Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Facebook Marketing 101 Ebook
Facebook Marketing 101 Ebook
All right reserved. No part of this book shall be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted
by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without written
permission from the publisher and author. No patent liability is assumed with respect to the use of the
information contained herein. All terms mentioned in this book that are known to be trademarks or
service marks have been appropriately capitalized. Use of a term in this book should not be regarded
as affecting the validity of any trademark or service mark. Facebook is a registered trademark of
Facebook Inc.
2
Letter from the author
5
What You‟ll Learn 6
The Complete Guide On Getting Started
With Facebook Marketing
8
11 Proven Tactics To Grow You Facebook 39
Page Fan Base
4
Facebook Marketing 101
A Complete Guide to Facebook Marketing for 2015
by Zoe Summers @ Mass Planner
.
With this eBook, we aim to help you get
started with Facebook Marketing and keep you up
to date with all the changes that affect your plans.
In today's marketing landscape, there is no
question whether to start building a Facebook
presence or not. The question is how to do it in a
fast and efficient way.
This eBook is a guide with the purpose to
take you through the process of setting up your
Facebook Page and Marketing plan, from the very
Zoe Summers
beginning. If you're an advanced Facebook Social Media Expert at
Marketer, don't worry, there are plenty of new Mass Planner – The most
ideas that will give you food for thoughts and help powerful social media
automation software
you improve your marketing game.
There will be however a lot of testing and Follow me on:
experimentation on your part. But with the ideas
and knowledge in this book you will be able to
speed things up, build a successful brand and
meet your business goals.
You‟ll also learn the most efficient ways to use your cover photo for
branding and the best methods to dramatically increase the engagement
on your Page and drive traffic back to your website.
Inside The News Feed Algorithm: How To Get In The News Feeds
More Often
In this chapter, you will learn how to determine your EdgeRank and why
it‟s important for your Facebook content. We will walk through all the
News Feed algorithm changes throughout the years, and we will study
the best methods to increase your score to help you get into the News
Feed more.
6
The Importance Of Facebook Videos And How To Use Them With
Your Business
Your Facebook content is the only thing that can make or break your
business Page. That‟s why it‟s in your advantage to know what type of
content can boost your engagement rates and ignite your fan base
growth.
You‟ll also learn the most effective ways to use your cover photo for
branding and the best methods to dramatically increase the
engagement on your Page and drive traffic back to your website.
8
The Complete Guide On Getting Started With
Facebook Marketing
even for the experienced marketers to was the entire Earth’s population in
18041.
keep up with all the Facebook changes
According to the company‟s earning
and algorithm updates. Many slides for Q1 20152:
strategies that once worked are
useless and when you think you got it
all figured out Facebook announces
another change.
So, before getting frustrated for
not seeing the best results for your
efforts,
9
let‟s take a look at the Facebook Marketing Best Practices for 2015. This
guide will keep you up to date with the latest changes on Facebook, the
newest marketing strategies that work and mistakes to avoid.
First, let’s see ten rules to have in mind before creating your
Facebook Page.
10
The best way to show your personal side and connect emotionally
with your audience is to invite them behind the scenes. Show them the
team behind your amazing products. When talking to your fans use first
names. Post holiday pictures or daily life events. You don‟t have to be too
personal, just to let your fans get a glimpse of who you are when you
don‟t put your working face on.
People tend to trust a brand more when they know there‟s a real
person behind it. And with trust you have engagement, and traffic and
sales, and … you get the picture.
11
#2 Create Fresh Content
I bet you hear this a lot. The key to social media success (in fact, to
online success) is new, unique content. The internet is flooded with the
same old stories. Too many people think alike, sound alike and write
alike. There‟s too much content online, and it‟s getting harder and harder
to find good, rewarding information. When you find such a source, you
stick with it.
To make yourself stand out from the crowd, you need to have
courage and determination. Don‟t be afraid to tell your opinions. Dare to
be different! Tell a story from a new perspective,
12
find rules that you can break3 to help you enhance your social presence.
Don‟t just follow other social influencers. Learn from them, but do
your own thing. Become an influencer yourself!
The only thing you need to have in mind when creating fresh content
is your audience. Write content to attract your ideal audience, because
they‟re going to become your number one fans. No matter the social
platform you use, you need to consistently create new content and
always share your best stuff.
Try creating a little curiosity with each post, to make people pay
attention and want to read more.
Engagement is about getting your fans to take action (to like your
posts, shares your updates, leave a comment or click on your links).
Engagement is the real name of the game when you‟re talking Facebook
13
Marketing. And the reason engagement is so important is that all your
fans actions are directly influencing your EdgeRank. We will talk more
about the EdgeRank in one of our future chapters, but for now what you
need to know is that this rank decides whether to show your content to
your fans or not. So, every time people take action your EdgeRank goes
up. This means you‟ll show up in the News Feeds more often, and people
will see more of your posts.
14
If you‟ve got zero engagement, then none of your fans see your
posts in their News Feeds. Better reach goes hand in hand with more
traffic to your page, which is good for your business, right? So, if you
want better reach, you need to create an engaged community around
your business
15
Why We Like, Comment, and I will be brutally honest with
Share on Facebook4
you right now: people are not on
On average, 44% of Facebook
users, “like” content posted by their
Facebook to do business with you.
friends at least once per day, with They want to look at some funny
29% doing so several times per
day. pictures, videos, find an old college
People will like and share more of your updates because they‟re
not over promotional, but fun. So their friends will see them and share
with their friends and so on. Sooner rather than later, your updates will
show up more in your audience‟s News Feeds.
16
And when you win your audience‟s trust, your promotional updates will be
well received and most importantly visible to a huge following.
Have a clear goal for your content strategy, decide what the primary
actions that you want your fans to take are and just go ahead and ask
them. You‟ll see a boost in your performance and you‟ll start reaching
your goals sooner.
People are too busy and even if they appreciate your content,
sharing it with their friends may not be the first thing on their minds.
17
#7 Make use of the power of social proof
One way to make people talk about you is to do fun things, like
contests, where the spotlight is on your audience.
One way to do this is by showcasing your fans. This way other fans
will get involved. And you‟re not only getting your top fans to shine on
your Facebook page, but you will get other people to know your fans as
well.
18
Humans Of New York5 is one brand that successfully managed to
create a truly inspired and engaged community. As you can see people
engage with one another, they like and reply to other people‟s comments.
19
Have a branded timeline cover and profile photo. Look professional
on Facebook but at the same time familiar to the people that know you
from outside the social space.
And you don‟t even have to spend that much time on tracking. In just
15 or 20 minutes a week you can figure out what improvements to make
and what type of content your audience receives best.
Make use of the Facebook‟s Page Insights, where you can see
which posts get the most engagement and reach. You can see how many
people are talking about a post, and if it‟s doing really well, you want to
do more of that.
20
What is the difference between a Facebook
Profile and a Page?
Your profile is more about your personal life. The place where you connect
with your friends and family, people from high school or college.
21 21
Meanwhile, on your personal profile, you can let your friends know about
the products that you‟re working on or a coming event for which you need
their support.
By mixing the professional with the personal and vice-versa, you will
get double the exposure.
The same goes with your profile: you don‟t want to sound too
professional and talk only business with your friends. On your profile, you
want to get more personal while on your page more focused about your
niche and your business.
22
To take advantage of both your profile and your page you need to be
active on both. Don‟t neglect one or another. At first, your updates on
your profile will get more reach and engagement from your friends. But if
you‟re very active on your page, you will start to get similar exposure on
page posts too.
1. Go to your settings
2. Click Followers in the left column
3. Choose Everybody next to Who Can Follow Me
23
Some people prefer to connect with the individual versus the brand.
By allowing them to follow your profile, you will get expanded visibility.
You profile‟s posts will have higher priority when displayed in the
News Feeds than your page‟s posts. Having both, the profile and the
page will get you into the News Feed for more people often.
1. Click on the “Create Page.” option in the Facebook menu, right next
to your username.
24
3. Add details for your business and then click “Get Started”
25
4. Add more page details to increase the chance that your fans find you
through search and save your information.
You can switch between your profile and your page when using
Facebook. This means you can like other pages as your page, you can
post content, like or comment as your page on any timeline of a page that
you‟ve liked. You don‟t even have to like the page, and you can do all
those things as your page on their timeline.
The profile image that appears next to your name on comments and
posts is the same image but is automatically scaled down to 32px by
27
32px. As you can see, the profile image works like a tiny avatar, so it‟s
better to avoid having words that can‟t be distinguished. Try to stick to
your headshot if it‟s a personal brand or an image that represents your
business versus a bunch of words.
Another thing you need to have in mind when creating your cover
photo, besides the size, is that they now have a narrow gray semi-
transparent gradient running along the bottom. This is something
personal profiles have had for a while, but it‟s now also available on
cover photos on business pages.
If you‟ve just set up a new Facebook profile or page and don‟t yet
have a cover photo when you try to add one, you‟ll see a message from
Facebook with some ground rules:
• don‟t use your timeline cover photo for ads, promotions or to sell
your products or services
• don‟t use content that is commercial, promotional, copyright-
infringing or already used by someone else
• be creative and experiment with images to see what your
audience responds best to.
28
9 Innovative ways to use your timeline cover photo
#1 Extend the Brand
#2 Event Promotion
29
#3 Highlight your team
You can use pictures from team buildings, events or you can just
take a quick picture in your office. The important thing is to let your team
shine.
30
#4 Personal Branding
Seth Godin10 chooses to showcase his fans holding his latest book.
31
#5 Show your audience
#6 Create curiosity
32
#7 Simple Branding
Oreo15 is all about animations and fun, not only on their cover photo,
but throughout the entire Facebook page.
Facebook wants you to get creative and change your cover photo
often to show your audience what you‟re all about. It‟s a good practice to
have different versions and change it once a month or even once a few
weeks if you want to. Keep things interesting and fun.
34
Things to do on your Facebook page to make sure you drive all
the traffic to your website
We‟re not done with setting up an effective Facebook page yet. Next
thing to do is to optimize your page for driving traffic back to your site.
After all that‟s our primary goal, right?
Here‟s a list of a few things you can do right from the start.
• Book Now
• Contact Us
• Use App
• Play Game
• Shop Now
• Sign Up
• Watch Video
35
After you select the type you want, you need to add the URL of your
website and the URL of the mobile version if you have one.
36
Next, you will see the iOS destination screen, where you can choose
where to send the people that tap the button on an iPhone or iPad. You
can choose to send them to your website or your mobile app if you have
one.
The final step is deciding what happens when people tap the button
from an Android device: whether they‟re sent to the website or the
Android application.
37
Notes
38
We'll dissect the best ways to build your Facebook Page fan base.
In this chapter you will learn the best 11 strategies to quickly grow
your fan base with an ideal audience.
39
11 Proven Tactics To Grow Your Facebook Page
Fanbase
It‟s all about the community. You don‟t So why does growing your
want just fans, you want engaged fans. fan base matter? Because
Engaged fans will bring other engaged fans it will increase your social
with the word-of-mouth being in your favor. traffic, will build your brand,
will get more exposure and
more potential clients. And
To start a chain reaction that will that‟s good business.
increase your fan base organically,
you need to define your ideal
customers, attract them to your
Facebook page and build an What is a super fan? Amy
engaged community. Porterfield says that it‟s the
super fan you want to attract
to your page. Because their
loyalty is absolute, they‟re
the best of the best. They
are the fans that have given
you data permissions,
purchased from
you, and sparked other fan‟s
purchases.1
8
The next step is to send your fans to your website. So the ultimate
goal is to bring your genuine and engaged Facebook audience to your
website and grow your business.
The more super fans you have on your Facebook page, the more
engagement you will have around your updates. Meaning that more of
your posts will show up in the News Feed for more people. The super
fans are those that don‟t stop at liking your Facebook page. They actively
engage with your content. They like it, comment or share it. They spread
your word. So you need more super fans. Whenever they like or leave a
comment or share one of your posts, these posts will also appear in their
friends‟ News Feeds. These friends will discover your brand and in turn
they will like your page.
First of all you want to attract the audience you already have, that
spend time on your website. You know they already have a genuine
interest in your products or services, so you want to make it easier for
them to follow you on Facebook as well. They can become the super
fans that we talked about, given that you consistently provide great
content on your Facebook page.
41
One way to drive the traffic to your website to your Facebook page is
to add a like button or box to your site.
This way people spending time on your site are one click away from
becoming your fans on Facebook. They don‟t have to leave your website
to go to Facebook. They just have to click the Like button.
Another advantage is that this kind of plugin will show all the pictures
of your visitor‟s friends that already liked your page. People are more
inclined to like your page if they see that their friends already liked it.
42
#2 Connect Your Personal Profile With Your Pages
We already discussed the difference between a Facebook Profile
and a Facebook Page and what you can do with each in our first chapter.
And we also discussed the fact that if you have both you get double the
exposure. Now, to make it easier for your page to get discovered, you
need to link it from your profile.
In the About section, you can add the company you currently work
for, which is your Facebook Page. Then you need to select “ I currently
work here “ and voilà: your page and profile are linked together.
Now all the traffic that goes to your profile will quickly find your page
as well. Everywhere on Facebook where your profile appears, a link to
your page will show up from now on. For example, if you go and type
your name into the search bar, you will see under your name your job title
and your Page name. Or, for example, if you take your mouse over your
profile name in your Timeline or News Feed, you will see a box showing
up that contains a short description of your profile, including a link to your
Facebook Page.
43
Another benefit of having your profile and page linked together is
that, if you leave a comment on a website that uses the Facebook
commenting platform, your page is linked to that comment as well. If you
comment in niche groups, your Facebook Page will be visible too, getting
more exposure from targeted groups and leading to more fans.
Let people know that they can find useful and exclusive information
on your Facebook Page, that they don‟t want to miss. And don‟t limit to
your Facebook Page, add a link to your Facebook profile also to get even
more exposure. This way people that you are communicating with
regularly will be able to go on Facebook and like your page or add your
profile and stay connected.
44
Adding a link to your Facebook page or profile in your e-mail
signature, will make it easier for all the people you communicate with
daily, to add you on Facebook or to follow your business page. It‟s a
great opportunity to let people get to know your better.
It‟s quite easy to add your Facebook profile or page in the e-mail
signature. You can add it manually by simply adding the link and a text
“Follow me on Facebook” or you can use a tool like WiseStamp that lets
you create something more professional. You can add links to other
social platforms as well, but try to keep it clean and brief.
If you build an e-mailing list for your website, then don‟t forget to add
your Facebook links in the newsletter that you send regularly.
45
Don‟t neglect the When creating a profile on community websites, you
usually can add several social media links. Make sure
possibility to add links you add a link to your Facebook page, and also to
your Facebook profile.
to your page when
creating profiles on Some people prefer to connect and follow the real
person and not the business page.
forums or communities
in your niche.
Also, you want to add the link in the signature too. People that will
find your posts or comments useful will click your links to learn more
about you and to follow you on social platforms. Being in your industry,
people on these forums are right in your target audience.
Tweet your Facebook Page URL to your followers and let them know
that they can get value by liking your page.
Another reason is the fact that people are more active in groups.
They engage more with the content being posted on groups, which is a
signal for Facebook to show them more of that content.
• Find and Join groups in your for your business (like we have
niche to connect with your peers for Mass Planner:
and prospective customers.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/
• Create a Facebook group to
promote an online event. massplanner/ ) where your fans
• Create a group to bring your can join and discuss topics related
distributed team together. to your products. Or you can create
a group that covers a broader
subject in your niche. Either way, you need to be active and get yourself
noticed by the members of those groups.
#8 Guest Blogging
With guest blogging, you will not only get extra exposure and traffic
for your website, but for your Facebook page as well.
But before thinking about guest blogging, you need to build your
own blog with fantastic content that‟s a great representation of you and
your brand. That‟s the only way you can prove that you are an expert in
48
your industry, and you know how to express your unique ideas and
perspective of things.
After you successfully add some great content on your blog, you can
send a request to blog for somebody else. But before reaching out, you
need to study these blogs and understand their style, their voice, and their
audience to know if your content is a good fit. Most blogs have their guest
blogging guidelines on their site so that you can prepare before
approaching them.
When you contribute on other blogs with content, make sure you add
links to your social profiles and pages when setting up your author bio.
There are some blogs that offer a like button for your Facebook Page within
your author bio, but almost on every blog that accepts guest blogging you
can add a link to your Facebook page and profile.
There are many plugins to help you add these buttons, and you can
place them at the beginning of the post or the end. Or even throughout
49
your content if you prefer.
You can test different positions for your share buttons and see which
ones get the most clicks. As you can see, the guys from Mention2, opted for
a floating panel, a set of share buttons right under the blog post‟s cover
photo and another one at the bottom of the post.
50
Copyblogger3, on the other hand, decided to stick with the share
buttons above the cover photo for their blog post and at the bottom of the
blog post.
As you can see, there is no strict rule about where to place your share
buttons. You can play around and combine several placings until you are
content with the results.
This is most beneficial in the beginning to get the first few thousands
likes before the organic growth kicks in.
One way to get more likes to your Facebook page is to ask for a like
by using a popup on your website. When the reader is about to leave your
website, a popup will appear and kindly ask to stay connected and get
more exclusive content on your Facebook page.
51
Notes
1 Amy Porterfield is one of the author for Facebook Marketing All-in-One For
Dummies
2 http://blog.mention.com/
3 http://www.copyblogger.com/landing-page-goofs/
4 https://www.hellobar.com/
52
In this chapter, you will learn how to determine your EdgeRank and
why it‟s important for your Facebook content. We will walk through
all the News Feed algorithm changes throughout the years, and we
will study the best methods to increase your score to help you get
into the News Feed more.
53
Inside The News Feed Algorithm: How To Get
Into The News Feeds More Often
I‟m sure you all remember the EdgeRank formula that can be simply
translated into this:
These three factors, affinity, weight and time decay, play a significant
role in determining whether your own posts are displayed in people‟s
news feed or not.
55
As for your Facebook Page, there are three things that you need to
do to make sure you raise your score:
• get people to like your Page (if they don‟t like your page, you can be
sure they will not see any of your updates)
• publish content so great that people want to engage with it
• publish consistently so that your content isn‟t old.
Related Articles
First they started to determine the quality of the content shared by
Pages throughout the platform. Then they added the “Related Articles”
section, focusing on delivering the latest news.
56
Focus on friends’ text updates
Then, in January 2014, the company noticed that if people saw their
friends sharing text updates, they will start writing their own updates. So
they decided to increase the distribution of this kind of posts. For brands,
on the other hand, they introduced a new way to share links.
57
Click-bait and over promotional posts penalization
You‟ll never believe what happened next! In August 2014, Facebook
started to penalize click-bait posts2. A few months later, they began to
pay attention to trends and show posts about trending topics higher in the
feed.
58
Similarly, Facebook will give less visibility to likes and comments
from friends in a user‟s news feed. Both changes should lead to a decline
in the organic reach of the pages‟ posts.
You can‟t actually check up your EdgeRank. No one knows all the
factors involved in computing this score (except maybe the developers
that built the algorithm). What can you do instead, is increase your score
taking advantage of the things you know.
How can you increase the EdgeRank score for your Page?
59
you can also add a call to action to ask them to like it and share it with
their friends. If you have great content, they will be glad to share it.
Ask questions that will get your fans talking. Make them entertaining
and simple, like one-word responses that are easy to engage with. These
are fun ways to get your fans talking.
60
per day. Track your engagement rates and your fans‟ responses and plan
your strategy.
61
times to share are for your business.
Use your page insights to see when your followers are online. Go to
Facebook Insights, Posts, and choose ” Where your fans are online”.
These statistics should give you a baseline for your posting times, just go
from there and start testing.
Videos have incredible organic reach rates lately (as much as 35%
of the audience6). Not only that but if you upload the videos directly to
Facebook, they will automatically play when people scroll their feeds,
increasing the engagement and the viewing rates.
62
Watch your Page Insights and see your best performing updates to
know what type of posts is commonly appreciated by your audience, and
do more of that.
Access the Facebook Insights for your Page, click on Posts then
choose “Post Types”. You will see the average reach for each type of
posts and the average engagement (the number of clicks per post or the
likes, comments and shares). See what types of posts get the most reach
and add more of that to your strategy.
63
Even though you schedule your updates in advance, you can step in
and take advantage of some spontaneous marketing ideas.
Now let‟s see some things to avoid if you want to increase your
EdgeRank score:
• Don't create posts that are too promotional and try to avoid click-
inducing titles. This will lead to a penalization from Facebook, and
you don‟t want that!
• When scheduling your posts in advance don‟t use the same content
for all your social media accounts. Each platform has its own
64
particularities, and you need to take advantage of that.
• Don't get caught up in a game of numbers. The number of likes you
have on your Page is not that important. What matters most is the
number of engaged fans that liked your Page. They will truly help you
thrive.
• Don't have content that is not related to your business. You want your
fans to kind of know what to expect, even though you produce unique
content consistently. People should easily recognize you and your
brand in what you share. That‟s the reason they follow you, after all.
65
Notes
66
Your Facebook content is the only thing that can make or break your
business Page. That‟s why it‟s to your advantage to know what type
of content can boost your engagement rates and ignite your fan
base growth.
67
The Importance Of Facebook Videos And How
To Use Them For Your Business
mobile devices accounting for more than half of the total 76 minutes of
average time spent per day with digital video content.”
These are impressive stats that should give you some food for
thought, but there‟s more. A video post on Facebook gets instant traction
compared with a post consisting of a static image. It‟ll sure be interesting
to see how the gif posts would perform on Facebook, now
69
that they added support for this5.
Facebook has also become the first choice for video advertisers. (Is
this the beginning of the end for YouTube?) According to a recent study
from Mixpo6, advertisers and agencies are taking the Facebook plunge
when it comes to video advertising.
When asked about what platforms they ran video campaigns on last
year and what platforms they plan to run video campaigns on in the next
year, here‟s how they responded:
The reason is that these videos will automatically come to life while
people scroll down their News Feeds, unlike the videos shared from other
70
platforms.
Another reason for native videos on Facebook is that they will fill the
entire available width of the News Feeds.
71
• Auto-play feature anyone? Your video will automatically play while
people scroll down their feeds grabbing their attention and luring them
to stop and see the entire video.
• You can add call-to-action buttons during the video or at the end of
the video.
You can upload the video right from your smartphone, using the
Facebook app or by e-mail the video to your Facebook‟s post-by-email
address with the caption in the subject line.
While uploading the video, you can add tags to help it gain traction
on other Facebook pages, you can add a CTA (call-to-action) button (with
a hyperlink with headline and description) that takes people straight to
your website after they watched your video.
Not only on Facebook but across all the social media channels, short
videos get the most engagement and views compared to longer, in-depth
videos.
72
Short and simple!
Short, so you don‟t have to steal too much of your audience‟s time,
and simple to make it easy for you to incorporate them into your online
marketing strategy. If you need an entire (expensive) crew to come up
with an entertaining animation for your message, sooner or later you‟ll
choose to use your marketing budget on more affordable artifices.
73
You can add an explicit action for the user to take in the first seconds
with Call-To-Action buttons.
74
video or a third one.
• “Sustain” videos – for building your brand. In this type of videos you
need to include strong Call-To-Action buttons and invite people to
interact with your brand. You have the possibility to add a CTA button
during a video (like “Learn More”) or at the end of the video (for
example: “Replay”, “Learn More”, “Done”)
Facebook has offered video ads and posts for quite some time, but
they only rolled up native video advertising last year.
75
These are some characteristics of the Video Ads:
• all ads in the News Feed start as auto-play with audio off
• a video play is considered a view if played for 3 sec (on YouTube, you
need to watch a video for at least 30 seconds to be counted as a
view)
• the user must click/tap to turn audio on
• advertisers can create remarketing audiences from video watchers
• available to buy in their auction marketplace
• available for an upfront buy, but the video must be pre-approved
76
2. Choose “Get Video Views”
Choose “Get Video Views” from the options list and the Facebook
Page where you want to place the Video Ad, from the right side of the
screen.
3. Upload Video
77
4. Video Processing
You have the option to choose a thumbnail from the screens in the
video or to upload a new image that you want to show as the thumbnail
for your Ad.
78
6. Add Compelling Text
Next, add the text that will be displayed next to your video. You can
also choose a Call to Action button that will appear after the video starts.
You can choose from: Shop Now, Book Now, Learn More, Sign Up,
Download and Watch More.
You can define your audience for the video ad by choosing specific
demographic data, interests and behaviors.
79
8. Define Your Budget
80
Notes
81
This chapter will give you a high-level snapshot of Facebook Ads.
We‟re going to explore all the types of Ads that you can create on
Facebook. In addition to that, we‟ll walk through the best practices
when creating your first ad campaign.
82
The Beginner’s Guide To Facebook Ads
After all the changes to the Facebook‟s algorithm and the decrease
in the organic reach of your posts, you probably started thinking about
using Facebook Ads to boost your engagement rates. However, many
business owners are disappointed with the results they get and sooner or
later they give up.
That‟s because they expect that once they set an ad up their job is
done, and Facebook will somehow magically increase their fan base,
traffic, and conversions.
The truth is that it‟s not that easy. You need to put serious effort into
this in order for it to work and not waste your time and money.
Here is a short guide to help you get started with Facebook Ads and
how to optimize them for maximum performance.
But remember, before starting any campaign you need to make sure
you have a good product to sell. There is no magic campaign that can fix
a flawed product.
8
You can see that you can create ads based on your objectives for
your campaign:
84
If you want to get more engagement for your Page content, you can
choose to boost your posts. After you select the Page, you can choose
the post that you want to promote and get more people to see and
engage with it. A Facebook Ad will be created from your post.
With this type of ad, you don‟t have to target only people that are not
your fans. Not necessarily. You can choose your existing fans as well if
you want to get them to consider your products, to get them up the sales
funnel. Again, it depends on your marketing plans.
So when you choose your audience to show your promoted post to,
you can choose people based on their information shared on Facebook,
like location, age, gender or interests, or you can choose people that
already liked your page and their friends.
Boosted posts will show up in people‟s News Feed, and they look
like any other story, except that you get to pay for the impressions that
this ad generates. So make sure you only promote you own stuff, in case
you don‟t want to pay to drive traffic to someone else‟s website.
85
• Content that announces recent product launches, events, rebranding
campaigns, to drive mindshare for your brand.
• Video Ads
The best part with this kind of ads is that they show the friends who
already liked the page, making use of social proof to reel them in.
Now, you should have a clear and distinctive goal in mind for your
ads. If your goal is to get more likes for your Page, then your ad should
say something like “Click Like to stay in touch with us”.
87
But if you‟re not after likes, and your primary goal is to get people to
your custom tab and sign up for your blog, for example, you can‟t ask
them to click the Like button. You need to change your message
accordingly. You will still have the like button in your message, but if you
tell them “Click here to try our awesome product.” they will do just that.
So, you need to know what‟s more important for you when you build your
strategy.
These ads are placed in the right column of your Facebook page,
and you can take people outside Facebook by using them. You can drive
traffic to your sales page or website to increase your conversion rates.
You can even add multiple images (up to 5 images) to your ad at no
extra cost if you want to highlight more aspects of your business or
88
more products. Every image has a unique URL, so you can drive more
traffic to different pages on your site.
For this type of Facebook ad, you need to add a snippet of code to
your website in the section that will measure your conversions.
89
When you set up your pixel, you can optimize it for one of the
following conversion types:
• Checkouts
• Registrations
• Leads
• Key page views
• Adds to cart
• Other website conversions
90
Get installs of your app
To get installs for your mobile application, you need to add a Call To
Action to take people to the App Store or Google Play. You can use either
an image or a video for the creative, and you can choose from several
CTA buttons:
• Install Now
• Play Game
• Watch Video
• Shop Now
• Book Now
91
Increase engagement in your app
To increase the engagement for you mobile app, you need to target
your existing users, that already installed your application and take them
from Facebook to your app.
92
Get people to claim your offer
You can only create an Offer if your Page has at least 50 fans.
Otherwise you will not even have the option to create an offer. Also, there
are some restrictions on some Pages (for example, Community Pages
cannot create offers) and the Pages must be at least 1-month-old.
The offers usually appear in the News Feed, meaning that they are
visible to mobile users as well. You can use offers for your online store or
local business, you can give product discounts or even free content to
build your mailing list.
93
Get video views
Videos are pretty hot on Facebook right now (those videos that are
directly uploaded to the platform). You get the most organic reach1 thanks
to the features like auto-play and the integrated calls to action. If you
choose to promote your videos, you‟ll get even more reach for less
money.
So you can see it‟s both efficient and inexpensive. You have the
option to optimize your ad for video views, to automatically play the video
while people scroll down the feeds, and you can also choose to remarket
to people that already watched other videos.
94
Best Practices When Using Facebook Ads
For the people placed at the bottom of the funnel, you want to make
sure you design ads that drive awareness and are optimized for
predictable reach and controlled frequency.
Next, you want to make sure that you target people that already know
your brand. So you can create custom audiences with people that already
had an initial contact with your Page or website. You want to tell them to
consider your business, your products or services.
For the audiences at the top of your funnel, you want to include Calls
to Action to invite them to interact with your brand. To share your content
with their friends, to drive affinity.
Another best practice is to use native ads. These are the ads that are
placed in the News Feeds, and they are the most engaging because:
• they‟re cross devices (these ads are visible on mobile devices too)
95
• they are large with more clickable real estate
• and they are perfectly integrated with the other stories in the feed.
But you can and should test different ad placements. This way you
can track their performance and see which one gets you the best results.
Now the question is when it‟s a good idea to run a Facebook Ad. It
all depends on your goals, of course, but here‟s a list of a few situations
that might benefit from running a Facebook ad:
• when you want to increase your fanbase
• to build brand awareness
• when you want to drive in-store sales. If you have a local business,
you can use Facebook ads with location-based targeting to sell a
product, a program or a service and to actually get people to visit your
local store and generate sales.
• to drive online sales. You can send people outside Facebook, to a
sales page and tell them about your programs, products, and
services.
• to launch a new product or service.
• to promote a mobile application.
• to promote offline or online events, like webinars, conferences, online
and offline summits, meet-ups or local events. There are so many
different types of events that you can market with Facebook ads.
• to generate leads for your business.
96
Notes
1 The importance of Facebook Videos and how to use them for your business:
http://www.massplanner.com/the-importance-of-facebook-videos-and-how-to-use-
them-for-your-business/
97
This chapter will help you get the whole idea of Facebook Ads, how
to prepare your campaign and optimize it until successful.
98
Core Elements of Marketing With Facebook Ads
Planning
When you decide to create a
Facebook Marketing campaign, the
first thing you want to do is identify
your primary goal. Whether you want to
send people to your site, increase Deliver the right
conversions, boost your posts or get message to the right
more likes for your page, you can
people at the right time.
choose from a variety of objectives for
your campaign.
Targeting
Next, you want to determine who
the people in your target audience for
your campaign are. What type of data
99
or insights do you have about them?
Creatives
The creatives are the images you use to highlight your ads. Your
images need to have a “thumb” effect, to stop people from scrolling. You
can even customize your images for the same ads depending on your
target audience.
When testing different images for your ads, you will see that
headshots perform better than logos or other abstract images. Headshots
of attractive women statistically perform much better than anything else.
You can start experimenting with these kinds of images if it makes sense
100
for your business.
Make sure you use appropriate image sizes for your ads. The link
thumbnails should have a 1.91:1 aspect ratio to stretch across the width
of the News Feed. The quality of the images is also important , you don‟t
want them to look too blurry or stretched. 1
The copy is crucial as well, but there are no definitive rules about
their form. Usually, it takes a lot of AB testing before determining the best
copy for your audience. Your target customers should also give you a
clue about the text they prefer. Based on the data you have about your
clients you should know how to address them. Ultimately your job is to
come up with a message that entices people to click and convert. And
you can‟t rely on what works for other businesses, you need to test it for
yourself.
101
These are the main bidding options:
102
• Clicks to Website
• Website Conversions
• Post Engagement
• Page Likes
• Desktop App Installs
• Desktop App Engagement
• Offer Claims
• Event Responses
• Video Views
Let‟s say you want to convince people to try your new product, so
you choose to create an ad with the “Send people to your website”
objective, to drive traffic to your landing page and sign up for a trial.
103
Then you will create an audience based on demographic information
and interests. Go ahead and choose your daily budget that you want to
spend and then click on Show Advanced Options in the Budgeting and
Pricing section.
You can see that by default the bidding is optimized for “Clicks to
Website”, but if you click on the drop-down, you can see other bidding
options.
104
Let‟s stick with the “Optimized for Clicks to Website” bidding option
for now. Facebook will show your ad only to those people in your target
audience that are more likely to click the ad and go to your website. So
even if your estimated audience is around 100,000, your add might be
promoted to only 10,000 people. Facebook chooses the people more
likely to click on your ad based on their history, their previous activity and
the links they clicked.
CPM is cost per impressions, meaning that you pay for ad views that
are measured in multiples of thousands. So you‟re not paying for clicks
but for every thousand people that see your ad. If your bid is optimized
for clicks to your website, and you choose to pay for thousands of
impressions, you pay only for those people that actually see your ad. So
it‟s a good thing that Facebook shows your ad only to people most likely
to take that particular action. This will avoid wasting impressions on
people that will not take your desired action.
If you choose the automatic bid pricing, CPM, you won‟t need to set
a bid. Facebook will get you the most actions at the best price. However,
you can manually set what that action is worth to you.
105
This option works in almost any situation. Even if you defined a vast
audience, Facebook would only pick the most relevant one, those with
the best chance to take your action.
With CPC you only pay when someone clicks on your ad, regardless
of the number of impressions resulted. The more clicks you receive, the
106
lower the cost per click will be. The ads that are optimized for clicks are in
fact tuned to find people most likely to click your ad.
A “click” includes any click on your ad, which could be a photo click,
comment, like or any other random click. Optimizing for clicks will result
in a high number of clicks on a low-cost, but that‟s not necessarily good
for business, because it includes all the random clicks not only those that
take people to your website and convert them.
107
For pricing a bid you have two options: automatically bid pricing,
which lets Facebook get you more clicks at the best price, or you can
choose to manually set up the maximum price you are willing to pay per
click. So if you are a beginner you might want to stick with the automatic
pricing and let Facebook do its magic, and when you‟re ready you can
test different bids and see what‟s optimal for you.
108
For this type of bidding, you will have to set up the maximum amount
that you are willing to pay for one thousand impressions for your ad. The
price charged, however, is almost always less than the bid.
The first step is to create two versions of the same ad to test one
against the other. The key is to change only one element, so you have a
good idea about the factor that contributed to the success of one of the
ads.
109
Here‟s a list of a few ideas for your split tests:
• test the picture of your ad: picture A vs. picture B, keep the same
copy for both;
• a picture vs. a video ad
• a picture vs. a carousel (multiple images in the same ad)
• use an ad image with a human vs an image without a human in it
• the same ad image with and without text overlay
• a call to action A vs. a call to action B, both with the same creative
• test two different bidding options to see which performs best
• test different target audiences
The possibilities are endless. Next, you have to track your ads
performance in your Facebook Ads Manager dashboard and decide
which one performed better.
You always need to measure the performance of your ads, not just
for split test, because you want to know if the results, whether your
objective was to increase sales or engagement to your page, were worth
the amount of money you spent.
• Facebook SDK and App Events for measuring the data you need to
optimize your mobile ads. App events allow you to understand who is
using your app and measure all the in-app actions to be able to
optimize your ads and reach more relevant people. Whether you have
an iOS application or an Android one, you will be able to understand
how people engage with your app.
From the ads manager, you can drill down into each campaign and
you will see more details such as the number of actions as a result of
your ad, the average cost you paid for each action and the number of
people who saw your ad (reach).
111
Notes
112
About Mass Planner
113
114