As B2B marketers, we all know that social media is more than just cat pictures. Social media is a powerful tool for reaching your prospects and customers, when used correctly.
There is about 2.62 billion people on social media worldwide in 2018, and that number is only expected to grow. Your target audience is out there and now you just need a way to reach them, and once you get in front of them – keep them engaged. Unfortunately many marketers can feel overwhelmed by social media. There is so much to learn and the platforms are constantly changing. Who can keep up?
Luckily, learning opportunities like the Facebook Ads Summit 2018 exist. The team at Social Media Examiner brought together a team of Facebook ad specialists to coach marketers via live stream on how they could be getting the results they wanted.
Naturally we wanted in. Facebook had 1.13 billion daily active users in 2016, and that number has grown since. Facebook is a goldmine of potential customers and we owe it to our clients to provide them with the best social plan possible. We have several ad campaigns in place, but we thought this summit could tell us if we were going in the right direction and give us some pointers to do even better.
Who Is This “We”?
Mary Jo Preston - Media Director at Stream Creative. With over 20 years of experience in marketing, advertising, special events, and promotions, MJ knows a thing or two about digital marketing and getting in front of the right people.
Stephanie Santoro - Marketing Coordinator at Stream Creative. Stephanie is responsible for several clients’ social accounts: creating social calendars, running contests, providing support and testing ad performance.
During the week of the Facebook Ads Summit we met every day in our conference room to watch the sessions live. The summit started with a poll question to gauge the participants biggest challenges with FB ads - here are the results:
The following are our top takeaways from our favorite sessions:
Perfecting Your Hooks: How to Craft Facebook Ads that Work! - Molly Pittman
“Your copy should explain why your offer is something the market wants.”
Molly shared with us 11 copy chunks to test out and perfect. Here they are:
- Pain/Benefit: Ever wish..? Tired of..? Struggling with..?
- Have: Having ____(before) is __ (before feeling) ...that's why we made ____(content).
- Feel: Are you feeling ___ because of ____
- Average Day: Tired of ___(before) Do this___ and get (after)
- Status: Want to be__,Become a __ and ___(learn/benefit)
- Relevance: It’s ___! Therefore you should___
- Tell a Story: Can you relate? If so__ do this and __ learn this
- Analogy: It’s like (know a thing) for __ (your market)
- Comparison
- Novelty: great for new product
- Logic: Facts/Stats that proves the importance of product/service
Before she shared those, she took a moment to have us take a step back and always keep the following in mind when crafting your copy: Convey the “Why” quickly, be relevant and write to speak to the end-user.
How to Create a Facebook Ad Funnel That Doubles Your Sales Conversion Rate - Amanda Bond
“Ask your audience WHY they did (or didn’t) buy. Analyze their responses and find the TRUE OBJECTIONS. Turn those objections into dynamic sequence ads."
Amanda Bond emphasized the importance of creating a Dynamic Sequence which would target those in purchase consideration that overcomes the three most common objections. This was a very helpful takeaway as it was something we could begin doing immediately after the session ended.
The first step is setting up a custom audience in Ads Manager, for example, target everyone who visited a certain webpage. Now every time someone visits that page, they will trigger your ad sequence.
Your ad sequence will consist of three different ads, each with a solution about a specific objection people have about your product. If you aren’t familiar enough with your audience to know what those are, try talking to your sales team about common questions they get or send our a survey to your audience.
Once those ads take off, start building lookalike audiences and growing custom ones.
Systematic Testing: How to Reach your Best Audience With the Right Ads for the Lowest Price - Azriel Ratz
“When building ad campaigns, start with the last step.”
We thought is was a great take away because it makes a lot of sense, yet it’s something we don’t really do. It’s easiest to create an ad targeted toward an existing audience that’s ready to buy, but this is typically a final step. In the case of ad sequencing, working backwards is easier and helps you stay focused on the final destination you want your audience to end at.
Deep Dive into Facebook Ad Analytics to Improve Your Strategy - Andrea Vahl
“Your data is only as good as your setup.”
Andrea Vahl made the excellent point that you should map out your entire funnel before you get anything rolling. This way you can set up ads targeting people who only made it to certain stages of of the funnel. Based on where they left off, you can create specific messaging to cater to them, and why they didn’t make it all the way through.
You can track conversions and other metrics to find out which areas of the funnel can be improved.
How to Use Facebook’s Custom Audiences to Lower Your Ad Costs and Improve Your Results - Rick Mulready
“How do you create a connection with people that you previously didn’t have a connection with?”
Rick Mulready compared Facebook ads to love at first sight; in order for things to work out you need to immediately establish a deep connection. And once you decide to engage with them, you need to be clear on the value you bring.
His metaphor made a lot of sense and carried through well as he talked about how to properly engage with people. One of his tips for building an engaged audience was to use Facebook Live. For obvious reasons Facebook loves Facebook Live videos and they often get higher reach and engagement as compared to normal videos.
Once the video is up you can see which of your audiences are more engaged based on video performance. Once you know who’s interested, you can start targeting them directly.
Rick also provided a quick tip for those who are unsure if they placed their Facebook pixel correctly on their site. Use the FB Pixel helper, a Chrome extension and troubleshooting tool that helps you validate your pixel implementation to ensure you are set up properly.
How to Boost Conversions With Facebook Ad Video Sequences - Tommie Powers
Tommie Powers provided us with a very specific step by step process on how to reach the right audiences with video, how to tell which audiences are engaged, and how to follow up with that engaged audience.
There were several good takeaways in this session but we personally love to test ad sets whenever we can, so we found Powers’ section on targeting and testing particularly interesting.
Powers recommended testing 10 ad sets at $5 dollars a day to start, then after 48 hours cutting down to the top 3 ads which were getting the most engagement. He then went on to explain how to determine which adds had the best engagement.
How to Craft Compelling Ad Copy That Converts - Zach Spuckler
“Good copy is the difference between telling and selling."
As an inbound agency, it’s our job to educate potential customers through various forms of content. There is a lot you can say about a product so it’s important to focus on what the customer wants to know about. A product will sell itself if it meets someone’s needs. Here lies the key to solving your copywriting problem: Find the problem your audience has, then solve it.
According to Spuckler, before making a Facebook ad ask yourself 3 questions:
- What is the problem my audience has?
- How do I solve this problem?
- What’s at stake if they don’t take action?
Spuckler talked about focusing on a specific audience, and how your ad should paint a picture of how they will feel once their problem is solved. If you’re in a position where you don’t know your audience that well, send out a survey asking them about their “biggest problem” in regards to the product your are trying to sell.
We found Spuckler's advice to be a good jumping off point, and general enough where we could apply it to everyone of our clients.
How to Successfully Launch Your Next Product With Facebook Ads - Nicholas Kusmich
Nick showed us his 4 Launch Accelerators:
- MARKET- know who, where they hang out, who they follow, what do they buy?
- MAGNET- You must give before you ask! Keep your resources short, easy to follow, goal oriented
- MESSAGE - provide value
- MOVEMENT - create an action
What we liked about his session is that he mapped out a movement to reach those, as he said,
“ Think of the prospect in a swim lane: Slow lane, medium lane and then Fast lane. What action would you want each of these to take.”
The other takeaway that resonated was 3 Key ad principles: Look, Hook and Took
- Look- capture attention, even gave an example of increasing contrast within an image to make it more noticeable.
- Hook- create a connection
- Took- call to action
He also left us with a great resource that we will pass on to you called the Perfect Ad template, which you can download here.
What a week of learning! Now it was time to get to work and apply some of these strategies to our campaigns. A lot of the information assured us we are heading in the right direction with many of our ads, and gave us a lot of ideas on how we could take others to the next level.
Implementation Time:
Now is the time to execute and take what we learned and put it to good use. Here is just a start of what we have done so far:
- Tested that little FB Pixel helper
- Built out more custom audiences for our clients
- Mapped out a sequence video ad for a new client
- Used the Perfect Ad template as a checklist on our existing ads to ensure we have that Look, Hook and Took!
Big Thank You to all the FB speakers who gave their time and shared their knowledge with us at the #FB18 ad summit and Social Media Examiner for putting this whole thing together!
Did we miss your “ah-ha!” moment from the summit? Comment below with your favorite takeaway!
