Facebook advertising has taken the marketing world by storm. But with so many advertising options available within Facebook, how do you know where to start the campaigns that will best support your goals and objectives?
In today's Whiteboard Friday, Lauren Vacarello outlines the different ad types on Facebook and walks us through getting started with Facebook advertising. We'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!
Video Transcription
"Hi, I'm Lauren Vacarello, the Senior Director of Online Marketing for Salesforce.com, and today we're going to talk about 5 Steps to Facebook Advertising. In the next 5 or 10 minutes, we'll talk about how to get started with advertising on Facebook.
So before we really dive into it, let's talk about the different types of ads there are on Facebook. I'm sure everyone's familiar with something that mildly resembles this with your news feed on Facebook. There are actually three real main types of ads on Facebook. Everything else falls under those categories.
First, there's going to be your marketplace ads. So your marketplace ads are the ads that you're most familiar with. They're the ads on the right-hand side of your Facebook feed. What makes these different from, say, a premium ad is both the cost of these ads and the different options that you have. With marketplace ads, all you're really going to get is that little, tiny image and a little bit of copy to the right-hand side.
With your premium ads, sometimes they'll show up on the right, but they'll also show up in the center of your Facebook page as well, with one of the big example of premium ads being your sponsored stories. Now, sponsored stories are a newer ad type that Facebook is really testing out right now. So you're going to see it as part of your Facebook feed. Some people are getting a little unhappy about seeing these larger ads in their feed, but Facebook is now a publicly traded company and they need to make money, and to do that they need to start selling more advertising.
The thing about premium ads that is really interesting is there are these different types of premium ads that you can actually have. So one of the types of premium ads is going to be video ads. That's when you'll see a video embedded into an ad unit, lots of different copy. If you see a poll, if you see someone pitching an event, those are all going to be part of premium ads.
One of the really cool things that Facebook is doing right now is something called custom audiences. Think of it this way. Say you have an email list and you have an email list of 10,000 potential customers. You can work with Facebook to build something called a custom audience. You give them these 10,000 email addresses. They'll match it to people's Facebook accounts, and now you're able to build a really targeted ad campaign just to those 10,000 people that you may have in your lead nurturing program at the same time.
What also really differentiates premium ads from marketplace ads is the cost. Now, premium ads, you have to buy on a CPM basis. You also have to buy through a Facebook account team. Marketplace ads, super easy, self-service, you can sign up for them with a credit card. Anyone can advertise on marketplace ads.
Your premium ads are going to have about an $8.50 CPM. You have to talk to a person to sell them, and in a lot of instances, you don't actually have the control over the ads, your Facebook account team is going to have to set them up for you.
Definite advantages, you've a lot higher response rate with your video ads. You can do a lot more with polls and the sponsored stories in the center of the feed. You're going to get the most interaction with those types of ads. But at the same time, the costs are going to be anywhere from two to four times as much as you'd pay using marketplace ads.
Then there's also something that's been getting a lot of press right now, which is FBX or Facebook retargeting. Facebook retargeting is really interesting, and Facebook is finally trying to start to monetize their audience base. They've been experimenting with new ad types. Facebook retargeting is Facebook saying, "I'm not going to try to come up with my own ad type. I'm going to take something that works for everybody else." It's been really, really profitable for them.
So think of it the same way that you think of retargeting. I think there's been a recent Whiteboard Friday on retargeting. Very similar principles apply, but instead of just retargeting people who come to your website as they browse random places on the web, you're retargeting them as they go onto their Facebook page. So really, really interesting possibilities there.
So now that you've had a quick primer on what the types of Facebook advertising are, let's actually talk about how you'd use it and about getting started with this. Before you really do any type of Facebook advertising, before you do any advertising in general, it starts with identifying what your goals are. So I'm going to walk you through a scenario of let's say we're going to sell SEOmoz to small businesses using Facebook advertising.
The first thing you want to do is identify your goals. In this situation, we want to sell SEOmoz to small businesses. Let's figure out exactly what we want to do with those goals. Are we trying to get new people that we've never spoken to? Are we trying to nurture existing people in the SEOmoz database, or are we trying to go after existing SEOmoz customers to get them to buy a larger, more expensive product?
So start by figuring out exactly what your goals are. Also identify do you want them to buy after seeing that ad, or do you want the ad to be part of a brand awareness play, where you're just trying to introduce your product to them and then eventually get them to buy? Start by identifying what your goals are.
So we're going to identify our goals. Let's say we want to sell SEOmoz to new people. Perfect. So who are we trying to sell this to? Set your targets. You have to know your audience with this. Facebook is amazing when it comes to targeting capabilities. With a lot of behavioral targeting on the web right now, it's all assumptions people make. Because I go to ESPN and Golf Digest and Harvard Business Review, then I must be a CEO of a company, and I must be a man in between these ages.
What's really cool about Facebook is it's not assumptions that people are making based on what actions someone may or may not be taking on the Internet. We self-identify on social media really, really well. We tell people who we are and what we're interested in. We tell them what school we went to. We tell them our jobs. We tell them who we're friends with. Because we know all of that information, it's really easy to target these people as a marketer. You're not guessing what people are interested in. They're actually telling you what they're interested in, and you can see what they're talking about, and that gives Facebook incredible targeting options. Not even using Facebook retargeting, but just through their marketplace ads and their premium ads, you have a lot of really great options.
So let's set our targets for this scenario. Let's say SEOmoz wants to target small businesses to buy the SEOmoz product. But not just small businesses, who in small businesses? Do we want to target the marketing team? Do we want to target CEOs? Do we want to target CMOs? Do we also want to think a little bit differently and target based on what people are interested in? Great targets in this scenario.
Facebook does something really cool and lets you target the friends of your fans. So we're going to make the assumption if I'm a fan of SEOmoz and I'm friends with 500 people on Facebook, the average number of friends that someone on Facebook has, I believe, is 500. I think most people watching this probably have more than 500 friends. So be happy you have a lot of Facebook friends, but great for SEOmoz. We're going to target my friends and fans on Facebook because we're going to make the assumption, if I'm a fan of SEOmoz, there's a good chance we might want to sell to my friends, because I'm friends with like-minded people. So the first target is going to be friends of fans.
You might be asking yourself, "Lauren, why aren't we targeting SEOmoz fans if we want to sell SEOmoz to more people?" Well, maybe a lot of SEOmoz fans are already customers, so you're going to need to find that out. Whether it's for your business, SEOmoz or even for Salesforce, it's really important to know who your fans actually are. It's as simple as doing a quick SurveyMonkey survey just to ask your fans who they are and if they're already a customer.
So let's say we target friends of fans, we target fans. Now, small business itself is a really big audience on Facebook. Tens of millions of people fall into the small business audience, so you might want to narrow that down a little bit more. Facebook gives you a lot of different clusters, which is really just a cluster of different keywords and different interests to build a larger group of people. So maybe it's small business, maybe we want to think differently. Think about who these people, who your target buyer actually thinks about, who they care about. Maybe it's small business, maybe it's people interested in marketing or in the Internet.
The Internet is a target audience on Facebook, because I am a fan of the Internet. Think about all of your targets and build out each individual line for your targets. Think of it the same way if anyone's run a paid search campaign or a display campaign. You have your account. You have campaigns, and you have ad groups. Think of this similar to how you're going to think of your ad groups, because if you're going doing a marketplace ad, you want to have a different type of ad for each one of these different target audiences, really similar to how you're going to have a different paid search ad to a different ad group.
So if you're Salesforce and we're advertising CRM and we're also advertising customer support application, it's going to be two different ad copies. Really similar, if you're advertising to friends of fans and to people that are identified as interested in marketing, you need different ad copy. So start by having different ad copy. Perfect.
The next part, you need to determine what content you're going to use, and you need to post that content. So two different options here. Let's start with marketplace ads. You get this little 50 x 50 image, and you get about 135 characters over here in the ad. You can treat this really similar to how you treat, say, paid search or display and come up with different ad copies, work with the different the stakeholders within your organization to post these.
But if you're going to do some of the premium ads and you've got this big, sponsored story over here, this is what gets really interesting. With sponsored story, it's going to be something you post on your company's Facebook page. So think of this as your company's Facebook page. You post something, you want to get that piece of content in front of a lot of people.
Let's say I am going to draw Roger really poorly right now. Let's say we've got a great post. This is the SEOmoz page. We've got this great post with Roger talking about all the new features that SEOmoz is coming out with. So now we say, "Okay, here's this piece of content. This piece of content needs to almost serve two masters." We need to make all of our fans and followers happy and show them this content, but let's try to take this content and get it outside of the SEOmoz audience.
So now we want to take this piece of content, and we want to get people in the small business segment to care about this. So we can't get a new piece of copy if we're using a sponsored story. We have to take an existing story on the SEOmoz page, but we want to get it in front of small businesses, people in marketing, fans, friends of fans. So you build all of your different targets, and you choose to sponsor this story. But with this, you have less control.
So two options, but the great thing about Facebook, honestly, you want to do both. It's not an if-then. You can use your marketplace ads to really customize and put the custom content in front of all these audiences. But with sponsored stories, you're taking up more real estate. You're in the center of the page,so it's a really good way to attract people's attention. If you are using friends of fans and advertising to friends of fans and any of these people comment, it's going to have that little bit of the extra engagement over there. So try sponsored stories and look into marketplace ads as well.
If you're using marketplace ads, the Facebook interface is still being developed, so it's a little bit hard to clone ads. It's not super easy to use. So you can end up - I will do the Salesforce pitch - using a tool like Salesforce marketing cloud because it lets you start to clone these ads. So instead of making 50 different ads for 50 different targets, you take one ad, you clone it and make changes. It just helps you move a little bit more quickly. There are lots of different options for doing that as well.
We figure out our content and we post our content. So for sponsored stories, we put a great piece of content front and center on the page. We promote it to all of our different fans and followers, but know that it's going to show up in the center of their feed as an option. Also build your marketplace ad campaign where you've got individual ads for each target.
Here's an interesting trick that people don't think about, and it's my one, major tip for everyone. If you are doing premium content and you do have this sponsored story over here, say you have content that you don't necessarily want your fans and followers to see. Say you really just want to post your great piece of content to advertise to people in marketing. You're okay if your fans and followers see it, but it's not really for them, it's really advertising content. You could actually backdate that story so that your fans and followers don't really see this unless they scroll all the way back, which some of your fans and followers might. But backdate your content so that this doesn't show up on your main company page, but you can still use it in advertising to some of your different audiences. So that's my one tip for you.
Once you determine and post your content, so let's say we're going to do sponsored stories and marketplace ads. Perfect. Then the next and most important step is testing and optimization. No one's going to get everything right on their first try, and that's okay. You're not supposed to get everything right. You just need to move really, really quickly, and the larger your budget, the more quickly you should be able to test and optimize.
Now, with Facebook ads, we find out that the ads actually burn out pretty quickly, so that if you're using a sponsored story and you're advertising to the same audience, first of all, make sure you set up frequency caps when you work with your Facebook team, because you don't want to show the same person an ad 15 times in the middle of their feed. That really does get kind of irritating, and the effectiveness of your ads starts to decrease. So you don't want to do that. So set frequency caps and also start to rotate your content, especially on the marketplace ads on the right-hand rail. Start to rotate out the image. Start to rotate out your copy.
Depending on how much advertising you're doing and the size of your budget, it could be as little as two days. You might be able to get away with a week or two. But as long as you're monitoring results, you'll start to see performance over here. Let's say you're tracking leads. You're tracking leads, so leads start to go up, and then they start to peak and fall off as impressions go up. You want to find that point where your impressions are going up but your performance is dropping. Once you reach that point, it's time to switch out your ad because people have seen it. Anyone who's going to respond to it already has. So make sure you know when to pull your ad copy, and that's really reporting, doing your analysis and the whole time, what you should be doing is testing and optimizing.
Think of it the way you think of paid search. You're advertising to friends and fans. You don't want to just give them one ad. You want to rotate through different titles, different images, different copy, different offers to see what's really going to perform best, same way you're going to do this with, let's say, a paid search campaign or a display advertising campaign. So make sure you test and optimize. Let's say lots of testing. We like testing.
Then this is the thing that's really different with Facebook advertising. We're going to think all the way back - and everyone will make fun of me for making this statement - think about when TV first came out, because I was alive when TV first came out. It's a joke. Picture when TV first came out, and people all go home and they're sitting and watching their three channels on television. But you have to make money, so they started putting commercials.
People hated commercials on television. People hated it, and they would complain about commercials interrupting television. But you have to have commercials on television or else television couldn't exist in the early days of TV, because they needed a way to make money. Now we have cable, and you have to pay for channels, which is a whole different model. But when TV first came out, people hated commercials. Even when email first came out, even email now, a lot of people really hated getting emails and were complaining about emails. It became a little easier with email because there was the option to unsubscribe.
Now think about Facebook. We've spent years on Facebook without really having to deal with a lot of advertising. Their right-hand rail started. This in the middle of your feed is really just coming out. So people in general are very taken aback by this. They're not sure what to do about ads in their feed, and not everyone's going to like having ads in their feed, the same way not everyone likes receiving an email from a potential company they're going to buy from, the same way people hated commercials when television first came out.
The biggest difference with this is, because you can comment on this, you'll start to see how much people don't like advertising. It won't necessarily be about your product. It will be that they don't like that Facebook is offering advertising. Facebook has to make money. They're a publicly traded company, and they're going to try to figure out different ways they can make money. But you need to know that this might impact your ads.
If you run a TV commercial and someone doesn't like it, there's not a lot they can do about it. If you send an email and someone doesn't like it, they can unsubscribe. If you run an ad and it shows up in someone's feed and they don't like it, they can write a comment about it. If you're doing a lot of advertising, you might start to see a lot of negative comments.
What's really fun about these is you'll also get a lot of likes. You'll get a lot of shares, and if the content is engaging and people care about the content, if you're advertising to SMBs or people in marketing and you're giving them content that tells them how to help their business and really gives them useful information, you'll get a lot of likes, and you'll get a lot of shares and people will be really happy with it. But you can't make everyone happy, and some people will just start to leave negative comments.
As a company, before you really launch this type of campaign, you need to think about what you're going to do about those negative comments. Are you going to engage with them? Are you going to respond? What's your threshold? What are you comfortable with? If people start having a lot of negative comments about your ad, do you pull the ad? Do you try to talk to all of these people? Do you say, "You know what? I don't care about negative comments?" What's your threshold?
So figure out your engagement strategy and how you're going to monitor that before you launch the campaign. Otherwise, you'll launch all of this, you'll run this sponsored story, you'll make tons and tons of money, hopefully, from all of the advertising that you're doing. You'll sell shoes, you'll sell Moz licenses, you'll be really successful, but then you'll see all these negative comments and then suddenly maybe you won't be as successful and maybe this is a bigger deal for your business of having all those negative comments than the potential upside.
So think about that first and know what you're willing to deal with, what you're comfortable with, and then what your engagement and response strategy is before you launch. If you do that and you start off with goals, you go after those targets, you optimize, because maybe some of these targets don't work. Maybe people who like the Internet don't like SEOmoz. It's weird. You think they would, but what if they don't? You have to know which lines you're willing to get rid of, which comes from the optimization piece. If someone's not happy, if you've got a great community team that's really engaging, you can start turning some of those negative comments into real sales opportunities.
So that's my how to get started with Facebook advertising. A few quick steps to go, but for anyone who's looking to try it, you can sign up for marketplace ads with a credit card, give it a shot - a lot of times they offer a little bit of free Facebook money - and see what happens and see what works for your business.
Thank you, everybody. I am Lauren Vacarello. Take care."
Is the title of this article a little misleading? I thought this was going to be about building Facebook authority. Not Facebook advertising
Ditto To Scott. Page title needs changing. What' ads on FB? Oh, I forgot. I use Firefox Ad Blocker Plus.
Btw, where's the lighting crew today? Too bright, can't see whiteboard text.
What's with all the negative vibes man?
But I agree, I was expecting an interesting Whiteboard Friday about facebook authority... instead we get another facebook advertising plug. Ad Blockers could make them obsolete to a large number of people. And yes, the lighting is all wrong.
I too was also disappointed by the misleading title.
Hi Scott,
Thanks for watching Whiteboard Friday! We're sorry the original title was a bit misleading. We've updated the text to set a better expectation of what the content offers. Enjoy!
People talked a lot about success of FB ads when GM stopped advertising on FB. Two scenarios where different advertisements succeed. First when someone looking for something desperately. Search network advertisement falls in this category. Second, when someone is free and refreshing mood on internet. Facebook ads falls in this category. These advertisements require some thing extra ordinary to catch the attention. FB ads also need same. You need great visual ad in market place or impressive content for sponsored stories.
We always look at direct goal conversion. But as I have said, in second type of advertising, people only looking, they are not desperately looking for something and its not necessary to buy immediately. There you need some impressive extra ordinary punch to sell something. Still you can't get goal conversions as higher as search network advertising. But against it Facebook ads are much cheaper compare to others. Its definitely worth to try. Branding and brand awareness is extra you will get. You can't measure that extra benefit by direct goal conversion.
BTW thanks Lauren for such a wonderful explanation.
Thanks! Glad you liked the post and you bring up a great point. Content really is key with sponsored stories.
Hi Lauren,
Thank you for giving us the indepth analysis of Facebook Advertising , will definitely discuss these points with my team.
Thanks, Anand.
Thanks for the comment Anand! Glad you liked the post.
I was in fact around when television was getting off the ground, and we watched advertising just as eagerly as we did the Ed Sullivan or Jackie Gleason shows. So, not true - people did not hate ads.
The reason is the medium was new to us and it we were hungry for new information about consumer products (actually, my parents were - I was a kid). So, those ads improved the television experience.
In the same way, those of us who were around when email was new LOVED getting emails, just as much we love getting the right emails today.
The reason people hate Facebook sponsored stories is the same reason Google is cracking down on sponsored stories in Google News - they purport to be valid news, when in fact they are native advertising - ads disguised as news. Thus, they compromise the experience by essentially tricking people.
Ads are most effective when they are done well - and clearly delivered as an ad. What Facebook is doing with sponsored stories is compromising the social experience. We don't mind marketplace ads because we see them as what they are - ads.
Facebook should learn from Google - use ads to improve the experience. It worked in the early days of television, and the early days of the web, so it can work for Facebook too.
Jeff - I think you're right - but your logic could also be used to explain why "native advertising" or "sponsored content" could be a good thing.
What's most important is the value of the content that's created. If it's a sponsored story on FB that is useful to people - or helps them find a product or service they want/need - then how bad is it?
Let's not kid ourselves - native advertising already exists in traditional media. You can't watch reality TV without them pushing a product on the show (and then again in the commercial break). That kind of thing has been going on since the Golden Age of both TV and Radio when hosts would pitch products in the middle of a program.
I've worked in local television. Reporters and producers are given lists of companies that advertised with the station - these were "recommended" to be used first when doing a story in which the business could be interviewed or shown as an expert.
Let's not forget that all broadcast and cable networks are owned by bigger corporations, and when you see them touting new products or interviewing authors, musicians and actors on the Today Show or GMA - there's a good chance it's all connected by money.
Is a business blog that covers a variety of topics any less "deceiving"?
The problem is the quality of the advertising - not the way it's distributed. You are right, ads should "improve the experience" - and that can be done with native advertising.
A FB ad that screams "selly sell sell" will certainly annoy people. As online marketers it's our job to do better than that.
Hi Lauren,any ideas regarding automatic bots of fictive users that spend a great amount of your budget? That's the greatest disadvantage of Facebook from my experience.
I haven't really experienced this, but if it starts becoming a big problem I would guess Facebook would create a similar process to how Google investigates click fraud for search. Are you seeing this a lot in your advertising?
Hi Lauren,
Unfortunately yes.Maybe in the US it's different , but I doubt that.
Hi Lauren,
I disagree that you can only use Custom Audiences with Premium Facebook ads. We just ran a campaign that was specifically targeted to our Custom Audiences, and we never had to talk to anyone at Facebook to get them set up. We used Power Editor (accessible only via Chrome) to set them up, and then launched our campaigns. It worked like a charm.
Can you comment on that please? Thanks! and great post BTW
Dana
Nice tip, the existing Facebook interface isn't great for managing numerous campaigns.
Facebook Power Editor for Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/facebook-power-editor/djicncbfodbeijpfpjjojkfhgbpjnlih?hl=en
Facebook's guide on using it: https://www.facebook.com/help/332626706817162/
Hi Dana,
Yes, you are right. You can use the power editor to target custom audiences on FB.
Negative comments are a great opportunity. It is a reason to approach the fans and be helpful to them. Tell them you are sorry and show how to unsubscribe from the ad. You will painlessly loose audience who is not interested in your ads in the first place and appear like a good guy to everyone else.
Negative comments can be a great way to showcase your brand and turn a detractor into a supporter and really highlight your customer service.
Thanks Lauren,
Nice to know all of that....
All are people using facebook advertising for a website and products marketing.
Thanks once again......thank for sharing this info....
How to More Likes on Facebook Page ?
Really useful WBF.Thank you for the post.
Ya you are right
Thanks Lauren for the well thought out presentation on Facebook and their advertising modules which at times can be perplexing. As a company that assists clients in laying out full scale online marketing promotions and campaigns, Facebook ads are typically always a part of that equation.
That's awesome. It's great to see Facebook and social advertising in general really becoming part of integrated campaigns.
Great intro to Facebook marketing with some nice tips. I personally never liked Facebook, but I do like the idea of making money with it. :-)
Great wbf on the advertising options. Best thing I did learn here though was that its easy to install an add-on for FB users to block ads which I wasn't aware existed. A bit naive on my part but still a great summary of the FB advertising capabilities.
Interesting topic, but I found the outline of the different types of ads a bit misleading. You don't have to be a premium advertiser and go through a Facebook rep in order to show ads in the news feed. Sponsored Stories and Page Post Ads can be used to advertise posts including videos, polls, etc. and are available to all advertisers. You also aren't forced to pay CPM on these types of ads either, but you can choose Facebook's enhanced bidding or traditional CPC.
I know I'm getting a little into the weeds, but I think that's why so many people get confused about Facebook ads: it's just so dang complicated.
Also thought the assertion that premium ads are only accessible via your Facebook rep a little...shall I say..misleading.
About cloning ads [if you don't have a kick-ass software], turn to the power editor + putting basic spreadsheet skills to use.
Apologies for not more clearly explaining the different ad types. I was referring to things like forms built into ads being a premium buy. I'll make sure to clarify better next time.
Hi, Lauren Vacarello,
I Always follow the the whiteboard Friday. Its really interesting and amazing session over the advertising on the Face Book. Actually face book is also the market player now days to catch the targeted audiences through the premium advertisement. You explained 5 key steps to advertisement over the Face Book. before advertisement over the face book we have to make strong strategy to catch the targeted audiences from the crowd places.
Generally people making mistake to advertisement, they just needed conversions without any strategy which is fully wrong direction for the advertisement.
Thank you so much to share wonderful information with us.
Really nice post, facebook and social media is something I have yet to incorporate in to my own efforts, this posts will be of great benefit. Thank you.
Advertising is at the heart of the internet and all media for that matter. If everyone blocks advertising, the content that you enjoy and rely on will slowly vanish. Do you understand the concept?
You overestimate the positive impact of your profession. All you're doing is annoying people, and filling the pockets of shareholders and businesses. As far as FB, you are in the process of changing it from a social networking site, to a stocked fishing pond, full of guppies to spam. I'm sure that's good for you, but the site will collapse under the weight of that, whether you believe it or not.
The internet- and specifically, social media is driven by interesting people. Interesting and actively engaged people are now being driven off FB, because their feeds are inundated with unwanted ads. You are also inadvertantly causing people to 'unlike' commercial pages, because it puts their friends at risk of being spammed in their feeds. And make no mistake- people ARE feeling spammed.
FB isn't dead yet, but it's on the way, and you are the ones who will kill it. Its product WAS user experience, and sharing of *interesting* information. That's changing with gusto.
Americans can't go anywhere any more, without ads being shoved in our faces. And when those ads use our personal information to target (such an apropos word there) us and our friends so heavily and obnoxiously- as is being done now, we start to get annoyed. People ARE leaving. You would be wise not to underestimate that.
Thanks
Lauren
For sharing regarding facebook advertising which is really help us of our business. I appreciate your knowledge; if possible give some updates for good job.
Great in depth post. Really helpful.
May be you can answer a question I have been trying to get an answer to please?
I have a website and now making a new website selling same/similar products but targeting a new audience i.e keywords etc. My question is can I use the same facebook page, twitter etc for both websites or does each need its own in its own right. As I do not want Google to penalize me for my ignorance.
I hope you can help me please.
Kind RegardsGemma
Thank you for the post.
You hit the nail on the head, your target market is telling you via there profile, "Hey I am interested". Facebook is smart, innovative and they will figure out how to maximize there marketing capabilities and how to capitalize on a big piece of the market.
Im surprised, really useful WBF! Thanx
Hi Lauren,
Great WBF in terms of strategy and process. It would have helped alot of you were clear about the monetary thresholds associated with the various options. I am sure salesforce is spending a certain amount to have a facebook account team working with them.
Using 8.50 for a CPM to illustrate the point is fine for me because I am an online marketer and I currently advertise there and know that working with a premium account team constitutes a major spend every month.
Marketplace ads are along the lines of ppc types of ads, but the rest..there is a min spend.
This is a pretty solid guide to getting into Facebook advertising. I guess fast forwarding 5+ months it's safe to say that sponsored stories are incredibly effective at this point. While I understand this was made when moz was SEOmoz, I am a big fan of leveraging both organic and paid, especially with social.While I love reading successful case studies on organic Facebook growth, anyone with the right frame of mind and has the ability to adjust to change can grow a brand and get engagement for very cheap, even in comparison to organic growth.
Obviously depending on your industry and the type of content you want to provide for your audience the amount of success will vary. But I strongly encourage organic marketers to dive into Facebook. Great video Lauren.
Do you type out the transcripts or are they generated?
The transcripts are done by the company Speechpad (there's a link at the end of the post).
Good WBF - would like to see more on this topic
Some of the comments regarding conversions seem to be only focused on the sale. FB being a social site can create loyal long term customers. We have run several FB ads of different types. The buzz created when a group of like minded friends start tagging each other in product posts is very valuable. You build an interactive community that is there when you are ready to pitch.I love seeing the bubble of new fans grow in a geographical area. 1 likes the page their friends follow suit. As Lauren said you do need to identify your goals before you begin.
Great point! Facebook is a good place to build up your community since your prospects and customers are likely already there.
Hi Lauren,
I need to say that I've worked with my company on Facebook Advertising in Argentina for more than 2 years and it's really a great recopilation of the big picture of the Facebook platform right now.
I just want to add that the more you test, the more you learn. It's extremely useful to work on different markets, different products and even different countries, people have differences that can make you smarter if you see it and you can transfer some ideas from one segment to another.
Thanks!
Although I'm not in charge of Social Media, but this White Board Friday gave me some ideas that I can share. Thank you!
Thanks for sharing such amazing information. these are really helpful for my cargames.pk website.
Facebook re-targeting, sponsored ads etc.. this really important informations.
Thanks Lauren...
Very good WBF, thanks for sharing. One of the most unique looks at FB advertising and easily the most in depth and most informative.
I have a fb page with 5k friends..Your advices are great!
Great Whiteboard Friday Lauren. thanks for all tips connected with Facebook advertisement
Thanks Lauren for this information. I will discuss about it with my team members.
Yousuf
It was one of the best WBF that I have watched. Thanks Lauren for sharing this.
Thank you!
Long-time reader, first-time commenter...lots of good advice.
One thing not mentioned here is how you can use Power Editor with FB ads so that your sponsored stories show up in the Newsfeed only. With the little bit of FB advertising I've done so far, the sponsored stories seem way more effective. With a sponsored story in the sidebar, the text gets cut off and the image is super tiny.
Also, as Lauren mentioned, I get far more page likes from sponsored stories than from actual "Likes campaigns' that show up only in the right sidebar.
That is a great point!
I think it is worth testing all the different types of FB ads because you never know what will work for your business, but I agree with you. Sponsored stories are great especially when you are promoting really engaging, useful content.
Some great insight Lauren! Here's an FB question I've been unable to get a solid response on: when targeting FB ads by location, does facebook use the user's current IP address or the location they have set as their hometown?
Our clients are located in a tourist town in Mexico and want to target English speaking visitors; however, they don't want to waste money over-marketing to the relatively small group of ex-pats who have our city listed as their hometown. Cheers!
Why don't you change your city to alcapulco and then target an ad to that market and see if you can see the ad?
Great question. I am confirming with some contacts at Facebook to get the absolute answer on this one. Give me a couple of days and I'll get back to you.
Thanks Lauren! - A very helpful and practical WBF. Its not easy to stay across all these changes as well as everything else in the space!
Thanks! It was a lot of information to fit into a WBF. Hopefully the team will ask me back to do another one :)
Another good Whiteboard Friday. Facebook advertising should be interesting and continue to change as it evolves. I think people's disappointment with FB advertising comes from there not being any ads to speak of for so long, but you are correct a business that is publicly traded has to make money.
Thanks! Social advertising is still evolving every day, which makes it a really exciting space. I have a feeling Facebook will continue to develop different ad products that will provide users with great information and still satisfy advertiser needs.
Great piece of work :)
As I do some FB Ads, one other trick is pretty usefull, tracking, especially when You try to sell something to others. Easy to set up and still in Insight, so we don't need to click over and over again, also easier to track ROI :)
Anyone knowns when normal agencies get FBX, btw?
Although FBX isn't offered everywhere yet, quite a few ad platforms, like Turn, Adroll, Bizo, and Mediamath can access it.
There are also some interesting new developments with FBX actually. Check out this article about FBX accessing the newsfeed d https://adage.com/article/digital/facebook-brings-fbx-ads-desktop-news-feeds/240539/
Fantastic WBF Lauren, I recently had someone tell me Facebook was dead.. Made me laugh my a$$ off :D
I hear SEO is dead too oh and that this internet thing is just a fad. ;-)
Thank you for a great overview.
Loved the idea of backdating advertising posts. How come I didnt think of that!!
It's one of my favorite tips too. :)
Great WBF, Lauren. I've not done much FB advertising personally (just yet) but I'm going to come back to this video when the time comes.
I'm curious to know though... Where did you get the 500 friends figure from? I'm sure I heard/read somewhere that it's more like 100, if you factor in all the older generations now using FB that probably only have a handful of friends on there (compared to high school and university folk). Would be cool to get that backed up with a source if to know of one? Thanks :-)
Actually, those of us that have been on the planet longer (age 50+) have more friends because of accumulated interconnections. My friends that are actively using FB typically have 1,000+ friends. Age isn't nearly as much a factor as how actively people are engaging - at least that's my observation.
Sorry Jeff, that wasn't a dig - I promise! ;-) It was just what I'd heard/read. I'm probably way off the mark (sounds like I am).
Still... It'd be good to know where Lauren heard/read this herself... :-)
Great analogy re advertising and TV. It's really interesting that there are some attempts to make TV more Social right now, too.
Do you think that Facebook will be successful in it's attempt to monetize?
Completely my personal opinion, but I think Facebook will figure it out. They have a brilliant team and I believe in the future of social advertising.
Great tips for Facebook marketing! Having your campaign planned out before launching the advertising is def the way to go... thanks for sharing Lauren
Fantastic overview Lauren. Thank you.
Thanks!
Excellent piece. Pretty sure though that we have been able to add sponsored stories without the sales team though. Some very helpful info thou. :)
Great feedback. Next time I will be more clear. I didn't mean to infer all sponsored stories but in particular certain types of sponsored stories, like the ability to have a form built into a post. Glad you enjoyed the rest of the WBF!
Has anyone had a lot of success/conversions from Facebook ads compared to say PPC ads on Google?
I'm also looking for compression results. Facebook Ads Vs PPC Ads.
Strictly in terms of conversions that happen off of Facebook, FBX ads perform much closer to Google PPC ads than any other type of Facebook ads, but still aren't quite as effective. Of course, this also depends on your site, ad content, target market, etc. but this is the overall trend I've seen.
So would paying for Facebook ads increase the facebook pages pr also?
https://www.sacairconditioning.com
Are you asking about edgerank or about likes?
Well this is good video the other whiteboard Friday. Good idea about facebook advertising
Nice Whiteboard Friday and very informative!
+1 for danatanseo & skifr. I'm also interested in your point of view regarding these, Lauren.
Thanks!
p.s. sorry for replying - this meant to be a new comment :)
I wrote a SEOMOZ post I wrote a few months ago for my fellow Mozzers: 13-social-media-software-tools-for-marketing-your-company-or-clients. There are more social media tools besides Sales Force Social Marketing.
I enjoyed watching this long presentation. Thanks Lauren
Thanks! I'm constantly amazed at how the social media tool space has evolved over the last few years.