Weekend Musings 18
Can TikTok eat Facebook's ad dollars and other platforms for fundraising in India
Sunday’s are bliss.
I do an early morning walk to Arunachala, enjoy the quiet serene beauty from one of the top spots.
And if I am lucky I visit the Skandasraman Cave where Sri Ramana Maharshi lived and meditated from 1916 to 1922.
And there are many more such caves and paths to get lost in nowhere. I am exploring one Sunday at a time.
By the time I come down and I am lucky I get a free meal served by the Ashram. It is simple, basic and fulfilling. I was lucky today - a small portion of pullav, a portion of hot curd rice with lemon pickle. I had it in the Ashram premises with other devotees who had come to take the blessings from Bhagwaan.
All that and more in my new newsletter Pradakshina, my journey within to understand “Who Am I” and be a better human being.
Meeting Devi Amma in Bangalore and
My Introduction to Grace - connecting with Sri Ramana Maharshi and Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj in Arunachala are my recent articles.
Do read it and if you find value do subscribe.
However free lunch is kind of over for Facebook.
A few years ago Facebook decided to end the free lunch that is Organic Reach for startups and brands. Today karma has hit back the social network which now has rebranded itself to Meta.
First Apple and then Google decided to stop providing free ad dollars to Meta. According to early reports, over 95% of iPhone users who had downloaded the update were opting out of ad tracking — hence the prediction that Meta's ad revenue will take a $10 billion hit in the coming year.
So what do you do in such a scenario?
Alex Kantrowitz from Big Technology thinks that it is a golden opportunity for TikTok to capitalize.
“This is 100% TikTok’s moment to scale,” said Sara Livingston, head of customer solutions at Rockerbox, a marketing analytics company. Facebook’s travails may lead more marketers to test budgets with TikTok, she said, and if their ads prove effective, they won’t stop spending. “Once they get in and establish a baseline of spend, it’s about a growing that. And it's really hard to get unseated.”
But the problem and asset for TikTok is its storytelling format.
Would you like to run an NGO Fundraising ad on TikTok? Well, why not but is the target audience click and willing to donate on the platform. And will the platform drive traffic to a Donation Page. There are donation stickers but not available for all.
How do you tell a story and launch an ad campaign without too much of a hassle?
Facebook’s Ad Manager does the job efficiently. Just get a big screen, the 13-inch laptop will drive you crazy. Facebook also has grave problems when it comes to advertising such as how it handles Payments.
And as the network moves into the Meta world it has completely turning a blind eye when it comes to support. Now it is more or less stopping chat support and providing help articles for specific issues.
I will do a post on my Facebook customer care experiences 😊
Furthermore, TikTok has been more of an engaging platform but the platform has shared numbers to prove that conversions are happening on its platform.
For eCommerce the platform shared:
Using closed captioning or on-screen text that clearly displays an offer or call-to-action drove an 80% lift in conversion
A combination of human voiceover illustrating the product and written offer drove an 87% lift in conversion
Videos that used a variety of scenes, as opposed to a static shot, led to a 38% lift in conversion
Hootsuite has provided an exhaustive guide on How to Advertise on TikTok in 2022
However, for an Indian TikTok is non-existent so I have no choice but to go back to Facebook. And the platform with all the challenges and PR struggles is still at the top and the Meta family(Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp) is making it possible too.
According to Dataportal - India has at least 329.7 million active Facebook users.
I recently shared on my company blog how the recent changes from Facebook will impact Nonprofit Fundraising - iOS and Facebook’s changes, and their impact on the Nonprofits.
LinkedIn is another platform that has been looked on as a B2B platform. Can Nonprofits look at it as a platform to raise funds? Why not? One can target people based on job profiles and designations. The platform has grown its advertising capabilities but the cost of conversion remains too high.
For example, On an average CPL on Facebook for Click To Donate camapigns is ranging from INR50 to INR70 but on LinkedIn, this can be three or four times.
And the average donation/gift size in India is INR 1000-1500 in such case the volumes play a role will LinkedIn give that to me? Right now I don’t have an answer as I have not explored LinkedIn as a fundraising platform but it is a good time to look into it.
Meanwhile, SocialInsider has an extensive guide about LinkedIn ads, it covers LinkedIn ads types, objectives, formats, and best practices.
There are some more platforms to explore(YouTube) but right now Facebook has been a preferred platform for Nonprofits in India when it comes to Click To Donate and Lead Generation campaigns.
More to be explored soon like Arunachala :)
Peace.