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The Wild World of Facebook Marketing [An Update]

The Wild World of Facebook Marketing [An Update]

2017-06-27 15:05:33 | Karen Cummings | facebook,social media marketing

In the wonderful world of digital marketing, we are often blessed, and sometimes cursed, with a bounty of updates and changes to the way we do our work. From the way strategies evolve, to software and technology updates, digital marketing practices are constantly progressing to help us do our jobs better.

Most recently, Facebook Business & Ads Managers have rolled out an astounding number of updates to improve upon the business’s experience. And we cannot tell you how excited we are about this. While it’s yet to be determined if these updates really do improve the business’s experience on Facebook, we’re still excited that the updates are business-centric since their previous updates have focused on creating a better experience for the public.

Now we want you to brace yourselves. Not only are there a lot of updates, but some of them are a little more complex than others. Below is an overview of what Facebook has changed!

 

More Control Over Ad Placement

Facebook is launching new tools to give advertisers more control over their ad placements in Audience Network, Instant Articles, and in-stream ads. The updates include:

  • Giving advertisers the ability to see where their ads could potentially deliver before the campaign goes live
  • Preventing ads from appearing where you don’t want them by applying “block lists”

 

Conversion Ad Improvements

If you’ve ever run a conversion ad, you know how frustrating they can be, but Facebook is doing what it can to improve that.

The nature of conversion ads means that delivery will be low if that ad set doesn’t get many initial conversions – when your goal is conversions, your pixel needs to be getting 15-25 conversions per week to collect enough data to learn who is converting. But now, there’s a new feature to improve ad delivery!

This new feature will allow you to temporarily optimize your ads for clicks instead of conversions if Facebook doesn’t have enough data for conversions. In this initial stage, Facebook will optimize for link clicks, which in turn will drive traffic, and eventually conversions. Then you can choose from one of two options:

  • Standard: Set an end point for when Facebook stops optimizing for clicks after you’ve reached 15-25 conversions, 1,000 link clicks or 7 days have passed (whichever comes first). Then, Facebook will switch over to conversions.
  • Extended: Optimize your ad for link clicks and conversions until the ad set collects 15-25 conversions, or until the budget is spent.

 

Cover Videos

Since April, Facebook has been experimenting with videos as cover images, and now they’re expanding this option to more Pages. Once it’s rolled out to your page, you’ll have the ability to set a 20 – 90 second video (820×312 pixels) in place of your normal cover image. The cover videos will auto-play and auto-loop, and will be set to mute unless a user clicks on the sound feature in the bottom right hand corner.

 

New Canvas Ad Templates

Facebook introduced three new canvas ad templates to Ads Manager. You will now be able to choose from “Get New Customers,” “Sell Products,” or “Showcase Your Business.”

For a more in-depth description of how you can utilize these new templates, check here.

On top of the new templates, it will now be easier to build canvas ads too! Facebook will start pulling images directly from your landing pages, and queuing your account’s more commonly used destination links.

 

Create Lookalike Audiences & Factor in Lifetime Value

Using Facebook Pixels, Facebook has collected purchase values to estimate how much an individual may spend with your business over the course of a week. It takes into account your ad bid and automatically adjusts based on its estimation. So now, you can deliver ad campaigns to users likely to spend more at a lower cost.

Additionally, you can now create lookalike audiences based on your custom audiences, including the data collected about your customers’ expected lifetime value.

 

Custom Facebook Analytics Dashboard

You’ll now be able to create a custom analytics dashboard inside Ads Manager that your whole team can access. This will make it easier for you to access the most important stats for your business.

 

Facebook Messenger 2.0

Facebook has released a lot of updates inside the chat feature to make it as user-friendly as possible. On the business side of things, they’ve rolled out smart replies which allows Page Admins to turn on automatic replies based on artificial intelligence.

 

Conditional Answers in Lead Forms

Lead Ads have been a great tool for businesses since you can collect information without users ever having to leave Facebook – as a result, conversion rates are awesome!

Now, you can make your lead forms smarter. This is a pretty complex process, so we’ll leave it to Facebook to explain it to you.

We know we just threw a lot of information at you, but don’t get overwhelmed! While this sounds like a whole lot of work added to your plate, Facebook is just rolling these updates out now which means you may not even have them yet. So take this time to learn, digest and prepare for when these updates are made available to you!

Totally stuck with your business’s Facebook and social strategy? Don’t fret, we’ve got you covered! Schedule a Discovery Session with us today to learn how Radiant Marketing can help propel you to small business success!