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We’re at the Grand Hyatt Atlanta in Buckhead, Georgia for the 2015 Type-A Parent Conference. Today is VIP session day, and the first session I’m attending is Facebook Ads – Beyond the Boost with Sarah Pinnix.
You don’t have to have a big budget to do Facebook ads. [Note from Christina: Sarah talked very quickly and had a LOT of information on her slides, and I was unable to capture everything she discussed.]
Should I boost a post or create a campaign? How do I measure ROI? How do I increase ROI? Those are the most common questions Sarah gets ask.
But before you ask how, you need to ask why.
If you don’t have a goal and don’t aim for anything in particular, you won’t get results.
Campaign > Ad Set (audience and budget) > Ad Creative
Write everything out and create a tree on a piece of paper because Ad Manager can be very confusing.
You can choose:
The Boost Button
Very limited choices, only three audience types. The goal is post engagement, which does not have very good ROI. Don’t click the boost button. Use the ad campaign in Ad Manager instead!
Ad Campaign:
- Website clicks
- Conversions
Page Likes
This is the most important factor in the success in your campaign. Engagement could be killing your ROI. You don’t want a million people to like your page because of cute cat photos you share, you want fewer people who are actually interested in your niche.
Web Conversions
Install a code on your website so Facebook can add a pixel to track when people come to your site. Facebook is testing an email subscription option, but since it’s not double opt-in, you may lose any of the people sign up.
The next question: Who?
Specific, balanced, or broad?
- Interest, behavior, and lifestyle
If you’re building a page from scratch, this is a place to start, but it has a low conversion rate. - Lookalike audience
The lookalike audience will look at the profile of people who like your page to determine who else among the vast sea of Facebook users is just like them and might like to like your page. - Website/email custom audience
The custom audience option can let you target people who have come to your site within the last X days without performing any actions.
Example campaign for Page Likes: try all three audience types, see which performs best for half a day, and cancel all the others. (Run the exact same ad creative to see what audience type works the best.)
Example campaign for Conversions: audience should include fans
The next question: HOW?
Someone becomes a Facebook fan > clicks to your site > signs up for your email list >
Bad ad targeting is what leads to showing you a restaurant ad for a place you don’t like at 11:30 pm when the location is closed. Or those bad SEO ads that follow you around.
Likes, comments, shares, and reach are vanity numbers that don’t really mean anything.
Actionable ROI:
- Page Likes
- Signups
- Downloads
- Web Visits
- Conversions
Use link extensions to track precise traffic in Google Analytics to calculate what each like, subscriber, etc. is worth in dollars.
Page Like ads are something Sarah recommends for everyone, as long as you’re targeting properly. If you already have a large following but they aren’t engaging, you need to target them with audience types to get them re-engaged.
3 fans for a dollar ends up being a pretty good rate. So when you run page like campaigns, budget accordingly and you can probably expect that. Website clicks and conversions are generally more expensive, but if people are buying $500 products per conversion, you can justify paying more per conversion.
Use Facebook Insights to show you when your fans are online and when they are active on your page.
JonLoomer.com really helped Sarah to learn as much as she has about Facebook ads.
That’s me: Christina Gleason. I’m a writer, editor, and disability advocate. I'm a multiply disabled autistic lady doing my best in this world built for abled people. I’m a geek for grammar, fantasy, and casual gaming. I hate vegetables. I cannot reliably speak, so I’ll happily conduct business over email or messaging instead.
