The internet has made it nearly impossible to hide misdeeds. In both private and public conversations, offensive, controversial, or embarrassing exchanges are immortalized for the public, such as the recent case with Joe Ricketts’ and Liam Neeson’s controversial remarks. If you’re interested in the world of an agency, Facebook ads, and general advertising, being involved in this development is necessary.
But today, Facebook offers a relief from regrettable comments as it finally rolls out an unsend feature on Messenger, which allows users to retract messages within a ten-minute window.
Prototyped in October 2018, Unsend is now available to all Android and iOS users. When users click a message, two options will appear: Remove for Everyone and Remove for you. Choosing the latter will remove the message from the recipient, although the retracted message will be replaced with a note about the removal. Choosing the former will remove the message only from the sender—the recipient can still see the message.
Photo courtesy of Tech Crunch
Although users can retract messages, they are still required to abide by Facebook’s Community Standards. Because Facebook has brief access to content after removal, users can flag messages as violations, and Facebook can revisit the message for review.
The unsend feature was first discovered by Tech Crunch when the online publisher reported on Mark Zuckerberg’s disappearing Messenger chats back in April 2018. Although a long wait, regular users can finally have what only the CEO of Facebook could enjoy.
Recently Mark Zuckerberg went live on Facebook to announce several changes to the company’s video features. He discussed the company’s three major video product categories: video calling, video rooms, and live video. Here are the products coming soon to Facebook’s family of apps that you should become well acquainted with if you are interested in ways to develop the Facebook advertise experience.
AR Experiences on Messenger
Messenger, which will now be available for video calling in more than 70 countries and territories, has undergone several AI-based changes to make calls more enjoyable and effective. Instead of static backgrounds, you can set a 360-degree immersive virtual background that moves with you as you move. There are also new AR experiences surrounding activities and special occasions, like birthdays. You can set AI-powered mood lighting, too, to create a better atmosphere for your video call, whether you’re getting together with family or are going on a first date.
Moreover, there are a number of benefits to using the new Messenger app:
If you only use Messenger on your phone, you can now make group calls on a larger screen, which is better for engaging with everyone you’re chatting with.
The same Messenger features you’re used to will be available in the app, including Dark Mode and GIFs.
You can connect with contacts via Messenger without needing to know their email addresses or phone numbers.
You can get notifications for new messages, and you can also mute or snooze notifications to avoid interruptions.
Virtual Dates
The new Virtual Dates is a combination of Facebook Dating and Messenger. You can invite matches to a video chat where you’ll go on a virtual date. The chat is privacy-protected so that you can’t see each other’s last names. Also, to connect for a second time after the first meeting, you’ll have to accept a new invite – that way, you can’t get roped into a second virtual date with someone you’re not interested in.
Facebook Dating / Facebook
WhatsApp
WhatsApp has doubled the number of people who can participate in a group call from four to eight. The service is available around the globe and on all major mobile platforms, and it’s the only end-to-end encrypted audio and video calling service.
WhatsApp / Facebook
Video Rooms
Video rooms, officially called Messenger Rooms, are different from video calling because you’ll set up the room ahead of time and then invite people to join using a link. Rooms are best for coordinating large group video calls, and anyone can join, even if they don’t have a login for any Facebook service. Rooms will be natively hosted in Messenger, but you can create and invite people to rooms in WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram, too.
Messenger Rooms / Facebook
Unlike a Zoom meeting where everyone is expected to show up at the designated time, Messenger Rooms are more casual. You can send out a link and let people know when the room will be open, but attendees can drop in and out whenever they want. After you create a room and invite who you’d like, users will be able to see a tray at the top of their News Feed that includes active rooms that they can join.
Rooms can be private, meaning they require a link to join, or they can be open to friends or people from a community. However, Facebook works behind the scenes to ensure that even more public rooms are open to only people you’re likely to want to connect with. They’ll select who to show the room to based on people you’ve interacted with or have shown interest in interacting with somewhat recently. That way, distant connections won’t be able to join the room.
For more privacy and security, you have the ability to kick someone out of a room or to lock a room to prevent more people from joining.
Live Video
Facebook Live lets you broadcast what you’re doing in the moment and interact with viewers in real time. Live With, an Instagram feature that will now be launched with Facebook as part of Facebook Live, lets two people go live together even if they’re not in the same place.
Live With / Facebook
Instagram Live will also now be available on your desktop instead of just in the mobile app. With more people staying home during the pandemic, desktop computers and larger screens are being used more than before.
Online Events
Events that would normally be held in public and with crowds are now being held online. Messenger Rooms and Facebook Live can now be combined with Facebook Events to plan and hold online events. Smaller events may fare better in Messenger Rooms while larger events are ideal for Live. Hosts can charge a fee to attend the event, too. Charging a fee helps creators and small businesses, and viewers will be able to attend a quality event like a class, conference, or creative performance.
Facebook Events / Facebook
Final Thoughts
Video products let you feel connected to people even when you can’t be in the same room with them. From secure, encrypted use for businesses to AI-powered fun and dating, video calling has a broad range of uses. The technology may be the same, but the way people use it – and what they’re able to get out of it – is varied and personal.
Earlier this month, it was discovered that a private Facebook group called “Marines United” dispersed explicit photos of female marines. The marines scandal, which is currently under investigation, leaves us frightened for our privacy, as well as our well-being on social media. How can we protect our children from cyberbullying, exploitation, assault, and violence? How can we protect ourselves from impersonation, among other privacy breaches?
Rest assured, as soon as Facebook discovers that someone has violated its community standards, it will take action. Here are the 11 forbidden Facebook posts and activities that will get you in trouble that an ads agency like us is well aware of.
1. Direct Threats
Facebook will remove posts or comments that contain credible threats of physical and financial harm, vandalism, and theft. Facebook considers an offender’s physical location (such as violent or unstable regions) and public visibility when determining whether a threat is credible.
2. Promotion of Self-Harm and Suicide
Facebook forbids posts that promote or encourage suicide or other types of self-harm, including self-mutilation and eating disorders. Additionally, Facebook removes comments or posts that attack survivors of self-harm or suicide, whether this attack may be said in earnest or in humor. Facebook, however, does allow posts that inform and educate people about self-harm and suicide.
3. Support for Dangerous Organizations
Facebook will remove posts that support and praise terrorist, criminal, and violent groups or leaders. However, Facebook welcomes discussion and commentary on these subjects if people discuss those issues politely and respectfully.
4. Bullying and Harassment
Although Facebook welcomes open discussion or criticism on public figures and celebrities, it does not tolerate posts that degrade or shame private individuals, or people who have neither gained news attention nor the interest of the public by way of their actions or public profession. Below are the posts and activities Facebook forbids:
Pages that identify and shame private individuals
Images altered to degrade private individuals
Photos or videos of physical bullying posted to shame the victim
Sharing personal information to blackmail or harass people
Repeatedly targeting other people with unwanted friend requests or messages
5. Attacks on Public Figures
Although Facebook encourages discussion and criticism of public figures and celebrities, it removes credible threats and hate speech targeting public figures and celebrities as it does for private individuals.
6. Criminal Activity
Facebook will remove posts that celebrate criminal activity, including activity that causes financial damage to people or businesses and physical harm to people, businesses, or animals. If Facebook suspects a genuine threat to an individual or to public safety, it will alert the police.
7. Sexual Violence and Exploitation
Facebook removes posts that promote sexual violence and exploitation, such as child exploitation and sexual assault. It also removes images and videos that portray acts of sexual violence, as well as explicit images and videos shared without consent.
Below are several examples of sexual exploitation:
Solicitation of sexual material
Sexual content involving minors
Threats to share intimate images
Offers of sexual and escort services
Prostitution
Sexual massages
Filmed sexual activity
If necessary, Facebook will submit these contents to law enforcement.
8. Promoting Offers of Regulated Goods
Facebook removes posts that sell or promote prescription drugs, marijuana, firearms, or ammunition. Additionally, Facebook will not allow you to sell regulated goods using its payment tools (i.e. Messenger).
9. Violence and Graphic Content
Violent and graphic content are removed if posted for sadistic pleasure or glorification. It is condoned, however, if content was posted to raise awareness or to condemn such acts.
10. Hate Speech
Facebook removes hate speech, or content that directly attacks people based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, sex, gender, gender identity, disabilities or diseases. However, Facebook allows posts that examine hate speech for the purpose of awareness, education, humor, satire, and social commentary.
11. Nudity
Facebook restricts nudity because it considers people’s age (teens as young as 14 can register for a Facebook account) and sensitivity to that type of content. Facebook will remove photographs of genitalia, buttocks, and breasts with exposed nipples. However, images of breastfeeding women and post-mastectomy breasts and paintings and sculptures depicting nudity are condoned.
Although Facebook removes content that violates its community standards, it’s important to know that it does not actively police forbidden content. Rather, it depends on reports from its users, a dilemma which the marines scandal exemplifies: the page, which contained hundreds of explicit photos for thousands of marines, has existed for quite sometime until a group member reported it. Thus, to protect yourselves and others from a privacy breach, you mustreport forbidden content or activities you see on Facebook.
Were you familiar with these 11 forbidden Facebook posts before reading this article? Leave your comments below or share this post to friends.
How effective is Facebook advertising? Very effective, at least according to a few stats. As of Q2 2018, there are 80 million small- and medium-sized Facebook business pages, a 23-percent increase from last year. Six million of those businesses regularly advertise on Facebook.
The increasing number of advertisers flocking to Facebook can be attributed to the social media company’s ability to bring more customers to businesses. In fact, almost 80 percent of American consumers say they’ve both discovered and purchased products through Facebook ads, a substantially higher percentage than Pinterest or Instagram. Of course, those numbers reflect average marketing performance. Some businesses that put any advertisement on Facebook don’t do this well—others do substantially better.
The difference has less to do with these companies’ total ad spend than with execution. Said differently, the businesses that have the most success are those that effectively leverage Facebook’s marketing tools, strategically segment their target audience, use customized landing pages in conjunction with Facebook ads, learn the nuances of ad bidding and budgeting, and make the most of the social media giant’s visual potential.
What Facebook Advertising Strategies Are Best for Your Business?
First and foremost, make sure your business qualifies for Facebook advertising by checking the list of prohibited items to sell on Facebook. Businesses currently advertising on Facebook or contemplating doing so often wonder which strategies would do well for them. Certainly, the most successful campaigns are those that are built on careful planning and grounded in clearly defined, realistic, and measurable marketing objectives. They also precisely target audiences and effectively leverage Facebook’s advertising tools. That said, some Facebook advertising strategies are more effective than others, including the following nine.
1. Get Your Target Audience Right
Targeting the right audience is marketing 101, and with that beginner course comes the usual recommendation to segment your audience, create buyer personas, and ensure your campaign reflects your entire sales funnel, not just the top. Facebook offers unique opportunities based on the granularity of its user data to define your target audience with a much greater degree of precision. In fact, audience targeting options are one of the many benefits of Facebook ads compared to other platforms.
There are several ways you can improve your ad campaigns using Facebook’s ad targeting tools. One way is to effectively incorporate key data parameters. For example, you can clearly define the location, age, interests, and detailed demographic data of your target audience.
To get even more granular, you can use Facebook’s Custom Audiences tool, which allows you to target users who interacted with your business in the past. You could target, for example, the leads who downloaded content from your website after clicking on your Lead Ad.
You could also use Lookalike Audience to expand the reach of your ads and grow your customer base. Whereas a Custom Audience consists of people who have already interacted with your business, a Lookalike Audience is comprised of Facebook users who resemble people who engaged with you, based on key behavioral and demographic data. Using Lookalike Audience, you can expand your reach to users who haven’t yet engaged with your business but are more likely to do so.
2. Select Ad Types Based on Stage in the Buyer’s Journey
It’s important to use Facebook for more than lead generation. Sure, you can create Lead Ads that give people exclusive content in exchange for their contact information, a classic inbound approach to generating more leads and awareness of your business, but Facebook is equally useful for nurturing those leads with ads that push them to the consideration and conversion stage. You can, for example, create a Carousel Ad, an attention-grabbing format that displays multiple products simultaneously.
You can increase the effectiveness of your Facebook advertising campaigns when you integrate those campaigns with your overall inbound strategy, one aspect of which is lead generation through content marketing. The idea isn’t new: You create relevant and useful content then promote that content in a Facebook Ad. When users click on the ad, they will be taken to a customized landing page where the gated content is available to download. You offer access to the content in exchange for users’ contact information and, bingo, you have a new lead.
Social media sites—Facebook in particular—can be enormously effective in extending the reach of your content marketing campaigns. Facebook, after all, is no longer only about posting funny kitten photos. In fact, according to HubSpot, 74 percent of Facebook users are there for professional purposes, and Facebook sends a substantial portion of its users to longer articles on other sites. Whatever your content and call to action, include it in one of your Facebook ads to bolster lead generation.
4. Use Videos
Facebook is a visual medium. To get the most out of it, take the time to create striking videos in your Facebook ads. Consider, for example, these visual asset stats from HubSpot:
Facebook users watch 100 million hours of video content every day.
Only 20 percent of people will read text in a Facebook ad. Eighty percent will watch a Facebook video.
Sixty-four percent of Facebook users say they’re more likely to buy a product online after watching a video.
On average, people can recall 65 percent of visual content they saw three days earlier.
The videos you use in Facebook ads should work naturally and organically with the copy that accompanies them. Don’t, for example, hit users with gratuitous shots of your business or your products unless those are directly related to the ad in which they appear.
5. Link Facebook’s Organic and Paid Advertising
Facebook has dramatically decreased the organic reach of brands, businesses, and public figures, but they can still leverage organic marketing through methods such as employee advocacy and customer service pieces. Those are dramatically more effective when linked to Facebook paid advertising, one of the reasons Sprout Social recommends a hybrid social media strategy. Organic activities, like the aforementioned, will help you build the trust you need to make your Facebook ads more effective. And, of course, your organic posts will be more effective when linked to conversion-enhancing Facebook ads.
6. Target Life Events
Among the more powerful marketing tools Facebook makes available is life event targeting. In other words, you can target prospects based on life events, such as a recent move or a recent engagement. By targeting life events, you can put highly relevant content in front of your Facebook audience at precisely the moment they want to see it. Some examples of how you might target life events include targeting a recent homebuyer with an ad promoting your moving services, targeting a recent home seller with your real estate ad, or targeting a newly engaged couple with an ad promoting your wedding planning agency.
7. Use Layered Targeting Options to Get Super Specific
Now, you probably don’t want to freak out your Facebook prospects, but you can put ads in front of them that are remarkably granular. Leveraging layered options, you can create target audiences grounded in a combination of behavioral, demographic, and geolocation data, so much so that an audience could be as small as a handful of people—or even just one. For example, if you run a real estate business, and you want your ad to appear to a specific group of potential clients, you can get as specific as targeting individuals in El Paso, Texas, with an average household income of $70,000 and an interest in buying a house.
8. Create a Smart Bid Strategy
Marketers are naturally concerned with the bottom line, and with increasingly limited marketing dollars and an increasingly large number of marketing channels, marketers need to be cost-conscious. You don’t want to spend more than you planned to, and you don’t want the wrong people clicking on your Facebook ads.
Fortunately, Facebook makes creating a smart bidding and budget strategy easier with its optimized CPM feature. With optimized CPM, you give Facebook permission to bid for ad space based on your goals and budget constraints, making it relatively easy to create the most of the budget you have.
9. Measure Results and Test Campaigns for Continual Improvement
Testing and tracking campaigns are the sine qua non of effective marketing, and Facebook is no different, with one small exception. Whereas most marketers have reasonably good familiarity with SEO, PPC, and content marketing, many are new to Facebook.
If you’re starting out as a Facebook advertiser, it’s a good idea to run relatively small test campaigns, same as would do if you just started trading stocks. Make adjustments based on results and gradually increase your scope. If you take the time to learn from your mistakes, you can ensure that your Facebook ad campaigns will continually improve over time.
Facebook is a platform many marketers use to grow their businesses. Although the social media company offers many advertising tools to help you succeed in the platform, the tools will hardly make an impact if not used with a strategy. If you put in the work, Facebook will produce the results.
In order to run ads on Facebook, you will need both an ad account and also a fan page. If you are utilizing a Facebook ad marketing agency to help you manage your account, you will need to assign agency access to your ad account and also give them access to your fan page. Here is a quick overview on how to provide access to your fan page.
Step 1: Navigate to your Fan Page on Facebook
Then click “Settings” from the top right menu.
Step 2: View Page Roles Page
Click on “Page Roles” from the left side menu.
*If you have signed up with AdvertiseMint, you can enter facebook@advertisemint.com into the “email” box and select “partner“. Press “Save“.
Step 3: Check your Notifications
AdvertiseMint will typically send a page request form directly to you. Once it arrives, you will receive a notification. Click the link in the notification.
Step 4: Respond to Request
Once the request has come through, you will be able to see it under the “Page Roles” tab under “Pending Agency Requests“. Click the “Respond to Request“.
Tinder announced during its parent company Match Group’s Q4 earnings summary with chairman and chief executive Greg Blatt that Tinder is joining Facebook’s Audience Network.
Tinder’s partnership with Facebook means advertisers and any agency for advertising will be able to serve ads on Tinder’s app by choosing Audience Network as one of its placements. Tinder users that fit the ad’s targeting description (gender, location, hobbies, interests, etc.) will see the ad. If advertisers don’t want their ads to appear on Tinder, they can opt out.
During the Q4 earnings report, Blatt said that Tinder is on its way to tripling its direct sales from Q1 of last year. He anticipates the partnership with Facebook will help him achieve this.
“As we roll in Facebook, we’re going to be able to start providing inventory on top of that,” Blatt said.
Apart from the premium subscription model, advertising is Tinder’s second source of revenue. Since 2015, brands such as Budweiser, Hero Condoms, and Bite the Ballot have served ads on the app. Recently, movies have also started advertising on Tinder by creating sponsored profiles of celebrities. Movies that did this included Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates.
With Tinder’s dominant “swipe” functionality, it’s certain that Facebook ads will appear after a user has swiped through a few profile cards. However, neither Tinder nor Facebook disclosed how many swipes it would take for an ad to appear in front of a Tinder user.
“Right now it’s literally all guesswork,” said Blatt when asked what the ad load would look like.
“I mean it’s not a relevant number right now. The inventory level is so small, but Facebook gives us the ability to hit any ad load we want, and I think in Q2 we are going to spend a fair amount of time testing that to try and find what our optimal level is,” he said.
Although Tinder has been reluctant to release its subscriber figures, it claims that each day there are 26 million matches across 196 countries—that’s good news for Facebook advertisers looking for a fresh platform and a new audience.
A screenshot of Facebook’s recent ad activity feature
You’ve likely clicked on an ad, debated whether or not to purchase the advertised item, then clicked out of the website, deciding to purchase later. You’re not the only one guilty of this indecisive act—your customers do it too. Fortunately, Facebook rolled out a new feature that allows customers to revisit your ads.
Recent ad activity, a tab located on the left column of desktop and the bookmarks bar of the app, contains a history of people’s recent ad activity. Currently, three month’s worth of ad activity appears in the ad activity log making Facebook ad agencies not the only thing privy to a surplus of ad data.
The ad activity from the left column of Facebook desktop
With this new feature, customers can revisit an ad they previously clicked. It is especially beneficial to advertisers because it allows indecisive customers, who take more time debating whether or not to make a purchase, to revisit an ad and convert. Previously, Facebook ads were transient and difficult to track down: an ad that appears one day will likely reappear several days after if at all.
Not only does the recent ad activity tab allow customers to revisit ads, but it also solves the problem of conversion credit. Previously, customers who couldn’t revisit Facebook ads resorted to searching the business on Google, giving Google instead of Facebook credit for conversion.
Of course, advertisers can still use the old method of crediting Facebook by using View Tags. The feature, located on the ad level of the creation workflow, tracks users who clicked on an ad or interacted with a business on Facebook. The cookies tracking the users will remain in browsers for up to a year if the browser isn’t cleared.
Although the recent ad activity feature seems to be a direct response to crediting problems, it can also be a direct response to the recent Russian ads scandal. A few weeks earlier, Facebook discovered 3,000 ads from Russia that promoted politically divisive ads on topics such as LGBTQ, gun laws, and immigration.
A Facebook representative was pressed for comments about the connection between the recent ad activity feature and the Russian ads scandal, but the Facebook representative could not provide more information. Nonetheless, the new feature gives users more transparency on the ads they clicked while giving advertisers the customers they otherwise could have lost.
One of the many benefits of Facebook for businesses is the selection of objectives available for you to outline and achieve your advertising goals. If you want people to search for more information about your business, then you should choose “clicks to website” as your Facebook advertising objective. This is a practice well-known by the top Facebook ad agencies.
With this objective, you can direct customers to your website and encourage them to explore your content, familiarize themselves with your brand, and hopefully convert. Clicks-to-website ads typically include the following call-to-actions:
Book Now
Contact Us
Download
Learn More
Shop Now
Sign Up
Watch More
Apply Now
Like all other ad types on Facebook, clicks-to-website objective ads are not available for brands with prohibited items to sell on Facebook, so double-check that your ads will qualify. Additionally, clicks-to-website ads, as the name implies, are only useful for businesses that have a site of their own to direct traffic to. In other words, if you’re selling on Facebook Marketplace and not your own online store, these ads won’t be useful to you.
Which platforms support the clicks-to-website objective?
You can serve all click-to-website ads on Facebook (mobile, desktop, newsfeed, and right column) and Instagram’s platforms. When creating an ad in Ads Manager, you can choose where you want to serve your ads in the “Placements” section.
Which ad formats can I use with the clicks-to-website objective?
An ad with a click-to-website objective is eligible for the video, carousel, photo, canvas, and slideshow format. You can choose your format in the “Format” section when creating the ad.
Facebook ad specs
When creating a clicks-to-website ad, follow these Facebook ad specs.
Facebook Links
Design Recommendations
Recommended image size: 1,200 x 628 pixels Image ratio: 1.9:1 Text: 90 characters Headline: 25 characters Link description: 30 characters Your image should include minimal text. See how the amount of text in your ad image will impact the reach of your ad.
Instagram Links
Design Recommendations
Image ratio: 1:1 Image size: 1080 x 1080 pixels Caption: Text only, 125 characters recommended Technical Requirements Image ratio: 1.9:1 to 1:1 Minimum resolution: 600 x 315 pixels (1.9:1 landscape) / 600 x 600 pixels (square) Caption: Text only, max 2,200 characters Limited support for landscape format Maximum resolution: 1936 x 1936 pixels File type: .jpg or .png Maximum size: 30MB Your image may not include more than 20% text. See how much text is on your image.
Facebook Carousel
Design Recommendations
Recommended image size: 1080 x 1080 pixels Image ratio: 1:1 Text: 90 characters Headline: 40 characters Link description: 20 characters Your image should include minimal text.
Instagram Carousel
Design Recommendations
Image size: 1080 x 1080 pixels Caption: Text only, 125 characters recommended
Technical Recommendations
Minimum number of images: 3 Maximum number of images: 5 Image ratio: 1:1 Minimum resolution: 600 x 600 pixels Maximum resolution: 1936 x 1936 pixels File type: .jpg or .png Maximum size: 30MB per image Your image should include minimal text. See how the amount of text in your ad image will impact the reach of your ad. Caption: Text only, max 2,200 characters
Facebook Canvas
Design Requirements
Image Ratio: 1.9:1 Image Size: 1,200 x 628 pixels recommended Your image may not include more than 20% text. See how much text is on your image. Text: 90 characters recommended Headline: 45 characters recommended Note that the feed unit may have either an image or video.
Marketing is so much different now than it used to be. Most campaigns are digital, with social media as the biggest channel for delivering ads to audiences. Facebook in particular has helped many businesses succeed, but if you’re unfamiliar with the platform, if you don’t know how Facebook advertising works, you could waste a significant amount of money, not to mention time. This article contains a Facebook marketing strategy used by the biggest Facebook ad companies that will help you succeed on the biggest social networking platform in the world.
If you’re turning to Facebook to market your business, you need to know exactly what you want out of it in order to measure whether or not the platform is working for you. Think about your business goals with your marketing team or Facebook advertising agency, and write down what you want to accomplish: Do you want to increase sales, boost brand awareness, drive app installs?
Facebook’s numerous ad objectives will help you achieve your business goals. These objectives fall under three of the following categories.
Awareness: generates interest in your business’s offerings
Consideration: gets users thinking about your business
Conversions: encourages users to buy your product or service
Awareness
The awareness category includes the following objectives:
Brand awareness: spreads the word about your brand so more people know about it
Reach: reaches as many users who match your target audience as possible
Consideration
The consideration category includes
Traffic: drives visits to your website or app
App installs: directs users who click on your ad to the app store to download your app
Engagement: increases the number of users who see and engage with your Facebook page content, such as posts and events
Video views: gets more users to watch your Facebook videos
Lead generation: acquires new leads by collecting customer information, such as email addresses, first and last names, and phone numbers
Messages: encourages more users to engage in conversations with your business on Facebook Messenger
Conversions
The conversions category includes the following:
Conversions: prompts more customers, new or existing, to purchase on your website, subscribe to your mailing list, download your app, or make other conversions relevant to your business goals
Catalog sales: promotes items from your product catalog that are relevant to your target audience
Store visits: drives foot traffic to your business’s brick-and-mortar location
By clearly identifying your objectives, it’ll be easier to craft ads and organic content that best fit your needs, which will more likely result in a successful Facebook campaign.
Determine Who Is Your Target Audience
Mentatdgt / Pexels
No Facebook content, organic or paid, is going to perform well if it’s delivered to an audience unlikely to engage. A hardcore rock-and-roller, for instance, probably won’t buy your opera album, so promoting your CDs to this individual isn’t going to deliver the conversions you’re aiming for. You should be able to answer the following questions to determine who is your target audience.
What are their key interests? For example, if you’re promoting a romantic comedy, your ideal audience includes users who enjoy movies, romance, and comedy.
Where do they live? If your business is entirely online, your target audience may live anywhere. However, if you’re trying to reach locals to drive foot traffic, specify a geographical radius. Other factors, such as seasonal influences, may also determine the location of your target audience.
What age demographic do you want to reach? Do you want to reach millennials, gen Zs, or parents?
Does your target audience have a specific range of income? If you offer expensive products or services, you don’t want to deliver your ads to an audience that may not be willing to spend too much money.
Is education a factor? For example, if you sell college supplies, your target audience may be recent high school graduates.
Other factors may also be important to know, depending on the product or services you offer and your objectives. Add any relevant questions to the above list and be as specific as possible. Knowing everything you can about your target audience will help you deliver relevant content to people who are most inclined to respond.
If you’ve already accumulated a list of customer leads, you can upload it to Facebook as a Custom Audience. Facebook will use that information to deliver your ads to users who have already interacted with your business in some way. But be aware of Facebook’s latest efforts to be more transparent with users about advertisers who target them with Custom Audiences.
To reach new customers, you can use your Custom Audience to create a Lookalike Audience, which targets users with similar interests and demographics to those of your Custom Audience. This ensures your ad will be delivered users who are likely to interact with your business.
Set a Realistic Budget
Pixabay / Pexels
If you aren’t careful, you can end up spending a lot of money on Facebook ads. However, when appropriated wisely, the money invested in marketing on the platform is money well spent.
Just as you need to be very specific about your objectives and target audience, you want to be specific about where your money will go. For example, you want to budget for the promotion of the ads, as well as the creative process behind them. Facebook doesn’t charge you to create content, but you may determine that you want to invest in a Facebook advertising agency. Create a budget for any portion of your Facebook marketing plan that you are willing to invest in.
Depending on the size of your business, your budget will vary. Be realistic and crunch the numbers. You may want to get a financial expert to help you accurately calculate the costs.
Create Engaging Organic Content
To give your Facebook page more value to users, you want to post engaging organic content. The more engaging it is, the more users will interact with it, the more Facebook will prioritize your posts in users’ News Feeds. You should also diversify your content to make it more interesting and to avoid boring your audience with your posts. Alternate between video, images, and Gifs, as visuals grab your audience’s attention more than just plain text.
When choosing visuals for your posts, make sure they are high-resolution and professional. Anything less will make your page seem inexperienced and behind the times. Additionally, avoid cheesy stock photos. Images should always be relevant to your message, and they should look both natural and stunning. Look at the following two stock photos, for example.
Pexels
Which stock photo looks more natural? Hopefully, you agree that the photo on the right is more captivating and natural than the one on the left. The photo on the left looks very staged, with people that appear stiff and fake. The photo on the right, however, looks like a real workplace environment, due to the candid shot and natural appearances of the subjects in the image.
With video, since most users will be watching it with sound off on their mobile devices, you need to make your message clear even without audio. Use captions to convey your message. Still, your video’s audio should also be high-quality, so users who do watch it with sound on can hear everything crystal clear.
When writing your post text, be interesting, and make sure it is free of common grammatical errors. To encourage users to engage with your posts, ask questions, ask for their thoughts, educate them, or tap into their emotions. Be wary of lazy copywriting. You never want your audience to lose interest.
Create Engaging Ads
As you would with organic content, you need to create high-converting and engaging Facebook ads. Otherwise, you will fail to meet your business’s objective. The approach is similar to creating organic content. You want to include engaging and high-quality visuals that are relevant to the message. The video you post should include captions, and the copy should be compelling. However, there are more factors to consider when creating click-worthy ads that drive desired conversions. With Facebook ads, you want to add a value proposition, CTA (call to action), and social proof to your creatives.
Value propositions provide the benefit of purchasing a product or service. Ad taken from Facebook’s Ad Library
Value proposition conveys the benefit of the product or service you’re promoting. It gives your customers incentive to take action. A value proposition could be a solution to a problem, a discount or special offer, or a reason why customers should buy from you, not your competitors.
All Facebook ads contain CTA buttons. Ad taken from Facebook’s Ad Library
CTAs are phrases urging your audience to take action. Although you can add CTAs in your ad copy, Facebook ads already include CTA buttons, including those that say “Buy Now,” “Learn More,” “Sign Up,” and “Click Here.” By including CTAs in your Facebook ad, you’re prompting your audience to engage with it.
Social proof gives your audience evidence that others are engaging with your business or taking action on your ad, serving as social media’s “word of mouth.” It can typically be used in your ad’s copy, such as “Thousands of people are raving about this product,” or it can simply appear in the form of likes, shares, and comments on your ad.
Advertisers often feature customer reviews on ads, which function as social proof.
Another way to make your Facebook ads engaging is to format them for vertical screens. Facebook users spend a lot of time on their mobile devices. They very rarely rotate their phones to watch a video horizontally anymore, so you should optimize your ads for mobile by formatting them vertically. Video ads in particular should be optimized for mobile. You can get creative within the vertical space, directing your audience’s eye throughout the video by using bright colors, movement, or split screens. Play around with your video creative to make it engaging for mobile users.
Engaging ads are the key to conversions. You don’t want to neglect this area of your marketing strategy.
Use a Variety of Ad Formats
The beauty of Facebook advertising is there are so many formats to choose from. There are Carousel Ads, Dynamic Ads, Lead Ads, and Canvas Ads.
An example of a Carousel Ad
Carousel Ads allow you to include multiple images and videos in one ad, using a string of carousel cards. You can use the cards to tell a story, demonstrate steps to using a product, or display multiple products you want to promote from your store.
Dynamic Ads advertise products from your product catalog. They help you deliver relevant ads to customers from your target audience who have viewed your product, placed products in their shopping carts, or purchased specific products.
Lead Ads help you collect leads by using a form pre-filled with information the user previously shared with Facebook. They also allow you to create custom questions and conditional answers.
An example of a Lead Ad
Canvas Ads allow you to create an immersive mobile experience for your audience. This format offers a variety of templates to choose from, depending on what you want to accomplish. For example, the Lifestyle layout lets you build immersive, branded collections with lifestyle imagery in the form of people, places, or experiences.
Post Content When Your Audience Is Most Engaged
Once you’ve gotten to know your audience, you should pay attention to the times of day when they’re the most engaged with your content. Once you’ve identified those key days and times, schedule your content to post at those times. This will increase the likelihood that your audience will engage with your content, helping you drive conversions.
Scheduling tools like Hootsuite make it easy to schedule bulk content. You can plan out your posts for the week or even the month to ensure you’re posting consistently and frequently, keeping your audience engaged when they’re the most active on Facebook.
Use Analytics to Keep Track of Your Campaign’s Performance
How do you know how well your Facebook campaign is performing? Facebook’s Ads Manager offers a variety of metrics to help you measure campaign performance and post reach. Last year, Facebook simplified its ad metrics with new labels, so it’s easier to understand your metrics now more than ever.
If you or the person in charge of your Facebook campaign has trouble understanding Facebook’s metrics, a Facebook advertising agency can help you understand and interpret your results.
Split Test Often
Last but not least, you should regularly split test your Facebook ads. Split testing, also known as A/B testing, is the process of experimenting with different ad elements to find the best performing version of the ad. For instance, you can swap out an image with a new one while keeping the same copy to see whether the ad performs better. Split testing helps you choose the version that will best deliver the results you’re aiming for.
Using Facebook to market your business is a wise decision. However, it does require careful planning and a solid strategy to reach your goals successfully. If you’re new to the game or if you don’t have the time to dedicate to your Facebook marketing plan, you should consider hiring a reputable Facebook advertising agency to help you navigate such a complex platform.
With Facebook’s Workplace, a business-oriented version of Facebook, co-workers can easily connect, collaborate, and work with one another no matter the space and distance. This can allow for greater connection at large businesses that provide a Facebook advertising service. Like Facebook, Workplace contains Live Video, News Feed, Groups, Messenger, Reactions, Search, and Trending Posts. However, unlike Facebook, Workplace has:
Analytics and Integrations: a dashboard with analytics, integration, single sign-on, and identity providers that companies use to integrate Workplace with their existing IT systems.
Multi-Company Groups: shared spaces in which employees from different organizations can work together and collaborate.
Note: to join Workplace, you must submit an application to workplace.fb.com on the behalf of your company. Once your application has been approved, you will receive an email from Workplace inviting you to join. Note that you may receive a response from Workplace as late as three months.
If you want to start a Workplace account for your company, follow the steps below.
Step 1: Click “Get Started”
From the email invite Marketplace sent you, click “Get Started.”
Step 2: Click “Get Started” again
Click “Get Started.”
Step 3: Fill in form and click “Preview Profile”
Fill in the form with your information and click “Preview Profile” to see what your profile looks like.
Step 4: Access free trial
To access the free trial, click “Get Started.”
Step 5: Create password and click “Invite Coworkers”
Create your password then click “Invite Coworkers” to invite your employees to sign up. Employees won’t have to purchase the free trial.
Step 6: Invite co-workers
Enter the full names and email addresses of the employees you want to invite. Then click “Send Invites.”
Step 7: You’re done!
Congrats! You’re now a member of Workplace, and the employees you invited will become members of Workplace as soon as they sign up. Your email invites will be sent to the email addresses you provided, and your employees will go through a similar sign up process outlined in “How to Join Workplace as an Employee.”
Remember that Workplace looks and functions like Facebook. If you know how to navigate Facebook, you’ll know to navigate Workplace.
Interested in more Facebook Workplace info? Check out our guide on how to join Facebook Workplace as an employee.
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