Ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus said that, “Change is the only constant in life”. If there’s one area this applies to more than ever, it’s social media.
Since the birth of Facebook, Twitter & Co., our lives have been shaped in ways hardly anyone understands. Some researchers consider the new addiction to social networks more dangerous than the addictive behavior towards alcohol, drugs or tobacco, whereas others highlight the need for those regular dopamine hits of online validation (read the full article on The Times).
I guess the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
Today I’d like to dive deeper into the social ads game and share with you a few Facebook advertising tips that work this very moment. As things change and Facebook releases new features and campaign types, these tips need alterations, too.
Before we get started, I’d like to point out the following:
Facebook ads are still underpriced.
Yes, more corporations are shifting budgets from traditional media to digital, thus dumping large sums of money into social and mainly Facebook advertising.
Yes, the number of advertisers is growing very fast. By the time I’m writing this post, Facebook hit 6 million advertisers.
Yes, you don’t need to mess around with Power Editor anymore as Facebook has vamped up the Ads Manager enabling you to setup ads as you once used to doing inside Power Editor. Btw. the two advertising tools are about to merge, in case you don’t already have access to the new Ads Manager/ Power Editor tool.
Despite all of the above, the platform is still underpriced.
1. Sell High-Ticket Items with Facebook Messenger Ads
When you run Messenger Ads, you encourage people to have a conversation with your business in Messenger to complete purchases, answer questions and offer support.
The personal nature of Messenger ads as opposed to other ad types where you’re taken to an article, a video or sales page allows you to cater a marketing message that is personalized, super relevant and highly targeted thus enabling you to sell high-ticket items (for example high-ticket events) while giving the audience immediate support in case it’s required.
Nothing beats personalized messages and a human answering your questions. This however doesn’t mean you can’t deploy chatbots for your opening lines or for a quick navigation through basic Q&As.
2. Build Your Email List with Facebook Lead Ads
Modern technology allows us to communicate, sign up to newsletters and purchase things faster and with little hustle. To harness the power of this human behavior, Facebook has come up with a new campaign type called Lead Ads.
You don’t have to leave the Facebook environment anymore.
Your data (e.g. name, email address) is prepopulated from your profile information.
You simply click a button and the goodies you signed up for are immediately delivered to your inbox.
Facebook sure knows how to make the most out of the age of instant gratification.
Before you deploy Facebook Lead Ads, make sure your CRM / email marketing software is connected accordingly. You can use third-party lead generation platforms such as Zapier, SyncSumo, Leadsbridge, AdEspresso or Driftrock that integrate seamlessly. I personally use Leadsbridge to sync my Custom Audiences and keep everything up-to-date.
3. Add Your Eventbrite Event to Facebook and Send Traffic to Facebook’s Event Tab
This Facebook advertising tip is extremely valuable for those of you who run events and sell tickets on Eventbrite.
Eventbrite has partnered up with Facebook and now you can add your Eventbrite tickets to a Facebook event with a few clicks. The huge benefit of this is that attendees can now complete their Eventbrite order without ever leaving Facebook.
Here’s a quick guide provided by Eventbrite on how to use the ‘Add to Facebook’ tool to publish the event on your Facebook Page.
Once you’re done with that, you can set up an ad and drive traffic to the newly created Facebook event tab.
4. Test Instagram Stories as an Ad Placement
Instagram is a great platform for eCommerce and Influencer marketing. When it comes to advertising, the Instagram Feed might not be the best place to run Lead Ads for example.
The Instagram Feed can be very powerful for campaign types such as brand awareness, engagement, video views, reach or catalog sales. The newly released Instagram Stories placement is a whole deal altogether.
Where attention goes, money flows – this statement can best describe the current state of Instagram Stories. Therefore, I highly suggest you add this placement to your next ad and track the results it generates for you and your business.
5. Use the Insights from Facebook Analytics to Create Better Ads
Hidden in your Facebook advertising dashboard under “Measure & Report” lays a golden nugget very few advertisers are familiar with and more importantly, use on a regular basis. It’s Analytics.
Once you dig into Analytics, you’ll understand exactly what I’m talking about. I warn you, it will be addictive. The insights you’ll get will blow your mind – especially if you’re using Business Manager that allows you to create Event Source Groups (ESG) and track your visitors journey across devices, pages and platforms.
What’s the biggest benefit of Facebook Analytics?
In my opinion, it’s the fact that you can use these insights along with your Google Analytics data to massively improve your targeting which is a key component to running successful ads on Facebook, or any platform for that matter.
6. Find Out which Facebook Advertising Campaign Causes the Lowest Cost Conversions for Your Business
One of the latest features that was added to the Facebook Advertising dashboard is “Test and Learn”. You’ll find it under “Measure & Report” just like Analytics that I previously touched upon.
For now, you can set up tests to answer the following two questions:
- Campaign comparison test: Which campaign causes the lowest cost conversions to occur?
- Facebook ad account test: How many conversions are all my Facebook ads causing?
When you run ads, you always want to know which campaign adds more sales, leads or conversions at a lower cost to your business. If you want to look at the big picture of how your Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Audience Network ads are impacting your business, this is a great place to start.
Going forward, I see this “Test and Learn” section being expanded and polished by Facebook.
7. Create Multiple Ad Sets and Test Different Bid Strategies
Instead of creating an ad set one at the time and eventually duplicating it in the future, Facebook now enables you to create multiple ad sets and decide how you want your budget to be distributed.
Currently, you can add up to four variations:
- Custom Audience variation
- Location variation
- Age range variation
- Detailed targeting variation
In terms of budget distribution, you can choose between Even Distribution where every single ad set you created gets the same amount of budget or Balanced Distribution, where you can allocate your budget based on the audience size.
If you decide to go with the second option, Facebook will provide you with a pre-populated breakdown. You can adjust the budgets in the “Review Ad Sets” section or leave the budget split as is.
What’s the biggest benefit of the Balanced Distribution bid strategy?
For those of you who’re planning on scaling your Facebook ad campaigns without killing the performance or causing other unwanted damages, this strategy might be of great service to you.
Actionable Facebook Advertising Tips to Successfully Grow Your Business
All of the above mentioned Facebook advertising tips and suggestions are hands-on and can be implemented immediately. They are not easy, nor are they intuitive, especially for those of you who aren’t actively involved in the Facebook advertising game.
Some of these tips are more advanced, whereas others such as for example, growing your email list with Lead Ads or creating multiple ad sets to test different bid strategies require medium level know-how.
This is a small list of Facebook advertising tips and strategies that work today, as in right now. Facebook changes so fast, and therefore even the ads that generate fantastic results today will have to be constantly tweaked and adjusted to continue to deliver great results in the future.
What other Facebook advertising tips would you add to the list? Is there a particular campaign type that keeps generating outstanding results over and over again for your business?
