Boost Your Business Facebook: How to Hack Your Facebook Page and Facebook Ads — ½ day Workshop

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Tuesday, September 8th some pre-pandemic years ago!

The day Facebook gave away the keys to the kingdom; secrets were revealed, and the day we got to hack organic reach! YES, Let’s get this party started!!

Well, sadly none of that happened.

Instead of keys, we got a chair; instead of secrets we got 1-2-1 time; instead of hack-a-thon, we got Power Editor and Ads Manager training.

A day at Facebook HQ, Silicon Docks, Dublin, Ireland. Oh my!

UPDATED: December 2020, Updated statistics, improved readability, added and updated content, improved spelling and grammar, added/removed images, and updated to reflect learning, understanding and context and the continuous updating and understanding of Digital Marketing.

Boost Your Business Facebook: Facebook Page is a Mobile Strategy

Owning a Facebook page is a mobile strategy

Facebook

Don’t worry, this is Urban Renström, there is always science and research involved in everything demonstrated, taught, and talked about.

The first speaker says ‘owning a Facebook page is your mobile strategy.

Yes, it is! well no not really. Social is one of the channels to reach your ideal clients, update your existing customers and get found.

Relying on Facebook as your mobile strategy is fraught with danger. Facebook is *borrowed land*. Facebook is the landlord and we are the tenants. A Facebook Page is one part of your lead generation machine – you also need a funnel, website, and video!

Remember, earlier this year (every year – for some), organic reach was reduced? Yep, that was Facebook changing the rules again. #JustSaying #BeAware #DigitalSharecropping

(old numbers!) The speaker says 2 million people in Ireland on Facebook and 1.2 million of the 2 million access Facebook on a mobile device.

New Image Nov 2020 – Facebook Monthly Active Users Ireland – Data were taken from Audience Builder in Power Editor

Remember only 4.5+m people in Ireland. 53% of Ireland registered on Facebook and 99% accessed Facebook on mobile.

Put an advert on Facebook and you too can access 2.5-3 million people. But don’t do that as not everyone wants your stuff and not everyone is your ideal or target audience.

Hack Facebook Page Workshop: Creating Compelling Content for Your Page

Content is the key to reaching people – either original or via content curation or through video content.

A new speaker takes the podium this one from the SMB team.

Discussing Facebook page fundamentals and posting content on your page.

Facebook Page Is Your Mobile Channel

Totally agree. And a Facebook page is cheaper than building an app. And more people are on Facebook than would use your app.

Also, a page lets you advertise in the news feed (lol! You can advertise on Facebook without a Facebook page, but, the ads will only display in the right-hand column on the desktop).

“2.5 Mil People On Mobile”

Speaker says 1.8 million people in Ireland access Facebook using a mobile device. 500K more people than the first speaker! But, hey what is 500K between friends?

It’s all about the opportunity. Your customers and the potential customers are in this 1.8 million people group.

The only reason you are not getting sales from Facebook is a) because of budget or b) not being comfortable with the advertising tools.

Before you begin Facebook advertising get traffic, conversions and clients, ensure your website is in order – functioning shopping cart, sign-up forms, terms and conditions, privacy policies, email CAN-SPAM etc. Double-check and get someone else to check.

Cannot help with the budget part, but, the rest? Read on.

Pages Give Business A Voice On Facebook Mobile

Yes, pages do give businesses a voice on Facebook.

A page lets you express yourself, and answer questions from prospects, and customers. And lets you reach the audience you want.

Reach The Audience You Want?

The observant person remembers the dropping of organic reach on the post and correctly asks, how can I ‘reach the audience I want?’

The implied answer from the speaker, and this workshop, is to use Facebook ads.

Yep, Facebook Ads. Before you run any ads install the Facebook Pixel.

However, don’t ignore page posts just yet! Your Facebook Fans and page posts are very important.

Posts help warm up your audience, nurturing them, along the  “people to know you, like you and trust you before they buy from you” continuum.

View Facebook Ads and your Facebook Page as complementary tools. Not exclusive ones. Let us think about the audience, fans, and sales for a moment.

  • The 2-2.5 million people on Facebook in Ireland do not know you – brand-unaware
  • Part of the 2.5 million are your fans and they know you
  • A smaller group of your fans like you
  • Smallest Trust You
  • They tiniest group? are those who buy from you

Content on your page nurtures your fans. Letting them get know-you-and-like-you-before-I-buy-from-you. Which is important when running ads for your products or services.

Which group is more likely to buy from you the 2-2.5 million cold audience who don’t know you or your fans who do know you, like you and trust you?

Your Fans naturally.

Use the Facebook Page’s advanced audience targeting features.

Target your fans by gender, relationship status, educational status, age, location, language, interest, or website visitors.

Why do this? Because not every update will resonate with your fans. Experiment with narrowing your audience with your update.

It is your responsibility to warm up your audience. Posting interesting content helps to heat them up.

Speakers continue with Facebook page fundamentals.

Boost Facebook Page with Fundamentals

What makes a good Facebook page?

The speaker discusses Facebook Page basics. Page Name, vanity URL, about section, profile and cover photo. The CTA button. The Facebook Page Manager app.

  • Page name
  • Page URL
  • About Section
  • Profile and cover photo
  • CTA
  • Page manager app

Page Name, Vanity URL

Match your page name with your website/business name. Why? Brand consistency and ease of remembering. The next speaker suggests improving your branding with a vanity URL.

My page URL is Facebook.com/UrbanRenstromDigital my website site address is www.UrbanRenstrom.com, and my Twitter is @UrbanRenstorm.

IM Cleaning Services, Cheappprinting4u.ie, and Flavour Safari are three examples of memorable names of Facebook pages. And all three match their website name.

On Mobile, The About Section Is First Tab People View When Visiting Your Page

Agree. View these four Pages I visited on my iPhone.

Notice the ‘about’ section is above and before any photos or page posts. This invites people to click and read the ‘about us’ page.

Position of the about us is by design?

Why? Because the ‘who of a business is more important than what people post on their page. A well-written ‘about us’ page, lets people know what you do and how you can help them.

Look again at the Flavour Safari page. Facebook also tells us how quickly page owners respond to comments! Interesting. Whilst fast response rate to comments on Facebook does not guarantee a responsive business. It does give a data point in how the business treats its customers.

Profile Picture and Cover Photo

Use a headshot as the profile picture instead of a logo. Why? People buy from people, not from logos and websites. If you insist on using a logo, let people know somewhere who you are. Either in a photo, you’ve uploaded or in your cover photo.

Be creative in your cover photo image. Use a menu item, a photo of your offices, or a photo of people using your product. Use this space to generate interest, and comments and get the attention of your fans.

Keep in mind the cover photos cannot be deceptive, misleading or copyright infringing. As always follow the Facebook Page TOC.

Call to Action Button

The call to action button is being rolled out to all pages. See the image to the right on the options for the call to action button. Not visible is the donate now button. If your page is a charity donate is an option.

Facebook Page Manager App

Speaker refers to the iPhone, Android app letting you access and manage your Facebook page from your mobile. Here is the page manager in the Apple App Store and Google Play Apps.

Top tip: “View page as a visitor” helps the admin understand the page from a visitor’s point of view.

Facebook Page Posting: Best Practices

Speaker says page posting best practices are not ‘one size fits all’.

I add best practices are the starting point for a process, not the endpoint.

Here are a few page posting guidelines.

  • Use big, beautiful images – they catch the attention
  • Your post is competing with baby pictures and memes – does it fit in?
  • Be authentic and post things related to your business..that’s why people liked your page
  • Offer people a behind-the-scenes sneak peek
  • Be real and sincere with your posts
  • Focus on business objectives
  • Consider the action you want people to take
  • Ask question

Use Native Facebook Video

The speaker says native video has the best engagement rates on Facebook.

A native video is a video uploaded directly to Facebook. Instead of posting a link from YouTube or some other service.

Social media analytics and social reporting company locowise.com researched videos and video views on Facebook. They compared 1,000 pages with a total of 291 mil likes and found:

  • 47% of 1000 pages have never uploaded any videos
  • 12% of the 1000 pages posted 46% of all videos in this sample set
  • The speaker says – people don’t watch long videos. Best is 30sec- 1mim
  • Entice people to ‘click to play’ to hear the audio
  • Be a silent movie master! Most videos are viewed on autoplay, and use subtitles, or a ‘storyboard’ so people get your message without sound.

The speaker asks “care to get move video views? Promote it to your fans!”

Test, Test And Test Again

Boost Your Business Facebook

The speaker suggests you should worry less about making mistakes and instead focus on the action you get. And use those actions to inform and improve your strategy and tactics.

The mantra of any good marketeer, not just a Facebook marketeer, is ABT, always be testing.

The testing paradigm of — do, wash, rinse, repeat — applies to posting on your Facebook Page and to advertising.

Publish, Schedule Backdate, Save Drafts, Target Post On Your Page

The speaker continues discussing page posts. States posts can be published, backdated, saved, and you can publish a post to a section of your audience.

The speaker says the key to an effective advertising campaign is posting positive and engaging content on your page. This mirrors my earlier comment that your page and advertising efforts are complementary.

Obvious stuff. Yet many businesses fail to follow this simple advice.

Engage With Your Fans

The speaker suggests you should engage with your audience. This includes answering private and public messages to your page. And replying to comments.

Responsiveness Badge

Boost Your Business Facebook
“Responsive” to Messages Badge – Lets your Fans Know You Reply to Comments and Quickly

See this image – this green badge lets your fans and visitors know you reply to Messenger message quickly. The badge appears when a page has:

  • Responded to 90% of messages
  • Maintained a median response time of 5 minutes for all replies sent

Of course, your page has to allow people to contact it. Go to your Facebook Page/setting, then look for Messages. Ensure you ‘allow people to contact my page privately’ this page for a little more info.

Page Insights

Facebook Page insights are where you learn about fans, where they live, what times and days of the week they see your posts. And what type of page post which resonate with your fans.

On a desktop/laptop computer, log on to your page then click insights.

Insight opens and you see the other tabs. Under the ‘Posts’ tab is where we see which posts are resonating and not resonating with your fans.

Boost Your Business Facebook

Facebook Ads

Boost Your Business Facebook
Facebook ads! The reason we’re attending this workshop!!

My personal goal is to get all the tips and tricks to get the most out of running Facebook ads!!

Well, I did not get all the ‘insider tips and tricks. Because this workshop was positioned for the beginner advertiser.

Boost A Post vs Power Editor and the Ads Manager

Facebook Ads Entry Level Options
‘Boost Post’, ‘Promote Page’ and ‘Promote Website’ is the Three Entry Level Advertisement Option – Accessible from your Page

The speaker briefly discusses the main differences between boosting a Facebook post and using Power Editor.

A Boost a post is one of three entry-level advertising objectives. All are accessible from your Facebook Page.

Boosting a post is equal to the ‘Post Page Engagement’ objective in the Power Editor.

‘Promote your Page’ is equal to the ‘Page Likes’ objective.

‘Promote your Website’ is equal to the ‘Clicks to Website’ objective.

All have limited audience targeting, budgeting and bid control compared to the full-blow ads tool.

The Ads Manager offers 13 different campaign objectives; full audience targeting options; Facebook custom audiences; bid control and full reporting.

The learning curve for Facebook Power Editor is steep. No way to sugar coating that.

Yet, the Power Editor allows for laser precision control over all aspects of advertising campaigns.

This refined control is needed to
a) target the right people,
b) reduce your overall advertising spend,
c) match your business objectives with the right ad type,
d) getting a high ad relevancy score, and
e) using Facebook custom and engagement audience feature, including retargeting.

Boosting vs Power Editor

Ads Manager is built to use with Google’s Chrome web browser. Access the Power Editor through your pages ads account.

Ad campaign structure

The speaker continues with the ad campaign structure as it relates to the Power Editor.

Boost Your Business Facebook
Facebook Advertising Campaign Structure – Every Campaign begins with an Objectives, And Ads at the Bottom are Controlled by the Ads Sets

The Facebook advertising structure has the campaigns (objectives) at the top; ad sets below and, the actual ads at the bottom.

Every Facebook advertising campaign begins with a single objective. For example – Page Likes, Page Post Engagement, or Clicks to Website.

Ad sets defined and control audience targeting, ad placements, and bid control. An objective can have multiple ad sets. Each targeting different elements.

Below ad sets are the individual Ads. It’s possible to run multiple ads under each ad set. Each ad uses different images, text, call-to-action-button, or links.

Boost Your Business Facebook
Facebook Ad Campaign Structure vs. Features for Each

12 Facebook Campaigns (Objectives)

Boost Your Business Facebook
Facebook Ad Objectives when Bidding with Auction

In the Ads Manager, Facebook offers 12+ different campaign objectives.

Yes, 12 different objectives. And yes, you can run campaigns with different objectives at the same time. Layering.

For example, run a campaign to get visitors to your website. Another campaign to get conversions. Then a 3rd campaign to retarget those same visitors. And get page post engagements.

Three examples.

Take an eCommerce site selling 100 different products. Use the ‘Product Catalogue Sales’ objective and target your fans. Your Ads will use the carousel ads – up to 5 images. Each image is allowed to link to the same product page or different product pages. Then run retargeting ads to the people who visited the product pages but, abandoned the shopping cart. In the retargeting ad say: “Hey, we noticed you did not buy the shirt yesterday, Want free shipping? Click here” Would that work? I think yes.

If you are a coach or business consultant and you blog regularly, then use the ‘Clicks to Website’ objective. Use an attractive image in your ad. In the text of the ad, list the problem, then agitate the problem and offer the solution. The solution is revealed only after a person clicks through and reads the article. Then run retargeting ads to the people who read your blog post — and offer a lead magnet to get them to opt-in to your email.

If you are a restaurant or retail shop use the ‘Offer Claim’ objective for an irresistible offer — ‘20% of a 3-course meal with a bottle of wine’. When the offer is clicked it will be emailed to the person and can only be redeemed in-store.

Campaign Structure — Lining Up Your Ducks In A Row

One of the problems when trying to Boost your Business on Facebook is keeping track of everything!

To prevent getting lost in the Facebook ads manager – the naming structure is important. Best practices are to keep the naming consistent from campaign objectives to ads sets and ads.

One naming convention is:

  • Bid Type – Audience – Age – Location – Placement

For example oCPM – Fans – All – US/UK/Ireland/Canada/Australia – News Feed

Another example:

Fixed Price – WCA 30 – 25-50 – UK/Ireland – All placement

The Speaker asks the Audience – Are you Targeting the Right Audience?

The speaker moves on to audience targeting. And says when building an audience it is possible to layer interest. And clarifies (or confuses) by interest layering is an ‘or’ operator and not an ‘and’ operator.

Using more than one interest adds to the size of the audience. People interested in reading, fishing or sports include these groups.

Boost Your Business Facebook
Facebook ads Relevance Score as seen in Ads Manager and Power Editor. Relevance score is replaced by Ads Diagnostics

Targeting the correct audience with your ads is key to being effective. Yes, targeting your Page Fans is the obvious choice. But, you may want to cast a wider net than your page fans.

So, by serving the correct ad, to the right audiences you get results. A right ad to the wrong audience equals money wasted.

Not just wasted money, but, low relevance score.

Understanding Ads Performance and the Ads Manager

Understanding ads performance is a whole workshop in its own right!

The speaker mentions the relevancy score metric and where to find it in the Power Editor and Ads Manager. And ignores all the other performance reporting metrics.

Considering the speaker ignores all other ad metrics only increases the importance of the relevance.

Ad relevance is a score, 1-10, with 1 being the lowest. The score is based on the positive and negative feedback the ad gets from the audience. With a 500 daily impressions minimum need to receive your first score. Also, the relevancy score is updated in real-time. Therefore, monitor and stop ads with relevancy when relevancy scores drop below 7 or 8.

As always, resonance is central. Serve the right ad to the right audience at the right time wins high click-through rates, lower CPM. The right ad in front of the wrong audience wastes money.

A high relevance score lowers your costs and Facebook serves your ad to more people. A low score raises your costs and reduces the number of times your ad is seen by people.

A high relevance score:

…can lower the cost of reaching people…can help test ad creative options before running a campaign…can help optimize campaigns already in progress.

In February of this year, the relevance began rolling out. Find your relevance score in your ads managers. This Facebook post explains where to access it in detail. And this post discusses how to improve your relevance score.

1/2 Day Boost your Business Facebook Workshop

Fantastic day out in Facebook HQ Dublin. Very enjoyable attending the workshop. The speakers touched topically on many subjects and ignored others. We did not do a deep dive into any subject. Was left for a future workshop.

What part of Facebook Ads are you struggling with? What audience has been most profitable? Look forward to chatting with you in the comments below.

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