Upcoming Facebook changes – what you need to know
Today I had a quick Facebook Live on some of the upcoming changes for Facebook Advertising and Facebook’s Terms of Service, and what they will mean for Australian business, marketers, agencies and others in the digital marketing space.
You can have a look here:
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Setting up a basic Facebook Advertising campaign
With over 15 million Australians using Facebook on a regular basis, chances are your target market is on this channel. And small businesses, just like yours, are taking advantage of the opportunity Facebook Advertising presents, with:
But why use Facebook advertising? By advertising Facebook, you can:
Simply put, it is a way for anyone with a Facebook page to pay to promote their content to a specific group of people.
The content appears in your Facebook newsfeed and looks like a regular post. But an ad is easy to spot.
So, let’s take a look.
Here you can see that I have been served an ad from Possum Digital.
The absolute give away here, is that the word sponsored is directly underneath the page name. If a piece of content has the word sponsored in this position, then it’s definitely an ad.
Other elements of the ad are:
This particular example is a single image ad. There are other types of ads – carousel ads, lead ads and right hand side ads – but to keep things easy, we’ll focus the rest of this webinar on the type of ad in this example.
Now you know what to look out for, what do you need to start advertising? You’ll need to:
Just a quick side note on Facebook pixel – all a Facebook pixel is, is a piece of web code that allows Facebook to connect with your website.
It helps you track conversions from Facebook ads, optimise ads based on collected data, build targeted audiences for future ads, and remarket to qualified leads— that is, people who have already taken some kind of action on your website.
It works by placing and triggering cookies to track users as they interact with your website and your Facebook ads.
We’re now ready to create our Facebook Ad campaign.
There are 3 stages to setting up Facebook advertising:
Firstly, setting up your campaign – this is where you set the objective for your campaign.
It is important to note that you can only select 1 objective for each campaign, so choose wisely.
Next, we set up the ad set, where the audience is defined, budget selected and timing scheduled.
With your budget, you can select a budget per day, or a total – or global – budget for the length of your campaign. Either way make sure you always have an end date!
When it comes to defining our audience, there are many ways to select who you wish to serve your ad to (you can also refer to our previous post):
And lastly, the ad creative stage is where you create the actual post that will be seen.
I recommend creating more than one ad so that you can test different images – image versus video – different written messages – or even test what call to action button works best. And remember, you ad is only going to be as effective as the landing page your send people to. The destination matters!
At the end of any ad campaign, it’s important to look at the results.
Based on what the original objective was, here are some metrics you can look at the determine success:
If your objective was around awareness, look at:
If your objective was around engagement, look at:
And finally, if your objective was around conversions, look at:
There is so much more we can talk about in the world of Facebook advertising, but I recommend setting up something simple with a small budget first, We’d love to hear how you go with your ad campaign! Feel free to drop over to our Facebook page and leave a comment there.
Do you have a plan for each social media channel?
Hands up if you have a marketing, or more specifically, a social media marketing strategy? If you do, well done! If you don’t, stop reading and go and get my 1 page template social media plan template.
In your plan, you are likely to have identified what channels you are going to use to promote your business (hopefully through building a community and sharing valuable content). And if you are going to be using more than one social media channel (or platform) to market your business, then I always recommend creating a mini plan for each one.
Creating a mini plan for each channel is really easy. Get a blank piece of paper, and some different coloured pens (if that takes your fancy!) and start writing.
Putting it simply, this is the WHY. What is the value that this channel brings to your business?
For example: “I will use my LinkedIn profile to build my credibility as an expert in [your industry]”
Here you will look at no more than 3 specific goals for your channels. These goals should be SMART (Specific Measurable Achievable Relevant and Time Limited) and relate to your business goals.
For example: “I will ask for 3 recommendations on my LinkedIn profile each week for the next 3 months. This will help build social proof and credibility for my business.”
Who will you be talking to through this social media channel? Who your audience is for your Facebook page may be different to who you will be speaking to through Twitter or your LinkedIn profile.
Make sure you are specific as possible – you can’t target all SMEs in Australia, but you can target SMEs owners aged 35 – 50 in Sydney who are B2C focussed.
What are the actions will you do each day, and each week to reach your goals? Tactics are actions that are in line with your strategy, and will help you achieve your goals.
Examples of tactics include:
And that’s it! I’d love to hear how your planning is going. Did you find this exercise hard? Did it help you get clarity on what you’re doing? Did you remove or add and social media channels to your marketing mix?
Best time to post on social media by channel
Let’s face it, social media has become so much a part of our lives, that we’re constantly checking our phones for the latest update. It’s also a quick way to connect with friends and loved ones and many SMEs across Australia use it to market their products and services. So when is the best time to post to get maximum exposure?
When it comes to social media, timing sums it all. But posting is not as easy as it sounds because you’re not 100% sure when you will reach your audience. There are literally millions of people checking their accounts regularly, but what really are the best times to post on social media? When should you be sharing your content? Let’s check it out.
Now that you know, the best times to post on every social media platform,test it out for yourself . However, before posting your content, make sure your content is relevant to the audience that you are targeting. It is not enough to just hit that post button. Every social media post that you bring out will say something or will reflect on your brand or yourself so make sure to make the most out of it.
Using Facebook Messenger to nurture your social community
Have you considered using Facebook Messenger to connect with your customers? Instant messaging is available to anyone with a Facebook profile, and even better, with the app downloaded on their phone. Facebook messenger has been growing over the past years and it has become more than just an app. A feature within Facebook is now one of the world’s most popular mobile messaging services.
Customers are expecting fast responses from businesses on Facebook and the answer to this is by using chatbots. This can help you in delivering the fastest and right answers to your customer’s questions, and in real time. In April 2016, bots have been created to add new services and features to the Messenger and up to now, there are more robots to be created.
But what can these bots do and how can they help in your business? Listed are some of their benefits.
A little window that just pops up and saying that they are able to answer your questions- these are chatbots. To others, it may be annoying and they may have positive and negative experiences with them. If you use Facebook regularly to market your business, consider using Facebook Messenger as a channel to keep your customers happy and engaged with you and your business.