Tag: Facebook

Facebook is Changing the Game with New Messenger Updates

Facebook made some big announcements today during it’s Messenger webinar, which introduced some new features as well as hinting at potential functionalities coming down the line.

Messenger Codes were announced and my first reaction was “QR Codes are BACK!” These are custom images unique to each Facebook business (and personal) page that, when scanned in the Messenger app will automatically open up a private message with the business page. This is a huge opportunity for engagement and customer service! Imagine the Messenger Code on the side of product packages? Get a package in the mail, but something’s not the right size? Scan the code that’s slapped on the side of the box and start having a conversation with return instructions from the business page directly in seconds. Messenger Codes may finally achieve what QR Codes so valiantly attempted in the past. These are available for download in your page’s message inbox now.

Then there is also the recently introduced Messenger Links that use a page’s username to create a short link (think Bit.ly) that when clicked, automatically opens a private message within Messenger with the business. Try it out with your business, brand or personal page. The universal format is: m.me/PageName to get your own username.

You can also encourage conversations by being quick to respond as a corresponding badge will appear on your page while helping establish response time guidelines. You may have seen these badges popping up on more and more Facebook pages recently. The requirements consist of responding to 90% of messages within 15 minutes to receive the badge and meet the threshold of “Very Responsive.” Just remember that this threshold is only for the previous 7 day period, so if you have done this one week, but then don’t the next week, you will lose your badge.

You can also set an automatic greeting reply for when a user messages your page to set expectations and provide a link to some FAQ’s or anything else for people who start a conversation with you.

Use the “Message” button to automatically open up a private conversation to respond to sensitive or private questions in a private message. This is a tool of unparalleled value for anyone who has ever been tasked with handling responding for a large company. Oftentimes best practices call for responding to a disgruntled customer in a private message so this helps take care of that, keeping the page drama free while also creating improved customer service.

You can also turn on Away Messages! Viva la AOL Instant Messenger! So if you’re away from the computer for a while or the business just won’t have anyone available to respond at certain hours just set this up and let your customers know exactly when you’ll get back to them. You can enable away messages even if you don’t have specific business hours too.

Another cool feature are Context Cards within the message inbox, which are actually a snapshot, or a trading card if you will, of the person who messaged you. These Context Cards allow a business to get more personal info on users such as where they live, where they work etc. to provide a more personalized and custom message.

One thing to note for advertisers is that you can’t reach out to a customer unsolicited. So you can’t message a person who hasn’t reached out to you directly via messenger — yet. Facebook specifically said they will look into features like this in the future, but currently want to “empower customers to take the first step.” But once a person messages a page, then you can interact with them, send them special offers etc. all through Messenger.

The best part is all of these new Facebook features are available globally right now!

May 26, 2016
Attack the Top of the Sales Funnel with Facebook Video

Facebook rolls out new ad types all the time that allow advertisers to target users in unique ways or to reach different goals. Combining these various strategies into a few campaigns going through the longer sales funnel is one of the best ways to take advantage of all these ad types. This is what I like to call Attacking the Top of the Sales Funnel.

Figure out who your key demo is for this campaign; who are you trying to hit? Is it men of a certain age in a certain radius? Moms with an interest in soccer? Whatever it is, set your targeting and run a Facebook video campaign.

The beauty of Facebook video is you can sort out the users that are actually interested in your product based on who actually watched certain percentages of the video. Make sure to check off “Create audiences from people who view this video” under the designated Call To Action Button.

Doing this will allow Facebook to build a Custom Audience of users who have viewed your video. If your video gets 10,000 impressions, but only 5,000 users actually watch the video, then why would you want to waste ad spend on the 5,000 people that scrolled right past your content? Exactly, follow up with users who have already expressed an interest and given you their attention.

Now it’s time to attack the top of the sales funnel. Using this Custom Audience you have created a perfect retargeting list to hit Facebook users with a follow up message or offer. This is particularly effective if the video is more of a brand awareness play and then retargeting users in the Custom Audience with a Carousel Ad with specific products/features.

Finally, based on the results of your Carousel Ad determine which product or feature is getting the best engagement and most clicks from users? Then jump one level further down the funnel and closer to a conversion by serving up a specific offer or special to those users – based directly off which Carousel slide performed the best.

Courtesy of Facebook for Business

This is a great tactic to increase efficiency of your ad spend. Rather than throwing videos, promo posts, website clicks ads etc. all out randomly and seeing what sticks, this allows you to methodically whittle down your audience size while also increasing the user attention, interest and the likelihood of ultimately making a purchase.

May 6, 2016
Lower the Barrier of Entry to Drive More Conversions

Currently the average conversion on mobile takes 24 taps. This is why it is crucial to lower the barrier of entry to complete a conversion, whether that be an e-commerce purchase, a sign-up or a form fill. Making things simpler and quicker for your consumers will help improve conversion rates and total conversions. Whether it’s eliminating unnecessary steps in a shopping cart checkout process or enabling users to check out as guests, the easier the process is, the more likely consumers are to complete the desired action.

If form fills to gather customer information is your goal, consider running a Facebook Lead Ad as it definitely lowers the barrier of entry. Rather than displaying an ad, requiring a click, sending a user to your website, waiting for it to load, manually filling out a form and then submitting it — a Lead Ad is a Two Tap process.

Originally created as a quick way to optimize form fills for mobile users, these ads have a person click once on the ad, which will automatically fill various fields in the form based on information from their Facebook profile, and then a second click to approve and send this info to the advertiser. And with the ability to integrate these Lead Ads with CRM systems like Salesforce, this eliminates the need for a lengthy process and helps quickly grab the relevant information advertisers crave.

March 30, 2016
Facebook Bidding Strategies: Engagement vs CPM vs CPC
As Facebook continues to develop new ad types, selecting the right bidding strategy for each becomes even more critical. This slight adjustment in bidding strategy, whether bidding for Engagement, CPM, CPC etc. will have a huge impact on ad performance. So instead of defaulting to running a Promoted Post simply because it reaches a large number of people, it’s important to identify what the goals of an ad campaign are and act accordingly.

A lot of times people will run Promoted Posts for sale offers and simply bid on Post Engagement (it’s the default option), which will optimize ad delivery for people most likely to engage with the post. The only problem is that this doesn’t necessarily correlate with sales as it will optimize to display ads to users most likely to comment, like, share etc. Facebook reps describe these as “clicky” users, who are more likely to comment, like or share, but not necessarily hit your website and make a purchase.

Below are a few quick tips for your Facebook ad campaigns, depending on the goal of the ad:

Goal: Reach a large number of users and drive Impressions

Ad Type: Promoted Post

Bid Strategy: CPM or Daily Unique Reach/Reach & Frequency (if you’re concerned with delivery/frequency) to blast the ad out

Goal: Clicks to a Website

Ad Type: Website Clicks

Bid Strategy: CPC optimized for Link Clicks

*Note: If the audience size isn’t that large you can bid on CPC and optimize for Impressions, but Link Clicks will be the most effective way of driving results if applicable.

”Engagement doesn’t necessarily correlate to sales anymore.”
- As with most things, take this with a grain of salt, but the underlying point here is that bidding on Post Engagement may not be the most effective way to drive sales. Think of it this way, if bidding on engagement you’re telling Facebook to bid on users most likely to like, comment and share where in the end what you ultimately want is people to go to the website and convert/make a purchase instead. So a Website Clicks campaign makes more sense for specific sales/offers.
  Using the Best Bid Strategy w/ Each Ad Objective
- A Promoted Post bidding on Post Engagement would be more effective bidding for CPM if your goal is brand awareness/getting the ad in front of as many people as possible, not necessarily bidding for users who will engage on the post itself.
- Promoted posts probably should not be used if the campaign goal is to get people to click through to the website, unless you are altering the bid strategy on that campaign to CPC (specifically Link Clicks)
- “90% of offline sales come from people who don’t interact with the ads (likes, comments etc.)”
- *Note: If you’re still using the old Facebook conversion tracking code, the best practice is to place the new Facebook pixel on the client website and give it 30 days to build data before switching from the old code to the new pixel.
March 25, 2016
Reporting Facebook Conversions (Accurately)

Confused by your conversion data on Facebook? Seeing data trickle in or maybe conversions are missing from your insights? Facebook reports all conversions as a “Conversion,” whether it’s a View Through Conversion or a Direct Conversion; Facebook does not differentiate like Google does. So that’s why it’s important to set the “Attribution Window” appropriately and leave yourself the right amount of time if trying to match up conversions with Google Analytics or a client’s CRM data.

How Facebook Defines Conversions:

Facebook bundles everything into the one “Conversion” metric. The default attribution model is this:

– User Viewed Ad and Converted Within 1 Day

– User Clicked Ad and Converted Within 28 Days

To adjust this, go to your Ads Manager, click on “Columns” and select “Customize Columns.”

In the bottom right hand side of this menu you will see what the Attribution Window is currently set to with the option to adjust it.

Set your Attribution Window appropriately, give the campaigns the same amount of time to sync up with your Analytics or client back-end system and your reporting headaches should be gone!

March 23, 2016
Understanding the Facebook Pixel
The Facebook Pixel has helped bridge the gap in attribution for any business running certain ad types on Facebook. Taking advantage of the Pixel will allow you to track conversions, create remarketing campaigns and track how various audiences are interacting with your site. It’s important to install the Facebook Pixel sooner than later as the old Facebook conversion tracking codes will be getting deactivated by Facebook in the second half of 2016 so it’s necessary to have all clients over to the new Facebook pixel by the summer of 2016.

The Basics
- The “Standard Objectives” that can be set in the pixel (Lead, Complete Registration etc.) are the 9 most requested actions.
- Pixel improves cross-device tracking based on the user’s Facebook identity across desktop and mobile
- 99% of people who saw a Facebook ad and purchased in-store never clicked on an ad at all.
Difference in Conversion Tracking Options
- Standard Events: These are best when you want to pass back data (which action was performed on the site), when utilizing dynamic product ads and dynamic values for products, and ideal when access to the website’s back-end code is available.
  - Standard Events tracking is a stronger method of tracking conversions than Custom Conversion, so use this before Custom Conversions when possible.
    
    In Page Event Tracking — Used when a person submits a form but a new page URL doesn’t load. “Standard events are going to be the best way to track that event if there is no specific URL you can use to create a rule.”
- Custom Conversions: The best advantage of Custom Conversions are that they don’t need to have additional code added to the client’s website (other than the standard Facebook pixel), and allows for tracking of up to 20 separate conversions. This is great for when access to the client’s website back-end is unavailable. Custom Conversions can also be used to track users through the conversion funnel using the specific landing page URLs.
  - For example if you have your Facebook pixel placed on a client’s website and then in the future need to change conversion parameters or add new conversions, this allows you to track this by creating Custom Conversions which use the main Facebook Pixel and track based on the URL or a piece of the URL (i.e. Thank You page) as well as the category (ie. “purchase”). “It is a simple way to define new types of conversions.”
Examples of Uses for the Pixel
- A college website wants to drive leads for people that wanted more info specifically on getting a Master’s Degree. Create a parameter that is a “Content Type” for the Master’s option, so that will say to Facebook this is a specific event (Master’s Degree) and allow Facebook to segment out this info specifically rather than tracking all leads as one conversion.
- Add Standard Event tracking to a specific button on the website, which is great for a form fill or a client that doesn’t have a Thank You page to support conversion tracking. This involves a bit of a workaround, which is broken down in the Facebook Developers How To.
How to Make Sure the Facebook Pixel is Live
- To double check if a Facebook Pixel is working, there is a tool called the Facebook Pixel Helper that is a Google Chrome widget, which can be used to check to see if there are any pixels on a specific page and if it is working. This is a widget I use all the time to check in on code installations quickly and easily, definitely recommend it.
Cross Device Conversions
- A great experiment to run is to explore running mobile specific campaigns aimed at getting people to your website/driving brand awareness and running desktop specific campaigns aimed at driving people to pages for adding payment info and completing conversions.
  - Go into cross-device reports to see how much traffic and how many conversions are coming from which devices and go from there.
Taking Advantage of the Purchase Funnel (when available)
- Move Optimization Event Up the Funnel — Rather than giving Facebook, say 200 pieces of data from final conversions to optimize a campaign, try moving the Optimization Event up to the initial checkout page where Facebook will now have, say 2,000 pieces of data to optimize for.
Segment Audiences Based on Site Usage
- Segment Audiences based on how users interact with a website using 2 main options:
  - How Interested Are They and How Long Ago Did They Visit?
    
    Someone who visited the website 1 day ago and did a search but did not add anything to their cart; try setting up a basic remarketing campaign, but if that audience doesn’t convert in another week or so they may not be worth it.
    
    Someone who visited the website 7 days ago and made a high value purchase; create a Lookalike Audience of these users while also remarketing with additional complimentary products/items.
    
    Someone who visited 30 days ago and is a member but has not returned, hit them with a re-engagement message (specific offer, promotion etc.), but they may be more likely to lapse as a customer.
Graphics and stats courtesy of Facebook. For a deeper dive, you can watch the Facebook Pixel Webinar here.
March 23, 2016