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The aim of this Smarter Guide is to provide an overview of the opportunities that exist
for Facebook advertisers. It is not intended as a step-by-step guide to creating ads and
campaigns, more to look at best practice. Facebook’s own online learning platform,
Blueprint, provides continually updated step-by-step guidance should you need it.
The platform itself remains free for brands to set up pages for their businesses and enjoy
some exposure free of charge but for the wider range of services on offer, it is now very
much a ‘pay to play’ offering.
That doesn’t mean that you need to invest hugely in advertising - it’s still a lot cheaper
than most other promotional opportunities, and what it offers in terms of targeting is
deeply impressive.
It is also partnering with third party organisations to track user activity elsewhere on the
internet which adds another dimension to its offering.
Before we get into the nitty gritty of Facebook advertising, as an example of a success
story this Liverpool-based lifestyle and street-wear brand attracted new customers and
boosted sales in the US by three times with the combined power of the Facebook pixel,
audience targeting and Instagram ads:
Most households are using, sharing, interacting and even shopping with content and
brands on Facebook each day.
Since its launch in 2004, Facebook is often thought of as the most popular social network,
reporting in January 2019:
þþ Organic reach levels are at an all time low forcing brands to pay for visibility of
updates, even to their fans
þþ Maxed out “ad load” means Facebook are having to test additional inventory options
þþ Reduced need for using ‘dark’ or unpublished posts - most functionality is now
available in ‘normal’ ads
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KEY STRATEGY RECOMMENDATION
Blueprint: Facebook’s online learning platform
Blueprint is a free online learning resource run by Facebook that will teach you all
the basics you need to know to get ahead with Facebook marketing.
Find out more at https://www.facebook.com/blueprint
With organic reach at an all time low, for most brands Facebook is no longer the guaranteed
communications channel it once was without the addition of a little advertising budget.
This move was in response to a few insights from the social network. Firstly, it is publically
known that Facebook mobile advertising inventory was certainly close to running out.
There was also a drop in younger demographics using the platform, complaining that the
social aspect had been lost and it’s more about advertising and branded content.
The update aimed to show less public content like posts from businesses, brands, and
media to encourage more meaningful interactions between people. It therefore means
that it is likely to become harder for brands to get their content shown in the newsfeed.
Brands need to take action to understand who their fans are and what’s relevant to them.
In short, users will be more likely to see your Facebook posts if their friends and family
are reacting to it.
þþ Publish less content: Post updates that are more relevant to the user rather than
just pushing out lots of disengaging content.
þþ Stop ‘like baiting’: Although comments will help your chances of being shown,
posts that simply ask for a user to ‘comment on this post’ etc. will lead to the
content being demoted rather than promoted.
þþ Use the ‘See first’ function: Facebook offers users the chance to customize their
notifications so that your posts appear at the top of their newsfeed. Encourage
users to amend their settings so that they see the content from your page as a
priority. Here’s a guide from Facebook to help you educate your page followers.
þþ Use the Live function more: Put a strategy in place of how you’ll use the Live
facility, and the type of content you would like to share, then maximize it for
company updates. Facebook has said that Live videos are totalling six times the
interactions of non-Live videos.
þþ Use groups more often: Groups are created through a shared interest or need.
Interacting through your page in these groups means that you can speak directly to
likeminded individuals who are more likely to engage with your brand.
þþ Use the Facebook Local app for small business: The app aggregates
Facebook’s database of 70 million business pages, reviews and check-ins.
Consumers can therefore view bars, restaurants and attractions, look at maps and
see nearby friends based on recommendations not advertising.
Online advertising
The landscape of online advertising is ever changing – more users are shifting to mobile
and increasingly shifting to social. This means that calls to business are being driven by
social ads.
Zenith’s1 research shows that across the globe, social display ad spend more than doubled from
2015 to 2017 and is projected to reach $76.24 billion in 2020.
This means that there are multiple opportunities available for the purpose of advertising,
as well audience networks for native ads.
þþ Facebook: Advertising inventory available for mobile and desktop news feeds and
right column
þþ Audience network: Adverts are shown in third-party mobile apps and websites
Advertising inventory through the Facebook platform for mobile and desktop news feeds
and right column is the original offering.
1. Campaigns
2. Ad sets
3. Ads
So as an example, your campaign may be to drive more traffic to a website. Your ad set
level may test different audiences to display the advert. Your ads may be a number of
different images, videos or text to derive the best performer.
þþ Behaviours – limited to digital activities, different types of mobile devices and travel
(brilliant if you work in tech or travel, less so otherwise)
þþ Connections can further narrow down the targeting either to existing fans or
avoiding targeting existing fans
þþ You can connect your Instagram profile so that ads run across to the two platforms
þþ Adding pixel tracking will help you to assess ROI from advertising budget
Once set up you can then track how your ads are working to meet the objectives.
The objectives that you can choose from are split into specific areas:
Awareness:
þþ Page post boost: Get more people to see and engage with your Page posts.
þþ Brand Awareness: Reach people who are more likely to pay attention to your
adverts and increase awareness for your brand.
þþ Reach: Choose this objective if you’d like to show your advert to the largest
audience for your budget.
Consideration:
þþ Traffic: Send more people to a destination on or off Facebook.
þþ Engagement: Get more people to see and engage with your post or Page.
Engagement can include comments, shares, likes, event responses and offer claims.
þþ App Installs: Send people to the store where they can purchase your app.
þþ Lead Generation: Collect lead information from people who are interested in your
business.
Conversion:
þþ Conversions: Get people to take valuable actions on your website or app, such as
adding payment information or making a purchase. Use the Facebook pixel or app
events to track and measure conversions.
þþ Product Catalogue Sales: Create adverts that automatically show products from
your product catalogue based on your target audience
þþ Store Visits: Promote multiple business locations to people who are nearby.
Brands use Facebook for all manner of strategic purposes but they tend to fall into one
of three overall strategic categories namely:
þþ Customer acquisition
þþ Customer conversion
þþ Customer retention
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KEY STRATEGY RECOMMENDATION
Use Facebook for multiple goals
With Facebook’s myriad advertising options, the opportunity for lead generation,
conversion and customer retention are comprehensive with new features being
regularly rolled out.
Different ad types and targeting strategies will lend themselves naturally to one or more
of these approaches.
þþ Retain customers
þþ Showcase products 2
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KEY STRATEGY RECOMMENDATION
Use Instagram advertising to grow profile
If Instagram is a priority for your business, consider paid for Instagram ads by
linking your accounts though the Facebook Ad Manager
The targeting options available on the Facebook advertising platform are extremely
deep.
Given the nature of how people interact with Facebook, the platform has a lot of data
on its users.
In short, it is said that Facebook knows you better than your friends do. It uses the
history of your stated likes, your click history and even the words you use in your
status updates as well as externally collected data to build a pretty accurate profile
of you.
Reading this, if your response is ‘why do I still see such irrelevant ads then?’ All I
can do is blame the advertiser for poor targeting practice rather than Facebook itself.
Facebook uses the following information in determining what ads to show you:
þþ Information you post and share on Facebook (including pages and posts liked)
þþ Information about you from your Facebook account such as your age, gender,
location and the devices you use to access Facebook
þþ Your activity on websites and apps off of Facebook that use Facebook login or
Facebook social plugins
þþ Offline activity such as purchase history or loyalty card usage supplied by data
collection companies
Rather than being anxious about your own personal data, we’d suggest considering the
opportunities that this vast knowledge base has for you as a business trying to reach
people effectively.
It is also worth noting that with the Facebook Messenger app and purchase of mobile
WhatsApp, further user data will be available for targeting (although can be opted out of).
As we mentioned in the last step, Facebook is currently testing adverts in Messenger, so
this may offer additional targeting opportunities.
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KEY STRATEGY RECOMMENDATION
Choose your campaign creation method depending on your needs
Campaign shells: Set up your campaign structure and fill in the details for your ads
and ad sets to run later. Complete campaigns: Fill in all of the details at the time of
creation and end up with completed drafts that are ready to run.
Creating drafts
The Power Editor tool previously auto-saved draft campaigns during the creation of ads.
This is now a feature in the new Ads Manager allowing campaigns to be set up in draft
and published at any time.
Reporting
Previously the different tools offered different reporting capabilities. The new merged
Ads Manager combines all of the reports so that users can create, view and manage
their campaign results in one place without needing to switch between tools to create
their reports
Facebook have a number of broad targeting filters which when combined are very
powerful:
þþ Custom Audience: Use email addresses, phone numbers, Facebook user IDs or
app user IDs to create and save audiences you’d like to show your ads to. This can
be used to target existing people that you may already have data on.
þþ Lookalike audiences - once you have created a Custom audience, you can then
ask Facebook to find people similar to them. For instance, you can create Lookalike
audiences of your fan base, people on your mailing list, or people who have visited
particular Pages on your website.
þþ Audience insights - Audience Insights helps you learn more about your target
audiences. You’ll gather aggregated attributes, such as interests and behaviours,
that you can use to find new audiences who may be interested in your business.
With each of these, you can target further by connections. Select your audience based
on whether or not they’re connected to any of your Pages, apps or events. Anyone who
has a friend connected to what you’re advertising will see his or her friend included in
your ad. This can increase the likelihood that they’ll find your ad relevant enough to click
on or engage with it.
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KEY STRATEGY RECOMMENDATION
Drill down to your target market with Facebook advertising
Is your ideal customer male, living in Aberdeen, with an iPhone, and an interest in
deep sea fishing? If so, you can probably find him on Facebook.
And once you’ve found him, you can use Lookalike Audiences to find others that
share a similar profile.
The following screen grab (from Ads Manager) neatly displays how the various targeting
options surface as you create an ad. This is for a UK chiuldren’s retailer.
At a more sophisticated level, Facebook has two very powerful targeting features:
þþ Custom audiences - you can create an audience to target based on your email list,
people who have visited your website, or used your app
þþ Lookalike audiences - once you have created a Custom audience, you can then
ask Facebook to find people similar to them. For instance, you can create Lookalike
audiences of your fan base, people on your mailing list, or people who have visited
particular Pages on your website.
Qwaya has detailed the targeting options in an excellent infographic which we’ll use here
in lieu of a lengthy written explanation:
The company above already knows that their target audience is women aged 25-44, but
this gives an idea of the kind of interests they could also target. You can add in further
analysis by looking at Google Analytics.
When you right click at the top of an ad you see a drop down of various options as
follows. See this ad from Wordpress:
Click on the ‘Why am I seeing this?’ option and you see how it relates to one of your
interests:
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KEY STRATEGY RECOMMENDATION
Learn from other advertisers as to how they target prospects and with what
messages.
Follow your competitor brands and learn from what they are doing.
See below for examples of other advertisers and their targeting criteria:
This advert targets return visits from a previously clicked on app or website:
This advert targets lookalike audiences. In order to access Lookalike audiences you will
need to understand Custom audiences:
At a basic level Custom Audiences enable you to advertise to people that you already
know (for instance your mailing list) but that are not currently fans of your Page. You
upload your mailing list (or phone numbers) to Facebook and then target ads at that
‘Custom’ Audience. Facebook hashes the data so that they won’t actually be using it
other than in the process of creating the audience for you alone.
You can also use this feature to exclude people from your advertising. So, for instance,
you could upload a list of people that have purchased a particular product in order to
exclude them from ads promoting that product.
Facebook’s Help Center has a video that explains how they work and below Is our own
step-by-step guide:
3. Click the Create Audience button, select the Custom Audience option, then choose
Customer List (other options are also available).
5. Your Custom Audience will be ready in about 30 minutes. Now you can create an ad
in the usual way but pop the Custom Audience in as your target group (see below for
more info).
þþ Bring back website visitors for a subsequent visit, perhaps to purchase a product
(see the Lean Greens ad below)
þþ Precise targeting of your ‘hottest’ fans – i.e. ads targeted at people that are both
your Facebook Fans AND have recently been on your website
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KEY STRATEGY RECOMMENDATION
Use retargeting techniques on Facebook
Using Website Custom Audiences you can target ads at people who have visited
specific Pages on your website but not progressed to the checkout.
4. A box will appear with a variety of options. Choose Custom Audience from your
Website.
6. Next, place the pixel code provided by Facebook onto your website (Facebook can’t
see what people are doing on your website without this). Copy the pixel code from the
Create Web Remarketing Pixel box, and paste it between the <head> and </head>
tags on all Pages of your website. Or, send the pixel code to your website developer.
9. Choose from one of the 4 options to add people to your audience. You can include all
of your website visitors, those who visited certain Pages and more.
10. Select how long you’d like to capture your Custom Audience pixel for. To include past
website traffic, tick the box.
12. Select OK to finish setting up your remarketing pixel code to start adding people to this
audience
þþ People similar to your Mailing list (which you’ll have uploaded already as a Custom
Audience)
þþ People similar to visitors to your website (or specific website Pages). This is a
Lookalike of your Website Custom Audience
To create a Lookalike audience you will first need either an existing Custom Audience or
alternatively a Conversion Pixel or a Website Custom Audience set up. Then:
4. Select your customer group. Choose a Facebook Page, Custom Audience, conversion
pixel or Website Custom Audience.
5. Next, increase or decrease the size of your lookalike audience using the slider. The
bigger the reach, the more your compromise the similarity:
- Similarity: Start by optimizing your lookalike audience for Similarity, which will show
your adverts to a smaller, more precise audience. With this Facebook will show your
ad to the top 1% of people on Facebook in your selected country who are most similar
to your source audience.
- Reach: Then, experiment with optimizing your audience size for Reach, which will
show your adverts to a larger audience. With this option Facebook finds the top 10%
of people on Facebook in your selected country who are most similar to your source
audience.
6. The Lookalike Audience takes a while to populate but should be ready for advertising
within 6-24 hours.
Relevance score is calculated based on the positive and negative feedback on an advert
from its target audience. The more positive interactions, the higher the ad’s relevance
score will be. Positive indicators vary depending on the ad’s objective, but may include
video views, conversions, etc. The more times people hide or report an ad, the lower its
score will be.
Ads receive a relevance score between 1 and 10, with 10 being the highest. The score is
updated as people interact and provide feedback on the ad. Ads with guaranteed delivery
— like those bought through reach and frequency — are not impacted by relevance
score. Relevance score has a smaller impact on cost and delivery in brand awareness
campaigns, since those ads are optimized for reaching people, rather than driving a
specific action like installs.
þþ It can lower the cost of reaching people - the higher an ad’s relevance score is, the
less it will cost to be delivered.
þþ Bids matter too - if two ads are aimed at the same audience, there’s no guarantee
that the ad with an excellent relevance score and low bid will beat the ad with a
good relevance score and high bid. But, overall, having strong relevance scores will
help advertisers see more efficient delivery through the system.
Below is Facebook’s own explanation of how relevance scores work.
Your advert’s relevance score is based on positive and negative feedback from the people
seeing it, based on how the advert is performing. It is calculated differently depending on
your objective (e.g. clicks to website or video views):
þþ Positive feedback: The number of times people are expected to take a desired
action, such as sharing or liking your advert, or help you achieve your objective,
such as visiting your website.
þþ Negative feedback: The number of times people are expected to hide your advert
or indicate a negative experience, such as choosing not to see adverts from you.
According to Econsultancy and Adobe research, most agencies (from UK, US and others)
cite audience targeting/refinement as the most important tactics for optimizing social ads:
When you create your ads, you can choose to run your ads across all eligible placements
on Facebook, Instagram, and the Audience Network. You can also manually select your
placements during ad creation.
Facebook –
þþ Feeds: Desktop News Feed (for laptops or desktop computers) and/or the mobile
News Feed (mobile devices or mobile browser).
þþ Instant Articles: Ads appear in Instant Articles within the Facebook mobile app
and Messenger.
þþ In-Stream Video: Ads appear as short videos in both Live video and Video on
Demand on Facebook.
Instagram
þþ Feeds: Desktop Feed (for laptops or desktop computers) and/or the mobile News
Feed (mobile devices or mobile browser).
þþ Stories: Your ads can appear in people’s stories on Instagram. Ads in stories only
appear to people browsing stories on Instagram.
Messenger app
þþ Your ads can appear in people’s stories on Instagram. Ads in stories only appear to
people browsing stories on Instagram.
Audience network - Your ads appear on apps and websites in the Audience Network.
When companies buy ads through Facebook, they can choose to have their ads
distributed in the Audience Network.
Facebook states that native adverts run on the Audience Network get 60% more engagement.
As you create your ad in the Ads Manager or Power Editor you will be able to preview
how it will look. You can select multiple placements within the same ad set. Just be aware
that budget will not be spread evenly. Facebook claims that 85% of it’s ad revenue is
driven through mobile as this is where most users are, so it is worth considering how to
optimize your ads for mobile if using this technique. Therefore, typically mobile will take
the majority budget. If you want to control spend between placements simply create a
different ad set for each variant.4
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KEY STRATEGY RECOMMENDATION
Take control in ad budget allocation
Create separate ad sets if you want to control the budget allocation between
mobile and desktop ads.
There are two delivery types you can choose for your ad set: standard and accelerated.
The option chosen affects how the budget will be spent.
Standard Delivery
If you choose standard delivery, your ads are delivered evenly over the course of your
campaign.
Accelerated Delivery
If you choose accelerated delivery, your ads will be delivered as quickly as possible. This
means prioritising speed over efficiency when choosing who to show your ads to, and when.
While this option may prevent you from getting the most purely statistical value from your
ads, there could be contextual value that makes it worth it. For example, if your campaign is
extremely time-sensitive, there might be added value for you in getting all your ads out during
a specific and short time period. In such a case, the trade-off could be worth it.
One of the reasons why Facebook marketing can’t be mastered instantly is the breadth
of advertising options available to brands. The offering is also changed regularly jus to
keep us on our toes!
Facebook maintains a comprehensive ads guide from which we’ve screen grabbed much
of the information in this section.
Let’s first look at the anatomy of an ad in the context of the placement options - note how
the image size and shape varies and how text is truncated in some variants:
Instagram ad anatomy
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KEY STRATEGY RECOMMENDATION
Keep up-to-date with the latest changes in Facebook Ads
Use Facebook’s online Ads guide to check the size specifications of images and
the permitted length of ad copy
Boosting a Post
At the simplest level a ‘Boosted’ Post is an ad because you are paying for exposure
beyond its natural organic reach. Facebook gives you multiple opportunities to throw a
little ad money behind your organic content. With reach levels at an all time low, this is
becoming an increasing necessity to reach remotely sensible numbers of your fans. And
of course boosting a post is an opportunity to reach out beyond your fan base.
Below is an example of a recent post and you’ll see the Boost Post button under the post
in the News Feed:
Once you hit that button you have the option of further targeting who sees it:
Note the warning at the top of this screen grab about 20% text. It’s very easy to boost
posts but they will be rejected if they fail to comply with this requirement. This ad will not
only have possible failed on that criteria, but our use of the Facebook ‘f’ would certainly
have been disallowed.
Facebook Advertising (Updated February 2019)
© Smart Insights (Marketing Intelligence) Limited. Please go to www.smartinsights.com to feedback or access our other guides. 34
5 AD TYPES AND WHAT THEY OFFER
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KEY STRATEGY RECOMMENDATION
Design your posts to allow for Boosts
Use the Facebook Text Overlay tool to check the image:text ratio of posts so that
they can be boosted as promotions.
With boosted posts, you can now also add additional targeting without accessing the ad
through the Ad Manager.
To access the promotion options first make sure you have a CTA set up then click on it
and you will see the Promote option.
Be aware that if your normal cover image contains more than 20% text you’ll need to
upload something within the Ad Policy limits.
Rather than run through examples of every type of advert as these can change, take a
look at Facebook’s ad guide.
When you place an ad, it enters an auction and is competing against all the other
advertisers targeting those people. As mentioned in the relevance section, all ads
compete equally and win based on a combination or bid, quality and performance of
clicks.
You will set a maximum budget and Facebook will estimate the cost of your ads in the
pricing section.
Facebook will optimize your ads to appear to people most like to do what your objective
sets out to achieve. It is important to know that the options available for the advert will
differ depending on your chosen objective. Note that these will be different depending on
the objective you have set for your campaign.
For example, these are the delivery options for boosted posts:
Whereas the options for promoting a Page means that optimization is limited to achieving
Page likes only.
When it comes to pricing, you will see that you can select a bid yourself - we’d always
recommend testing (note that some of these examples are in Dollars - yours is likely to
be in your local currency):
Automatic bid
This is where Facebook calculates the bid with the goal of spending your entire budget
and getting you the most of the result that your advert set is optimized for. We recommend
automatic bidding if you don’t have a specific value in mind for the result that you’re
optimizing for, or are still trying to figure out the right manual bid.
Manual bid
A manual bid is one that sets the maximum amount that you’d be willing to pay for the
result that your advert set is optimized for. Facebook advises against setting your bid at
less than your maximum or your ad may not be fully optimized.
Optimizing for actions is the default for a reason and the bid approach I would normally
recommend.
þþ Average bidding: This option will pace your adverts to avoid using the entire
budget in one go. This means that the cost of some ads will be high, some will be a
lot cheaper.
þþ Maximum bidding: This will give you the maximum advert delivery and as many
conversions as possible, even if it costs more.
þþ Automatic bidding: The main benefit of this is getting the lowest costs. You can
also set a bid cap, like in the previous manual maximum bid option.
þþ Target cost: An enhancement to the previous manual average bid option, making it
easier to scale with stable costs.
You can find out more about Ad Set Bidding on Facebook’s help Pages.
Facebook optimizes for different behaviours depending on the objective that you have
chosen. The table below shows the objective types, what Facebook optimizes for and
how you’re charged for each campaign.
Before you choose a bid, make sure you understand the difference between budget and
bid. Your budget is the maximum amount you’re willing to spend on each campaign you
run. A bid allows you to choose how much you’re willing to pay per click (CPC) or per
1,000 impressions (CPM).
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KEY STRATEGY RECOMMENDATION
Test, test and test again
Test everything. The image, the copy, the placement, the bid type, the bid amount.
Learn from your results, tweak and test again.
1. The merged Ads Manager (self-server) and Power Editor (used by bigger advertisers)
And of course, still an ad of sorts, is the ‘Boost Post’ button which you can use to drive
more reach of your newsfeed content.
Business Manager
Business Manager is a tool to help businesses and agencies manage their Facebook
Pages, add accounts and apps in one place. It is more secure tool for managing access
to Pages and ad accounts, geared towards companies who need to give different
permissions to lots of people giving greater control without the need to be Facebook
friends with work colleagues to get access to pages and ad accounts.
Built to mirror an organisational structure, the Business Manager hierarchy puts Business
Admins at the top with full access to control the permissions for anyone who works on
specific Pages or ad accounts.
Facebook is keen to migrate all advertisers over to Business Manager. It states the
following benefits:
þþ Increased control on who has access to Pages and ad accounts, with ease of
removal or change
You’ll know you are in Business Manager as the usual blue and white environment is now
black and grey:
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KEY STRATEGY RECOMMENDATION
Facebook’s own Business Manager Resources
For the most part, the Pages Manager App is going to be your go-to solution for creating
content and checking Insights or Notifications. If you want to share Posts as your Page,
you can use Facebook within a mobile browser and look for little flag at the bottom
left of the Post. That will allow you to choose the ‘Voice’ you want to use, yourself or one
of the Pages you admin. This is the option accessible on Desktop, so by going into the
mobile browser, you should see it there as well.
This advice will help out with sharing and commenting on Desktop as well.
To revert you will need to bring in a new Page and claim it to Business Manager (own).
Once you do this go to info and you can change your primary Page to the one you just
added. From that point you can release the Page your client wants to keep. Additional
you can bring it back in without claiming the Page to retain the functions in Business
Manager without it affecting your access from the drop down.
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KEY STRATEGY RECOMMENDATION
Getting help with Business Manager
If you are interested in learning more, Social Media Examiner has a helpful article
on setting up Business Manager and using it. Facebook’s own Help Center also
has a useful section on the product.
There is a Facebook Group dedicated to answering questions, providing support
and collecting feedback on Business Manager, moderated by the Facebook
Help Team. If you are using Business Manager this is likely to be helpful to you.
Facebook’s Blueprint also has a helpful section on setting up Business Manager.
Ads Manager
In the past, Facebook has created two tools to administer Facebook advertising; Power
Editor and Ads Manager.
In a nutshell, Facebook Ads Manager was a tool for creating and optimizing campaigns.
Power Editor is a more advanced tool offering additional functions to perform multiple
actions simultaneously and to work with ads more effectively. Power Editor has mostly
been used by experienced advertisers managing advanced and more difficult campaigns,
such as agencies.
Facebook made the move to merge these two tools, creating a new Ads Manager:
þþ Quick creation: Allows the user to set up a campaign, ad set and ad elements in
any order. This is a good choice for more advanced advertisers previously using
Power Editor. This is otherwise known as creating ‘campaign shells’.
þþ Guided creation: This option guides users through the steps of the flow. It is better
for users if they are less familiar with all the components of Facebook advertising
campaigns, or preferred the previous Ads Manager tool. This is for ‘complete
campaigns’.
To simplify reporting, try to include as much information in the name as is helpful for
when coming to review ad effectiveness.
Advanced Facebook marketer, Jon Loomer recommends the following naming convention
that includes the following qualifiers:
þþ Client Name
þþ Page Name
þþ Item Promoted
þþ Objective
þþ Other Variations
It would look something like this (you’d replace each qualifier):
[Client Name] – [Page Name] – [Item Promoted] – [Objective]
Note that a qualifier is only necessary if you create campaigns with variations of that
item. For example, if you don’t take on clients, there’s no need to reserve a spot for the
client name. And if you only manage one Page, that may not be necessary either (though
you may want to plan for expansion).
Ad Set Name
Quite a bit of variations can occur within an ad set, so expect the name of your ad sets
to be more descriptive.
Your ad set name could include details about any of the following:
þþ Daily/Lifetime Budget
þþ Scheduling
þþ Audience Targeted
þþ Placement
þþ Optimization
þþ Pricing
þþ Other Variations
It would look something like this (you’d replace each qualifier):
[Daily/Lifetime Budget] – [Scheduling] – [Audience Targeted] – [Placement] –
[Optimization] – [Pricing] – [Other Variations]
Ad Name
The ad name tends to be a bit simpler, particularly if you’re promoting an existing post.
Here are the qualifiers to consider:
þþ Copy Details
þþ Imagery Details
It would look something like this (you’d replace each qualifier):
[Inline Post, Promoted Post or Unpublished Post] – [Copy Details] – [Imagery
Details]
Now you understand the nuts and bolts of advertising on Facebook, what else should be
considered to make an ad really work?
þþ The novelty or familiarity of the ad/the brand Plus the following creative elements:
þþ The text
þþ Headline
þþ Display link/URL
þþ Link Description
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KEY STRATEGY RECOMMENDATION
Understand where all the ad elements surface and experiment with varying
content
When planning a campaign, create a table or spread sheet with all the headlines,
copy, CTAs and links laid out. Create variants for split testing.
This great HubSpot blog post that analysis 11 Facebook ads that work (and why) is also
worth reading. Writer Amanda Sibley boils their effectiveness down to four factors:
1. Being visual
2. Being relevant
Check out royalty free sites that allow use for commercial posts. Note some require
attribution but you can check the licenses for individual terms:
þþ https://pixabay.com/
þþ https://www.pexels.com/
þþ https://stocksnap.io/
þþ https://unsplash.com/
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KEY STRATEGY RECOMMENDATION
Where to find images
If you use Facebook’s Ads Manager you will get free access to Shutterstock’s huge
library of stock images. If you prefer to integrate text then head over to Canva where
you can buy images for just $1 each and enjoy an easy-to-use publishing platform to
create profession- al-looking graphics incorporating text and images.
This blog article gives lots of examples of adverts that could do better, but let’s look at
some that could do with a little improvement:
Image too small to generate the larger news feed preview (images should be at least
1200x630 for optimum display, but if smaller than 600x315 this smaller image size will
instead be used)
Bad formatting - truncation problems, too much upper case, too many exclamation marks.
Poor creative - no headline or copy under the image, logo too small, missing full stop, and
phone number lost in text.
You can upload sample images to test the percentage of text using the Grid Tool at www.
facebook.com/ads/tools/text_overlay.
Be aware that the rules are quite rigid on this – if more than 5 squares on the grid have
text then it will be rejected.
The above image contains significantly more than 20% text. The image below corrects
this (note that text in a logo is considered to be text).
þþ Memes
þþ Non-essential text
þþ Logos
þþ Legal print
þþ Phone numbers
þþ Watermarks
After 100 impressions, Facebook computers analyse your image to confirm that it aligns with
the 20% rule. This is why ads may initially appear to be accepted only to be rejected later.
Key policies
þþ All ads must have an image (except presumably boosted posts of updates without
one!)
þþ The product being advertised and any related partnerships must be made clear as
in this Amex ad
þþ Similarly any implied partnership with Facebook is not allowed (so don’t use the
logo in your ads!)
þþ You are also not allowed to use images of any Facebook features that imply
Facebook Messages, Wall Posts etc
Landing Pages
þþ Any deals or coupon offers must be accurately reflected on the landing Page
þþ The destination URL must function properly in all browsers and not be a site under
construction
þþ Ads may not direct to landing Pages that trigger pop-ups or pop-unders
þþ Ads may not direct to landing Pages where downloads, malware or spyware are
automatically initiated upon arrival. Nor may they link to a file that requires an
additional program or application to open content
Your ad text or targeting may not assert or imply knowledge of personal information such as:
þþ Age
þþ Gender identity
þþ Criminal record
Rules on images
þþ Images must be appropriate to the product being advertised
þþ Must not be overly sexual, imply nudity or focus unnecessarily on body parts
þþ Ads may not contain adult content, including nudity, depictions of people in explicit or
suggestive positions or activities that are overly suggestive or sexually provocative.
þþ Images may not portray non-existent functionality (the ad below with a fake play
button as rejected)
If you work in these areas be very careful that you understand the compliance in full. I’ve
seen a number of Facebook Pages closed down without warning for relatively low level
infringement.
When you login to Facebook once you have started running ads you’ll likely see something
like this lifetime overview in the right hand side of the screen which gives an overview of
basic advertising metrics.
Facebook Insights
Regardless of whether you spend money on Facebook advertising or not, Facebook
provides an analytics service called Facebook Insights. As well as emailing you a weekly
summary of your page’s progress, you can access the service and download a multitude
of reports.
It is worth keeping an eye on these reports in combination with your ads reporting, to get
a fuller picture of the organic and paid reach for your Page.
Engagement metrics include image/video/link clicks, comments, shares, post likes, and
page likes. Reach is also a key statistic, showing how many people have seen your
content.
This section is intended as a brief introduction and tutorial to the new Insights including
some of the most useful new data.
Facebook has recently updated their Pages Insights offering to help businesses better
understand how they are performing:
þþ Redesigning Page Insights for mobile: This will make it easier to find the most
Once the code is in place, tick the Conversion Tracking option to tell Facebook each
time you create an ad to track it. If you are using Power Editor you can track multiple
conversion goals at the same time.
You can edit this report by clicking the Customise Columns button:
We’d suggest that you create a number of separate reports depending on what you
intend to measure - the possibilities are endless.
Use the Filters option to create a report filtered by keyword or other variable:
Ad Reports functions
Reports can be scheduled to be created an emailed at daily, weekly or monthly intervals:
Google Analytics Social reporting tab also reports referrals from social media sites:
We’d suggest using UTM tracking in all your Facebook ads to allow for accurate tracking
through to Google Analytics.
To build a URL with tags, you’ll need to tell Google the following (* marks required):
You can choose to see a demographic profile of one of three categories of audience:
Below is the data about Musicademy’s custom audience that comprises the people from
the US (you can add whichever countries you like) who have been on guitar-related
Pages on our website:
Here’s a profile of activity on Facebook and by device of people on our mailing list:
Other reports such as household income, retail spending, purchase behaviour and
geographic location are also available.
This can be a helpful market research tool. Not only can you find out more about your
Facebook fans, but any custom audience that you upload.
10 RESOURCES
Other resources
þþ Canva – templates to create designs for Facebook covers, ads etc. Includes useful
image library
þþ Facebook Pages Manager App – android and iPhone app for managing your
Page, and monitoring ads on the go
þþApp creation
þþ Woobox
þþ Shortstack
þþ Tabsite