by dennis.yu | Apr 10, 2014 | B2B Marketing, Facebook Advertising, Power Editor
Did you see this today?
It’s in the ads manager.
You used to have just workplace targeting.
But now it’s expanded into 4 categories with subcategories.
Look at office type, for example.
If you’re selling enterprise software, like Marketo, you’d want to choose “corporation”.
But if you’re selling marketing automation software to small businesses, you’d choose “small office” or “home office”.
This is super cool for B2B marketers. Take any of your already performing ads and duplicate them, filtering down by these work categories.
We did have job title targets before, embedded in precise interest targets. But now it’s in its own bucket.
And now that it is, we can do combination targeting, which wasn’t possible before.
If you’ve always wanted to filter down by people who are marketing managers AND are high income AND like Eloqua, now it’s possible.
Before, you could only target folks who like Eloqua OR are marketing managers, which might be too big an audience.
For the ad geeks, feast yourselves on boolean logic here.
For the rest of us, continue to use workplace and job title targets to make sure you’re influencing the influencers, such as the press and industry folks.
Here’s a fun example:
We co-presented with Marketo at Marketo Summit on how Marketo drives leads using Facebook
We posted it our blog and then ran ads targeting people who work at Marketo.
Less than 1,000 folks, but they’re all high quality.
Of course, we can target folks who like Marketo
And target folks who have job titles of “digital marketing” and “chief marketing office”, filtering by corporations:
We might even target folks who work at Eloqua, like Eloqua, work at Forrester, like Forrester, and so forth.
And to think that some people say that B2B lead gen via Facebook isn’t possible?
Hey, that’s more traffic for the rest of us!
by dennis.yu | Mar 17, 2014 | Facebook Advertising, Power Editor
Google PPC pros have long-awaited this.
First off, relax!
You don’t need to do anything with your existing campaigns.
Each of your ads lives in their own ad set (or ad group, as most people call them).
Budgeting and end dates are at the ad group level.
So now you don’t need to create one campaign per post anymore.
Fewer campaigns to manage, less mess!
There is a new tab to look at ad sets, just like you used to look at campaigns and ads.
And the on-off toggle buttons are cute.
To be able to see pacing ($X of $Y spent) or delivery status is interesting for an agency.
But you’ve had this data all along, anyway.
The best way to use ad sets is to test out creative combos.
Within an ad set, you’d have multiple ads, each with different targets, but against a particular post.
It’s no different than Google AdWords, where you have ad groups that are around the testing of ads. The reason why they’ve been called “ad groups” the last 15 years, as opposed to “interest groups” is that it’s around ad copy.
On Facebook, it’s about the organic post creative that you’re amplifying.
And the campaign is still by objective.
So the audience > engagement > conversion framework is still rock solid.
What do you guys think?
by dennis.yu | Feb 18, 2014 | Facebook Advertising, Partner Categories, Power Editor
Since Partner Category data (available as targeting in Power Editor only) is based on offline data, you can expect the impact to be offline, as well.
If you’re new to Facebook ads, Partner Category data comes from three data providers that match credit card, shopping, motor vehicle registration, and other such sources against Facebook users. There are over 1,000 public categories you can use. It’s available in the United States right now, but will roll out internationally soon.
If you’ve already mastered the basics of the 3 campaign funnel, then it’s time to look at advanced topics like Partner Categories and other Power Editor shenanigans.
So if you’re matching offline purchase data to drive in-store sales, you’re going to be successful.
Same for if you’re a CPG (consumer packaged goods like soap and sugar water) trying to drive awareness for product launch.
But if you’re trying to drive on-line signups using the type of car they drive, whether they have an airline loyalty card, and if their employment status, it’s going to be harder.
We’re not saying NOT to use partner category targeting if you’re not driving a brand or in-store campaign. Rather, you can use them to create more ads to supplement your existing campaigns.
If you have a retail location for customers to visit you, then definitely use partner category targeting. Just make sure that you know how to measure the incremental impact of this.
Income, job title, vehicle ownership, purchase categories, and demographics are a great indirect way to target. You can think of them as an extension to precise interests.
by dennis.yu | Dec 10, 2013 | Facebook Advertising, Power Editor
Direct marketers are all too eager to drive immediate conversion. This leads to silly behavior which frustrates them (hey, Facebook doesn’t convert), while aggravating users.
The key is to balance your audience building, engagement, and conversion efforts. You should group your ads into these 3 campaigns.
If you don’t, your ads will be mixed up and you’ll not be able to optimize efficiently. If you see “multiple” in the results column, like below, there’s something wrong.
The new “business objective” ad flow inadvertently creates multiple ads with multiple objectives per campaign. So don’t do it. Create campaign where you have a single objective per campaign, to get fans, drive engagement, collect emails, drive conversions, and so forth.
The more complex your product offering and the more stages you have in your funnel, the more important to separate out your campaigns.
Decide how much to allocate to different points in the funnel (don’t put it all in conversion), and make sure to have ads with the same goals in each campaign.
Name your campaigns as 1_audience, 2_engagement, 3_conversion, and so forth, so it’s easy to sort your funnel in the ads manager or Power Editor.
by dennis.yu | Dec 9, 2013 | Facebook Advertising, Power Editor
Aren’t existing customers the easiest source of incremental revenue?
Original Juan, makers of spicy hot barbecue sauce, has taken their list, uploaded a custom audience, and advertised their Black Friday specials into the newsfeed.
They drove 4 conversions for only $26.72, which is a cost per conversion of $6.68.
You’ll have to decide if this is an acceptable conversion cost for you, whether it’s to acquire a new customer that might spend a lot more over the course of their lifetime or the incremental revenue from an existing customer.
The CTR and conversion rates on showing messages to existing customers is clearly higher than those not aware of your brand, it’s apples and oranges, just like brand vs non-brand terms on Google.
4 conversions on 52 clicks is a 7.7% conversion rate. Of course, if you’re in B2B lead gen or selling products that are over $100, often a 1% conversion rate can still be great.
The secret to custom audiences is to build up your list over time and mention the special only when the timing is right, when it’s your special sale or event. It takes patience to know when to sow versus reap.
by dennis.yu | Dec 6, 2013 | Facebook Advertising, Power Editor
If you’re trying to create a page post ad in Power Editor and using FOF (friend of fan) targeting to narrow down your audience, you’re perhaps frustrated this option has disppeared:
Others have verified the bug.
Good news is that it’s still in the regular ads manager.
So that your workaround for now.
FOF targeting is critical to trim down audiences to a testable size and to increase CTR, as I explain
here.
Even 3 years ago,
connection targeting was the cornerstone of Facebook ads, because it helped people see what their friends are doing. It was paid word of mouth.
I expect that Facebook will keep trimming the ad options available to us, to automatically piggyback sponsored stories on top of brand posts and to automatically choose FOF audiences to serve ads to first, even if you don’t specify it.
When advertisers whine about how difficult Facebook ads are, what they’re really saying is that they don’t want to deal with the complexity.
It’s Facebook’s problem to solve
Rather than forcing us to bid CPM or CPC (I don’t ever recommend this), wouldn’t it be smarter to let Facebook do the work?
- • Optimized CPM bidding on the offsite pixel allows Facebook to choose who to target and also decide how much to pay.
- • FOF targeting increases your CTR by automatically finding the right friends to show in each ad.
- • Custom audiences (and especially lookalike audiences based on similarity) makes Facebook find the right combination of attributes to target, so you don’t have to figure out the combos yourself.
What’s your “favorite” Power Editor bug?
Do you think Facebook marketing will ever get to the point that you can just press a button, no ad copy, targeting, or bidding?
