Demystifying Facebook Promotions

Felicia Lin (November 1, 2016)

In This Workshop I Will Cover:

• Best practices for Facebook

• Facebook profile, page, group (plus a bonus about Facebook pages)

• What types of businesses do best on Facebook

• What makes a successful ad on Facebook

• What is the key to successful advertising on Facebook

• Boosting a post vs. using Ads Manager

• Creating an audience for your Facebook ad

• Additional promotional tools (Facebook Live)

Best Practices for Facebook1. Use Tags for Additional Reach• Tag other Facebook pages• Your post may show up in the feed of someone that liked the Facebook page• A click on your post (even if it is to another Facebook page) counts as engagement

and the more engagement there is with your post, the more your post will show up on news feeds

Image courtesy of SproutSocial

Note on Using Hashtags on Facebook

Results from Social Bakers’ study on how Facebook engagement is affected by hashtag use:

Using Hashtags on Facebook

Conclusion:

Using more than 2 hashtags on Facebook causes a significant drop in engagement

If you are going to use hashtags on Facebook use them sparingly• Make sure that they are relevant • Use a hashtag that is being used in a campaign on your other

social media (Twitter, Instagram)

2. Leverage Trends

3. Include Branded Hashtags, But Not Too Many• Too many hashtags lower engagement and hurt your reach• In a study by Sprout Social posts with 1-2 hashtags averaged 593 interactions,

while posts with more than 10 hashtags averaged only 188 interactions

4. Balance Stories & Promotions

5. Educate, Entertain & Repeat

6. Say More With Less

7. Have More to Say? Use a Link

8. Use Clear Calls-to-Action

9. Use Original Photos

10. Target Your Posts

Facebook

What’s the difference between a Facebook profile, Facebook page and Facebook group?

What are some of the benefits or limitations of each?

How do you decide which is best for you?

Which is best for you?Facebook profile (personal page)

Facebook page(business page)

Facebook group

• For a single individual

• Connect with other by friending them

• People can also follow you

• Non-commercial use• Limited to 5000

friends• Can’t run Facebook

offers or contests• Can’t do Facebook

ads (promoted, targeted posts)

• Can be converted from a personal to business page

• For a business/celebrity/brand

• Likes vs. Friends• Facebook Tabs

(customize, highlight aspects, make offers)

• Schedule posts in advance

• Moderate comments/block people

• Facebook advertising (target by demographics)

• Insights/analytics• Multiple admins

• For a specific group (organization, common interest)

• A place for group communications

• Can be public, private, secret

• Can regulate/approve members of a group

4) Response Assistant

This is a great customer service tool offered by Facebook for your Page. If you’re not able to immediately respond to messages that your fans sent to your Page, Response Assistant allows you to create up 3 types of automatic responses.

Image from: Sprout Social

What types of businesses do best on Facebook?

Most “Liked” Page Types

Image courtesy of Hubspot

Least “Liked” Page Types

Image courtesy of Hubspot

Successful Ads on Facebook Are:

• Visual

• Relevant

• Includes a good value proposition (free trial, enticing product)

• Clear call-to-action

What is the key to successful advertising

on Facebook?

Facebook Advertising

There 3 places where you can do Facebook advertising

1) In ads manager2) From your Facebook fan page

(boost a post)3) Use a tool called Power Editor*

*this topic is beyond the scope of this workshop

Boosting a Post vs. Ads Manager

• You want to build all of your ads in ad manager first

• Boosting a post is easy, but you won’t have as much control over the ad

• 99% of all ads are run in ads manager

Creating an Audience

1) Select/build a custom audience

2) Create your own audience

How to Build an Audience

Select/set characteristics:• Countries• Age• Gender• Language• Detailed targeting (interests, income,

behavior)

How to Create a Custom Audience

1) Select a custom audience (a custom audience that you previously created)

2) Creating an audience based on something that you already know or have

e.g. your email list, people who have visited your website/certain pages of your website (Facebook pixel)

How to Build a Custom Audience

1) Ads manager ==> Audiences

2) Click on “Create Audience” (3 Options)1. Create a Custom Audience2. Create a Lookalike audience3. Create a Saved audience

1. Create a Custom Audience

• Customer file (e.g. email list)

• Website Traffic (involves the use of a Facebook pixel)

• App Activity (specific action taken in app/game)

• Engagement on Facebook (people who have viewed your videos)

2. Create a Lookalike Audience

• A second audience that Facebook can create for you that has the same characteristics as the original audience (one you already created)

• Can only select one country (Facebook will build an audience 1-10% the total country)

What happens if you DON’T have:

• A big email list • A lot of traffic going to your website• A lot of Facebook fans How do you create a great audience if you don’t have these assets?

Use Audience Insights

• A tool that Facebook provides gives information about everyone on Facebook

• If you input specific information, Facebook will build an audience and will indicate how well the audience will perform

Audience Insights (continued)You can start with:

• Everyone on Facebook• People connected with your Facebook page• A custom audience

You can start from scratch (recommended)• Set a specific geographic area (especially if you have a local

business or mom & pop shop), age, gender

NOTE: Facebook will tell you the demographics of these people and what types of pages these people like/follow, where they live, languages, devices used, activities, income purchasing behaviors.

Audience Insights (continued)

TIP: Create an audience based on interests i.e. people who are already interested in your subject matter.

When selecting interests consider the following:

What topics, organizations, people or publications are the people who are likely to be your audience interested in?

Enter 5-6 things in these categories.

Audience Insights (continued)Fine tune the audience: Look at “Page Likes” and Affinity

AFFINITY = how likely your audience is to like a page compared to everyone else on Facebook

Make adjustments, go for a smaller, more targeted audience• Add a condition (i.e. a further descriptor) to narrow down

the audience, and see how it affects the affinity scores.

Audience Insights (continued)

The goal is to create a highly targeted audience of people more likely to want what you are advertising.

TIP: Aim for an affinity score in the 10+ range.

Once you have finished creating an audience, you can create an ad directly using that audience

NOTE: Save the audience created and the next time you create a Facebook ad, click browse and find the saved audience

Boosting Posts From Your Facebook Page

Have you seen this?

“Your Page post is performing better than 95% of other posts”

Don’t fall for Facebook’s marketing ploy.

See how a post is really performing by clicking on the number of people reached, likes, shares etc.

Boost with a purpose:

1) Business purpose• To promote a webinar, push traffic to a blog post,

or giveaway

2) To increase engagement in your community

How to select a post to boost (to increase engagement)

• Go to InsightsClick on posts reach

• Sort posts from best to worst performing reach

• Pick a post that is performing well AND has a business purpose

Boost a Post Through Ads Manager

• Not directly from your page

• By using Ads Manager you will have more control over the audience you want to target the ad toward

Steps to Boost Through Ads Manager

• Go to Ads Manager• Click “Create Ad”• What’s your marketing objective?

Click “Boost Your Posts”• Name campaign• Click continue

Steps to Boost Through Ads Manager

• Set the audience e.g. custom audience, or build

TIP #1: Use the Connections Section to boost a post only to your fans

Also go to Detailed Targeting, Demographics

Steps to Boost Through Ads Manager

TIP #2: If you don’t have that many fans for your page, you can use friends of people who like your page instead

• Scroll down to placements

• Set Budget & Schedule

Steps to Boost Through Ads Manager

• Enter Ad set name

• Select page post (from Timeline)

Additional Promotional Opportunities on Facebook

Facebook Live

Why do a Facebook Live video?

How have you already seen Facebook Live used?

What are some ways you could use Facebook Live? What types of videos could you create?

How could you use Facebook Live for your business?

Facebook LiveWhat can you use Facebook Live for?

• A behind the scenes look

• Concert or event

• To make an important announcement

• To demonstrate something visually/live in action

• As a vlog

• Interview Q&A

• Podcast

• Focus on a cause and create awareness

Let’s keep in touch!

Web resources referenced10 Facebook Posting Tips to Improve Your Brand Awareness by Jennifer Beesehttp://sproutsocial.com/insights/facebook-posting-tips/

11 Examples of Facebook Ads That Actually Work (And Why)http://bit.ly/2f6uC0p

Post PlannerTips from 13 Experts on How to Use Hashtags on Facebook by Scott Ayreshttp://www.postplanner.com/how-to-use-hashtags-on-facebook/

Should You Use Hashtags on Facebook?http://imegonline.com/blog/should-you-use-hashtags-on-facebook/

BuzzSumoHow To Improve Facebook Engagement: Insights from 1bn Posts by Steve Raysonhttp://bit.ly/1PNIDNM

The Science of Facebook Marketing by Dan Zarrellahttp://www.hubspot.com/

Kim GarstFacebook Live Traininghttp://kimgarst.com/