I hear a lot of chatter about how time-consuming creating Facebook ads within Ads Manager can be. The truth is, though, that most people with this issue don’t have the right processes in place for optimal efficiency.

When I create a new campaign, the vast majority of my time is spent on the ad itself (imagery and creative). The creation of campaigns and ad sets is lightning fast, and a big reason for that is saved audiences.

[Tweet “Here’s a simple tip for saving loads of time creating Facebook ads…”]

What a Saved Audience Is

The typical advertiser takes one of two approaches when creating an ad set that targets an audience they’ve targeted before:

1. They build the audience from scratch
2. They duplicate an existing ad set

The second option can save time, but there is the matter of finding that ad set and changing the settings that don’t apply to the new ad set.

The first is the most common. The advertiser essentially wings it, creating the audience based on…

• Custom Audiences
• Lookalike Audiences
• Countries/Location
• Gender
• Age
• Interests
• Behaviors
• Connections/Apps Used/Pages Liked

There are a couple of obvious issues with this approach.

First, it’s absolutely time-consuming. You may need to enter several custom audiences. Or several countries. And as almost always is the case with interests, several of them. The advertiser either enters them from memory or goes back and forth between an existing ad set and the new one.

More importantly, though, is that it’s inexact. When advertisers wing it, they enter all of these things from memory. Is the ideal age group 35-44 or 25-49? Did the list of interests include “Facebook for Business” or “Facebook for Local Business”?

These seem like small variations, but they make a huge difference.

With saved audiences, you can take an audience you use frequently — and successfully — and save it for easy access later.

Create a Saved Audience From Scratch

To create a Saved Audience from scratch, go to the “Audiences” section of Ads Manager…

Click the “Create Audience” button at the far right and select “Saved Audience.”

Now create the audience as you normally would within the ad set. Select custom audiences, countries, ages, genders, interests, connections, or whatever you want. Then name and save it.

Create a Saved Audience From an Existing Ad Set

There are a couple of ways you could create a Saved Audience from an existing ad set.

The first is to find an ad set that uses a frequently used audience. Select it and then click the icon to save your audience.

The second is within the creation of your audience within the ad set. At the bottom is a button to save the audience. When checked, you’ll need to name it.

That new saved audience will now be found within your “Audiences” list.

Use a Saved Audience

When creating your ad set, by default you are generating a new audience. But, click “Use Saved Audience” to get a list of saved audiences.

After selecting a saved audience, it will fill out the audience settings for you.

Just know that once you select that, any edits will be made to the saved audience itself. So if you click the “Edit Audience” button and change the ages or countries, for example, those changes are applied to the Saved Audience. This same audience may be used for other ad sets as well, and those changes would also appear there.

This part is extremely annoying. It’s always been this way, and it seems like an obvious area for improvement. Why not make saved audiences more of a template that can be edited? For example, you’ll often want to exclude the audience that performed the action you’re promoting.

As a result, this may be best suited for targeting where exclusion isn’t needed — maybe where an action can be performed repeatedly.

Saved Audiences You Should Create

You should look at this tool as a way to save yourself a ton of time. Find the audiences you target most frequently and create saved audiences out of them.

Here are a few examples…

1. Website Visitors
2. Email List
3. Lookalike Audiences
4. Interests
5. Lookalikes + Interests

Honestly, it could be anything. No judging.

Your Turn

Do you use saved audiences? Which audiences do you save?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Facebook Saved Audiences: How to Save Time Creating Facebook Ads appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Facebook announced today that Power Editor and Ads Manager will be combining into one tool.

Deep breaths…

For those who have used Power Editor religiously for the past several years due to added features not available in Ads Manager, don’t worry. It sounds as though no functionality will be lost.

For those who have used Ads Manager because Power Editor is overwhelming, don’t worry. Ease of use will remain a priority.

If you’ve followed the evolution of Power Editor during the past couple of years, this shouldn’t be much of a surprise. There was a time when the two tools were drastically different. But with each update to the two interfaces, they’ve looked more and more like the other.

The reality is that there was no longer a need to have both tools. They have become nearly identical anyway.

This update, which is rolling out this week, is focused primarily on campaign creation and reporting. Let’s take a closer look…

Creation Flows

One change we’ve seen over the past year or so is the introduction of “Guided Creation” when designing campaigns. It allows advertisers to go through the entire process of creating a campaign, ad set, and ad, and it’s become the only way to create campaigns in Ads Manager (before the change)…

From Power Editor, advertisers had the option of using Guided Creation or Quick Creation. Quick Creation allowed advertisers to quickly generate a campaign, ad set, and ad draft by providing the most basic information (before the change)…

Guided Creation within Power Editor was almost identical to the same process in Ads Manager. Here’s an image before the change…

The new Ads Manager (combined tool) will allow advertisers who used the Quick Creation option in Power Editor to keep using it (after the change)…

Facebook sent me this image of what Guided Creation will look like for the new Ads Manager (combined tool)…

Both options will be made available to all advertisers with the combined tool. Facebook will automatically opt you in to the creation method you use most frequently, but you’ll be available to switch to the other method if you choose.

Drafts

The difference between the image above and the original flow of Guided Creation in Ads Manager is small. Can you spot it?

Here’s the bottom left corner of Guided Creation in the old Ads Manager…

If you closed this window at any time, you’d lose all of your work. No drafts were generated.

But here’s the bottom left corner of the new (combined tool) Ads Manager…

All advertisers will now have the ability to save their work as a draft.

In fact, Facebook says your work will now be saved via automatic drafts. You will, however, need to review and publish any changes that need to go live (as you do in Power Editor). To help make sure that an advertiser with unsaved changes doesn’t forget, Facebook will surface reminders inviting you to review and publish your changes.

One Source for Reports

Great, so there’s now one unified place to create Facebook campaigns, ad sets, and ads. That was certainly a source of confusion for advertisers — particularly new advertisers. But what about reports?

Yeah, this was an issue, too. Advertisers have had ad reports baked into their Ads Manager. But they also had stats in Power Editor. Frustratingly, the organization and access to these metrics were not the same.

Hell… Sometimes the numbers didn’t even match up from Ads Manager to Power Editor!

Personally, I ignored the stats within Power Editor. If I wanted to see how my campaigns were doing, I dove into the goldmine of information in Ads Manager. That’s where I used Customized Columns and accessed the enlightening info within Breakdowns.

With this update, there will be one unified place to access your ad reports — within the new Ads Manager. This is where you’ll get charts, activity history, breakdowns, summary rows, date benchmarks, exported insights reports and more. No more confusion.

If you aren’t using many of these features in Ads Manager, it’s time to start. They’re extremely valuable!

You Lose Nothing

This could be a scary announcement for both the green advertiser who is intimidated by Power Editor and the experienced advertiser who wants all of the extra bells and whistles. But it appears both sides should be happy by this announcement.

The new advertiser can continue to use the guided creation method when creating a campaign. Power Editor no longer “exists” (in name, at least), so it’s one less thing for them to worry about.

Facebook says that no functionality is lost as a result of this change. So those who have relied on Power Editor for the past few years won’t lose anything.

The bottom line is this update provides consistency and continuity. If executed as Facebook claims, it will be better for everyone.

If you don’t have this update yet, Facebook says they will begin rolling it out later this week.

Your Turn

What do you think of this update?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Facebook Ads Manager and Power Editor Combine Into One Tool appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Much of the confusion about Facebook advertising among novice to intermediate marketers centers around the lack of specificity in training materials available. They speak in generalities and in theory instead of providing specific examples and step-by-step instructions.

I try to do things differently here, sharing as much detail and as many examples from my own advertising as I can. Today, I want to dive into a rather complex topic that confuses many marketers looking to take advantage of the power of both Facebook ads and email.

I’ve written before about how I’ll run Facebook campaigns that mimic an email funnel. I’ll occasionally get asked something along the lines of, “Why even bother? Why not just send the email?”

Here’s an important point that you need to understand: When you run consistent messaging to the same audience via both email and Facebook ads, they make each other more effective.

The email campaign by itself may have done fine. The Facebook campaign by itself may have done fine. Combine the two, and not only do you combine the results, but the familiarity from the email (on which a user didn’t act) could make action on an ad more likely (and vice versa).

I don’t always combine the two because it can be a bit complicated, but when I do the results are often magical. Today I want to provide the details of how I’m promoting my How to Create an Evergreen Facebook Campaign Workshop with both email and Facebook ads — and how they work together.

[SIDE NOTE: This workshop occurs next Wednesday, Feb. 3 at 5pm EST. It is for Power Hitters Club members only, my private membership. If you’d like to join the club or learn more about it, go here. By doing so, you may be added to my Facebook campaign!]

So let’s take a closer look at the basics of my email and Facebook campaigns and how one influences the other. I will simplify some of this as there are some complexities that may add unnecessary confusion to this blog post.

[Tweet “Email and Facebook ad campaigns can work together in beautiful ways. Here is a detailed example…”]

1. My Email Campaign

On Wednesday, January 27 (a week from the workshop), I wrote an email to most of my list.

I started broadly, excluding only people who are current members of the Power Hitters Club (who are automatically registered for the workshop). The goal with this email was to introduce the workshop and my Power Hitters Club membership to this audience.

The following day, I sent a second email to those who opened the first one.

This time, I took a different approach. I shared some history about why I teach using the workshop model, providing some personal stories along the way.

Both emails shared a couple of links: One was a link to a special landing page for recipients of this email and another was to a recent blog post I wrote about the evergreen Facebook campaign concept. (There was also a link to my “About Me” page in the second email, but that didn’t impact the campaign).

I added UTM tags to the end of the blog post URL — not necessarily for tracking purposes, but so that I could create a special Website Custom Audience for it.

I then created the following Website Custom Audiences:

• Viewed Evergreen Campaign Workshop Landing Page from Email – 180 Days
• Viewed Evergreen Campaign Workshop Landing Page from Email – 2 Days
• Viewed Evergreen Campaign Workshop Landing Page from Email – 4 Days
• Viewed Evergreen Campaign Workshop Landing Page from Email – 6 Days
• Viewed Evergreen Blog Post from Email – 180 Days
• Viewed Evergreen Blog Post from Email – 2 Days
• Viewed Evergreen Blog Post from Email – 4 Days
• Viewed Evergreen Blog Post from Email – 6 Days

To clarify, I created a special landing page that I used for this email campaign. That’s the URL used for the first four WCAs above. Here’s an example…

For the second four, I added UTM parameters to the end of the URL of a recent blog post to separate these WCAs from people reading the post normally on my site. Here’s what that looked like…

The truth is that I probably didn’t need to create a separate landing page for this campaign. I could have also used UTM parameters for it as well. But let’s not get bogged down into unnecessary details.

The main goal here was to drive traffic to these pages so that we could then target those people with corresponding Facebook ads. The more traffic I can drive, the more people I will target on Facebook.

In the past, I’ve been known to hit my entire email list multiple times with promotions for my products. But now that my workshops are only available for PHC members, I find that to be overkill.

So now I do it like this:

1. Email the entire list, minus current members
2. Email those who opened the first message but didn’t convert
3. LAST CHANCE: Email those who have clicked so far, but didn’t convert

In between, I will also email my list to promote this blog post. That email will include a mention of the upcoming workshop and a link to that special landing page. Again, the hope is to drive as many relevant people into that Facebook funnel as possible.

2. My Facebook Campaign

We now want to piggy-back off of that email and start running Facebook ads targeting those who have clicked my emails. Note that I considered widening the net and targeting anyone who opened, but I felt that could pull in too many accidental opens.

I created a campaign with the objective of Website Conversions.

I am going to split up my audience based on how recently they clicked the link in my email and visited the workshop landing page — or visited the UTM-altered blog post. To do this, I create multiple ad sets:

1. Viewed PHC/Evergreen Landing Page or Blog Post (1-2 Days) – Not PHC Members – News Feed – Daily Unique Reach
2. Viewed PHC/Evergreen Landing Page or Blog Post (3-4 Days) – Not PHC Members – News Feed – Daily Unique Reach
3. Viewed PHC/Evergreen Landing Page or Blog Post (5-6 Days) – Not PHC Members – News Feed – Daily Unique Reach

For simplicity’s sake, we’re only going to focus on the first two.

Understand that the primary strategy here is that we’re going to show one ad to someone who clicked on those links in my email for the first two days. Then we’ll show them another ad for the next two days before showing a final ad.

The ad sets for the three are identical, minus the targeting. So, here are some basic ways that these ad sets are set up:

• Optimize for a Conversion (Power Hitters Club Custom Conversion)
• $100 Daily Budget (more on this in a moment)
• Start Jan. 22, End Feb. 3
• Placement: Mobile News Feed and Desktop News Feed
• Optimization for Ad Delivery: Daily Unique Reach
• Manual Bid: $50 (more on this in a moment)

I set a $100 daily budget because that budget needed to be at least double the manual bid of $50.

I set a $50 manual bid to make sure that I reach as many of these people as possible — knowing that I ultimately won’t spend either $50 in CPM or anywhere close to $100 for a daily budget.

[SIDE NOTE: At this moment, my CPM is $27.65 and I’m spending around $25 per day.]

I use Daily Unique Reach because I have an incredibly relevant (and small) audience, and I want to reach as many of these people as possible. However, I also don’t want to bombard them over and over, so I limit my frequency to once per day.

[SIDE NOTE #2: As a result of bidding this way, my reach is currently about 70% of the total possible audience size. That can’t be done when Facebook optimizes for an action.]

This is also why I didn’t use the right column placement. Since I’m using Daily Unique Reach, I don’t want to waste my one impression per day on the right column.

Here are some details of targeting for the first ad set:

• Excluded current PHC members (both email Custom Audience and WCAs)
• Excluded those who clicked the associated ad (more on that in a moment)
• Targeted those who viewed the custom landing page during the past two days
• Targeted those who viewed the related blog post with UTM parameters during the past two days

I don’t do any country or language filtering.

Even though my email was not targeted at current PHC members, I know that some of those recipients will then become new members. As a result, I want to be sure I exclude them from this campaign.

I also want to avoid showing anyone this ad who already clicked on it. I do that by creating a Website Custom Audience for a UTM-altered URL for the landing page. Let’s get to that within the ad…

This is a simple link ad driving users to a UTM-altered version of that same landing page. I did this so that I can then create a Website Custom Audience for that URL and exclude anyone who clicked the ad already from this particular ad set.

You’ll note that the copy calls out the fact that those seeing the ad received an email from me. Increased relevance!

The second ad set will reach the same group of people, but during days three and four following their click of the landing page or UTM-altered blog post. That is done with the following targeting:

• Excluded current PHC members (both email Custom Audience and WCAs)
• Excluded those who clicked the associated ad
• Excluded those who viewed the custom landing page during the past two days
• Excluded those who viewed the related blog post with UTM parameters during the past two days
• Targeted those who viewed the custom landing page during the past four days
• Targeted those who viewed the related blog post with UTM parameters during the past four days

With this ad, I wanted to do things a little differently. I created a carousel that included a special video that highlights what will be covered within the workshop, a UTM-altered link to the landing page and a UTM-altered link to the blog post.

This should give you a clear picture of my strategy, but know that I’ll also have an ad set for days 5-6 to show yet another ad.

Results?

I am still early in this campaign, but this approach tends to work very well. Both email and Facebook ad campaigns will drive conversions at rates that are often higher than if used by themselves.

While saving money wasn’t necessarily a priority, note that this certainly is a way to focus budget without wasting it. Even though my bids are high, I’m only targeting around 1,000 people who have expressed interest in this workshop. Spend will be low, but return should also be high.

Your Turn

What are your thoughts on this approach? Have you ever tried something similar?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Combine Email and Facebook Ad Campaigns for Greater Success (Example) appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

I was excited when Facebook announced lead ads in June. When I received access on September 28, I was eager to give them a test drive. Lead ads have not disappointed.

Beginning today, Facebook is rolling out lead ads to Power Editor globally. Facebook also announced several enhancements that are coming that could be huge for marketers.

Let’s take a look at what lead ads are, my one-week test drive and the updates coming for this potentially powerful tool.

[Tweet “Facebook lead ads rolling out: Includes desktop, video, carousel and CRM integration!”]

What are Facebook Lead Ads?

One of the obstacles to a good user experience on Facebook is the poor load times when clicking an external link. Facebook has started testing and rolling out a series of features to help combat this, including instant articles and the “Buy” button.

Lead ads are yet another attempt to keep users on Facebook. In particular, most advertisers have seen the issues with collecting information from users while on a mobile device. While costs to reach and get engagement tends to be cheaper on mobile than on desktop, getting the conversion is usually more expensive.

There are many reasons for this, not limited to slow load times, lack of mobile responsiveness and the comparative difficulty entering contact information on mobile vs. desktop.

A lead ad looks like any other link ad with a CTA button on the surface. But when you click the link or CTA button (“Apply Now,” “Get Quote,” “Download,” “Learn More,” “Sign Up” or “Subscribe”), the user is immediately shown a form within Facebook.

Load time is vastly improved. But that’s just the start.

Facebook then pre-fills requested information like name and email address based on Facebook profile information. Users can edit this information in the form if they choose. Advertisers can ask for a long list of information (I’ll get to that in a minute) in addition to asking custom questions.

The process is streamlined to be much more efficient, and you can expect that advertisers will be seeing more leads (and lower cost per lead) as a result.

How to Create Facebook Lead Ads

Advertisers can create Facebook lead ads either through Power Editor or their Facebook Marketing Partner. I’m going to step you through how it’s done within Power Editor.

When creating a campaign within Power Editor, select the new “Lead Generation” objective.

Within the ad set, you may notice that the only option is mobile. That’s how lead ads were initially rolled out, but it is expanding to desktop (more on that later).

You will optimize for leads by default, with Facebook attempting to get you the most leads for the best price. You can also manually set the value of that lead.

You also have the option of using CPC bidding.

Much of the ad creation process is identical to what you would do when creating a typical link ad. You’ll need to provide:

• Text that goes above the image
• Link headline
• Link description
• Image (1200×628 pixels)

Note that while Facebook will pull the headline, description and image from meta data for link ads, you’ll need to provide those manually for lead ads.

You’ll also need to select a CTA button.

Advertisers have the following CTA options:

• Apply Now
• Download
• Get Quote
• Learn More
• Sign Up
• Subscribe

How to Create a Facebook Lead Form

Now you’ll need to select or create a lead form. Further down the page during ad creation, you’ll see this.

Click the button to create a new form. Then you’ll get the following view…

First name your lead form and click “Next.”

By default, Facebook will request Email and Full Name, but click the link to show more options.

Now a world of options will be opened up to you based on name, address, phone number, demographic information and work questions.

You can also add a custom question. Click “Add a question” at the bottom.

Facebook brings up requests based on automotive, education, e-commerce, B2B, professional services, health insurance, auto insurance, need help and purchase intent. For each of these, Facebook will request information (like “Choose a car brand”) and you can enter potential responses that a user can select from.

Here are all of the options…

Automotive:

• Car make
• Car model
• Trim
• Year of make
• Car dealership

Education:

• Interested field of study
• Current field of study
• Highest level of education
• When do you plan to enroll?
• Course of interest
• Campus location
• What degree are you interested in

Ecommerce:

• How often do you want to hear from us
• Select a category

B2B:

• Size of company
• Size of sales team
• Primary trade

Professional Services:

• Type of legal service

Health Insurance:

• Health insurance coverage status

Auto Insurance:

• Annual mileage

Need Help:

• Need help
• What are you looking for
• What is the problem
• Select services

Purchase Intent:

• Time to purchase
• Time to join
• Size of budget
• Waitlist

You can also choose to create up to three custom questions from scratch by clicking “Add Custom Question” at the top right.

You can either leave the answer open ended or provide options the user can select from.

When you’re ready, click “Next” and you’ll be taken to the privacy policy and disclaimer view.

Provide a link to your privacy policy. If you don’t have one, you need one on your site before getting your form and ad approved. You may want to try the Auto Terms of Service and Privacy Policy WordPress plugin.

If there are any disclaimers you want to add, enter it here. Otherwise, leave it blank and click “Next.”

Finally, add a link to your website. After the user has submitted your form, they will be given a link they can click.

While it would make sense for this to be a link to a landing page on your site, Facebook doesn’t allow you to customize your text for the CTA. So doing so may be confusing.

After adding the link, you’ll be prompted to preview your form.

Are you ready? You’re done! Just click “Create Form.”

How to Access Leads from Facebook Lead Ads

Once your lead ad starts running, the primary question from marketers has been, “Where do my leads go?” While it would be nice if these leads were automatically sent to your CRM (we’ll get to solutions on that in a minute), you have to collect them manually via a CSV file.

Go to your page and click “Publishing Tools” at the top right and then “Lead Ads Forms” on the left.

You should then see a list of your active forms. Click the “Download” link to export your new contacts. You’ll then need to manually import them into your CRM.

If you’re doing this as a manual process, I strongly recommend that you export and upload at least once per day — particularly if users are expecting an immediate response.

My Experiment with Facebook Lead Ads

During my experiment with this, I’ve seen some great results. I wanted to run lead ads for my main lead magnet, my 12 Tips ebook.

I’ve been promoting this ebook since the end of February, getting an average of $.71 per email address. Since it’s getting old, though, that cost has been going up — now averaging $.88 during the past 30 days.

On mobile, that cost has been a little bit higher — $.80 per lead overall and $.85 during the past 30 days. So lead ads would be a great experiment!

I created the following lead ad…

Here’s the form that comes up after clicking the image or CTA…

And here are my results…

As you can see, I’m averaging a cost of $.45 per registration, which is a little more than half of what I was getting before!

What About Lead Quality?

One of the questions I had about this was whether prefilling information from a user’s profile would make it too easy for the user. Would it pull an invalid email address? Would it attract leads from people who weren’t that interested?

In terms of invalid email addresses, a small sample test has shown no issue with this. I emailed the list of contacts that I compiled with a lead ad (at the time it was over 100) and had 100% deliverability (no bounces). The question regarding quality still remains if it isn’t a primary address, but the emails I collected were valid in all cases.

Features Coming to Facebook Lead Ads

As much as I love lead ads, they’ve had some weaknesses. Facebook is addressing those with today’s announcement, rolling out several enhancements.

CRM Integration

My biggest beef with lead ads was that you had to access your leads manually. That’s a major pain, and also a poor experience if after clicking the ad the user needs to wait for a response. CRM integration was needed!

Note, however, that this integration will not be native within Facebook. You’ll need to work with one of Facebook’s marketing partners (currently this includes Eloqua, Driftrock, Marketo, Maropost, Sailthru and Salesforce). I’m personally using DriftRock Lead Response (affiliate link). I use DriftRock for both lead ad CRM integration (with Lead Response) but also for email Custom Audience integration and syncing (with DriftRock Flow).

Desktop Placement

While lead ads are important for performance of mobile lead collection, I was disappointed that these were initially tested only on mobile. However, that’s going to change as Facebook will be bringing lead ads to desktop as well!

Lead Ads with Video

Want to collect a lead from a video ad? That will be possible soon!

Lead Ads with Carousel

This actually came up for me the other day. I have insane success with carousel ads, but what if I wanted to use one of the image links to collect a lead? Until now, that would mean sending the user to my website. In the future, lead ads will come to carousel ads as well!

Your Turn

What do you think about lead ads and these recent updates? Have you started experimenting? What are you seeing?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Facebook Lead Ads: Coming to Desktop, Carousel, Video, CRM Integration appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Facebook is implementing an updated version of the Custom Audience and Conversion pixels, which is great news. However, many marketers are still confused about the implications of this.

The official announcement from Facebook is too technical for most users, and there isn’t (yet) a clear step-by-step guide explaining how to implement this new pixel.

If you are also one of those confused marketers struggling to find your way around Facebook’s upgraded pixel, you are in the right place! Keep reading.

Why a New Pixel?

There are were two types of pixels available on Facebook, each with a different function.

• Audience Pixels: They are used to create website custom audiences. There’s only one pixel per advertising account.
• Conversion Pixels: These pixels have a double function: optimize advertising campaigns and track conversions.

However, as Facebook kept improving their advertising platform with new features, there was a need for a more robust pixel.

One of these features is Dynamic Products Ads, which allows retargeting users who have visited specific products or categories from your website.

If you have just a few products or pages, retargeting could easily be done using Website Custom Audiences; but as the product range increases the process becomes more complex. That’s where Dynamic Product Ads become really useful.

Furthermore, most businesses with a large product range require a comprehensive report with information not only about the revenue generated, but also products sold, number of items sold per transaction, user behavior, etc…

Including lots of different conversion pixels in your checkout pages is not a feasible option. All that code could slow down your website (which affects your SEO); and pixels could conflict with each other.

Facebook’s upgraded pixel has been implemented to solve all those issues while providing a more effective reporting process.

What Are The Main Features of The Upgraded Facebook Pixel?

The new pixel includes several interesting improvements and new features. The most significant ones are:

• Pixels are unified: There’s no need to use different pixels to track audiences and conversions.
• Loading is 3X faster: This improves your website SEO and reduces risks of malfunctioning.
• Pixels can be shared: Very useful when working with agencies or collaborating with other businesses.
• Multiple event tracking: New pixels allow tracking up to 9 different standard events, each of them with a set of parameters.

Let’s dig into each of these features.

One Pixel To Track Them All…

Until now there were two types of Facebook pixels with different functions: Audience Pixels and Conversion Pixels.

It was quite normal for a website to include several pixels in different pages — and sometimes within the same page. As we have seen, this practice could bring some problems.

Using Facebook Pixel Helper to test the pixels installed on a page, it is quite easy to see how multiple pixels take longer to load and could create errors — as you can see in the next image.

Now Facebook has simplified things by developing a single (and more robust) pixel.

[Tweet “The new #Facebook Pixel integrates Custom Audiences and conversion tracking in a single pixel.”]

Depending on the function(s) required, the code associated could be more or less complex and include extra lines. However, the base code is unique and common to all pages in the website.

Thus, moving forward you’ll need to include the new pixel in all the pages of your website, and then adapt the code only on the ones where you’ll like to track conversions.

Faster is Better

The new pixel provides faster loading times, which is certainly an advantage — especially for complex websites that require tracking multiple conversions.

According to Facebook:

All Facebook pixels are now up to 3X faster. We’ve rewritten a large part of our server response code and used javascript minification so that pixel load times can meet even the most strict customer SLAs.

Why is this important?

A pixel is actually an image of a size 1 x 1px (hence the name) that is loaded by a browser when a user accesses a page.

Having multiple pixels would require loading multiple images and thus increasing loading times. However, this is not the main problem.

Once the pixel is loaded, the code associated notifies Facebook’s servers; the more pixels, the more information that needs to be sent. Multiple pixels could try to communicate with Facebook simultaneously, and this could generate conflicts.

With the new pixel, not only do you need to load one pixel, but all the information associated is sent to Facebook once. Thus, increasing communication speed and reducing the risk of errors.

Imagine having 50 cars carrying 50 people (one per vehicle) from one place to another — or moving the same number of people in a bus. Same amount of people, but less traffic.

Sharing

Sometimes a business may want to share their pixels with another company. This is quite normal when working with agencies or as part of a business collaboration between different companies.

For example, a blog reviewing some products may be reached by the producing companies, so they could retarget users reading the articles related to their brands.

This process has also been simplified, and pixels can be shared with other Facebook Ad Account or Agencies.

Sharing a pixel is available only through Business Manager. To share your pixel, just follow these steps.

1. Go into Business Manager, and from the Settings menu select ‘Pixels’ on the left column
2. Select your pixel and then click on ‘Assign Account’ or ‘Assign Agency’, depending on your specific needs.

Remember that when you share your pixel, the other party will be able to see your code, including your pixel IDs.

You can stop sharing a pixel at any time by clicking on the X next to the name of the Ad Account or Agency you want to revoke access to your pixel.

Events and Parameters

The old conversion pixel allowed tracking 5 different types of user actions:

• Checkouts
• Registrations
• Leads
• Key Page Views
• Adds to Cart

These actions were enough for many businesses, but quite often complex websites required more information. Also, the only data tracked (apart of the number of conversions) was the conversion value and currency.

Now, the new pixel allows tracking 9 different user actions (or standard events). Each of these standard events can incorporate a series of parameters that could provide additional data.

The new standard events available are:

• View Content
• Search
• Add to Cart
• Add to Wishlist
• Start Checkout process
• Add Payment Information
• Complete Purchase
• Lead
• Complete registration

While the list of parameters are (not all parameters are available for all events)…

• Value
• Currency
• Content Name: for the name of the page or product
• Content category (for the product category)
• Content Ids (such as SKUs)
• Content Type (downloadable product, physical product, etc.)
• Number of Items
• Search String (if users search for particular terms on the site)
• Status (To confirm if a registration has been completed or not)

As you can see, this structure allows for more effective conversion tracking. For example, now you are able to understand the exact value of abandoned carts on an eCommerce website and redesign your retargeting strategy with a specific ROI goal in mind.

How To Implement Facebook’s Upgraded Custom Audience Pixel

Migrating to the upgraded pixel is a three step process:

1. Implement the new Audience pixel
2. Adapt the new pixel to track conversions
3. Remove the old Facebook pixel

1) Implement the New Pixel

The first step is really simple; all it requires is placing the following code into each page of your website, just before the closing </head> tag.

This is what we call Base Code.

Remember to replace <FB_PIXEL_ID> with your own pixel ID — the one associated to your account, NOT the ones used to track conversions.

You can find your pixel IDs by following these steps:

1. Go into your Ads Manager dashboard, and on the left column select ‘Audiences’
2. Click into the name of an existing Website Custom Audience (or create a new one first, if you don’t have any)
3. Facebook will open a new window. On the right side you’ll have an information box showing your pixel ID, as you can see in the following image.

2) Adapt the code to track conversions

So far we have only implemented the pixel code required to create audiences.

As we have seen before, tracking conversions requires adding some extra code as part of the base code — but only on the pages where the conversion will happen (remember that the base code needs to be implemented in ALL pages of your website).

It is very important to remember two things:

• The base code needs to be loaded before the conversion tracking code.
• The conversion tracking code is part of the same script that contains the base code, and thus it must be included before the closing </script> tag.

Considering these two rules, the code for your upgraded pixel should have the following structure (the following is just an example)…

The structure of the conversion code could vary depending on the event being tracked, but it will look similar to the following.

fbq(‘track’,  ‘EVENT NAME’, {

PARAMETER_1:‘PARAMETER_VALUE’,

PARAMETER_2: ‘PARAMETER_VALUE’,

PARAMETER_3:PARAMETER_VALUE,

PARAMETER_4:  ‘PARAMETER_VALUE’ });

For example, let’s say you want to track leads on a page where users request a brochure for a new Volkswagen Golf with a market value of $40,000 USD. Then you could place the following code on the page that is displayed after users submit their data.

fbq(‘track’, ‘Lead’, {

content_name: ‘Volkswagen Golf’,

content_category:  ‘Brochure’,

value: 40000.00,

currency:  ‘USD’ });

Remember most parameters are optional and you could simply leave them out. In this case the previous code would look like this:

fbq(‘track’, ‘Lead’, {

});

You can also track several conversions in the same page. All you’d need to do is add another piece of extra code — always before the closing </script> tag.

3) Remove the old pixel

Once you have included the new pixel in your website, including the code to track conversions in specific pages, you are ready to remove all previous pixels.

Should You Make The Move?

There’s something important you should consider before upgrading to the new pixel: Facebook is still rolling out this new feature, and your account may not be ready yet to read information received from the new pixels.

According to Facebook:

Through a new Custom Audience Pixel Stats API and in Power Editor and Ads Manager we are gradually rolling out a new pixel view and troubleshooting dashboard that allows marketers to get a snapshot of the pixel traffic on their website.

This means there could be cases where Power Editor or Ads Manager do not report the standard events for the new pixel. In these cases upgrading to the new pixel would show zero conversions for your campaigns.

To confirm if your account is ready to work and report on the new pixel, do the following:

1. Go to Ads Manager or Power Editor and create a ‘Website Conversions’ campaign.
2. When prompted, click on the field labelled ‘Choose a Conversion‘
3. If your account is ready, Facebook will display the new 9 standard events — together with any conversion pixels you had created previously.

If you cannot see these 9 standard events, then your account is not ready yet. If this is the case, don’t worry. Your existing conversion and custom audience pixels will continue to work and you can keep using them until Facebook migrates your account to the new pixel.

Your Turn

The new version of the Facebook pixel offers great features that allow for a better reporting. However, remember that if you are not sure how to use it — or if your account is not yet ready — you can still use the existing pixel to track conversions.

Will you upgrade to the new pixel? What do you think of the new events and parameters? Let me know your thoughts in the comment section below!

The post How to Use Facebook’s Upgraded Website Custom Audience Pixel appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Last week, I told you everything to know about the new Facebook Ads Manager. Now let’s take a closer look at Power Editor.

Like any other big change, the new Power Editor will take some getting used to. As you poke around you’ll find…

• Some things work differently now
• Some features are in different places
• The design is often different, but functions the same
• Some things are relatively or completely unchanged
• Some features are brand new

If you have the new Facebook Power Editor, here’s what it looks like…

Let’s dive in!

[Tweet “The new Facebook Power Editor is rolling out globally! Here’s everything you need to know…”]

Top Navigation

Previously, the navigation items were buried within one of a couple of drop-downs at the top. Now they all remain uncovered for easy access.

Manage Ads: This is the default view, allowing you to manage your campaigns, ad sets and ads.

Audiences: This aggregates all of your Custom Audiences, Lookalike Audiences and Saved Audiences. Nothing new here.

Image Library: This is a central place where all of the images you have uploaded to Power Editor live. Nothing new here.

Reporting: A list of your saved reports lives here. More later in this post.

Page Posts: Previously known as “Manage Pages,” a collection of page posts. Nothing new here.

Tools: A dropdown with access to the following:

• Campaign Dashboard
• Pixels
• Billing
• Account Settings
• Account Groups

The Pixels page is relatively new, but not to this design. It is found within the new Ads Manager and provides an overview of the performance of your Website Custom Audience and conversion pixels.

Side Navigation

The previous side navigation allowed you to drill down by campaign, ad set, ad and labels. It confused many advertisers because you were asked to click on campaign, ad set and ad names on the left only to get campaigns, ad sets and ads on the right.

The new side navigation has icons only representing the campaign, ad sets and ad groups. When you click on any of those three levels, you’ll get that information on the right.

Since there is no longer a list of campaigns, ad sets and ads on the left, the use of filtering becomes more important.

More Room for Lists

One of the biggest cosmetic changes is that there is now far more room for lists of your campaigns, ad sets and ads. The prior Power Editor had a dual pane: The top was a list of campaigns, ad sets or ads; the bottom was the editing pane.

This was a “pain,” to say the least. I know my routine was grabbing the bar separating the two and moving it up to get a better view of what I am creating or editing.

Now there is no separator. The list takes up the real estate, making this design much cleaner.

Editing

If you’re going to create a campaign, ad set or ad, you simply click the “Create” button at the top left. By default, you’ll create based on your current view (if viewing ad sets, you’ll create a new ad set). But there’s a drop-down to create whatever you want.

To edit a campaign, ad set or ad, simply click on the pencil icon at the far right. Whether creating or editing, the next view will look the same.

The editing pane then flies out from right to left, taking over the majority of the screen. When you’re done editing, click the pencil icon again and the pane will collapse to the right.

Search

The search at the top left is actually no more than a shortcut to filters by name, ID or tag (we’ll get to those next).

Here are your search options:

• Campaign Name
• Ad Set Name
• Ad Name
• Campaign ID
• Ad Set ID
• Ad ID
• Tag

Filters

If you’ve created hundreds or thousands of ads — particularly if for different pages or clients — it can be very difficult finding what you want. That’s where these filters come into play, allowing you to narrow dow the results.

Following are the filtering options, by category…

Campaign Delivery:

• Active
• Inactive
• Scheduled
• Not Delivering
• Completed
• Pending Review
• Not Approved

Ad Set Delivery:

• Active
• Inactive
• Scheduled
• Not Delivering
• Completed
• Pending Review
• Not Approved

Ad Delivery:

• Active
• Inactive
• Not Approved
• Pending Review

Objectives:

• Clicks to Website
• Product Catalog Sales
• Website Conversions
• Page Post Engagement
• Page Likes
• Mobile App Installs
• Mobile App Engagement
• Desktop App Installs
• Desktop App Engagement
• Local Awareness
• Offer Claims
• Event Responses
• Video Views

Recent Campaign Changes:

• Recently Edited
• Recently Uploaded
• Not Uploaded

Recent Ad Set Changes:

• Recently Edited
• Recently Uploaded
• Not Uploaded

Recent Ad Changes:

• Recently Edited
• Recently Uploaded
• Not Uploaded

When one of these is selected, the selected filter will then appear to the right…

You’ll be able to change your filter by clicking on it.

Depending on the filter, you will also need to provide a variable. For example, if you choose “Campaign Delivery,” you’ll need to select from variables like Active, Inactive, Scheduled, etc.

Reporting

If you click on the “Reporting” link within the top navigation, you’ll get a list of your scheduled reports as shown above. This will be a collection of both the sample reports that Facebook gives you and the custom reports you have previously created.

You can create a new report from here by clicking the “Create Report” button at the far right. You will then be able to apply filters to view only what you want and save it for easy access later.

If you click on one of the reports, you’ll be able to view the results like below…

You can also generate a report while viewing a filtered list of campaigns within the Manage Ads view…

Just click the “Create Report” icon!

Your Turn

This is an overview of most of the changes you need to be aware of within the new Power Editor. Some things didn’t change, or changed very little.

What do you think about this update? Let me know in the comments below!

The post New Facebook Power Editor: A Complete Guide appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

[AUDIO VERSION: I also recorded an audio version of this blog post. Click below to listen. Let me know if this is something you find helpful!]

Facebook recently started rolling out multi-product ads to all advertisers using Power Editor. This feature has amazing potential, and I’ve seen some pretty awesome results in my early tests. I strongly recommend you start experimenting as soon as possible!

Within this post, I want to introduce you to what multi-product ads are and how you can start creating them today.

[Tweet “You can now create your own multi-product Facebook ads, and they’re awesome! Here’s how…”]

What Multi-Product Ads Are

Multi-product ads allow a single advertiser to showcase multiple products — multiple groups of creative and links — within a single ad.

Here’s an example where I promote a discount to my Power Hitters Club to a small group of people…

With multi-product ads, there is a carousel of creative. By default, there are three sets of images and links that you can promote, and the targeted user would click an arrow to view beyond the first two within desktop news feed.

Note that you can include up to five sets of creative within Power Editor, but advertisers can provide up to 10 sets via the ads API. We’ll get into the details of creating these and how the creative is ordered in a little bit.

The first image above shows how it appears within desktop news feed. Here’s what it looks like from a mobile device…

In this case, you can only clearly see one set of creative and will need to click the arrow to view more.

How You Might Use Multi-Product Ads

Facebook’s intention is that you use this ad type to highlight multiple products. However, there’s nothing requiring you to use it only to drive conversions (opt-ins and sales).

I’ve been experimenting with using multi-product ads to drive traffic to my blog. Here’s an example…

This particular ad features three recent blog posts, but it was created prior to Facebook increasing the number of links you can feature to five.

Feel free to get creative with this. I’ve seen better than normal performance on website clicks for this ad, and I expect it to be a very helpful tool going forward.

How to Create Multi-Product Ads

Okay, first of all I’m going to assume you use Power Editor. I’ve said it over and over again, so hopefully you’ve listened to me by now. This is one of those features that — as of this moment — is not yet available in the main ad create tool.

Note that this ad unit is only available when using two campaign objectives:

• Clicks to Website
• Website Conversions

I’ve heard from some people who don’t think they have multi-product ads yet, but it’s often because they aren’t using the proper objective.

I’m going to assume you know how to set everything up on the campaign and ad set level. Let’s dive straight into the ad.

By default, your ad will be set to “Single image and link in one ad.” Go ahead and toggle to “Multiple images and links in one ad.”

Before you fill it out, it will look something like this…

Let’s start from the top and work our way down…

The “text” that you enter is for all links and products. It will appear above them and isn’t specific to a single link.

Here’s how it looks. As you can see, it’s above all of your links…

The next section is where you’ll enter your images and links…

At the top, you’ll see that you can select either image/link number 1, 2 or 3. There’s also a “+” button to add up to two more.

You will provide the following information for each…

Destination URL: This is where people will be redirected upon clicking the image or information associated with that particular link.

Headline: This is the linked text that will appear directly below the image.

Description: This is the grey text that will appear directly below the headline.

Note that if you don’t enter a headline or description, Facebook will pull that information from that page’s metadata. You may want to override this, however — particularly due to character limitations.

Image: Note that Facebook recommends a square 600×600 pixel image here. This is inconsistent with the typical link thumbnail aspect ratio that Facebook recommends of 1.91:1. In other words, you will likely need to create special images for multi-product ads!

Next up is Creative Optimization. We’ll get to that in a minute.

Next are the “See More” URL and Display URL.

After a user flips through your links, there is a final link to “See More.” Here is what it looks like for my multi-product ad…

You only update this once, just like the text at the top. Facebook doesn’t currently allow you to upload an image for this and it appears they automatically pull your profile photo (which is unfortunate).

At the very bottom, you can provide URL tags and tracking pixels. If your objective is Website Conversions, you’ll also need to select a Conversion Pixel.

Once again, this applies to all images and links you provide here, not just one.

Creative Optimization for Multi-Product Ads

One of the options I skipped over above was for Creative Optimization…

This is an interesting little feature. If left unchecked, Facebook will continue to show your links in the order that you enter them. If checked, Facebook will order them based on the level of engagement they receive.

This way, Facebook will dynamically optimize to always first show those links that are getting the most engagement — making the ad as productive as possible.

Learn More About Multi-Product Ads

I have also written a blog post exclusively for my Power Hitters Club members about how to view important click and conversion data for each link within a multi-product ad — including a helpful video!

Not a member of the Power Hitters Club? I’m making it a primary focus this year. Learn more about this private community here [use the promo code phc10 to get a discount!].

Your Turn

Have you started experimenting with multi-product Facebook ads yet? What results are you seeing?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post How to Create Multi-Product Facebook Ads in Power Editor appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

[AUDIO VERSION: I also recorded an audio version of this blog post. Click below to listen. Let me know if this is something you find helpful!]

I’ve run a podcast for more than two years now, but one longtime struggle has been the promotion of it. I now have a system for this that I want to share with you.

Note that my podcast is hosted on Libsyn and it is then published to iTunes and Stitcher. In the beginning, I’d write a blog post that recapped each episode, and that blog post would include an audio player within it as well as links to listen via iTunes and Stitcher. I would then send people to that blog post via email and Facebook ads.

However, I don’t do that anymore. The main reason is prioritization of time. I’ve found that my typical blog reader is far different than my typical podcast listener. As a result, these blog posts got very little attention, and it felt like a waste of my time.

I’m making the Social Media Pubcast a priority in 2015, but I’m still not writing a blog post for each episode. So how am I promoting it?

Every time I publish a new podcast episode, I promote it via Facebook ads to increase downloads on iTunes and Stitcher. Here’s how…

[Tweet “Here is a simple process for promoting your podcast on iTunes and Stitcher via Facebook ads…”]

Promote an Episode’s iTunes Link

First of all, a big hat tip to my friend Jay Baer. He solved the riddle for me on this one a while back, and I owe him the credit for pointing this out to me.

You need to find the direct link to your episode in iTunes. If you don’t know how to get there, here’s a roundabout way…

1) Google search your podcast. I’d Google “Social Media Pubcast with Jon Loomer on iTunes.” That takes me to my podcast within the web version of iTunes.

2) Find the episode you want to promote and click “View in iTunes.”

3) Copy the link. The iTunes application will now open…

Find the episode you want to promote, and click the “Get” button at the far right. Then select “Copy Link.”

Promote an Episode’s Stitcher Link

Of course, not everyone will have an iOS device, so you should also promote the episode link from within Stitcher. It’s a similar process for finding the link to promote within iTunes.

1) Google search your podcast. I’d Google “Social Media Pubcast with Jon Loomer on Stitcher.” That takes me here.

2) Click the link to the episode you want to promote. By default the most recent episode will be featured at the top. If you click the link or play button for that episode or any of the other episodes, you’ll be taken to a stand-alone page for that episode.

3) Copy the link. You’re on the page for the episode you want to promote, so simply copy the URL from the address bar.

Creating Your Campaign

I’m going to assume you know how to create a campaign within Power Editor, so we won’t go through all of the details there. But here are a few things we’ll need to do…

1) Create your campaign. It should utilize the “Clicks to Website” objective.

2) Create at least one ad set for each platform (iTunes and Stitcher). Personally, I create four total ad sets, two for each (one for fans and one for website visitors).

3) Target iOS device users for the iTunes ad sets. Under Placement, you should only choose mobile (you can include “Partner Mobile Apps”) and select “iOS Devices Only.”

4) Target Android device users for the Stitcher ad sets. Under Placement, you should only choose mobile and select “Android Devices Only.”

5) Create Your Ads. Paste in the iTunes or Stitcher link that you copied earlier (make sure it’s for the right ad set!).

The metadata Facebook pulls in on these pages usually isn’t very good. You should strongly consider overriding the Display URL, Headline and Image. As always, use an image that has a 1.91:1 aspect ratio (see this for reference).

That’s it! Upload that campaign and enjoy the improved downloads on your podcast!

More to Come

I actually have a second strategy that I’m using for targeting of these ads. I’ll get to that later!

What strategies are you using to promote your podcast? Let me know in the comments below!

The post How to Promote a Podcast with Facebook Ads appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

[AUDIO VERSION: I also recorded an audio version of this blog post. Click below to listen. Let me know if this is something you find helpful!]

If you are running Facebook ads that lead to any sort of conversion, directly or indirectly (sales, lead or opt-in), it’s a must that you use conversion tracking. Google tracking isn’t enough.

But even if you use Facebook conversion tracking, do you know when to use it? Do you know the difference between optimizing for and tracking pixels? Do you know how to set the conversion value? And do you know how to track for multiple conversions?

Answering these questions is precisely the purpose of this blog post.

[Tweet “You’re doing it wrong. Here’s how to track and optimize for multiple Facebook conversion pixels…”]

Why Google Tracking Isn’t Enough

Far too many advertisers think that it’s enough to use Google URL parameters, goals and analytics. It’s not.

When you don’t use Facebook’s conversion tracking, you aren’t optimizing for a conversion. We’ll get to why that matters in a minute.

When you don’t use Facebook’s conversion tracking, you aren’t able to break down Cost Per Conversion based on the following:

• Age
• Gender
• Age & Gender
• Country
• Ad Placement

When you don’t use Facebook’s conversion tracking, you aren’t able to break down cross-device performance. Within the custom Facebook ad reports, you can analyze on which devices users saw your ad and on which devices they converted.

How to Create a Conversion Pixel

Within Ads Manager, click the “Conversion Tracking” link on the left…

Then click the green “Create Pixel” button at the far right…

Next you’ll need to choose a category for the conversion you are looking to get. The options are:

• Checkouts
• Registrations
• Leads
• Key Page Views
• Adds to Cart
• Other Website Conversions

Finally, name your pixel and click the blue “Create Pixel” button…

You will then be given your pixel code…

Copy and place that code between the HEAD tags of the “success” page following a conversion (the “Thank you for your purchase!” page). It’s important this goes on the success page — and the page that only someone who just converted will see. That notifies Facebook that a conversion is complete.

Make sure to refresh the page that has the pixel on it. You should then see that the pixel is active…

Facebook will also begin tracking all times that pixel is fired (typically meaning a conversion, but someone — including you — may refresh it), regardless of whether someone reached that page from an ad.

In the example above, that pixel fired 506 times on September 26. That does not mean, however, that my ads led to 506 conversions on that day. I don’t need to run any ads at all for this to track.

When you run ads and connect a conversion pixel to those ads, Facebook will separate the conversions that happened as a result of someone viewing or clicking your ads.

Setting the Conversion Value

When you create your pixel, you’ll have the option of entering a conversion value. This isn’t required, and that value otherwise defaults to $0.00. But it can be very useful for your reporting!

There are two places where you can enter the value and currency for your conversion…

The value should be the cost of your product. This way, you can easily compare the cost of your advertising to the total value of conversions that resulted from those ads.

Tracking for a Conversion Pixel

You’ve created the pixel, but now it’s time to create a Facebook ad that tracks conversions. How else are you going to measure success?

I strongly encourage you to use Power Editor. The reason for this is going to become clearer in a moment. But trust me on this.

You can track for conversions regardless of your objective. Simply click the “Use Existing Pixels” button when creating your ad…

Note that you could have created a pixel at this step as well, but we already created ours!

Now check the conversion pixel you want to track and click the “Select” button…

Optimizing for a Conversion Pixel

Note that in the example above, you can track conversions no matter your objective. However, keep in mind that if your objective isn’t a Website Conversion, Facebook won’t optimize for that action.

Remember that earlier when you created your pixel, you selected the conversion type. Facebook is then able to see which users convert for which conversion type to help optimize accordingly.

When you choose the Website Conversion objective, you’ll be required to select a conversion pixel twice…

The first button is for choosing the conversion(s) you want to track. The second is for choosing the single conversion you want to optimize for.

Note that the same pixel should be selected for both tracking and optimizing. However, while you can select multiple pixels to track (we’ll get to that in a minute!), you can only optimize for one.

Why You Should Track for Multiple Pixels

If you’re driving website traffic, you should seriously consider tracking for conversions. Even if you aren’t leading to a landing page, you should track for any conversion that leads to that content.

For example, I am writing this post about Power Editor. I also link to my Power Editor ebook (there’s that link!). While getting conversions isn’t my main objective, I should still track for it.

In fact, I should consider tracking Power Editor course sales as well. Not that it’s the focus of this blog post, but because a sales funnel is created for it when someone gets the ebook.

So when you click the button to track conversions, you can actually select multiple pixels…

Note that this is only available within Power Editor. The main ads interface only allows you to track a single pixel per ad.

Using the Facebook Ad Reports

Now you need to analyze the success rate of your advertising. Most people use the main campaign dashboard within Ads Manager. That’s fine, but it’s only scratching the surface!

You need to use the custom Ad Reports. Click on “Reports” on the left within Ads Manager…

The ad reports are EXTREMELY valuable. You need to use them! But the default view is pretty worthless. Click the “Edit Columns” button to get access to your gold.

Select whatever columns are important to your report. Make sure you read this post for more info on that.

Since this is a conversion report, you’ll want to select the appropriate conversions within “Actions”…

To add columns for value of your conversions, select the appropriate conversions within “Value”…

And finally, select the appropriate conversion types under “Cost Per Action”…

This will give you a great base report that will show you the number of conversions, total conversion value and cost per conversion for your advertising. But recall that you can also break down performance by things like age, gender, country and placement.

You do that within “Data Breakdowns”…

Some Tips on Tracking for Multiple Pixels

These new reports will be great for breaking down the number of conversions, value of your conversions and the cost per conversion that resulted from your advertising. But you lose some granularity if you track for multiple conversions.

In the earlier example, I tracked opt-ins for my ebook as well as purchases of my Power Editor course. I tracked multiple pixels for conversion since I have different packages that can be purchased.

While I can view total number of conversions, total conversion value and total cost per conversion, it’s not as easy to break this down by product. Instead, Facebook lumps it together.

One way around this is through conversion types. Since I was tracking my ebook opt-ins (Leads) and sales (Checkouts), I can create columns for each of those conversion types (number, value and cost per conversion for each). However, Facebook lumps together all conversions that are of the same type.

Personally, I’m okay with this. But if you really want to isolate what product someone bought and you’re tracking for multiple conversions, consider using different tracking pixel types.

For example, if you’re tracking sales of three different products, consider using the following conversion types:

• Adds to Cart
• Checkouts
• Other Website Conversions

Of course, you should still optimize for the checkout.

Learn More Benefits of Power Editor

Tracking for multiple conversions is just one of the reasons you should be using Power Editor. The rest can be found in my ebook, “The 9 Ways the Pros Are Benefitting from Power Editor — AND YOU AREN’T!”

The post Facebook Power Editor: Track and Optimize for Multiple Conversions appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

One of the main struggles that my readers face as consultants is crafting effective Facebook advertising reports that they can send to their clients.

Luckily, Facebook has a powerful, customizable reporting system available. Unfortunately, the vast majority of advertisers don’t use it.

In this post, we’re going to focus on the following:

• What Custom Ad Reports Are
• What Clients Want vs. What They Need
• The Importance of a Campaign Naming Convention
• Page Likes Report for Clients
• Post Engagement Report for Clients
• Website Clicks Report for Clients
• Conversions Report for Clients
• Schedule Reports

[Tweet “If you manage Facebook ads for clients, you need a system for sending monthly reports. Do this…”]

What Custom Ad Reports Are

If you aren’t using Facebook’s custom ad reports, you aren’t the only one. But it’s now been available for well over a year, and you’re running out of excuses!

If you manage your campaigns from the Ads Manager, you very likely use the standard reporting interface to view how you are doing on a campaign, ad set or ad basis. But you only get the stats that Facebook gives you.

What you want is something more customized!

On the left hand side of Ads Manager, there’s a link for “Reports” and you’ll get a very generic report to start…

This report has 17 columns and isn’t particularly useful. But you can customize it by clicking the “Edit Columns” button.

Once you select the stats you want, click “Save Columns.”

What Clients Want vs. What They Need

Most clients don’t know what they want in a report. Or they act like they do and ask for everything. You need to set expectations and provide structure.

Don’t allow them to be distracted by metrics that don’t matter. Create concise reports that are focused on a clear objective.

I recommend only sending reports at the end of each month. Things change quickly. Don’t allow the client to overreact while you are testing early in the process.

Assuming you run multiple campaigns for different objectives, you should also be generating multiple reports. Following is an example of the reports you may provide:

• Page Likes Report
• Post Engagement Report
• Conversions Report
• Overview Report

Of course, if you’re running campaigns for mobile app installs, for example, you’ll want to run that report as well. It all depends on the work you are providing.

The Importance of a Campaign Naming Convention

Before we get started with creating these reports, it’s important that you follow a very important step. It’s critical that you have an effective naming convention for your campaigns.

You’ll soon see why this is so important. But get into the habit of including the following in the name of your campaigns:

• Name of Page
• Objective (Page Likes, Conversions, Post Engagement)
• Any Other Important Info (Product Promoted, Event)

Here’s an example of a campaign name:

Page Likes Campaign – Jon Loomer Digital – September 2014

The page name and objective will be important for filtering. I include the month for recurring campaigns (I always keep a Page Likes campaign running).

Page Likes Report for Clients

This is a basic report that should be run for most clients. It should capture the performance of all ads run for the sole purpose of increasing Page Likes.

After clicking the Edit Columns button, you’ll find that 14 metrics are selected by default:

• Delivery & Spend: Reach
• Delivery & Spend: Frequency
• Delivery & Spend: Impressions
• Delivery & Spend: Cost Per 1,000 Impressions (CPM)
• Delivery & Spend: Cost Per 1,000 People Reached
• Delivery & Spend: Amount Spent
• Clicks: Clicks
• Clicks: Unique Clicks
• Clicks: Click-Through Rate (CTR)
• Clicks: Unique Click-Through Rate (uCTR)
• Clicks: Cost Per Click (CPC)
• Actions: Actions
• Actions: People Taking Action
• Actions: Page Likes

This report includes several metrics that marketers are in love with. Some are much less important than their reputation. And they simply aren’t necessary here.

We need to give your client the bare minimum. Avoid distractions. Check only the following:

• Delivery & Spend: Frequency
• Delivery & Spend: Amount Spent
• Actions: Page Likes
• Cost Per Action: Cost Per Page Like

While you can break it down by ad set or ad within “Data Aggregation,” I recommend you don’t. All the client needs to know is how efficiently your Page Likes campaign is building Page Likes.

By default, your report displays data from the past seven days. I want you to change this to “last month.” There’s a filter at the far right to make this change:

Your current report will now include all of the campaigns you ran last month. Now you’ll need to add a filter or several filters to only pull in the Page Likes campaigns for a specific client.

Click the “Add Filters” button and enter the following two filters:

• Campaign Name > Contains > [Name of Page]
• Campaign Name > Contains > Page Like

You can move the columns so that stats are in the order you prefer by grabbing the top row of a column and dragging it over.

Next, save this report for access later by clicking the “Save” button. Make sure the name of that report is descriptive.

Note that this saved report is now available within the top left drop-down.

Post Engagement Report for Clients

Whether you boost a post through your page or promote it within the main ads interface or Power Editor (PREFERRED!), you should run a report that highlights these efforts.

Your goal here is typically to get some sort of post engagement (comment, post like, share).

• Delivery & Spend: Frequency
• Delivery & Spend: Amount Spent
• Actions: Post Engagement
• Actions: Post Likes
• Actions: Post Comments
• Actions: Post Shares
• Cost Per Action: Cost Per Post Engagement

Make sure to filter by the following:

• Page Name
• Post Engagement

Don’t forget to change the dates to “Last Month” and save your report.

Website Clicks Report for Clients

This is separate from the Post Engagement Reports for a reason. When you share a link, general post engagement is nice, but it’s not the objective. Your focus is on driving website traffic.

So for this report, let’s edit columns as follows:

• Delivery & Spend: Frequency
• Delivery & Spend: Amount Spent
• Actions: Website Clicks
• Cost Per Action: Cost Per Website Click

Make sure to filter by the following:

• Page Name
• Website Click

Don’t forget to change the dates to “Last Month” and save your report.

Conversions Report for Clients

This report will only work if you use conversion tracking so that Facebook can report on the number of conversions your campaigns are generating (one of the many reasons to use Conversion tracking!).

So for this report, let’s edit columns as follows:

• Delivery & Spend: Frequency
• Delivery & Spend: Amount Spent
• Actions: Website Clicks
• Actions: Website Conversions
• Cost Per Action: Cost Per Website Conversion

If you used multiple conversion types, you can choose those as well. Just be careful not to make this more complicated than is necessary.

Make sure to filter by the following:

• Page Name
• Website Conversion

Don’t forget to change the dates to “Last Month” and save your report.

Overview Report

Finally, you can create a master report that captures more data, just in case. This would be in the event that a client wants to know how many total page likes your campaigns generated, for example (including those that had objectives that weren’t for page likes).

• Delivery & Spend: Frequency
• Delivery & Spend: Amount Spent
• Actions: Page Likes
• Actions: Post Engagement
• Actions: Post Likes
• Actions: Post Comments
• Actions: Post Shares
• Actions: Website Clicks
• Actions: Website Conversions

Note that we don’t use Cost Per Action here since the results will be watered down and will appear worse than they are.

Make sure to filter by Page Name only.

Don’t forget to change the dates to “Last Month” and save your report.

Schedule Reports

Finally, let’s schedule these reports to be sent to both you and your client!

While viewing one of your saved reports, click on the “Schedule” button…

Next you’ll want to select “Monthly” for the frequency and pick a start date that is the first of the next month.

Finally, enter all email address of the people who need to receive that report. They’ll be emailed links to the export as well as the page for the report (they will need to have access to that page).

Your Turn

I didn’t cover every objective above (Photo Views, Video Views, Mobile App Installs, Event RSVP, Offer Claims, etc.), but you get the picture.

How do you handle reports for your clients?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post How to Create Effective Facebook Ad Reports for Clients appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

[AUDIO VERSION: I also recorded an audio version of this blog post. Click below to listen. Let me know if this is something you find helpful!]

Facebook’s Website Custom Audience is my favorite marketing tool. It allows advertisers to target a very valuable group of users: Those who have visited their website.

But it’s so much more than that. Website Custom Audiences can be great for…

• Driving website traffic by reaching those who have visited before
• Building relevant Page Likes by targeting those who know you
• Selling to those who abandoned their shopping cart
• Promoting a category of content to those who have shown interest in it
• A whole lot more…

But a problem has arisen for advertisers who run ads for multiple sites. There is a solution…

[Tweet “Facebook only gives you one Website Custom Audience pixel per account. Here’s the solution…”]

How Website Custom Audiences Work

Advertisers are able to tell Facebook to create lists of users who have visited a website generally or specific pages of that website. That is done by placing a unique pixel on the tracked website.

When you create that first Website Custom Audience, Facebook will give you a unique “pixel,” or snippet of code…

That pixel needs to be copied and pasted between the HEAD tags of every page of the tracked website.

This only needs to happen once. Each ad account is given only one pixel. So that code should be placed on the website template so that it appears on all pages.

This way, Facebook tracks every website visitor. Separate lists can then be created based on rules that the advertiser creates.

For example, here’s a rule for Facebook to generate a list of all of my website visitors during the past 30 days…

And this one will create a list of all visitors to a particular blog post during the past 180 days…

And this one will create a list of all visitors to my Power Hitters Club landing page during the past 1 day…

I do not need to add a pixel for each rule since they all use the same pixel. Facebook simply orders users into lists based on the rule that was created — and the pages that were then visited.

The Problem

So now you understand how Website Custom Audiences work. You know that you only have one pixel per ad account, and that it only needs to be added once to the template of your website.

But what if you are managing multiple websites?

This comes into play most often for consultants or agencies that manage the Facebook ads for multiple clients. Would you really want to apply the same pixel to all websites?

Solution #1: Multiple Ad Accounts

If you manage multiple clients, you absolutely should not add your pixel to those websites. You would need to be sure that your clients remove that pixel when you are done working with them, and this simply creates too much possibility for confusion later.

The best solution in this case is to be added to the client’s ad account. Since each ad account has its own Website Custom Audience pixel, this would solve your problem.

You would then create Website Custom Audiences and run ads while managing the client ad account. You would do that by selecting their account in the top left drop-down of Power Editor.

You will then only have control over those Custom Audiences and ads for that particular ad account.

How to Get Added to Other Ad Accounts

If you manage advertising for multiple clients, I will always recommend that you be added to their ad accounts. Not only does this help with Website Custom Audience pixels, but the client will then be billed directly for ads run instead of applying to your own account.

Tell your client to go to their Ads Manager and click on “Settings” on the left…

Then scroll down to “Ad Account Roles” and click the “Add a User” button on the right…

Have them add you as an “Ad Account Advertiser.”

Once added, you’ll be able to download all advertising from this new account to Power Editor and create Website Custom Audiences with a pixel unique to that ad account.

Solution #2: URL Rules

The method above is the cleanest way to create Website Custom Audiences for multiple websites, particularly if you don’t own some of those sites.

But what if you own multiple sites? In this case, you’ll be creating Website Custom Audiences under the same ad account, and those WCAs will be separated using rules.

If I had my pixel on multiple sites, I wouldn’t want to use the “All Website Visitors” method described earlier. Particularly if the sites are unrelated, that would result in Facebook building a list of visitors to all of my websites.

Instead, I’d have my pixel on multiple sites and then create separate “All Website Visitors” audiences like this…

In the example above, Facebook is building a list of all visitors to websites with my pixel on it that had “jonloomer.com” in the URL. I’d do the same thing for the other websites within my control.

I’d also create Website Custom Audiences for specific pages. This process wouldn’t change much, but I’d be sure to include the full URL just in case multiple sites have the same path.

Your Turn

Have you been creating Website Custom Audiences for multiple sites? How have you been doing it?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post How to Create Facebook Website Custom Audiences for Multiple Websites appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

One question I’ve repeatedly received from advanced Facebook advertisers involves dayparting: They want the ability to choose which times of the day to advertise and eliminate undesirable times.

Such a request comes mainly from those familiar with Google AdWords, where the feature is available. The thought is that certain times of the day are more effective than others, and dayparting limits waste.

Such a feature was not available for Facebook advertisers. Until now!

[Tweet “Dayparting is now available to Facebook advertisers: Choose specific times of day…”]

Use Power Editor

First, know that this functionality is currently only available in Power Editor.

While the main ad create tool has closed the gap lately in terms of functionality and is more useful than it’s been before, this is yet another reminder of why you need to be using Power Editor.

This feature will undoubtedly be rolled out to the ad create tool eventually, but it’s not there now. And if you want to advertise like the cool kids, you need to use Power Editor.

Schedule on Ad Set Level

You’ll be able to select specific times of the day to run your ad from the ad set level. Remember that ad sets allow you to set budget and start/end dates for a group of ads.

When you are in an ad set an “Ad Scheduling” notification will appear to you…

Ad Scheduling Tour

Facebook will take you on an initial tour…

What is Ad Scheduling?

Show your ads to the right people at the right time. You can schedule your ads for specific hours and days of the week.

How Ad Scheduling Works

All your important insights, reports and billing will show in your ad account’s time zone. This keeps information consistent across your account.

Setting Up Your Ad Set

Clicking Every Day lets you schedule the same time for each day of the week. You can also select entire days by clicking All Day.

Hands On

Note that you can only run this type of scheduling when you select “Lifetime” as your budgeting option. I don’t personally use lifetime, so this will be an adjustment.

You’ll want to select the radio button for “Run ads on a schedule.” Then manually choose the specific times and days you want your ad(s) to run.

Dayparting on Facebook: What You Should Know

I’ve always been skeptical of the feature. The reason is that I’ve felt that some advertisers have had the wrong motivation for using it.

For example, they’ll assume their audience is online between 10am and 6pm, so they’ll want to focus their ads during those times. But does it really matter when your audience is reached?

Well, that’s the question this will answer. It’s possible, for example, that certain audiences are more likely to read than interact at certain times. Or they may be more likely to buy during non-work hours.

But keep in mind that this will limit your audience. For example, let’s assume your ad was originally going to be shown to four groups of people during the course of a day, based on when they are online:

1. Group 1: Midnight – 6am (25 people)
2. Group 2: 6am – 12 Noon (25 people)
3. Group 3: 12 Noon – 6pm (25 people)
4. Group 4: 6pm – Midnight (25 people)

All four groups can be reached in this original way of scheduling on Facebook.

But now you decide that you only want to reach people between noon and 6pm because you’ve determined that this time is most effective.

The result? Instead of potentially reaching 100 people (25 in each group), you can now reach a max of 25. This will certainly impact distribution.

As it is, many advertisers are complaining about a decrease in impressions lately. This can partly be blamed on the larger (and fewer) sidebar units. It can also be blamed on increased competition.

Just be aware that scheduling in this manner may cut the distribution (or at least potential distribution) of your ads even more.

Your Turn

Is this a feature you’ve been looking forward to using? Have you started testing it yet?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Facebook Ad Dayparting: Schedule Specific Times and Days to Run appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Back in June, Facebook announced that they would soon launch new video advertising capabilities consisting of post-view CTA buttons, building an audience of people who viewed your video for later targeting and expanded video metrics.

These things are now here!

I’ve been testing and am excited about the possibilities. In this post, I’ll take you on a tour of what’s changed and how you can benefit.

[Tweet “Check out these amazing new Facebook video features that are now available to brands…”]

Video Views Objective

When you create a new campaign, you now have the option of selecting the “Video Views” objective. This is available within both Power Editor…

…and the ad create tool…

By making this selection, Facebook will optimize for video views — meaning that they will show your ad to people most likely to view your video.

Note that a “video view” is defined as viewing your video for a minimum of three seconds. This could be with or without sound (auto-play). It does not require the user to click the video to view.

Create a Video Ad

Within the “Creative” step of ad creation in Power Editor, you will be given a selection of posts that you can promote as video ads.

You’ll notice that Facebook will only list eligible posts that utilized Facebook video.

You may want to create an unpublished video post that doesn’t enter News Feeds organically. To do that, click the “+” button.

Click the “Select Video” button to upload a video file from your hard drive. Then enter the post text you want to appear above your video. Finally, click the “Create Post” button.

Of course, you may want to add a CTA button to the end of the video…

Post-View CTA Button

Prior to clicking the “Create Post” button, click the Call-to-Action dropdown (“No Button” is selected by default).

You’ll recall that marketers can add a call-to-action button to link posts that will drive users away from Facebook. This is different. This button will be embedded at the end of the video.

Once a call-to-action is selected, you will need to enter a destination URL (where the user will be sent upon clicking the button) and a display link (what you want that link to read).

Here is an example of how that button will look at the end of the video (“Learn More” is the CTA):

And here is an example of such a video in action:

Video View Audience Building and Targeting

One of the most amazing things advertisers can now do is build an audience of people who have previously viewed a video so that they can be targeted later. This way, you can focus only on those who are most engaged.

When creating your ad, you will have a checkbox available to “Create audiences from people who view this video.”

If you can’t read the info tool-tip, it reads as follows:

This will create two new audiences: one based on people who view at least 3 seconds of your video and one for people who view your video to 95% of its length. You can use these audiences to target new ads (video or other ad formats).

Your audiences will appear in the Audiences tab 24 hours after your campaign ends. Videos must be viewed at least 1,000 times in a 24-hour period for the audience to be saved or updated.

A quick summary:

• Audience of people who viewed at least 3 seconds of video created
• Audience of people who viewed your video to 95% of its length created
• Target these groups when promoting any type of content (not just video)
• Audiences will appear within 24 hours of the campaign ending
• Videos must be viewed at least 1,000 times during 24-hour period to qualify

New Video Metrics in Insights

When you go into your Page Insights, you’re going to find some new data for your Facebook video posts, whether promoted or not. Click the link to that post within the “Posts” section of Insights and you’ll see a view like this:

You’ll see the following in the primary view that you wouldn’t have seen before:

• Video Views: Views of at least three seconds (with or without sound)
• Clicks to Play: Clicks on the video to view with sound
• Link Clicks: Clicks on website links

Link Clicks may have been there before, but that now includes clicks on your CTA button.

When you click the “Video” menu at the top, you’ll get a view that looks like this:

You’ll see the following in the Video view:

• Audience Retention: Views of your video at each moment, as a percentage of all views
• Average Duration of Video Viewed
• Video Views: Total, Organic and Paid; Total Unique, Organic Unique, Paid Unique
• Video Views to 95%: Total, Organic and Paid; Total Unique, Organic Unique, Paid Unique

These metrics will give you a better understanding of how much of your video is being watched.

New Video Metrics in Ad Reports

Hopefully you are using Facebook’s Ad Reports to create custom reports that will help you analyze results and optimize for success. These reports have been updated to account for some new video metrics.

Click “Edit Columns” and you’ll get new metric options within the Actions section:

The new columns options are as follows:

• Clicks to Play Video
• Video Views
• Avg. Duration of Video Viewed
• Avg. % of Video Viewed
• Video Views to 25%
• Video Views to 50%
• Video Views to 75%
• Video Views to 95%

Within “Cost Per Action” you’ll also get two new metrics:

• Cost Per Clicks to Play Video
• Cost Per Video View

Your Turn

Have you started experimenting with Facebook video ads? What do you think, and what results are you seeing?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Facebook Video Ad Features: Objective, CTA Button, Audience, Metrics appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

One little nuisance that has irritated Facebook advertisers for quite some time is the inability to edit Facebook ads. What many don’t realize is that yes, you can edit ads!

For the past two years now, I’ve strongly suggested you only use Power Editor to create ads. It’s long had the latest features first, and it’s simply better than the ad create tool for creating and editing several ads at once.

However, one area where Power Editor lags is editing ad creative. Once you create an unpublished post, for example, it can’t be edited within Power Editor.

But have no fear: That typo in your ad can be edited!

[Tweet “You aren’t stuck with that Facebook ad. You can edit it! Here’s how…”]

How to Edit Ads in Ads Manager

Within Ads Manager, go to the preview of your ad. Then click the “Edit Creative” link…

Next, you’ll be given a dialog that looks like this…

You will be able to edit the following:

• Thumbnail Image: Upload a new image, browse library or reposition
• Headline: Change the title of your link
• Link Description: Change the copy that goes under the headline
• Text: Change the copy that goes above your link

Other things like targeting, placement and bidding have always been editable. But few advertisers realize that creative can be edited within the Ads Manager.

Once you’re done, click the “Save” button at the bottom right. You’ll then get a prompt that looks like this…

Once you click “Continue” you’ll see the new, edited ad in the preview…

When You Should Edit Ads

You’ve undoubtedly been there. You spent quite a bit of time creating the perfect ad with the perfect targeting, bidding and placement. But you made one small typo in the creative that you thought couldn’t be changed. So you started over.

This is a good example of when you should edit your ads. Another would be because your ad isn’t passing Facebook’s 20% text rule, so you upload a new image.

Regardless, I strongly encourage these changes only be made in the early stages of the ad. Avoid making major changes long after the ad has run.

A Caution on Editing Ads

Some advertisers will use this feature to split test ads. An ad isn’t working, so they change the copy or imagery. I’d consider this a very bad idea.

First, Facebook will distribute your ad partially based on the response it is receiving. If you completely change the copy and imagery, people are bound to react to it differently.

Second, this messes up Facebook reporting. When was your change made? Was it the reason for the change in performance of the ad?

If you are completely changing your imagery or messaging, I encourage you to create a separate ad. Especially if the ad has already run for a while.

Your Turn

Did you know that you could edit Facebook ads in this way? How do you or will you use it?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Edit Facebook Ads: Link Thumbnail Image, Headline, Text, Description appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

During the past couple of weeks, I’ve helped you understand the power of demographic and behavioral targeting with Facebook ads. Amazingly, advertisers are able to target Facebook users based on their actions away from Facebook.

Make sure you brush up on these blog posts:

• How to Target Facebook Users Based on the Car They Drive
• Core Audiences: How to Target Facebook Ads Using Behaviors
• Core Audiences: How to Target Facebook Ads Using More Demographics

Today, we’re going to talk about possibly the most amazing behavior targeting at all: Reach users with Facebook ads based on the things they buy away from Facebook.

[Tweet “You can target users based on what they buy away from Facebook? Darn right. Here’s how…”]

The Basics

This powerful targeting is found within behavior targeting. Whether you’re creating an ad within Power Editor or the ad create tool, click “Browse” within Behaviors.

That will give you the following categories:

• Automotive (DLX Auto Powered by Polk)
• Charitable Donations
• Digital Activities
• Financial
• Mobile Device User
• Purchase Behavior
• Residential Profiles
• Travel

Click on the Purchase Behavior category.

You will then be given the following sub-categories:

• Business Purchases
• Buyer Profiles
• Clothing
• Food and Drink
• Health and Beauty
• Home and Garden
• Household Products
• Kids Products
• Pet Products
• Purchase Habits
• Purchase Types
• Sports and Outdoors
• Store Types
• Subscription Services

Looks pretty crazy, right? Let’s dig in!

Business Purchases

If you’re a B2B company, you need to check this out. Click on Business Purchases for the following options:

• Business Marketing
• Maintenance, Repair and Operations
• Office and Corporate Gifts
• Training and Publications

If your ideal customer buys any of these products, make sure you test this out! I know that my target audience buys business marketing products, so I should work this into my targeting!

Facebook gets all of this information from data mining partner Epsilon. In each case, it is “aggregated, multi-sourced offline transaction-based data.”

Buyer Profiles

A person’s buying history can help Facebook and data mining partners generate buyer profiles to help categorize the types of buyer a person is. Click on Buyer Profiles for the following options:

• DIYers
• Fashionistas
• Foodies
• Gadget Enthusiast
• Gamers
• Green Living
• Healthy and Fit
• Luxury Brands and Services
• Outdoor Enthusiasts
• Shoppers
• Skiing, Golfing and Boating
• Spa Enthusiasts
• Sportsmen
• Trendy Homemakers

This information comes from data partners Epsilon and Datalogix. Facebook explains how these profiles were assembled as follows:

U.S consumer data on where consumers shop, how they shop, what products and brands they purchase, the publications they read, and their demographic and psychographic attributes.

Clothing

If you sell clothing, make sure to target Facebook users based on the types of clothing they have proven to buy!

Click on Clothing for the following options:

• Children’s
• Men’s
• Seasonal
• Women’s

Each of these are broken down further…

Children’s

• Children’s Apparel
• Infant and Toddler Apparel

Men’s

• Accessories
• Big and Tall Apparel
• Business Apparel
• Jeans

Seasonal

• Fall Seasonal Shoppers
• Spring Seasonal Shoppers
• Summer Seasonal Shoppers
• Winter Seasonal Shoppers

Women’s

• Accessories
• Business Apparel
• Fine Jewelry
• High-Ticket Apparel and Accessories
• Jewelry
• Low-Ticket Apparel and Accessories
• Luxury Brand Apparel
• Mid-Ticket Apparel and Accessories
• Plus Sizes
• Women’s Shoes
• Yount Women’s Apparel

Most of this information comes from actual purchase history through Datalogix and Epsilon.

Food and Drink

Click on the Food and Drink category and you can further drill down targeting based on the foods people buy:

• Alcoholic Beverages
• Bakery
• Beverages
• Cereal
• Children’s Food
• Condiments and Dressings
• Cooking Supplies
• Dairy and Eggs
• Frozen Food
• Grocery Shopper Type
• Health Food
• Meat and Seafood
• Soup
• Sweets and Snacks

Not detailed enough? Well, click any of the above to break it down further…

Alcoholic Beverages

• Wine

Bakery

• Bakery Products

Beverages

• Bottled Water
• Carbonated Drinks
• Coffee
• Coffee (K-Cup)
• Diet Drinks
• Energy Drinks
• Hot Tea
• Iced Tea and Lemonade
• Juice
• Non-Dairy Milk
• Sports Drinks

Cereal

• All Cereal
• Children’s Cereals
• Fiber Cereals
• Hot Cereals

Children’s Food

• Baby Food and Products
• Children’s Food
• Children’s Food and Products

Condiments and Dressings

• Condiments
• Salad Dressings

Cooking Supplies

• Baking
• Spices

Dairy and Eggs

• Cheese
• Eggs
• Milk
• Yogurt

Frozen Food

• Frozen Entrees
• Frozen Meats and Seafood
• Frozen Vegetables
• Ice Cream and Novelties

Grocery Shopper Type

• Premium Brand Groceries
• Top Spenders

Health Food

• Diet Foods
• Fresh Produce
• Low-Fat Foods
• Natural and Organics

Meat and Seafood

• Meat
• Seafood

Soup

• Soup

Sweets and Snacks

• Breakfast Bars
• Chocolate Candy
• Cookies
• Crackers
• Granola Bars
• Non-Chocolate Candy
• Peanut Butter and Jelly
• Salty Snacks

Facebook gets all of this information from Datalogix via “loyalty card and transaction-level household purchase data with multi-channel coverage across all product categories.”

Health and Beauty

You can target Facebook users who purchase specific types of health and beauty products by clicking the “Health and Beauty” sub-category. That opens up the following:

• Allergy Relief
• Beauty Products and Accessories
• Cosmetics
• Cough and Cold Relief
• Fragrance
• Hair Care
• Over-the-Counter Medication
• Pain Relief
• Sun Care
• Vitamins
• Vitamins and Supplements

Datalogix and Epsilon provide this information, much of it via loyalty card transactions.

Home and Garden

Target Facebook users who invest in the area outside of their homes by clicking the Home and Garden sub-category. That brings up the following:

• Entertaining
• Home Renovation
• Organization
• Tools

This information is provided by Datalogix via “transaction level date (sic) across 1,200 U.S. retailers across catalog, physical store, and online purchases.”

Household Products

Target Facebook users who spend money on products for cleaning and organizing the home by clicking the Household Products sub-category. Click it for these options:

• Cleaning Supplies
• Food Storage
• Green Cleaners and Suppliers
• Laundry Supplies

This information is provided by Datalogix via loyalty card transactions.

Kids Products

You can target Facebook users with young kids by targeting those who spend money on products for them. Click the Kids Products sub-category for these options:

• Baby Care
• Baby Toys
• Children’s Products

This is provided by Acxiom and Epsilon via actual purchase history.

Pet Products

Reach people with pets by targeting those who buy things for them! Click on the Pet Products sub-category for these options:

• Cat Food and Products
• Cat Owners
• Cat Products
• Dog Food and Products
• Dog Owners
• Dog Products
• Pet Care Products
• Pet Products

This information is provided by Datalogix via purchase history and many of the methods discussed earlier.

Purchase Habits

Is your product only available offline? Or online? It’s important to target those who typically buy that way.

Click the Purchase Habits sub-category for these options:

• Above Average Spending
• Offline Buyers
• Online Buyers

This information is provided by Epsilon.

Purchase Types

What other specific things is your ideal audience buying? Click on Purchase Types to target users who make the following purchases:

• Appliances
• Arts and Crafts
• Beauty Accessories
• Books
• Collectibles
• Cosmetics
• Electronics
• Gender Neutral Apparel
• Gift Products
• Gifts and Flowers
• Gifts and Party Supplies
• High-End Home Decor
• Home Office
• Low-End Home Decor
• Men’s Apparel
• Music and Videos
• Senior Products
• Shoes
• Small and Home Office Products
• Software
• Specialty Foods and Gifts
• Sports and Outdoors
• Tools and Electronics
• Travel Supplies
• Upscale Travel and Services
• Women’s Apparel

This information comes from Datalogix, Epsilon and Acxiom via purchase histories.

Sports and Outdoors

Target Facebook users you know spend a lot of time outdoors based on the things they buy! Click the Sports and Outdoors sub-category for these options:

• Cycling
• Fishing
• Fitness
• Golf and Tennis
• Hiking and Camping
• Hunting
• Running
• Winter Sports

This information comes from Datalogix purchase histories.

Store Types

Do your customers shop at specific types of stores? Target them by clicking on Store Types!

• Furniture Stores
• High-End Retail
• Home Improvement Stores
• Low-End Department Stores
• Membership Warehouse

Acxiom provides this information via purchase histories.

Subscription Services

And finally, you can reach Facebook users who are known to sign up for specific types of subscription services by clicking the Subscription Services sub-category:

• Auto Insurance Online
• Higher Education
• Mortgage Online
• Prepaid Debit Cards
• Satellite TV

Datalogix provides this information “based on recent consumer purchases and created to identify consumers likely to respond to offers in this category.”

Where Does Facebook Get This Data?

As discussed in prior posts and above, all of this information comes from Partner Categories. Facebook partners with data mining companies that collect data based on purchases, applications and surveys completed and send it to Facebook for ad targeting purposes.

It will undoubtedly sound creepy to some that you can target based on some of this information. But if you get past the creepiness, this data can be used to generate incredibly relevant — and useful — advertising.

As always, advertisers have no access to the names associated with this data. For more on how this data is used, make sure you read this message from Facebook.

How Can Advertisers Use This Data?

The possibilities are endless, but here are a few examples of how advertisers can use this information…

Fitness Gym: Target Healthy and Fit, Vitamins, Vitamins and Supplements, Fitness, Running

Online Upscale Women’s Clothing Retail: Target Fashionistas, High-Ticket Apparel and Accessories, High-End Retail, Above Average Spending, Online Buyers

Offline Dog Toy Product: Target Offline Buyers, Dog Products, Dog Owners, Dog Food and Products

Online Marketing Product: Target Business Marketing, Training and Publications, Online Buyers, Small and Home Office Products

Your Turn

Have you started using this information in your targeting? What have you done, or what ideas do you have?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post How to Target Facebook Users Based on Purchase Behavior appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Facebook has quietly rolled out a very small — but important — feature that could make a very big difference for brands: The ability to add a call-to-action button to ads and posts.

In this post, we’ll explore the following:

• What Call-to-Action Buttons Are
• Why This is a Big Deal
• How to Create Call-to-Action Buttons for Ads
• How to Create Call-to-Action Buttons for Organic Posts
• Ways to Use Call-to-Action Buttons

What Call-to-Action Buttons Are

You’ve likely started to notice posts from brands in your News Feed that have a button placed under the link title and within the description.

Here’s an example:

Types of call-to-action buttons include:

• Shop Now
• Learn More
• Sign Up
• Book Now
• Download

This isn’t only for ads. It’s for organic posts, too. And it’s not even a test feature that’s only available to the biggest of brands.

You very likely have access to call-to-action buttons and can benefit from them, too!

Why This is a Big Deal

First, the obvious: A native call-to-action button is bound to be good for click-through rates.

We know from testing that users are more likely to act when they are prompted to do so. As a result, marketers make sure that their copy includes a call-to-action. And some will also attempt to include a button within the image thumbnail.

This can only help get more clicks.

Second, this helps marketers since it takes the pressure off of putting these CTAs within the thumbnail images. As we know, Facebook has a very frustrating 20% text rule within images. Every character is important.

Now marketers can focus on a compelling message within the thumbnail image, but save the call-to-action for Facebook’s button.

How to Create Call-to-Action Buttons for Ads

Currently, the only way to create call-to-action buttons is within Power Editor. You can’t do it within your Page, and you can’t do it within the self-serve ad tool.

Note that for now the only content type that can include these buttons is a link share. So it needs to utilize the “Clicks to Website” objective, but only while creating an Unpublished Post (though there is an exception: if you create an organic post as described in the next step!).

While creating an ad, click the “Create New Unpublished Post” link…

Within the default “Link” view, fill out the link you want to share and promote the way you normally would. The only items that are required are the URL and post text (the commentary you add with the link). Facebook will automatically pull the link thumbnail, title and description (though you can override these).

Note the new option for a call-to-action. By default, there is “No Button.” But you can create a button with one of five calls-to-action!

[NOTE: It appears that adding the button lowers the character limit for your link to description to something around 132 from 150. You should consider manually changing your link description as a result.]

Something to keep in mind here is that your call-to-action button will only appear on ads within the News Feed, not the sidebar.

How to Create Call-to-Action Buttons for Organic Posts

Initially when I heard about this, it seemed like an incomplete feature. Sure, it’s great to have it for ads. But if you promote posts, you’ll need to create a completely new, unpublished post to add the button. And it sure would be nice to include a button for organic posts, too!

Well, guess what? You can do it! But once again, you need to use Power Editor.

Most marketers don’t realize that you can actually create posts from Power Editor. Honestly, there was very little reason to do this until now. But this little addition changes everything.

First, you’ll want to select the “Manage Pages” option from the top left drop-down within Power Editor.

Next, make sure that the page you want to create a post from is selected on the left. Then click the “Create Post” button.

That will bring up a dialog that looks identical to what you saw when you were creating an unpublished post. The reality is that you’re doing the exact same thing, but without needing to create an ad.

Click the “Create Post” button when you’re done.

Highlight the row that includes that new unpublished post to preview it.

Then click the “Publish” button to bring up this dialog…

The only step remaining is to click the “Upload Changes” button to push your post live, complete with a call-to-action button!

Ways to Use Call-to-Action Buttons

Personally, I am going to make sure that any time I share a link to my website, I include a call-to-action button going forward. It just makes sense!

This will be great for things like…

• Selling products
• Pushing registration of a newsletter or webinar
• Driving traffic to a blog post
• Pushing downloads of an eBook
• Driving one-on-one bookings

Since there are five different CTA options, I’d also recommend split testing different buttons where it makes sense. For example, if you are driving traffic to a sales page, you may try the “hard sell” buttons (Shop Now, Sign Up, Book Now) or the soft sell (Learn More).

See what works best!

Your Turn

How will you use call-to-action buttons on your Facebook content? Let me know in the comments below!

The post Facebook Call-to-Action Buttons: Create for Ads and Organic Posts appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

ALSO SEE:

• Facebook Website Custom Audiences: What You Need to Know [Video]
• Facebook Website Custom Audiences: Increase Fans, Traffic and Sales
• Website Custom Audiences Workshop: Sign Up!

I don’t recall the last time I was this excited about a new Facebook feature. Facebook has started rolling out Website Custom Audiences to all advertisers across Power Editor, Ads Manager and the ads API.

Here’s what I want you to know:

• What Website Custom Audiences Are
• How to Create a Website Custom Audience in Power Editor
• How to Create a Website Custom Audience in Ads Manager
• How to Create an Ad Using a Website Custom Audience
• My Quick Test
• Some Final Notes

[Tweet “Facebook is rolling out their most compelling ad product in some time: Website Custom Audiences.”]

What Are Website Custom Audiences?

Website Custom Audiences (known by the cool kids as WCA) allow you to create Facebook ads that target users who have previously visited your website.

Why is this awesome?

It’s one more way to reach an incredibly relevant audience. You can target fans organically. You can target your email list or other offline customers through Custom Audiences. And now you can reach people who may not be either an offline customer or a Facebook fan, but who visited your website.

Another very cool benefit is that you can isolate specific visitors within these Website Custom Audiences. So you can focus only on those who visited a specific page or section of your site, or those who visited pages that included a particular keyword in the URL.

The customization potential for such ads is incredible.

How They Are Different From FBX

If you’re an experienced Facebook advertiser, I know what you’re thinking: “But Jon. This sounds awfully familiar. Isn’t this FBX?”

FBX, you’ll recall, is another way to retarget your website visitors with Facebook ads. Yes, they are similar. But they are different. In my opinion, WCA is far better.

With FBX, you have to use an approved third party instead of building the ads through Power Editor or the self-serve ad tool. I’ve been recommending Perfect Audience and AdRoll.

And when you create FBX, it is a specific type of ad. It’s essentially a domain ad that can run either in the News Feed or sidebar. Tight restrictions on what you can do, and advertising isn’t connected to your page.

With Website Custom Audiences, you can create such ads within Power Editor and the self-serve ad tool. So first of all, this is much more convenient as it allows you to keep track of all advertising efforts in one place.

But the biggest advantage for WCA, in my opinion, is that you can create any ad the way you normally would, using the WCA you created as your targeted audience.

In other words, you can reach desktop News Feed, mobile or sidebar. You can promote an organic post or unpublished post. You can promote your page, event or app.

You have no limitations on what you can do. And you can also exclude these Website Custom Audiences for even more powerful targeting.

One final advantage is that we can plausibly assume that WCA will be cheaper than FBX. While FBX is plenty effective and affordable, the third parties need to take their cut. This is no longer necessary.

Facebook says that FBX still has a place, but it would appear to be for the bigger brands that want to set up liquid — or more dynamic — advertising. So this would apply to companies that want to set up dozens or hundreds of ads based on the specific page someone visits.

Still, one has to think that far fewer brands will be using FBX going forward. I know that I have very little use for it now.

How To Create a Website Custom Audience in Power Editor

On the left hand side, click on the “Manage Ads” drop-down and select Audiences.

Then click the “Create Audience” drop-down and select Custom Audience.

Next you’ll be given a dialog that looks like this…

You’ll want to click on “Custom Audience from your Website.”

You’ll then be asked to accept Facebook’s terms for Custom Audiences from your Website. You’ll want to do that.

That will bring up a dialog that looks like this…

A few notes…

Audience Name: Name your WCA something you’ll remember later. Make it descriptive of the audience you are going to target.

Description: Not required, but you can add some more details here if you desire.

Website Traffic: This is where you’ll tell Facebook how to target users based on the specific pages of your site that they visited. By default, Facebook will generate a Website Custom Audience of all website visitors, no matter what page they visited.

But you can also target people who visited specific pages by toggling to “People visiting specific pages.”

You can select URL, Domain or Path…

And then “Contains Any,” “Doesn’t Contain,” “Is Equal To” or “Is Not Equal To…”

You can enter either entire URLs, paths, domains, or keywords found within URLs, paths or domains. The door is clearly wide open for plenty of logic options.

However, the most common type of Website Custom Audience (other than for all visitors) will be for a specific page. For example, if I want to target only people who visited the landing page for my Power Editor training course, I’d use this:

/fb-marketing-advanced-university

If you add more keywords, Facebook will target anyone who visits any page that includes any of the keywords listed.

You can add “AND” logic by clicking the + button…

That way, Facebook will create a Website Custom Audience consisting of anyone who satisfies both rules you create.

If Facebook would target such a person based on the link you provided, you’ll see a green checkmark. Otherwise, it will be a red “X.”

Next, you’ll want to click the “View Remarketing Pixel” if this is the first time you’ve created a Website Custom Audience.

You’ll want to copy this to be used in the next step. Just in case, feel free to paste it to a text document for reference later.

Know that if you can’t access it, you’ll use the same pixel for all future Website Custom Audiences (it only needs to be pasted once). So just create a new WCA to get the pixel.

Duration: By default, Facebook sets this to 30 days. This way, you will be targeting anyone who visited your website within the past 30 days. Obviously, that clock starts ticking the minute your pixel is live.

Facebook allows you to use a duration of up to 180 days. What you use here should be related to the size of your potential audience. If you get really good traffic to the pages you are targeting, consider using shorter time periods to make the targeting more relevant.

Create a Website Custom Audience in Ads Manager

Within Ads Manager, click the “Audiences” link on the left.

Then click the green “Create Audience” button at the top right.

That will bring up this dialog again…

Everything from this point forward will be exactly the same as the steps within Power Editor. Refer to the passage above for details!

Install the Pixel

In the previous step, you copied the remarketing pixel. You’ll need that now!

Go into your website’s CMS. You will want to paste this code before the closing /HEADER tag of your website’s template.

I use WordPress and my site is built on Genesis Framework. As a result, I have a plugin called Genesis Simple Hooks that allows me to easily paste in code to go before that closing tag.

If you aren’t on Genesis, you can surely find another plugin that will do the same thing. OpenHook is one to consider.

Facebook will now start building your audience as visitors to your website are cookied. Facebook will match up those visitors with actual Facebook users.

If you get a lot of traffic, this audience will build quickly. Otherwise, it will take some time. Around four hours after creating my Website Custom Audience, Facebook is showing that I could potentially reach 1,100 people with the WCA that would target all website visitors.

Click the “Check Updates” button within Power Editor (or refresh Ads Manager) periodically if you’re impatient!

How to Create an Ad Using Website Custom Audiences

Using Website Custom Audiences is a snap. If you’ve ever used Custom Audiences before, you know the drill.

From the Advanced link of Audience during the ad creation process in Power Editor, you’ll be able to enter your Custom Audiences.

You can also exclude any Custom Audience as well, whether WCA or otherwise.

My Ad

I wanted to test this out immediately. So I created a really basic ad to get the attention of anyone who saw it.

The ad received very positive response, but that’s because I was up front about my test. It’ll be interesting to see how people receive it going forward.

It’s a very small sample size, but the ad had a Click-Through Rate of 9.091%.

Some Tips

Just a few things you need to know…

You only need to paste the pixel on your website once. This wasn’t clear to me at first. But the pixel is going to be the same every time. Activate the feature with the first pixel. All future audiences will be created to customize your audience.

You can create up to 200 Website Custom Audiences. Oh, the possibilities!

No Lookalike Audiences yet. I want this! Imagine being able to target users similar to your website visitors. This is only available via the ads API for now.

You can edit your audience, but it’s currently a pain. I can’t edit my audience yet within Power Editor. While I don’t currently have access to creating WCAs within the Ads Manager, I can view and edit them there. This will undoubtedly be fixed in Power Editor soon.

Benefits: More to Come

In this post, I wanted to first focus on what Website Custom Audiences are and how you can create them. But stay tuned. A separate post is coming about how you can use them for your business.

This feature is going to be huge!

What do you think? Are you excited? Let me know in the comments below!

The post Website Custom Audiences: Target Visitors with Facebook Ads (Not FBX!) appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Facebook advertising can be a bit complicated. There are endless terms and features that you need to know about, and this makes learning advertising on Facebook a challenge.

That’s why I created this Facebook ads glossary, and now why I’m excited to share my first (professionally done) infographic!

Bookmark this and keep this baby handy for later!

This is just one in a series of infographics that I’ve published lately that will help simplify Facebook marketing for you:

• Ultimate Guide: Facebook Insights Glossary of Terms [Infographic]
• All Facebook Image Dimensions: Timeline, Posts, Ads [Infographic]

Like this infographic? Share it! Hover over the graphic to share to Pinterest. Or you can snag the embed code at the bottom of this page to share it on your website.

Enjoy!

[Tweet “Check out this COMPLETE glossary of every Facebook ads term and feature you’ll ever need…”]

The post Facebook Ads Glossary: Reference of All Important Terms [Infographic] appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Facebook advertisers far and wide have found enormous success creating dark (or unpublished) posts. It’s a terrific way to optimize and create ad variations that reach the News Feeds of your target audience.

But these same advertisers repeatedly ask the same question: How do you check the comments on these posts?

You see, unpublished posts are just that — they aren’t published to your Facebook Page. So monitoring these posts can be a challenge without a bit of creativity.

[Tweet “Unpublished Facebook posts present a challenge for monitoring comments. Here’s the fix…”]

The Solution

Select “Manage Pages” from the top left drop-down within Power Editor.

After selecting your Page on the left, you will then see all of the corresponding recent and unpublished posts within a list. Highlight the post in question.

Then click “View Post.”

This will open the post’s permalink, which will allow you to view all activity on that post.

The Admin Panel

One issue with this method is that Facebook will only display the most recent posts within the Manage Pages area of Facebook. So your post will eventually fall off that list.

However, keep in mind that any time users comment on your unpublished post, you will receive a notification as you would for a published post in your Admin Panel.

You may want to click that alert to access the dedicated page for that post to bookmark it for later.

Ads Manager Preview

Note that there is another way to do this from the Ads Manager, though it only works for photos, videos and text updates (not link shares).

Click the ad while in Ads Manager. That will bring up a dialog that reads: “Linkable Area. Users who click this area will link to the destination specified by this ad. preview.”

Click the “preview” link. That will bring up the dedicated page for that post.

Unfortunately, it only opens the link you’re promoting (not the post permalink) for link shares.

Still having issues? Watch the video at the top of this post!

The post How to View the Comments on a Dark or Unpublished Facebook Post appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Forrester recently published a blog post called An Open Letter to Mark Zuckerberg that carelessly attempted to claim that Facebook advertising and marketing are ineffective, using a survey of 395 marketers and business executives as the proof.

I was initially going to write a post that would pick apart the endless flaws found throughout that study. But after reading the comments attached to the post, I realized I wouldn’t be breaking ground here — most rational people know the report can’t be taken seriously.

But what a post like that does is provide validation for the people who fail at Facebook. They use this as their excuse when things don’t go as planned. This allows them to put the blame on Facebook for their failures rather than accepting responsibility.

Still, that post got me thinking. It raised many questions. I wanted to know whether the 395 marketers and executives had ever used any of the countless tools and strategies common among those who succeed with Facebook.

As a result, I use that awful post as inspiration. I am willing to wager that the vast majority of brands and marketers who don’t find success on Facebook aren’t doing many of the following things…

[Tweet “If you’re failing at Facebook marketing, it’s probably because you aren’t doing these 14 things…”]

1. Provide Value

This should be obvious, but failure on Facebook can often be tracked back to this simple step.

Are you providing value? Are you making the lives of people better when sharing content? Are you educating or entertaining? Would you want to see your content every day in your News Feed?

If all you do is post content that tries to sell your stuff or act as your brand’s PR, you aren’t providing value. You are spamming.

2. Use a Consistent and Frequent Publishing Schedule

Now you need to provide that value on a consistent basis. Once or twice a week isn’t going to cut it. Post multiple times per day, spaced out by at least a few hours.

Implement a content plan and use scheduling software (or Facebook’s built in scheduler) to make sure you have content flowing through on a regular basis.

3. Involve Your Fans

When Fans comment on your post, respond. When they ask you a question, give them a thoughtful reply.

Create posts that involve your audience. Ask them what they think. Ask them to share their story. Ask them to provide their opinion.

Don’t know what types of content your Fans want to see? Ask them!

4. Focus on Relevant Fans, Not Cheapest Price

Far too often, the brands that fail on Facebook slip up here. They care about the “almighty Like” more than the people behind the action.

As a result, they buy Likes. Or they run poorly targeted ads that bring in bots and people who don’t care about their brand. All because they are concerned first with cost and last with relevance.

Craft content that appeals to your target audience. Run ads that are micro-targeted to reach those who matter most.

Forget about ads that generate Likes at 10 cents a piece. You will spend more. But when your focus is on quality, these efforts will pay off.

5. Find Your Target Audience Using Graph Search and Lookalike Audiences

Sure, you have committed to finding your ideal audience and attracting them. But how do you go about it?

You could guess by running ads that target precise interests that you think are associated with your target audience. Or you could be more scientific about it.

Whenever I run ads that target non-Fans, I create separate ads that reach each of the following groups:

• People who like similar Pages and interests
• Lookalike Audience (Reach)
• Lookalike Audience (Similarity)
• People who like similar Pages and interests + Lookalike Audience (Reach)
• People who like similar Pages and interests + Lookalike Audience (Similarity)

First, let me explain how I generate my list of similar Pages and interests.

Come up with two brands that you consider your competitors or would have a very similar audience to your own. Then run a series of Graph Searches.

When I search for Pages liked by people who like Social Media Examiner and Mari Smith, I get the following first page results:

• Mari Smith
• Mashable
• Social Media Today
• Seth Godin
• Guy Kawasaki
• Social Fresh
• Gary Vaynerchuk
• Tech Crunch
• Social Media Club
• New Media Expo
• Amy Porterfield
• The Next Web

This is a great start for a Precise Interests list when targeting ads (I’d turn that list into a Saved Target Group).

Next, you’ll want to take your email list and generate a Custom Audience. You could use your full email list or a list only of those who have bought from you.

From that Custom Audience, have Facebook generate Lookalike Audiences optimized for both Reach and Similarity.

When you’re done, you’ll have the building blocks for targeting relevant non-Fans.

6. Focus on the Metrics that Matter

What determines the success or failure of your Page or advertising efforts? Are you focusing on the metrics that matter?

Far too many marketers get bent out of shape obsessing over things like Reach and Page Likes. Neither of these two things, in and of themselves, mean a whole lot. And if they drive your strategy, you are bound to fail.

How much valuable engagement does your content drive? How much traffic to your website?

Do your ads result in conversions and sales? What is your cost per conversion?

These are the types of things you need to be worried about. Don’t distract yourself with metrics like Reach, CPM, CPC and Click Through Rate.

7. Don’t Click the Boost Post Button

While there are over 1 Million advertisers on Facebook, I guarantee that a high percentage of these people are casual advertisers who have only hit the Boost Post button.

It’s easy to do. But with simplicity goes a lack of control, and this way of advertising will likely lead to wasted ad spend.

You are more sophisticated than this. You want to reach a specific audience in specific placements.

8. Use Power Editor

One way to promote a post effectively is with Power Editor. You can, for example, target only Fans and reach them only in the News Feed.

If you’re serious about Facebook advertising, you need to use Power Editor. This is how you get full control over your ads and get full access to all of the tools and features that come with Facebook advertising.

While using the self-serve ad tool is certainly a step up from boosting a post, you can do better.

9. Use Conversion Tracking

Every time you run an ad that leads to some sort of conversion (purchase, registration or lead), you need to use Conversion Tracking.

Every. Single. Time.

If you don’t use Conversion Tracking, you won’t know whether your campaign truly was a success or failure. You’ll guess regarding the number of conversions it brought. And you’ll focus on metrics that could be completely independent of a conversion (CPM, CPC, CTR, etc.).

If your ad leads to a conversion, the only metrics you need to be aware of are Conversions and Cost Per Conversion. You want the lowest Cost Per Conversion as is possible.

But if you don’t use Conversion Tracking, this isn’t an option.

10. Target Your Email List

When you build your Fan base, do you run an ad that targets your email list to attract those who have already done business with you?

When you launch a product, do you run an ad targeted at those who have bought from you before?

You can do this with Custom Audiences. And if you don’t use this feature, you are ignoring a very important segment of your customer base!

11. Sell to Your Fans

While your focus on Facebook shouldn’t be only to sell, your Fans are the people most likely to buy from you.

If you spend more on ads that target non-Fans with product offers than Fans, you are likely throwing money away.

Target non-Fans to bring in new Fans. Gain trust from them by consistently providing value. Then sell.

It’s a simple Facebook sales funnel. And one that can lead to a very high ROI.

12. Optimize Your Images

When you share a link or run a link ad, does the thumbnail image take up the width of the News Feed, whether on desktop or mobile?

Bigger images lead to more engagement. Those thumbnails are begging to be clicked on.

If your link share results in a tiny, square thumbnail image, don’t expect it to get clicked!

13. Create Multiple Campaign and Ad Variations

You can’t report success or failure based on a single ad. There are far too many factors that lead to whether or not an ad works.

Test different copy, images and targeting. Test with different ad types, using Sponsored Stories or page posts. Test using link shares, videos or photos.

Don’t trust small sample sizes. Find what doesn’t work and stop those ads. Find what does work and escalate!

14. Optimize Ads Using Ad Reports

You may have an apparent failing ad that actually has success buried within the results. But you won’t know that without using Facebook’s ad reports.

With this amazing tool, you can figure out the Cost Per Action based on age, gender, country and placement. Placement, in particular, can result in wildly varying costs.

Use these reports to find what does and doesn’t work. Then optimize your ads!

Your Turn

What other tools and strategies are common among those who succeed on Facebook? Let me know in the comments below!

The post 14 Steps to Succeeding at Facebook Marketing appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Now that all advertisers have access to Custom Audiences via the self-serve ad tool and Power Editor, it’s time to start talking more about some creative ways to use them.

If you haven’t heard of Custom Audiences before, this is how you can target your customers in Facebook ads, whether they are Fans or not already.

To create a Custom Audience in Power Editor, click on “Audiences” on the left and then click “Create Audience” and select “Custom Audience.”

Then name and describe your audience. You’ll want it to be something descriptive so you’ll know what it is later.

Finally, you’ll upload your file that has your list of customers on it. This should be either a CSV or TXT file. If it’s an email list, make sure it’s only one column and only has valid email addresses in it.

It will take Facebook up to an hour to generate a list of Facebook users who are also on your email list. Expect anywhere from 30-70% of those email addresses to match up to Facebook users.

Once you have that list, what are you going to do with it? Here are four suggestions…

[Tweet “Here are 4 creative and powerful ways to use Facebook Custom Audiences to target your email list…”]

1. Increase Page Likes

This is a layup. Once you upload your email list and Facebook says it’s ready, this should be the first thing you do.

Until now, you’ve probably been stressing over which interests, ages, countries and other targeting options you need to use when targeting your ideal audience. This one’s easy.

You already know the people on your email list have interest in your content. Now you just need to be sure that you get as many of them as possible to like your Page — if they don’t like it already.

Within the Audience step of ad creation within Power Editor, you only need to do two things:

1. Exclude current Fans from targeting
2. Add your email list to targeting

To exclude your current Fans, go to the bottom where you’ll see Connections. Here, you’ll want to enter your Page name within the text box for “Target users who are not already connected to…”

Then click the “Advanced” link within the Audience step and enter the name of the Custom Audience you created that represents your email list within the first Custom Audiences text box.

To clarify what you just did: You are now targeting everyone on your email list who is not currently a Fan of your Page. You want those people!

The only concern left is choosing what type of ad to create. Personally, I’d recommend a Page Like Sponsored Story as well as a standard Page Like ad that drives users to a landing tab where you offer something of value in exchange for a Like.

Keep in mind that the Sponsored Story will have a smaller audience because you’ll only reach Facebook users on your email list who aren’t currently Fans but have friends who are Fans of your Page.

2. Extend the Reach of Your Posts

This is one I’m doing more and more of lately.

When you publish a post to your Page, you’ll likely reach anywhere from 10-16% of your Fans organically. If you’re like me, you want to reach more of them so you’ll promote a post (through Power Editor — don’t click the Boost Post button!) that targets your Fans only in the News Feed.

You may also target non-Fans who have specific interests similar to your niche. But you have to treat that group carefully since many Facebook users don’t like seeing content from Pages they don’t like in their feed.

But you could instead reach non-Fans who are on your email list. These are people who have already expressed interest in your content, so they’re bound to embrace seeing you in their News Feed.

First, let’s promote a post. Thanks to the new Objective flow, there are now two different ways to do the same thing.

Objective: Select “Clicks to website” and “Page post linked to your website.” Then select the post you want to promote.

Old Ad Types: Select “Ad” and “For a Facebook Page using a Page post.” Then select the post you want to promote.

What you do next is the same for either ad creation flow.

Now do exactly what you did in example #1 to target non-Fans who are also on your email list.

The result: You’ll reach more people who are interested in seeing your content. You should also expect to get some of these people to like your Page when your post is shown in their News Feeds.

3. Sell or Upgrade a Product

I’ve found that current Fans are overwhelmingly more likely to buy from me than well targeted non-Fans (this is why I talk about creating a Facebook sales funnel). So you should target this group when selling a product.

The method is just like what you did in step #2 where you promote a post to non-Fans who are on your email list. One addition is that you should also track conversions. You do this by clicking “Track conversions on my website for this ad” and select the pixel that applies to this promotion (if you need help on Conversion Tracking, see my tutorial).

Another opportunity is for upgrades. Hopefully, you have customer lists that are segmented based on their action: newsletter sign-up, opt-in and specific product purchase.

Let’s assume you have a list of people who purchased Widget 1.0. You are now announcing the release of Widget 2.0. If you’re a smart marketer, you’re going to send an email to those who bought Widget 1.0 to let them know of the release.

But you should also target these people in Facebook ads. This allows you to craft copy and imagery around the people you are targeting. For example, the copy should assume that the user who is seeing the ad already owns Widget 1.0. Let them know it’s time to upgrade!

You would target these users by creating a Custom Audience that is for the list of people who purchased Widget 1.0 only. Then enter that audience in your targeting as described earlier.

4. Target Users Similar to Your Subscribers

This goes a bit beyond Custom Audiences, but let’s assume you have a modest-sized email list. You want to target a larger group of people to perform any of the three steps suggested above. You can do this by creating Lookalike Audiences.

While you aren’t specifically targeting your email list in this case, you are using that email list to target other Facebook users like them.

To create a Lookalike Audience, click on the name of your Custom Audience within “Audiences” on the left of Power Editor. Then click “Create Similar Audience.”

Then select a country and whether you want to optimize for Similarity (top 1% of Facebook users) or Greater Reach (top 5%).

It will take up to 24 hours for Facebook to generate this list (possibly longer).

Now when you create an ad to get Page Likes, extend the Reach of your posts or sell a product, you can create a variation that targets users who are similar to those on your email list.

Your Turn

Do you have any other creative examples of using Custom Audiences? Let me know in the comments below!

The post 4 Creative Ways to Target Your Email List with Facebook Custom Audiences appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

You’re an advanced Facebook marketer, so you use Power Editor to create your ads. And as an advanced Facebook marketer, you know the importance of proper targeting.

Of course, proper targeting often means entering in countless precise interests, Custom Audiences, Lookalike Audiences and other variables to reach your ideal audience. It can take a ton of time.

Up until now, you could create a Saved Target Group (also called a Saved Audience). This is a great way to save time when building your ads.

[Tweet “Facebook has added the ability to create Saved Target Groups for Power Editor from existing ads.”]

The only problem, however, was that you needed to build this audience from scratch. Even if you had created ads that previously used the targeting you want to utilize going forward.

That’s finally changed. Facebook now allows you to create an audience using an ad you’ve already created.

Today we’re going to focus on the following:

• Why you should create Saved Target Groups
• Types of Saved Target Groups you should create
• How to create a Saved Target Group using a previous ad

The first two steps are to get you up to speed if you’ve never created these before. The third covers the new functionality that is going to make our lives a whole lot easier!

Why You Should Create Saved Target Groups

When you create an ad in Power Editor, you could enter in all of this information manually:

• Location
• Age
• Gender
• Precise Interests/Broad Categories
• Partner Categories
• Connections
• Custom Audiences (includes Lookalike Audiences)
• Excluded Audiences
• Interested In
• Relationship Status
• Languages
• Education
• Workplaces

That’s a ton of information, and it’s a major hassle if you create a lot of ads that utilize significant targeting (and you should).

But luckily when you create an ad, you can click the “Use Existing Targeting Group” button during the Audience step to automatically prefill this for you.

If you’ve never created a Saved Target Group before, you can go ahead and read this tutorial. Or you can continue reading for a new shortcut.

Types of Saved Target Groups You Should Create

You should sit down and think about the various groups you target in your ads. Make a list.

For me, there are a few groups I target regularly:

• Fans with age/location targeting
• Users who like similar Pages and interests
• Users on Custom Audience lists
• Users on Lookalike Audience lists (Reach)
• Users on Lookalike Audience lists (Similarity)
• Lookalike Audience (Reach) + similar Pages & interests
• Lookalike Audience (Similarity) + similar Pages & interests

[Note: Read this post for more information on some of the groups I target.]

I save all of these for easy access. You don’t need to create the same audiences since your saved target groups will depend on your needs. But you should put in the time to figure this out.

How to Create a Saved Target Group Using a Previous Ad

Okay, so now the new functionality that will make your life a whole lot easier.

I’m going to assume that you’ve previously created a bunch of ads that targeted your preferred audience. You can now use those ads to automatically generate new saved target groups.

First, find the ad that targeted that preferred audience that you’ll want to target again later.

Then click the “Create Audience Using Ad” button at the top.

You’ll then be redirected to the saved target group creation process within Audiences. The saved target group will be prefilled based on the targeting of the ad you were using. The name of that ad will be, by default, the name of that ad.

You should now change the name of that saved target group to accurately reflect the audience you are targeting for easy reference later.

Easy enough, right?

The post Facebook Saved Target Group Change: Create Audience Using Ad appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Facebook has updated ad creation within both Power Editor and the self-serve ad tool to reflect an objective-based flow. But is this no more than moving furniture?

Let’s take a quick look at what the changes are and what they mean to you.

[Tweet “Is the new objective-based Facebook ads design much more than moving furniture around?”]

Déjà vu?

First of all, I found this announcement interesting because we’ve been here before.

Facebook last made major changes to their ad create flow back in June of 2012. Back then, their reasoning was to focus more on objectives.

So if you feel like you’ve heard this song and dance before, you have. And I’ve gotta be honest: There’s really not much new to see here, particularly in Power Editor.

New Facebook Advertising Flow Based on Objectives

Now when you try to create an ad within the self-serve ad tool, you’ll be presented with the following navigation:

And when you create an ad in Power Editor, it’s slimmed down as follows:

So instead of selecting from various ad and Sponsored Story types, Facebook now gives you nine objective options:

• Clicks to Website
• Website Conversions
• Page Post Engagement
• Page Likes
• App Installs
• App Engagement
• Offer Claims
• Event Responses

Power Editor Objectives: The New Flow

I freaked out at first when I heard about this change because I feared that Facebook would remove control. They did, but access to the old ad units remains.

Note that you can toggle back and forth between the old ad units and the new objectives.

When you select an objective under the new design, you are still presented with ad types to choose from. So Facebook is really just finding out what you want to do first before presenting ad options.

Here’s an example when you select Page Post Engagement as your objective:

Here’s a list of all of the ad options that appear per objective…

Clicks to Website:

• Page post linked to your website (eligible for News Feed)
• Domain ad linked to your website (Right Column only)

Website Conversions:

• Page post linked to your website (eligible for News Feed)
• Domain ad linked to your website (Right Column only)

Page Post Engagement:

• For a Facebook Page using a post
• Sponsored story about people liking your post
• Sponsored story about people commenting on your post
• Sponsored story about people sharing your post

Page Likes:

• For a Facebook Page
• Sponsored story about people liking your Page

App Installs (Mobile):

• (Select your app to promote)

App Installs (Desktop):

• For a Facebook app
• Sponsored story published through your app
• Sponsored story about people playing your game

App Engagement:

• For a Facebook app
• Sponsored story published through your app
• Sponsored story about people playing your game

Offer Claims:

• For a Facebook Page using a post
• Sponsored story about people liking your post
• Sponsored story about people commenting on your post
• Sponsored story about people sharing your post

Event Responses:

• For a Facebook event
• Sponsored story about your event

Power Editor Objectives: Ad Comparison to Old Way

First of all, I don’t find the new objectives more helpful in Power Editor. There’s unnecessary duplication. And Facebook removes ad options that were formerly available (still available within the old format, as mentioned above).

For example, whether you choose “Clicks to Website” or “Website Conversions” you’ll get the same two ad options. You just have to make sure to select Conversion Tracking if you pick Website Conversions.

Also, the options are identical whether you select App Installs (Desktop) or App Engagement. In each case, you can create an ad that promotes your app or create Sponsored Stories that leverage activity within it. I see no differences.

Finally, the ability to select “Offer Claims” is also redundant. The same task can be accomplished within the Page Post Engagement objective.

I went through every “new” ad option within the objectives, and there is an ad equivalent within the old method in each case. So there is nothing new here.

However, there are some items missing from the new objective-based design:

• Sponsored Story about people checking into your location
• Sponsored Story about people posting on your wall
• Sponsored Story about people liking any of your Page posts
• Sponsored Story about people sharing links to your domain (Domain Sponsored Story)
• Video ad for a Facebook Page using a video Page post

The video ad, of course, isn’t a true omission since that unit was always redundant since you could create it through the normal process of promoting a Page using a Page post.

The one that impacts me most is the omission of Domain Sponsored Stories.

Power Editor Objectives: No Conversion Specs

One of my favorite features within Power Editor is Conversion Specs. This allows me to manually determine how Facebook will optimize my ad (for post engagement, link clicks, photo views, comments, etc.).

Here’s how the Optimization and Pricing step looks using the old flow:

And using the new flow:

AH! No Conversion Specs! That’s a problem for me.

Power Editor Objectives: The Verdict

This change is pretty worthless. Facebook’s just moving things around while taking away a few ad options and a very important feature.

My assumption is that Facebook will continue allowing advertisers to use the old ad options. I know I will, and you should, too.

Self-Serve Ad Tool Objectives

Now, I don’t use the self-serve ad tool, so I don’t have much of a point of reference on this. But I find the new objective flow to be helpful for new advertisers.

It’s certainly simple and streamlined. Of course, this is also at the expense of control which is why I’ll continue to recommend using Power Editor.

But there is one new feature within the self-serve ad tool that I really like. When you choose the Page Likes objective, you’re allowed to upload up to six image options.

When you upload new images, Facebook then automatically generates new ads for them. This is a feature I’d like to see in Power Editor!

While Facebook is making the self-serve ad tool slicker, it’s still made for the new advertiser wanting a simple experience.

What Do You Think?

So, back to you. What do you think of these changes?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post New Facebook Ad Design Puts Focus on Objectives: What You Need to Know appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

I have a confession to make: I’m not a particularly organized person. My desk is a mess. I operate on the fly more than I’d care to admit. And if I’m not careful, my Facebook ads will end up a disorganized mess, too.

There’s an easy solution that most Facebook marketers completely ignore: Labels.

What are Labels?

First of all, you’re using Power Editor, right? I’m sure you are…

When creating a campaign, you’ll see a text box for Labels.

You can enter as many labels as you want here. Consider them folders to keep together everything that is related.

[Tweet “Labels are a little-used feature that can help you organize your Facebook ad campaigns.”]

Your labels will then appear on the left hand side of Power Editor below “All Campaigns.”

How Can You Use Labels?

There are four main ways that you could use labels:

1. Goal: Organize campaigns by driving likes, traffic or conversions
2. Promotion: Organize campaigns by product you are promoting
3. Page: Keep all campaigns together related to a specific Page
4. Client: Keep all campaigns together related to a specific client

When you expand, you’ll see all of the campaigns related to that label:

For example, I’m currently using labels for…

• Affiliate
• Coaching
• Contests
• Conversions
• Domain Sponsored Story
• FBMAU
• Likes
• Pubcast
• Review
• SMSS
• Traffic
• Webinar

These are just a few ideas, but there are no rules to labels. Use them however you’d like!

The Limitations of Labels

Now, it would be nice if Facebook applied these labels outside of Power Editor and into the ad reports. Unfortunately, they do not.

Currently, this is only to keep your campaigns together as you’re working on them in Power Editor. This remains helpful if you want to, for example, refer back to an old and related campaign. This is good for optimizing and duplicating.

What would be great, though, is if you could run Facebook ad reports based on labels. My guess is that this will come eventually. It’s one more reason to use them!

Your Turn

Do you use labels? How do you use them?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post How to Use Labels to Organize Your Facebook Ads appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

One of my favorite Facebook ads features is Conversion Tracking (it’s actually one of the features I’m highlighting in this week’s FREE webinar). It’s an awesome way to both optimize for and track offsite conversions that come from your ad.

For a few months now, Facebook has offered a “Conversion Value” metric within Ads Manager that was supposed to help you see how much revenue has come in as a result of those conversions. But if you’re like me, it’s looked like this…

That’s not helpful, Facebook!

The problem, of course, is that Facebook makes it very difficult to set a Conversion Value. Nowhere do they make this clear.

If you hover over the Conversion Value tooltip, you get this:

Based on the “conversion details” I set up, huh, Facebook? How about you just tell me where I can do that?

Nothing shows up when you’re creating the pixel. Nothing when you’re selecting the pixel.

[Tweet “Did you know you can set the value of a Facebook conversion? Here’s how…”]

How to Do It

It turns out the only way to set this value is within the pixel itself.

[If you need any help with this, make sure to read my Conversion Tracking tutorial. Or you could sign up for my Power Editor training course!]

This is definitely a case of Facebook burying helpful functionality and making things way more difficult than they need to be. It would make a lot of sense to include a text field where we can enter the conversion value and then Facebook automatically includes that in the pixel. Of course, that would be too easy.

But this is how you do it. And it’s really not difficult once you figure it out.

Conversion Value = ROI

Now when you get conversions, the Facebook Ads Manager will actually display values to go along with those conversions to help you measure ROI.

Want to know what’s working? What to show the value of your advertising? This is it!

The post Facebook Offsite Conversion Tracking: How to Set Conversion Value appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

I receive a variation of the following question more times than I can count (I can’t count that high):

I place ads for two different pages that I manage. I’d like these accounts separated so that the ads and billing information aren’t all bundled together in Ad Manager or Power Editor. I’m assuming I’ve not set something up correctly.

Since I advertise for others as well as myself, this is an issue I had to figure out for my own business. And, of course, Facebook does a poor job of explaining how to do it.

[Tweet “Stop mixing your Facebook ads with clients’. Here’s how consultants can keep them separate…”]

The Problem: Separate Advertising Accounts

Let me break down the question a little bit more.

You advertise for several different clients. But you want to separate the reports between those clients.

There’s also the issue with billing. You don’t want to pay for the ads in each case and need to get reimbursed. You’d prefer to instead charge directly to your client.

Many consultants end up getting a username and password from the client. This isn’t necessary.

The Solution That Isn’t a Solution

Within the past year or so, Facebook rolled out five admin levels that would seem to solve this problem.

If you’ve tried this, you know that it doesn’t solve the problem explained above.

Sure, you can be added as an advertiser to multiple Pages this way. But you can’t separate these accounts and you’re on the hook for the billing.

The Actual Solution

Have your client go here. It’s the Facebook ads Account Settings page.

If they aren’t directed to the proper place, have them click on the Settings link on the left side while in the Ad Manager.

Have them scroll down to the Permissions area and click “Add a User.”

Then they need to enter your name (if you’re a friend) or your email address to add you.

They can add you either as a “General User” or for “Reports Only.”

General Users can see and edit your ads and set up ads using the funding source associated with this ad account.

Reports Only access provided to users who can only see your ad performance.

So, obviously, you want them to add you as a General User.

The Result

First, you will now be able to select from your available accounts when creating ads.

At the top left of your Facebook Ads Manager, you’ll now have a drop-down to select the account you want to use…

A similar drop-down exists in Power Editor…

You should now have no problem keeping your ads and reports separate.

Additionally, since your client added you to the account, ads will now be charged to their billing source.

That’s It!

Easy, right? So stop with the work-arounds and having to foot a bill that your clients may or may not get around to paying.

If you have any questions, let me know!

The post How to Set Up a Facebook Advertising Account for Consultants appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

The million dollar question asked by many marketers relates to how to increase Facebook Likes.

But the key problem should be attacking how you get relevant Facebook Fans. It’s about quality, not quantity!

[Tweet “Starting a Facebook page? Here’s how to build a relevant audience from scratch…”]

The Featured Question

The featured question this week comes from Daniel Himel:

If you had to build an audience from scratch, starting tomorrow. Knowing what you know now….What would be the top 5 steps you would do with facebook?

I am taking Daniel’s question literally and assuming no viable email list, no established website audience and no other customer list or social media audience to leverage that could be used to quickly and easily boost Facebook Likes.

This is not done easily overnight. Normally you can leverage trust established elsewhere. But we need to build that trust along with the audience from scratch.

Here is how I would do it…

1. Establish a Content Publishing Routine

Make sure that the routine appeals to your target audience. This assumes, of course, that you first understand who your target audience is. You should be able to answer these questions:

• How old are they?
• Are they male or female?
• Where do they live?
• What type of content do they value?
• What questions do they ask?

Put together some structure — a regular content publishing routine — to regularly get into the News Feeds of relevant people with content they value.

Structure is important here. Establish expectations on what you’re going to post and when. Consider daily themes. Schedule out content to make sure you stay on top of it (I use PostPlanner). Make sure you post the types of content that will elicit a response.

The ultimate goal here is that you not only reach your current fans who like your content, but you get them highly engaged so that those Fans can naturally share your content with friends who also fit your target audience.

2. Use Graph Search

Graph Search isn’t getting nearly enough attention from marketers. It’s an awesome tool for learning more about your brand’s audience.

In this case, of course, you don’t have an established audience. So you can use it to learn more about the users who like Pages based around products or services that are similar to your own.

First, come up with two Facebook Pages that are either for competitors or products and services similar to your own.

Then, run a search to find out the Pages that their Fans also like. Here’s an example:

“Pages liked by people who like Jon Loomer Digital and Mari Smith”

Here are the top Pages that come up for me when I run that search:

• Social Media Examiner
• Social Fresh
• AllFacebook.com
• Hubspot
• Mashable
• hubze
• Facebook Marketing
• Gary Vaynerchuk
• Klout
• TechCrunch
• Marie Forleo
• Lewis Howes

Keep that info in your back pocket!

Now run a search to determine the favorite interests of this same group of people. Here’s an example:

“Favorite interests of people who like Jon Loomer Digital and Mari Smith”

Here are the results of that search:

• Social media
• Marketing
• Social media marketing
• Blogging
• Photography
• Traveling
• Running
• Search engine optimization
• Reading
• Internet marketing
• LinkedIn
• Web 2.0

Some of these interests are clearly more relevant than others. Stick the relevant ones in your back pocket.

Now, depending on the nature of your basis, there are endless other searches that you could run to pad your knowledge of your ideal audience.

Here are some other examples:

• Groups of people who like…
• Pages liked by [career like “marketers”] who like…
• Places in [city] visited by people who like…
• [Business type like “restaurants”] in [city] visited by people who like…
• Movies liked by people who like…
• Games played by people who like…
• Favorite music of people who like…

Get creative and experiment!

3. Run Highly Targeted Facebook Ads

So, you’re probably wondering what the heck you’re going to do with all of that information you learned in Step #2. Here you go!

When you’re running Facebook ads, you want them to be highly targeted. So make sure they are surfaced only to the people who fit your target demographic. You can control this with basic things like age, gender, location, career and a whole lot more.

But you can also do this by listing Precise Interests. Use the learnings from above here.

Something else you can do is run Sponsored Results ads (Facebook is phasing these out, but use them while you can!). Target people running searches for the Pages that overlap with your target audience.

Finally, you now know a whole lot about your target audience. Use this information to target by specific lifestyle and buying history traits through the use of Partner Categories.

4. Offer a Premium Piece of Content

Create something of value that appeals to your target audience. This could be a professionally done eBook or white paper. Offer that piece of content for free in exchange for liking your Page.

This is done with like-gating. Visitors to your tab are given different views depending on whether they are Fans or not. If they aren’t, they can be shown a preview of what they get for free if they like your Page. When they like, they are given the download link.

I use ShortStack (aff.) to do this. Use this piece of premium content as a carrot for your ads. Drive those ads to this landing page.

5. Use Hashtags

Facebook hashtags are still gaining traction. But they can be a great tool for reaching a broader audience.

Research what hashtags are currently being used in your niche. Start using those hashtags appropriately to categorize your content.

If done correctly, you will begin reaching more people who aren’t currently Fans but who are interested in your niche. This is great for discovery!

EXTRA. Network

Okay, I was only supposed to do five. But the thing is that there are far more than five ways to increase your relevant Facebook audience. And really, you should be looking beyond Facebook to increase that audience.

A huge one is networking. Look to guest post on the blogs of others with larger audiences who service your target audience. Comment on those popular blogs. Comment on their Facebook Pages. And offer to interview some of these top names in your industry.

While doing these things, make sure that you are always looking to provide value. Networking is possibly the most important key to gaining traction quickly and going from obscurity to authority.

Other Related Links

Here are some other links that I referenced in the video above:

• How the Pros Use Facebook Advertising [Free eBook]
• 11 Powerful Ways to Increase Relevant Facebook Likes with Ads
• 11 Factors That Drive a Facebook Content Plan That Works
• How to Use Facebook Graph Search to Learn About Your Fans
• How to Create a Sponsored Result Facebook Search Ad
• Facebook Partner Categories: Ad Targeting Becomes More Powerful
• How to Use Tabs as a Facebook Advertising Destination
• 5 Reasons You Should STILL Create Facebook Tabs for Your Page
• Facebook Hashtags for Brands: What You Need to Know
• Facebook Custom Audiences: Target Facebook Ads by Email List
• Facebook Lookalike Audiences: Target Users Similar to Your Customers

Don’t Forget to Subscribe!

Make sure you watch the video above for all of the details.

That’s it! Hope you found this week’s video blog and separate answers helpful. Don’t forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel!

The post How to Build a Facebook Audience From Scratch appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Advertisers now have the ability to promote unpublished (otherwise known as “dark”) posts within the News Feeds of Fans.

An unpublished post is a status update, link share, video or photo that was never meant to be shared as an organic post. Staying true to its name, it’s never published but is only surfaced as an ad.

This functionality was previously made available to the ads API in July of 2012, but until recently the only placement option was the sidebar.

Why Create Unpublished Posts?

The purpose of today’s article is to tell you how to do this, but it’s necessary to provide a short explanation for why you might want to. A deeper explanation will need to come on another day.

The main reason you should consider creating unpublished posts is for split testing purposes.

You can otherwise utilize post targeting via the following methods:

• Gender
• Relationship Status
• Educational Status
• Interested In
• Age
• Location
• Language

This is nice, but you can’t target by interests, Custom Audiences, Partner Categories and other ways that you target with ads. And there’s also the issue with every targeted post appearing on your Timeline unless you hide the extras.

One of the ways I’ll find it helpful is when I create a post that is rejected by Facebook as an ad.

We’ve all been there. You share a link to your new product. You promote it. But the image associated with that link has more than 20% text in it, so Facebook gives you a big roadblock.

Instead of creating a whole new post, you can simply create an unpublished post and promote it to the Fans who matter most to you.

Okay, so here’s how you do it…

1. Use Power Editor

This should be Step 1 for all Facebook advertising you do. Please use Power Editor. If you don’t know how to use it, check out this tutorial.

2. Create a Campaign

Every site I’ve seen explain unpublished posts does a horrible job of explaining how to do it. As a result, every necessary step is here for you.

Since you will need to create a new ad from an established campaign, let’s do that first.

Click “Campaigns” at the top and then “Create Campaign.”

Then name your campaign, set a daily or lifetime budget and determine a start and end date.

3. Go to Manage Pages

If you’ve never created a post from within Power Editor, this step is one that will likely stump you. So click dropdown at the top left and select “Manage Pages”…

4. Create Your Unpublished Post

Select the name of your Page on the left hand side and then click the “Create Post” button at the top…

Select whether you are creating a Status, Link, Photo or Video and then compose your post. You can also target by language or location, but that really won’t be necessary.

When you’re done, click “Submit.” Note that this does not publish your post, it merely saves your composed post.

5. Promote Your Unpublished Post

You will know that your post is unpublished (or “dark”) because there will be a moon icon next to it…

Select this post and click the “Promote” button…

You’ll now need to select the campaign you created earlier to run your ad in…

Now go through and select the options you prefer within Creative & Placements, Audience and Advanced Options.

Then click the “Upload” button at the top right of the page, and your promoted unpublished post will be submitted for review!

6. Viewing Dark Posts and Notifications

Of course, once you create a dark or unpublished post, it won’t appear on your Timeline. So how do you see it, and what about when users comment on or like it?

From Power Editor, find that post again and click “View Post.”

This will allow you to view that post within Facebook…

You will also receive notifications as you normally would whenever users comment on or like your post.

Also, if your unpublished post is a photo or video, it will appear within your photo album. It just won’t appear on your Timeline.

Try It!

Try your own dark post! What are some of the reasons that you’ll be using this feature? Let me know in the comments below!

The post Facebook Ads Tip: How to Create a Dark or Unpublished Facebook Post appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

The problem? It’s freaking ridiculous.

Keep in mind, this comes from a guy who defends Facebook on every design change. Every privacy change. Every change that results in mass torches, pitchforks and hilariously ironic protest groups.

Now, don’t get me wrong. The change itself actually makes sense to me. The enforcement of it, however, is complete nonsense.

Understanding the 20% Rule

Ads and sponsored stories in News Feed may not include images comprised of more than 20% text.

Here are some other notes regarding this rule, per the Help Center:

• Examples include promoted Page posts, app install ads, Offers, Events and other News Feed ads
• Does not apply to pictures of products that include text on the product
• Images zoomed in on logos or images with text overlay not allowed
• Images edited to include text on the product as a loophole to the policy not allowed

Again, to this point I am in the extreme minority with understanding where Facebook is heading on this. Creating an ad out of a large image with text in it is essentially a way to take up more space in the News Feed with text.

So if the policy were enforced accordingly, I’d accept the rule. I wouldn’t necessarily be a raving fan of the rule, but I’d understand.

But here are the problems that are making my life as an advertiser a living hell…

How is 20% Measured?

Other than providing examples of some ads that do and don’t violate the 20% rule, there is no guide or tool that helps you determine whether or not your image is in compliance.

Either you’re measuring text in these images with a tool that you aren’t making available to the public or you’re simply guessing. In each case, it’s poor policy.

Facebook Sucks at Enforcement

1. Link Share Rejections. An example is a Promoted Post that I ran for a client. That post was a link share that drove users to a Facebook tab. The link preview had more than 20% text in it.

After getting rejected, I decided to run it as a Page Post Ad that would run only in the sidebar (we’ll get to this problem later). Rejected again.

A freaking link share. So you’re telling me that advertisers have to control how much text is in the thumbnail image? That’s absolutely ludicrous since it won’t always be controlled — and the image is rarely created with Facebook in mind.

And that’s only part of why this rejection was ridiculous. This particular Page Post Ad was targeted at a Custom Audience of people who aren’t already connected to the Page. I created this ad with the full intention of it never appearing in News Feeds. But because — I assume — it could appear in News Feeds as a Suggested Post due to a minuscule number of friends of Fans, the link share thumbnail image gets the ad rejected.

Absolutely insane.

2. Some Get Through, Some Don’t. I promoted a similar post that this time included a shared image. That image was a screen grab of a book gallery that was featured within a Facebook tab. Once again, that image did indeed have more than 20% text.

But that Promoted Post made it through. It was insanely effective. It was so effective that I extended the daily budget and expiration date to go through the end of February.

Of course, I got greedy and decided to create a Page Post Ad out of that same post that would — hopefully — go into the sidebar. Facebook rejected that one, and seemed to pick up on the other ad that had been going on for three weeks. They then killed that one, too.

Sometimes You Can’t Avoid the News Feed

Some of the most effective ads are Page Post Ads and Sponsored Stories that promote the engagement of Page content. Sometimes, those posts include images that have more than 20% text in them.

Sure, I get it. I can’t promote that post in the News Feed. So I guess I’ll just promote it in the sidebar.

But here’s the deal… You can’t.

Even when you use Power Editor, you can’t create a Page Post Ad or Sponsored Story that only shows up in the sidebar. This wasn’t clear to me until Facebook recently added some copy explaining the various placements in Power Editor.

Do you see the problem here, folks? Previously, the second option was only “Desktop.” My assumption was that this was simply all sidebar ads on desktop placements since the final option was “News Feed only.”

But “Desktop” includes the sidebar AND News Feed. In other words, if you want to target Fans or friends of Fans with a Page Post Ad or Sponsored Story, it’s impossible to hit them only on the sidebar.

Since you can’t avoid the News Feed, you can’t create ads that contain more than 20% text in them — even if your intention is to reach only the sidebar!

The result: I’m getting rejected over and over and over again. Link shares and ads that I never wanted to show up in the News Feed to begin with.

This is Ridiculous

Otherwise, just come out and say that no ad images for Page Post Ads or Sponsored Stories — whether in the News Feed or otherwise — can contain more than 20% text. Because that’s essentially what’s being enforced.

Your Turn

The post The Problem with Facebook’s 20-Percent Text in Ad Images Rule appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Facebook advertisers are now able to create Sponsored Results, a new form of advertising that appears within the typehead of Facebook search results.

Here is an example of a Facebook Sponsored Result when typing “Zynga” into the Facebook search typehead:

Following is the explanation of Sponsored Results from Facebook, as quoted by TechCrunch:

“Everyday, many people on Facebook use our search to find people, places, and things. We want to help them better find and discover the brands, products, and experiences relevant to them. Sponsored Results gives brands the ability to buy ads in search results, bringing more awareness and traffic to your App, Page, or Place. Sponsored Results give you:

1. Expanded distribution of your message, with placement in one of the most used features on Facebook.

2. The ability to target what people are looking for, by appearing alongside related Apps, Pages, and Places.

3. Flexibility to customize your landing destination, such as a specific tab on your Page.

Brands are not able to drive offsite using this product, but you will have the ability to drive to specific Pages, Tabs, and Canvas Applications.”

Note that advertisers are only able to target users based on the Page, Application or Place they are searching for. This is not a Google clone, where advertising is based on keywords.

This brings up a topic for another day. Today I want to focus on how to create a Sponsored Result Facebook search ad unit.

1. Use Power Editor

First, this functionality is only available through Power Editor or third party tools that utilize the Facebook advertising API. It is not available within the Facebook Ad Manager.

Power Editor is a Chrome plugin that offers the ability to bulk edit ads. Another advantage to using Power Editor over the Facebook Ads Manager is that you can also create mobile and News Feed ads.

For more information, read How to Use Facebook Power Editor.

2. Create a Campaign

When you create a campaign, you’ll need to provide the following:

• Campaign Name
• Budget (Lifetime or Daily)
• Type (Marketplace or Premium)
• Schedule
• Status

The Marketplace (Classic) and Premium (Multi-Objective) options just started appearing for me. I don’t know much about Premium yet, and Facebook hasn’t answered my questions. When I’ve tried selecting it, I get plenty of bugs. For the purpose of this tutorial, you need to select Marketplace (Classic) or it won’t work.

3. Create an Ad

Within Creative, make sure to click I want to advertise something I have on Facebook and select the Facebook Page you wish to advertise.

Within Story Type, select “Sponsored Result” from the drop-down.

Pick a destination tab. You don’t have to drive people to your Timeline; it could be a contest or free offer you’ve created. Just make sure you add context in the body.

Now, enter the body of your ad. You have 70 characters to work with, so make them count!

Within Interests & Broad Categories, you’ll want to list the names of Pages, Places or Applications that you want to target. I have a difficult time with this. Ethically, I do not want to steal Likes from others like me in my industry. For now, I’m instead sticking with searches of big brands related to my topic. I figure they can stand to lose a few Likes.

Within Connections on Facebook, make sure to list your Page for “Target users who are not already connected to…” so that you don’t throw money away on people who are already Fans.

Finally, you’ll want to select CPC and enter a bid under Pricing & Status. No other option currently works.

Fill out all other information as you normally would. Feel free to experiment. I’m keeping the net pretty wide and not entering in any Interests (precise or otherwise). I figure that if they are searching for a relevant Page, that’s all that really matters.

When you’re done, make sure to click the Upload button at the top right, and that’s it! As you would with any Facebook ad, feel free to split test. Try different things and figure out what works.

How About You?

The post How to Create a Sponsored Result Facebook Search Ad appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

In a previous blog post, I wrote about the benefits of using Facebook Power Editor. If you aren’t using Power Editor or a third party application that utilizes the Facebook advertising API, you don’t have access to several great features, including advertising on mobile devices.

Today I’m going to get into the details of installing and using Power Editor.

What Is Power Editor?

Power Editor is a free tool that replaces and enhances the capabilities of the Bulk Uploader. Power Editor makes it easy to create, edit and manage ads and campaigns in bulk, even across a large number of different ad accounts.

Install Power Editor

Once installed, you can access Power Editor by going to https://www.facebook.com/ads/manage/powereditor.

Use Power Editor

Once you install Power Editor, you’ll be asked which accounts you’d like to download into the tool. My guess is that you’ll want access to all of the ads you created previously, so you’ll select “all.”

Now you’ll have access to every campaign and ad that you’ve created.

Virtually everything that is available on Facebook.com/ads/manage will be available here, plus some additional features.

1) View Stats
When you’re viewing individual ads, the final columns will display key stats for those ads. If you want to view more stats, simply click Options and then Settings at the top right to select other columns.

2) Create a New Campaign
When viewing campaigns (click on the left), click Create Campaign at the top. An “Untitled” campaign will then populate on the left. Click it to begin to fill in the details (those details will go into the bottom panel).

3) Create a New Ad
When you’re within a campaign, click Ads at the top and then Create Ad. Once again, fill in all of the details in the main panel on the bottom.

4) Bulk Update Campaigns or Ads
If you want to edit multiple campaigns or ads at once, simply select the ones you want (with a Mac, you use the Command or Shift keys) and start editing in the bottom panel. These changes will apply to all campaigns or ads that you are editing.

5) Don’t Forget to Upload and Download!
The Power Editor is definitely not perfect. When you make changes outside of the Power Editor, you’ll need to make sure to click Download. When you have created or edited campaigns or ads within Power Editor, you’ll need to click Upload before they will take effect. These buttons are at the top right.

6) Access to Other Features
As mentioned before, you also have access to the following features when using Power Editor or the Facebook advertising API:

• Create an ad that appears within News Feeds (other than Promoted Posts)
• Create an ad that appears on mobile devices
• Create ads that use CPM, but not Optimized CPM

If you are currently advertising with the regular old Facebook.com interface, you have no idea what I’m talking about.

Final Notes

But in the end, if you want to access some great features that you may have been missing, Power Editor is definitely worth checking out.

Have you tried out Power Editor? Let me know your thoughts below!

The post How to Use Facebook Power Editor appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.