JR Media

This week's tip is about re-targeting ads. When you have a Facebook ad that directs people to either a landing page or a specific web page on your website, consider setting up a re-targeting ad that encourages these people to go back to your website and also reminds them of your offer, if you have one. To set this up, you need a Facebook pixel installed on your website.

If you'd like some assistance helping you set up these re-targeting ads, please contact me, I'll be more than happy to help. Until next week.

This week's tip. If you're running Facebook ads, make sure you run those ads for a minimum of four days. Why four days? Because every day hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of ads, are being pushed into the Facebook algorithm.

It takes about four days for your ads to properly settle into this wave of ads in the Facebook algorithm. If you do it any shorter, the data that you get back may not be accurate. Allow four days before turning anything off or making changes.

What I do for my clients is I make edits once a week and I analyse, but don't touch, three times a week, sometimes even daily depending on the campaign. But the key is that I don't touch it. The more you touch it, the more you break the algorithm.

Keep this in mind the next time you create your Facebook ad. Until next week.

This week's tip is more of an opinion. I got asked this week, what's the best day to start a Facebook ad, and in my opinion, any day is the best day to start a Facebook ad because Facebook is going to show your ad to the people most likely to take the objective that you set it, for example, if you asked people, if your Facebook objective was video views, because you had a video, it would show your ad to the people most likely to watch a video.

If it was traffic, which means you want people to click on your ad to go to a website, it would show your ad to people who were most likely to take that action.

If you do have data within your own organisation, for example, the phone rings more on this day or you have more website visitors on that day, then you use that data and test it out.

Perhaps show your ads a few days before that day, for example, there is no real one solid answer for this, but if you have no data, any day is a good day, until next week.

Today I wanna talk about short-termism.

Now, a common mistake that I see local businesses make all the time is that they suffer from short-termism. Now, short-termism is when we have a fantastic idea, we put all our energy into this idea or a platform, such as Facebook or Instagram or LinkedIn.

We put all our effort into it. We work really hard, but we only work really hard for a short amount of time because something new and shiny comes along and we get distracted and we go off and do that.

And when all that effort, we look back at all that effort and we don't see results, we blame the platform or we blame the idea that we just had. But especially with Facebook, things take time. It's not going to take one Facebook ad or one Facebook boost for four days for $20.

People aren't going to run to your door using that sort of strategy. Business owners like yourselves need to first know why they're advertising on Facebook and also have a plan in place on how they're gonna get people off Facebook and talking to them.

Now, I'm in production of organising an online course specifically for service-based businesses or brick and mortar businesses, and it's all about building a strategy, learning how to advertise properly through Facebook Ads Manager, and being cost-effective and smart about your Facebook marketing.

If you'd like to get in on the ground level with this online course and have access to my early pre-launch pricing, please send me your email, and I'll keep you in the loop. I'm going to launch it in June.

This week I wanna talk about the harsh reality of your Facebook marketing strategy.

The reality is, no matter how much money, time, and effort we put in our Facebook pages and our ads, we never really truly own anything.

We're really merely renting off Facebook. Now what I mean by that is we don't own our Facebook followers, we don't own the people who like, engage, and share with our posts, we don't the data that's generated by the Facebook pixel sitting on our website.

Facebook can take this away from us at any time and that's the harsh reality. But, we're damned if we do and we're damned if we don't. Really, aren't we? So, it's really important that you include in your Facebook marketing strategies, ways to encourage people to get off Facebook or any social media platform, by all means, get them off Facebook and onto your database.

So, either buy an eBook in exchange for an email or a really good offer on a product or a service. We need to encourage them to get off Facebook and into your database. Only then do we own that data and we can nurture and do more with it.

Today I'm going to talk about the difference between a boosted post and a sponsored ad because the difference between these two often confuses a lot of people. Either way, whether your boosting a post or creating a sponsored ad, they both look the same to your audience, so there's no difference there.

When boosting a post, this is found when you create a post on your Facebook Page and a little blue button appears next to your post. And what you do is you click the boost button directly from your Business Page and Facebook gives you some limited options on who you can target and how much, et cetera, et cetera.

This is the beginner's level of Facebook advertising. Whereas a sponsored post or a sponsored ad is done through Facebook's Ad Manager Console and the options on what you can do, who you can target, when and where your ads are shown and your ad format, meaning what your ads look like, the options are vast and varied and far more flexible.

If you'd like to dive in a little further into the boosted posts, I do have an eBook for those people interested, it's called How to Become a Better Booster and a link to that is provided in the comments below.

Today I'm talking about which kind of ads do I use, a boosted post or a sponsored post? Which ones do I use?

This is not an easy question to answer. It really depends on what your end goal is. A boosted post is used generally if your end goal is to encourage engagement on your post, which means you want more people to like, comment and share on your post.

However if you want people to visit your website, respond to an event that you're hosting, perhaps download an app, or purchase something from your website, the list goes on.

If these are any of your goals, then I highly recommend diving into a sponsored ad, and the other advantage of having a sponsored ad is that you can also ad a call to action button, which means could say learn more, shop now, buy now, download, the options, there's plenty of options there.

So really before you click Boost or setup a sponsored ad, think about your end goal. What do you want people to do after looking at your ad. Think about that and then choose accordingly.

For those who wanna dive in a little deeper but not too deep into the boosted post, I do have a free e-book available. It's called How to Become a Better Booster. There's a link to the e-book in the comments below.

I wanna talk about the three types of categories Facebook has for audiences that you can create within the Facebook ads manager. So there are three categories.

The first one is a saved audience. Now, if you're used to clicking the boost button, and you add peoples who are interested in certain products or certain people or maybe a little bit about demographics, things like that, this is called a saved audience. So that's category one.

The second category is called a custom audience. Now custom audience could be people who visit your website, could be your database of clients and prospects. It could be your Facebook page or Instagram followers. There's a whole variety of custom audiences. But basically, this is an audience that involves your business somehow.

And the third category is called a lookalike audience. And a lookalike audience is a group of people or an audience of people who Facebook believes have similar attributes to a custom audience that you set it. So if you say create a lookalike audience based on my website visitors, Facebook will look at your website visitors and then go find people with similar attributes to your website visitors. So those are the three categories.

There's lots and lots of variation within those three categories, but hopefully that clears the air between the difference of a saved audience, a custom audience and a lookalike audience.

I get asked all the time, Jess, how much do I spend on my Facebook Ads?

And like everything in Facebook Ad world, I can't give you a straight answer because there's so many factors involved when it comes to deciding on your budget for Facebook Ads that I can't just say one price and that be it. In fact, your bid, meaning how much you are prepared to pay Facebook to show people that ad, your bid is only one factor in about three or four factors that is the deciding factor whether Facebook shows your ad to the right people or not.

And it's gonna take more than a minute for me to actually explain that, so I'll have to wait for that for another day. But $1 per day is the minimum that you can spend on Facebook, so if you've never clicked that Boost button, put $1 a day and see what happens.

What have you got to lose? If you have done advertising before and you're still not sure about how much to spend, have a look at the size of your audience. How many people are in that audience, and how quickly do you want those people, all those people, to see your ads?

So if you've got an audience of 1,000, for example, you wouldn't wanna put three, $500 on a small audience of 1,000 people because Facebook will continually show your ads to those 1,000 people, five, six, seven times perhaps, and that can get a little bit annoying.

However if you've got $500 and you've got an audience of 30,000, 50,000, 70,000, then perhaps that's a better budget for that audience size. Probably wouldn't stretch to 70,000, but you get the idea. So if you've got a small audience of 1,000 people, consider three or $5 a day to reach those 1,000 people, and if you've got more, consider more.

So always have a look at your metrics as your ad is progressing. Look at your reach, which means how many people have seen your ad, and look at your impressions, which means how many times your ad has been shown to people, which is often more than once, which is a good thing, but we don't wanna show it nine, 10, 12, 20 times because it can get a little annoying.

Thanks everyone. I hope you found this useful.

This week I want to encourage everyone to go behind the boost button and have a look at Facebook's Ads Manager console.

I want you to poke around. I want you to try and break it, because the power that this console holds compared to that boost button is beyond compare. I wanna show you this little button, and I'm gonna put up it in a screen shot.

This little toggle, when highlighted blue, means that it's active. When you change it from blue to grey, it means it's inactive. So what this means is muck around. Try to create an ad. Go all the way to the end. And if you hit publish and then decide you don't want to run that ad again, all you need to do is to click that little toggle from blue to grey, and your credit card won't be charged. And if your credit card is being charged and you stop the ad campaign by changing it from blue to grey, your credit card will no longer be charged.

So what have you got to lose? Get in there, click around, break it. And when in doubt, change that little toggle from blue to grey. Until next week.