Tag : facebook advertising

The Reason for the Season? Last Minute Tips to Boost Your Facebook Success During the Holidays

6Nov

Unless you have been living under a rock, you know that the holiday season marketing machine is in full swing. Come on, let’s think about it: Christmas trees have been available in stores since September!

While mega brands are dumping most of their advertising and marketing dollars into selling you the latest must-have gadget, toy, foodstuff, or service – smaller brands and companies think, “ It’s too late now, we missed the boat!”

If that sounds like you, snap out of it!

When it comes to your Facebook marketing, you are NOT too late to throw your hat into the holiday marketing ring. But….you do need to act fast!

Here are some quick ideas that you can apply to your Facebook strategy that will help you to enhance your holiday marketshare:

1. Create a Seasonal Offer: Whether it is a special discount, special package, or a limited time product offer – you need something that is going to pique your audience’s interest in relationship to the season taking place around them. Ensure that your offer is not only attractive enough to your target audience, but that you have created enough urgency around it to force your consumers’ hand to decide and act.

2. Facebook Advertising: One of the best ways to bring more attention to your range of products and services on Facebook is to advertise. There are many options available on the Facebook Advertising platform that you can use to drive traffic to your site, help people claim your special offer, build awareness, boost posts, and much more. With a minimal budget set to run up to Christmas, you will be able to maximize your exposure to your target audience. Play with your budget and timings and remember to track your results!
3. Seasonal Branding: A big mis-step that companies who are looking to do a focused holiday campaign make is not adding seasonal branding to their Facebook Cover Image. Within reason and within the confines of your own branding, add seasonal imagery, show your special offer or package, and give deadline specific information. Be creative!

4. Themed Posts: Make sure your content strategy supports your discount…and make it fun! Run contests, post quizzes, and get your audience interested in engaging. The more engaged your audience is with your content, the more that your Facebook Page content will be served up to them in the future. If no one is engaging – odds are that no one is seeing your content at all.

5. Use Video: Don’t ignore the fact that videos are among the most viewed content on Facebook. You need to create your own video, upload it to Facebook, and enjoy the exposure! When it comes to exposure, video can add over 65% more engagement.

When it comes to Facebook, coming a little late to the holiday marketing game is not a problem. Just make sure that you use the 5 tips above, track your effectiveness and make changes as needed. You will need consistency and a close analytical eye to truly reap the most benefits during the holiday season. Seasons greetings everyone! Hope this holiday season is a winner for you and your business!

The 6 Step Facebook Advertising Formula: The Fast Track to Facebook Engagement

By Christopher Tompkins

8Sep

Facebook, Social Media, Uncategorized

Facebook Advertising has really exploded over the past few months in terms of visibility. Now it seems that you can’t even make a post to your Facebook Page without being asked if you would like to “Boost” it or promote it in some way, shape, or fashion using Facebook Advertising.

While you may be thinking – enough Facebook – what I would suggest is that you overcome this adverse reaction to advertising on social media and begin to embrace it. Once you are able to just understand the hard fact that advertising is something that is a crucial aspect of your overall campaign, the more successful you will become on Facebook.

One of the biggest barriers to entry for any online advertising model is the ease of use. Once we veer off the usual path (profiles and timelines) and go into the weird wild world of Facebook Advertising many people instantly get a bit scattered. I understand. But this is part of the learning curve.

This curve has recently been flattened a bit as Facebook has made their advertising interface VERY friendly and easy to use. So if you are interested in advertising on Facebook, here is the 6 Step Formula that you need to follow to quickly and effectively setup your ads.

Step 1: Choose Your Objective
I’ve written about Facebook Advertising Objectives before. There are 10 choices that offer you different paths down the advertising setup model. Which ever you choose, you will still have to complete the following steps. In this step, decide what you want your Facebook Advertisement to do!

Step 2: Who Do You Want Your Ads to Reach?
Now let’s get down to demographics. WOW is all I have to say. Facebook allows you to go as niche or as broad as you would like to. But to move through this step quickly you will need to know the following:
*Geographic location you want to target
*Age
*Gender
*Languages
*Interests of your target audience for the advertisement
*Behaviors of your target audience for the advertisement
*FB Connections you would like to include/exclude

Step 3: Budget
Now you need to setup how much you want to spend. If this is your first add I always suggest a Lifetime Budget of $50 for a 2 week or 1 month period. This way you can monitor your success closely in a more manageable way.

Step 4: Scheduling
When do you want your ads to run? All the time? Perhaps you have done research and found when your target audience is on Facebook the most. Then you can customize your ad schedule so that your ads only run at those times.

Step 5: Visuals
Facebook gives you the opportunity of adding 6 different pictures to your advertisement. I would suggest having these ready to go before even starting your Facebook Advertising journey. Just remember that images with text that takes up more than 20% of the image may not be approved. So be careful with text in your ad!

Step 6: Adding Text
This is where you can add your call to action for your Facebook Advertisement. Depending on what your target is, you get the opportunity to say more or less. At the low end you have to make your impact in around 90 characters or so, thus you need to be crafty in creating your ad copy.

And there you go! You click “Place Order” and your ad will be sent to the Facebook Advertising review board who will then approve or deny your ad. If denied, you will be notified why and given an opportunity to go in and make edits, not start all over (which is handy).

My tip here is that the more in-tune you are with your marketing strategy and your target audience, the easier this whole process will be. Otherwise there will be lots of guess work for you to complete. So look at the list above and come up with your ideas for each point and THEN log into Facebook and start setting up your brand new Facebook Advertisement!

Advertising on Facebook? Great! But….What’s Your Objective?

By Christopher Tompkins

20Aug

Facebook, Social Media, Uncategorized

If you have not considered advertising on Facebook – there truly is no time like the present to get started. I know in the past that I have been against Facebook advertising, and I am happy to admit it. At the time, it was not as advanced, and as crucial, as it is now.

The proof is in the pudding folks. How many people are your posts reaching? Just 1%? If you have ever been presented by this number – here are the facts. Facebook has changed its algorithm greatly, which is a high level way of saying that it has really reduced the number of people that will be exposed to your posts.

I’ve spoken with peers in the social media industry and we have agreed that organic engagement has dropped across the board. They have reported drops to 4-6% all the way down to 1-2% in terms of organic reach.

Cue Facebook Advertising.

While I am loathe to shove people towards advertising (as I believe in the online public relations aspect of social media), in this case I think it should be added as a crucial aspect of your overall Facebook marketing strategy.

But there are two pieces of good news – Facebook has made it easier than ever to understand their advertising model and your can get a lot of bang for your buck (currently).

My advice is that before you start ANY advertising initiative on Facebook or any other social media site, that you set forth clear objectives for why you want to advertise. In this case, Facebook has your best interests at heart and once you click “Create Ad” in your Facebook advertising section (yes, we all have them attached to our personal accounts), they will present you with a wonderful list of objectives to help you make the right choice.

I thought I would go through all of these here so that you can think critically about what your objective is before you even log into your account. Let’s go!

Possible Objectives for Your Facebook Advertising Campaign:

1. Boost Your Posts: Want to get more engagement on a certain post that you have on your Facebook Business Page? This option will allow you to create a sponsored post that would be seen by the audience of your choice to increase engagement.

2. Promote Your Page: Want more visibility and LIKES? Then this is the choice for you. It is a great way to get started with building your network on Facebook.

3. Send People to Your Website: Want hits to your website, blog, or online store? This allows you to create a sponsored ad that will be presented to the audience of your choice…right in the newsfeed!

4. Increase Conversions on Your Website: Do you want to promote conversions on your website? Want more email signups, ebook downloads, free consultation appointments? Use this objective to get more conversions on your offer.

5. Get Installs of Your App: Are you a developer with a new application that you would like to promote? What better way to promote this than to share your app via an add with a one-click download?

6. Increase Engagement in Your App: Is your application just not getting the user engagement that you want? Use this objective to get more people active using your app!

7. Reach People Near Your Business: Are you a local business that relies on your community for success? This objective allows you to hit your marketing with laser precision!

8. Raise Attendance at Your Event: You may have noticed that the number of people viewing your event invitations has decreased. Promote your event more aggressively with advertising and watch your numbers grow with targeted members outside of your network.

9. Get People to Claim Your Offer: Are you having a sale or special offer? Then this objective is the number one choice!

10. Get Video Views: Spend lots of money creating a promotional video or just have a video that you would like to see more people engage with? Use this to promote your video to a laser targeted market!

As you can see these 10 different objectives are a good starting point to better understanding where you need to start when it comes to Facebook Advertising. Now go onto your account and check these out in more detail. Facebook offers lots of flexibility, so click around and learn more about these objectives and what they entail!

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