Tag Archive for: Facebook ads

Common Facebook Ads Mistakes and How to Fix Them

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The benefits of advertising your business on Facebook are endless. With over a billion active users, cutting edge features, and detailed targeting ability, why wouldn’t you market yourself there? Despite all its advantages, many businesses still struggle to gain qualified leads from Facebook Ads. 

Advertising on Facebook isn’t as easy as everyone believes it to be, but it can be worth it. If you don’t put in proper time and effort into your ads, it could result in the waste of a lot of budget. Here are the most common Facebook Ads mistakes made by marketers and how to fix them. 

Audience Selection is too Narrow or too Broad 

Facebook provides extremely detailed targeting capabilities. Most people believe that the more specific you get with your targeting, the more effective it will be. This, however, could actually be your downfall. When your audience selection is too narrow you risk exhausting the segment too quickly, driving up your cost per click. The other issue that can result from overly-specific targeting is lack of responses. No matter how pin-pointed your audience is, only a small percentage will respond. When it comes to upper funnel advertising, numbers are the most important, and if your audience is too niche, the numbers are not on your side. 

On the other hand if your audience is too broad, you risk serving your ad to people who aren’t interested in your offer. Again, you could drive up the cost per click because of a poor audience-message match, or you risk paying for clicks that won’t convert to leads or customers.

Wrong Bid Strategy 

Oftentimes marketers just go with the default option when it comes to bid strategy. This is fine in some cases, but if the automatic option for lowest cost isn’t delivering results, it might be time to rethink. Here are the the other available bid strategies and what they’re best used for:

  • Bid Cap: Best for when you want to set a max bid across auctions to control cost and reach as many users as possible at that bid. 
  • Cost Cap: Best for when you want to maximize cost-efficiency or you need to keep cost within a specific threshold. 
  • Target Cost: Best for maintaining a consistent cost. 
  • Value Optimization within Min ROAS: Best if ROAS is the primary measure of success and you’re able to pass back transaction values to our platform. 
  • Highest Value: Best for getting the highest ROAS, want to spend full budget and when unsure of min ROAS/bid amount.

Too Large of an Ask 

Facebook users don’t have the same intent as those on search engines. If you’re asking for a large commitment from someone that has just been exposed to your brand for the first time, you’ll likely get poor results. When you’re still at the top of the funnel, you should be focusing on smaller asks, such as newsletter sign-ups, likes, comments, shares, etc. Once they have had more engagement, you can begin pushing larger asks, such as purchases, event sign-ups, etc.

Failing to Test Your Campaigns 

Launching ads on Facebook is easy. Finding a successful strategy, however, is not. The only real way to know what works and what doesn’t is by testing it. This sounds like more work, but Facebook actually makes A/B testing simple. A/B testing lets you change variables, such as your ad creative, audience or placement, to determine which strategy performs best and improve future campaigns. An A/B test lets you quickly compare both strategies to see which one performs best. After choosing which variable you want to test, Facebook divides your budget to equally and randomly split exposure between each version of your creative, audience, or placement. A/B testing can then measure the performance of each strategy on a cost per result basis or cost per conversion lift basis with a holdout. If you don’t test your way to success from the beginning, you may never figure out how to make Facebook Ads work for your business.

Final Thoughts 

The Facebook Ads platform is simple, but getting quality conversions can be difficult, which is why many businesses struggle with it. Luckily, these common issues are easy to resolve. Remember, there’s no one-size-fits-all answer to campaign optimization. The best strategy for you ultimately depends on your products, website, customer lifecycle, objectives, and intended user experience. 

At Onimod Global we are experts in SEM and social media marketing. We know which platforms are best for brands, and create visibility for brands where customers are searching, interacting, and ultimately converting. Find out more about we do, or contact us today!

Facebook’s New Lead Generation Messenger Feature and What it Means for Advertisers

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On August 29th Facebook started their global roll out of their new lead generation feature in Messenger to all advertisers. This feature allows businesses to create an automated question and answer experience within their Messenger app that launches via click-to-Messenger ads on Facebook News Feed. This is just one of the many new tools Facebook has introduced in the past year with the intentions of streamlining the advertising and communication processes from brands to users. 

 

How it works:

The automated lead generation feature is designed to be used in conjunction with click-to-Messenger ads, which triggers conversation between businesses and Facebook users. If you’re unfamiliar with click-to-Messenger ads, they were one of three new ad additions Facebook released back in February. These ads appear in user’s regular News Feed and will open a Messenger chat with the brand if the ad is clicked. With the new feature, businesses can now set up an automated question experience. The ad opens Messenger and kicks off a set of questions that can be answered through pre-filed or free form text. The system is also designed to send follow-up reminders if users do not complete the questions. 

Businesses can integrate Messenger with their CRM provider to capture the information provided by customers and identify qualified leads. Then, Pages can manually continue the conversation through Pages Inbox, Pages Manager App, or a third party-live chat provider. 

 

What it means for advertisers: 

According to a recent survey, 42% of those polled said they expect a response via an online chatbot within five seconds of sending a message. By integrating an automated lead generation feature that directly connects a CRM platform to its click-to-Messenger ads, brands are not only able to respond more quickly to customer inquiries, but also streamline all communication with their customers on the platform.

 Facebook says that “businesses engaging with potential leads in their preferred channels are seeing results, and finding it easy to continue the conversation and seamlessly nurture leads in Messenger.” They reported that RIFT Tax, a financial services company, used the new feature to increase its customer base of Armed Forces members and increased their qualified leads by 42%. They were able to respond to users in less than 10 minutes, which increased their lead resolve rate by 18%. 

Along with Facebook ads targeting, this feature allows advertisers to further drive interested people into conversation with your business. You can start to take action on leads in Messenger when it’s convenient for both you and your customers. You can easily send reminders to users that haven’t completed the questions, and nurture leads where they spend their time. Finally, with an integrated CRM, your sales team can start immediately taking action. 

 

To try out the lead generation feature:

  1. Visit Ads Manager.
  2. Select “Messenger Objective” and set “click to Messenger” as your message destination. The lead generation template is under the Ad Level in “Message Setup” section. 
  3. Select the option “Generate Leads” and click “+ Create Chat.” 
  4. Add a welcome message, a question, a thank you, a disqualifying message, a completion reminder, and your privacy policy. 
  5. Finalize the setup and submit for approval. 

 

Final Thoughts 

Currently, there are around 300,000 developers building on Messenger, and people and businesses exchanging over 20 billion messages on the platform each month. This option helps to improve the bots and conversation process overall. The more options business have to utilize them, the more popular they will become, and as utility increases, you can also expect consumers to become more attuned to bot usage, further boosting their appeal. 

 

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Facebook Is Bringing Augmented Reality Ads To The News Feed

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Facebook is getting creative with advertising content that their users can engage with: augmented reality!

For those of you unfamiliar with augmented reality, and especially the use of it in advertisements, it is extremely interactive and allows you to try out a virtual version of a product in a real-world environment. The example below from Engadget is how this technology will potentially be implemented into the Facebook advertising space.

 

This advertising will be available to only U.S. users in the entry launch. You as a consumer will be able to try on clothes, accessories, cosmetics, and even try out some AR-based games and apps.

Michael Kors was the first company to try out the new AR ads, and as you can see above, consumers were able to try on sunglasses and purchase them straight from the ad they were engaging with. In addition to Michael Kors, Wayfair, Sephora, Pottery Barn, NYX Professional Makeup, Bobbi Brown and King are all companies testing out the AR ads as well.

Due to the significant increase in AR popularity, the release of AR ads was no surprise to marketers. Almost 80 million people in the U.S. engage with AR monthly, and this number is expected to rise to 120 million by 2021.

AR is already regularly used and very successful in Facebook Messenger, so incorporating it into the News Feed is a natural next step for the technology. Nike used AR in Messenger to sell exclusively their new Kyrie 4s shoe, and the shoe sold it in only one hour. Clearly there was a ton of room for opportunity in sales with this interactive form of advertising. Digiday shares an example of AR advertising being used and how revolutionary it really can be:

In May, Snapchat said more than 100 advertisers were already buying its AR ads pro-grammatically and that a Foot Locker and Jordan Brand campaign using four AR ads saw an average play time of 45 seconds and over four million impressions.

An additional tool, the Video Creation Kit, Facebook has introduced will help advertisers create video ads with existing images. More news will come in August when it will be available on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Facebook’s Audience Network.

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Vero: The Social Media Platform Free of Data Mining, Bots, and Ads

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Could this be the next big thing in social media? Or is it all too good to be true? The jury is still out, but the future does look considerably promising for Vero.

Comparison

Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg was under fire again this week for the platform’s privacy policies. Zuckerberg simply stated that users all agree to meet each of Facebook’s terms and conditions when they sign up for a Facebook account.

Facebook is very clear about how the platform stores information about users, and this information is then used to better target consumers through the Facebook Ads platform. Since this is the primary source of income for Facebook, it is obvious that this is of primary concern to them as well. As a digital marketer, this kind of information is absolutely amazing, but as a consumer, this is concerning to say the least.

Many consumers are becoming more and more drawn to the idea of keeping their lives truly private. It is often found to be “creepy” and “invasive” when consumers are served ads for items they recently viewed or even those that they merely spoke of. All of these irritants provide a prime opportunity for a social media platform like Vero to strike.

What is Vero?

As stated on their website, Vero claims itself to be, “a social network for anyone who loves anything enough to share it – and wants control over who they share it with. Just like we do in real life.”

The whole purpose behind Vero is to allow people a space to share their interests, free from the worry of being bombarded by ads once they do. For example, if you were to make a post on Facebook about a designer dress, you would likely receive lots of advertisements afterward trying to sell you similar dresses or similar pieces from that designer.

Vero does not do this. Instead, anything posted on this platform is serving no other purpose than to please you by expressing and exploring things you personally connect with.

Vero is also very specific in the types of connections you would wish to make. The platform offers four separate groupings every time you post. These groupings consist of close friends, friends, acquaintances, and followers. Ever wanted to post something for your friends to see but not for your boss to see? Yeah, Vero thought so too.

Each and every feature of Vero is designed with the consumer’s typical social media frustrations in mind. This new platform is clearly trying to break away from the pack by offering everything that others aren’t, and so far it has been working to Vero’s advantage.

Concerns For Vero

In light of all of the positive features to Vero, there are also a few problems to consider. The company recently experienced troubles with their terms of service. This conflict was resolved by an updated version of the agreement that made it clear to users that Vero does not own their own content like they had previously suggested.

The company’s CEO, Ayman Hariri, has also brought a fair amount of controversy to the company. According to Gulf Business, Hariri’s family was sued by 30,000 workers at their construction firm for unpaid wages. Hariri claims to have cut all professional ties with his family and also claims to have divested from Vero to keep the brand image more reputable.

Going forward, it will be interesting to see if Vero can actually manage to capitalize on the public’s discontent with platforms like Facebook, or if they too will fizzle out in the near future like so many other “next big thing” platforms have in the past.

For more articles on social media and digital advertising please visit the Onimod Global news section. There you will find relevant and recent information about the incredible industry of digital marketing. Enjoy!

How to Digitally Optimize Your Campaign for the Hotel Industry

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One of the most inspiring aspects of digital marketing is that it can be useful across an incredible number of different industries. Each industry comes with its own unique strengths and caveats, and the industry of hospitality is no different.

Step One: Strategize

Of course, digital marketing success cannot be achieved by simply setting up a campaign through Bing or Google. This action does not make you a search engine marketing expert. In order for any marketing campaign to be successful, there needs to be a certain amount of effort put into formulating a strategy.

This basic and primary phase is so often understated or ignored, and unfortunately this ignorance can cause serious problems down the road. It is not enough to just generate leads. Instead, you should be focused on gaining quality conversions. What is the use in having thousands of respondents who will never actually book a stay in your hotel?

Step Two: Make Use of Your Resources

When it comes to advertising for your hotel, there are many different digital tools that you can utilize. A major advantage to digital marketing is that it gives you the ability to generate quality leads for a relatively low price.

In the world of digital advertising, two major brands dominate; Google and Facebook. These will be your go-to ad platforms as you begin to construct a digital marketing campaign for your hotel.

These two platforms possess several strengths such as:

  • Low cost per conversion.
  • Localized ads to target consumers currently located near you.
  • Mobile ads that appeal to the preferences of consumers today who are looking for ease and convenience in their purchases.
  • Native advertising throughout the regularly used social media and search engines that consumers use in their every day routine.

The list goes on, but these four reasons alone are enough to peak the interest of any hotel brand. There are also many other platforms that your brand can utilize, but these two advertising platforms should serve as a good baseline for your first steps in digital marketing.

Step 3: Review and Revise

It is always important to review a campaign before it is launched. This final step helps to rid the campaign of any minute errors that may not have been noticed the first time around. Taking a second look also provides the marketer with the chance to make sure that all ads align directly with the campaign’s mission. It can be fairly easy for a digital campaign to split off into a slightly different direction as it is making its way through the construction process.

This stage also provides a period in which you can review your other marketing sources and make sure that they are up to date. For example, many brands neglect their website and the incredible impact it has upon their brand. Brilliant and engaging ads will do little to convince a consumer of quality when all ads lead back to a broken and outdated website.

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As always, the digital marketing experts from Onimod Global are here to make sure that you receive the best information possible regarding the digital marketing industry. Our content specialists frequently publish new content pertaining directly to industry news and trends.

To access our full compilation of news articles, please click here. Thank you, and we look forward to providing you with more digital marketing insights soon!

Paid Advertising Metrics That Matter

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There is no busier time of the year for an advertiser than the holidays. As millions of consumers are looking to purchase gifts for their loved ones, we advertisers are here competing against one another for their attention.

Digital technologies have allowed advertisers much more access into the everyday life of the consumer, which is an incredible advantage for most. However, it is not enough to simply run a digital marketing campaign unless you can accurately measure and interpret its results. So what do you need to look for?

AdWords Pay Per Click

SearchEngineLand.com has recently published an article that discusses the best measurements to analyze when assessing the value of a PPC campaign, particularly those carried out through Google AdWords. The article brings many important topics to light, and is centered around 4 major areas of concern for AdWords PPC campaigns:

  1. High Cost Per Click = low profitability
  2. Long-tail keywords are a waste of money
  3. More clicks don’t mean more conversions
  4. There is no silver bullet

Facebook

Facebook has completely dominated the market when it comes to social media advertising. With more than 2 billion active users, Facebook provides an ideal consumer base for most businesses. The platform is also equipped with many different tools to help marketers keep track of how well their campaigns are performing.

The Facebook Pixel is just such a tool. As you are setting up your campaign, you are given the option to track users with the Facebook Pixel. This allows marketers to get a more complete picture of the customer journey by embedding a tiny, pixel-sized image into the ad. A similar Onimod blog post discusses this topic a bit further with the recent debut of the Snapchat Pixel. To read the full article, please click HERE.

Another highly useful Facebook tool is their split testing option. This campaign type allows the marketer to run two of the exact same ads to two completely different audiences. This form of A/B testing helps advertisers get a better idea of who their target consumers truly are.

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At Onimod Global, our content creation team strives to consistently offer the latest industry news combined with expert insight. We have many other articles relating to this subject of paid advertising metrics, including:

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3 Reasons Why Your Business Should Utilize Location-Based Ads

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1.) The Potential

It’s no secret that the use of mobile devices is skyrocketing. According to a report on SmartInsights, the average individual in the US spends 87 hours each month browsing on a smartphone. With so many consumers engaging with these devices throughout the day, it creates a wealth of opportunity for marketers and retailers.

Another report conducted by Google states that half of consumers visit a physical store immediately after researching the store on their phone. Simply put, if you’re not utilizing location-based ads, you’re missing out on an outrageous amount of potential sales.

 

2.) Consumers Like Customization

There are many technologies that allow the advertiser to target a specific location, such as beacons, geolocation, geofencing, and geotargeting. These many advanced mechanisms create a more familiar and customized experience for the consumer, which is often well-received. Potential customers enjoy seeing ads that are close to their physical location because it saves them the time of weeding out places that are too far away.

Beacons allow a retailer to offer notifications and promotions once customers are inside of their store. The only drawback is that beacons operate through Blutooth, which many users turn off to save on battery life.

Geolocation uses information to determine a user’s location. A consumer’s IP address or GPS location allows this technology to be possible. This is primarily how location-based mobile marketing is achieved.

Geofencing is the creation of a digital parameter or “fence”. Once a user enters the fence, they suddenly become able to receive special promotions or push notifications.

Geotargeting runs along similar lines to geolocation. This technology uses digital information to determine a user’s location, but it can discover more in-depth insights than geolocation. With the user’s permission, geotargeting can access purchase history and unique preferences to customize an advertisement to that user. Loyal customers can easily be rewarded with a special offer, or narrow channels like soon-to-be-mothers in the greater Ft. Lauderdale area can be connected to a nearby retailer.

 

3.) Stop Overspending for Your Ads

Dominant advertising platforms such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook Ads all reward advertisers that create higher quality content. These platforms strive to ensure that consumers are viewing the most relevant ads and search results possible, and that is exactly why they assess the content any user produces.

Adding location extensions to an ad will help to improve this quality score. With a higher quality score the ad will appear more frequently in a higher position for less money. So what’s not to love about location-based mobile advertising?

Facebook changes it’s News Feed settings to reduce spammy, ad-heavy websites using AI

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When faced with a challenge, what’s a tech company to do? Turn to technology, Facebook suggests. Read more

Facebook Pixel Is About To Get A Bit Smarter

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A change to the Facebook pixel will now pass a page’s click data and metadata back to Facebook. Read more

Google Search Algorithm Update February 7th

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We just had some Google algorithm update a week ago potentially targeting spammy links I believe. And now a week later, around February 7th, yesterday, it seems there was another algorithm update. This update doesn’t seem specific to links or spam but rather just a normal unconfirmed Google update where ranking changes shift based on something changing at Google.

I do not believe it is related to the mobile bug because most of the automated tracking tools only track desktop search.

There is some chatter, the chatter in the SEO community is not YET that hot but it might heat up throughout the day as people check their analytics and tools.

An ongoing WebmasterWorld thread has these posts:

SERPs movements again in our vertical. We’re seeing some recoveries from previous penguin casualties and some domain crowding. Spam STILL having a huge positive impact.

Yesterday (Tue 7th) I saw a huge spike in organic traffic, ~30% over avg, and 18% increase from previous record day in November. It’s a Canadian financial-related site. Increases from both Google.ca as well as other search engines/

Here is a post on Twitter that even caught Gary Illyes attention:

Screen Shot 02-08-17 at 01.51 PM

 

And here are the tracking tools showing changes on the 7th, note Mozcast is well behind in terms of tracking so this might be related to the link spam update we covered last week?

Mozcast:

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SERP Metrics:

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Algoroo:

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Accuranker:

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RankRanger:

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Have you noticed any changes over the past 24 hours?

 

 

 

HT SE Roundtable