November 16, 2017
Do you advertise on Facebook? Do you wish you could be a little more efficient with your time and money? Well these six tips could help you! I hope they help you. No really I do! We love helping advertisers like you!
Tip 1: Learn To Use Power Editor
Those of you who aren’t using the Power Editor for your Facebook advertising efforts could be wasting a lot of time in the ads manager interface. When creating campaigns, ad sets, and ads the Facebook interface will automatically default to ads manager. The power editor is an option you should be utilizing instead. The power editor is a much less clunky version of ads manager. It allows you to create, edit, swap, duplicate, pause, etc… across multiple campaigns, ad sets, and ads all at once. Plus, any changes you make will be saved to a draft before uploading. It’s a two step process unlike ads manager. This will allow you to fix any mistakes you made to your mass edits before they go live.
Tip 2: Have A Strategy, Don’t Wing It
Facebook should be treated like any other digital advertising platform. Meaning use it, but have a strategy in place. I know that sounds painfully obvious but it needs to be said. We all have seen those ads on Facebook trying to shove product down our throats from a company we have never heard of before. How annoying is that? Take the opportunity to build a funnel approach if you can. Hit people with a little branding before you try to sell them something. Introduce yourself, let me get to know you, and then you can ask me on a date. Are we still talking about Facebook???
Tip 3: Use Descriptive Naming Conventions
So you’ve got your strategy in place and you want to build some campaigns. Great! Ok so this is going to be called Campaign #1…..STOP! Don’t you dare use such an ambiguous naming convention! Anytime you name something it should be ridiculously obvious what the purpose/type of the campaign, ad set, or ad is. Did you create a campaign for your top of funnel efforts? Then “top of funnel” should be in your campaign’s name somewhere. While we’re at it, is your campaign objective (conversions, clicks to website, etc.) in it’s name too? Who are you targeting with this ad set? What type of ad (image, video, etc.) is this? Keep this thought process in mind when naming absolutely anything. This makes it super easy to go into the account and see what is and isn’t working from a top level view.
Tip 4: Utilize Segmentation
Ah segmentation, my old time consuming nemesis. We meet again! Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just throw everything in one campaign/ad set and it would spit out gold? Alas, poor digital advertiser! We must segment for success. Let’s break it down with an example. Say we sell men’s and women’s shoes and we want to introduce ourselves on Facebook to people who haven’t heard about us with some branded content (oh hey look, I’m referencing myself). Do you think it would be wise to use different messaging for men and women? Then we should have two ad sets, one targeting men and one targeting women. That way our ad’s creative and messaging can be tailored very specifically. This method doesn’t just work for gender! We can do this with geo locations, age, and more! Don’t be afraid to show your excitement.
Tip 5: Edit Your Ad Placements
When creating ad sets make sure to check the placements you have opted into. An ad you create for Facebook could end up on Instagram. It could also end up on the audience network which is inventory that is off of Facebook. It can even end up in the Facebook messenger. While I absolutely suggest you utilize Instagram, you might want to opt out of audience network and messenger if you are worried about where your ads are showing.
Tip 6: Test Facebook Algorithms
The machines! Artificial intelligence is taking over! They tried to warn us that Skynet was a threat! Oh wait, this isn’t my conspiracy theory blog. Yes, so Facebook algorithms. When it comes to what you should be setting bids at, you should trust automated bidding or at least CPL based bidding. The algorithms are pretty good at finding the most relevant user at the right cost for you. Machine learning has come a long way from what it used to be so don’t be afraid to test this out. Besides, manually bidding is a pain and can be time consuming. Not very efficient if you ask me! Wait didn’t I say that segmentation is time consuming too? Yes. Yes I did, but segmentation is worth it while manually bidding just isn’t. Who of us digital advertisers are smarter than machine learning when it comes to math? Is it you? Then stop advertising on Facebook and go work for NASA. I look forward to visiting Mars someday.