Recently, Facebook began to incorporate third-party data into its ad targeting with the release of partner categories. I thought I’d take the opportunity to explain this new capability in a little more detail. What Are Partner Categories? For the first time, advertisers can target users based on their off-Facebook purchasing behavior. As Facebook puts it: […]
All advertisers on Facebook aim to turn users into customers. At the end of the day, marketing is about generating sales and making money, of course. But when you run ads on Facebook, it can be difficult to see to the end of the funnel. Often, advertisers get lost in the quantity of metrics and data […]
In my last column, I discussed strategies for testing content on your Facebook page. I also talked about how important it is, even when testing, to retain the character of your brand in all your content. Your Facebook page should have an identity to it, and you should strive to hold that identity constant. Part of […]
Did you know that Facebook offers the capability to create unpublished posts on your Facebook Page? Such “dark posts” have actually been around for over six months, but it was only recently that Facebook has allowed them to appear in the Newsfeed. With Newsfeed being by far the most engaging placement on site, it’s not […]
Finding offline customers online is one of the Holy Grails of online marketing, and that’s what Facebook’s “Custom Audiences” advertising product is designed to do. As Facebook puts it, “Custom audiences let marketers find their offline audiences among Facebook users.” The feature allows you to match phone numbers, email address, or user IDs gathered offline […]
About six months ago, Facebook introduced yet another type of ad for advertisers to try: the Sponsored Result. Marketers can serve Facebook users searching for Pages, Applications, and such with ads in the Search bar. As Facebook says, the goal of Sponsored Results is “… help [Facebook users] better find and discover the brands, products, […]
We’ve talked at length about the importance of engaging your Facebook community beyond simply acquiring fans. Page Post ads are a great way to encourage this interaction. If you’re a retailer, consider Facebook Offers, a relatively new type of Page Post that allows brand pages to create coupons and share them exclusively on Facebook. Offers […]
Facebook is constantly rolling out new products and capabilities for advertisers. This makes the platform extremely dynamic, but it can also be hard to keep up with all the changes! One of the most major announcements in recent months is the introduction of placement targeting. Previously, marketplace ads were only shown in the right rail. […]
So, you’ve chosen your ad types, written creative, ran and optimized your campaign. What’s next? Evaluating Success It’s a fairly straightforward process to decide if your campaign was successful. Did you get fans? Conversions? Sign ups? Did you fulfill your campaign’s original goals? That should be easy to measure. The optimization strategies outlined in my […]
To get the most out of your Facebook campaigns, you need to devote time to evaluating their performance — not just after they’ve finished running, but while they are still active. You aren’t best served by creating ads, running them for several weeks, and then checking them after they have finished spending. You will see much better […]
More than any other element, targeting is what sets Facebook advertising apart from other channels. Anything that a user inputs into his or her Facebook profile is targetable: age, gender, relationship status, location, interests, level of education, and more. These capabilities allow you to reach customers at a much deeper and more customized level. Instead […]
It’s easy to dismiss creative as a lesser element of Facebook advertising. But it really does matter! In the many campaigns SocialCode has run, we’ve seen massive variance in performance across different text elements. Here is an opportunity to showcase what your brand or product is about, to distinguish yourselves from other ads or potential competitors, and […]
In the last column, we saw that a number of different elements make up an effective Facebook campaign. One of the most important elements is ad selection. In contrast to some forms of digital marketing, which offer almost no variety or evolve very slowly, Facebook is constantly updating their inventory of ads to provide even […]
Traditional advertisers often find Facebook daunting. Social media marketing is the future, that is certain, but transitioning established advertising strategy to new media can be a challenge. It’s worth it: with over 900 million people at your disposal, the possibilities are nearly limitless. The breadth of data available through Facebook and the versatility of its […]