Category Archives: Facebook Ads

7 Facebook Advertising Problems to Avoid

Facebook Advertising can be a very effective tool — as long as you know how to use it.

Are you making the most of Facebook Advertising — or are you falling prey to some of these seven problems?

Problem #1: Not keeping Up with Facebook Advertising Changes

You may not realise just how frequently Facebook makes changes to its Advertising products and services, all in the interests of extracting as much revenue as possible.

For example, news has recently emerged that from August 2019 Facebook is reducing the number of text lines displayed in mobile advertising and shrinking the size of photos and videos. As Digiday reports:

Facebook ads placed in mobile will soon only show three lines of text, compared to the seven that could previously be viewed, although Facebook users will still be able to click to show more. And photos and videos will have a 4:5 aspect ratio, at most, compared to the previous 2:3. These upcoming changes were first revealed by Susan Wenograd, vp of marketing strategy at agency Aimclear, and confirmed by digital marketer David Herrmann. The new restrictions will start to be applied from August 19, according to Wenograd.

How much of your message is conveyed in the first three lines of your copy?

Since your advertising images will reportedly be cropped automatically if you don’t change them yourself, will that cause problems?

To borrow a phrase from the Boy Scouts: Be Prepared.

Problem #2: Not Paying to Advertise on Facebook

Too many Kiwi businesses simply aren’t paying to advertise on Facebook. As a result, social media adspend in New Zealand is currently tracking at about half as much (on a percentage basis) as social media adspend elsewhere.

Why is this a problem?

Because on average 95% of your followers simply won’t see your unpaid posts on Facebook.

Today’s reality is simple: to get seen on Facebook you need to pay to advertise.

Problem #3: Targeting the Wrong Audience

One of the really, really cool things about Facebook Advertising is that you can really fine-tune your targeting and focus in on that audience with laser precision.

Unfortunately, that also means that if you choose the wrong audience for your Facebook advertising — for example, if you make assumptions about the types of people likely to buy your product but those assumptions turn out to be incorrect — then, unlike traditional advertising, there is no spillage. If you target a specific age group, then you will only get exposure to that age group on Facebook. So if older or younger people are actually more likely to buy your product, your Facebook advertising can either fail or just not live up to its potential.

Problem #4: Hard Sell Rather Than Conversation

Facebook has told us for years that they’re just NOT going to share posts that are self-promotional in nature. And yes, Facebook’s algorithms can easily tell the difference. In fact, according to Facebook’s latest update, Facebook’s algorithm will now “prioritize posts that spark conversations and meaningful interactions between people”.

Yeah, it’s all pretty clearly laid out: create posts that engage your followers and Facebook will share them. Those are also the sorts of posts that perform best when you pay to advertise as well.

Why should you pay to promote posts that aren’t directly trying to generate sales? Think of it this way: if you were standing in front of a prospective customer, you (hopefully) wouldn’t start a conversation with a blatant sales pitch. Instead, you’d ask a few questions, exchange some opinions and generally get to know that prospect before trying to close a sale.

Too many marketers forget that the medium is called “social”. That implies conversations, not monologues.

Problem #5: Not Setting a Bid Strategy

As MarketingLand notes: marketers often fail to consider a bid strategy when advertising on Facebook. By choosing the wrong strategy or neglecting a strategy altogether, they exhaust budget quickly and ad performance suffers.

There are six bid strategies available for Facebook ads. Each supports specific objectives and has unique benefits. Facebook sets bids for five of these strategies, including lowest cost, in which Facebook manages all bidding and reaches your lowest cost opportunities while spending budget.

What’s your bid strategy for Facebook Advertising?

Problem #6: Posting Boring Content

Does your advertising stand out on Facebook? Or does it just blend into the background, just another easily-avoided sales pitch amongst the hundreds of posts on your prospect’s newsfeed?

Yes, yes, we know, creativity is in the eye of the beholder. But because there have now been literally millions of ads on Facebook, the data analysts have been collecting, curating and analysing – and identifying the elements of successful Facebook ads. We’ve collated many of those examples in our “Mastering Facebook Ads” course (see details below). Turns out that it is rocket science, but there are plenty of astronauts out there identifying the nuggets of gold amongst the worthless asteroids.

Problem #7: Measuring the Wrong Things (or not measuring at all)

As Jeff Bullas points out: Arguably the most important part of your whole social marketing efforts is the ROI.

Did you achieve what you set out to do? And how do you measure that in the first place?

If you’re not following this step, then all your marketing efforts might as well go to waste.

Each step of the way, you need to be measuring and tracking the results so you know if a tactic is worth pursuing or not.

—

Suffering from one or more of those problems? Invented a few more of your own? It could be time to upskill yourself on the secrets of effective Facebook Advertising.

If you’d like to know more about Facebook Advertising, check out our online training course, “Mastering Facebook Ads”.

In this nine-part online training course, we will take you step-by-step through what you need to know to understand and master Facebook Advertising.

Lesson One: Getting Started

In this lesson we introduce you to the principles and practices of Facebook Advertising, and take you on a tour through Facebook Ads Manager (which is the tool that most of Facebook’s six million advertisers use to advertise on Facebook). We also discuss:

why you shouldn’t just boost your Facebook posts and expect to get effective results
the key differences between Google Adwords and Facebook Ads and why they matter to you
the limitations faced by New Zealand advertisers compared with our foreign counterparts
how (if you’re not careful) you can end up competing with yourself and drive up your Facebook advertising costs
an analysis of the New Zealand Facebook marketplace
why mobile is so important with Facebook (and why that matters to you)

Lesson Two: Setting Campaign Objectives

When you first start an advertising campaign on Facebook, you’ll be offered a range of possible objectives for your advertising. In this lesson, we deconstruct each of the offers on tap, consider how they might help or hinder your campaign and review:

the surprising importance of Awareness campaigns for your future success
why you shouldn’t just go straight after Conversion and Sales objectives
when, where and how you should trust Facebook to meet your objectives (and when you shouldn’t)

Lesson Three: Targeting

Facebook has such rich data about its users that you can use to laser-focus your advertising on the people that you most want to target. It’s both an asset and a liability, because if your targeting is based on assumptions, you might be advertising to exactly the wrong people. In this lesson, we explore:

the comprehensive sets of filters available to you to segment your audience
the enhanced capabilities that are NOT available to NZ businesses (and how you can compensate instead)
how you can reach out to your own customers and prospects through Facebook Custom Audiences
the surprising implications of Europe’s new GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation, introduced in May 2018) for New Zealand targeting on Facebook

Lesson Four: The Offer

All offers are not alike on Facebook. To understand what works on NZ’s most popular social network, we need to review some of the key elements of social shopping. In this lesson, we review:

The 10 most important factors that consumers look for when deciding whether or not to buy from you (and how you can improve each aspect)
The five most attractive offers that you can make, to close a sale
The six factors that consumers are most likely to consider when comparison shopping
The most popular items that Kiwis are buying online these days
The four most-important offerings you can provide that will have consumers recommending you to their friends
The five most likely reasons why consumers abandon their shopping cart in the middle of a purchase

Lesson Five: Advertising Creative

By now, you’ll be unsurprised to learn that all advertising is not alike on Facebook. In Lesson Five, we review the ads that work (and those that don’t) on Facebook. Included in this lesson:

identifying the most effective types of visual elements for Facebook Ads
when and how you should use video in your Facebook Ads
determining the copy elements that will work best to meet your objectives
establishing an effective Call to Action
considering the most important components of the Landing Pages (where you send people after they click on your ads)

Lesson Six: Remarketing and the Facebook Pixel

Remarketing — adding a Facebook pixel to a website outside Facebook, so that Facebook can track the journeys of those who click on your ads — is the key to truly understanding and segmenting your prospects. In this lesson, we give you a solid understanding of the benefits of remarketing and share how you can:

use remarketing to truly customise your Facebook Ads for your visitors
reach out again to prospects who visited your website but didn’t buy
follow up with prospects who made an enquiry or downloaded an ebook but have yet to buy
avoid wasting money, by not advertising again to those who did buy
remarket to visitors who have already liked your Facebook page

Lesson Seven: Measuring the Performance

Facebook Advertising creates a LOT of data, and the sheer scale of the information can be overwhelming. In Lesson Seven, we show you how to focus in on the key metrics that matter, and how to interpret that information to guide your future activities. In particular, we recommend that you track:

who saw your Facebook Ads
who clicked on those ads
the percentage who then took the desired action
the comparative Costs Per Click and Costs Per Conversion (and how to evaluate the effectiveness of your ads as a result)
the Lifetime Value of your Facebook-generated customers

Lesson Eight: Testing

Testing should be an essential part of any Facebook Advertising campaign. In this lesson we explain how to set up robust testing procedures for your campaigns and what represents appropriate sample sizes for each test. We also discuss:

which elements you might test (and why)
how and why you should only test a single element at any time
how to determine which variant is working and which is not (hint: it can be more complex than you think)
how much data you need to determine the outcome of a test

Lesson Nine: Creating Effective Facebook Posts

Finally, we review the types of posts that you should consider promoting with Facebook Ads, accompanied by a wide range of examples, including:

Plenty of stories from local and international businesses who are using Facebook effectively
The hotel chain that has twice as many people talking about it as the chain has followers
The radio station that has truly mastered the art of Facebook
Examples of posts that really tug at the heartstrings
The Facebook page that had 247,756 Facebook likes but managed to get 775,600 people talking and 160,000 people sharing
Practical posts that get people sharing

COURSE CREATION AND TUTORING
This course has been created and is tutored by Michael Carney, longtime marketer and author of six books (including the top-selling book “Trade Me Success Secrets”, now in its Second Edition). Michael is also the creator of a number of other online courses and consults on many digital business initiatives.

This is an online course, conducted on a web-based e-learning software platform, enabling course participants to proceed at their own pace, accessing materials online. This particular eCourse provides content in a variety of multimedia forms, including videos, slideshows, flash-based presentations and PDF files. No special software is required to participate.

Course lessons will be provided in nine parts, for participants to access in accordance with their own timetables.

CUSTOMER FEEDBACK

Feedback from previous Social Media Marketing online training course participants:

“this was the best professional development course I have done in many years” – Mark R, senior Agency Exec responsible for social media
“thought the information within was outstanding” – Ed P, General Manager
“What I loved was that I started with a fairly rudimentary understanding of social media but have learned a lot – including where to find more information as I need it.” – Fiona W, Marketing Manager
“I found it relevant, informative, topical, insightful and a bloody good read. It’s never evangelical, too techy, patronising, assumes that you know too much or too little about digital and has a warm sense of humour in the communication throughout which helped faciliate the learning process for me.” — Adrienne B, new media senior executive
“Thanks for pointing me in the direction of this course! It’s been extremely enlightening” — Shayne P, design agency director
“Rapt with what I have seen of the course” — Julia R, fashion editor
“I’m really enjoying the course – learning a lot – and I know the two friends I persuaded to join us are also loving it.” — Lavinia C, designer
“Am thoroughly enjoying the content!” – Kara B, magazine co-ordinator
“I completed the first lesson today and found it really interesting and love the interaction already! I am so looking forward to the second lesson already …” — Annette B, public relations director
“I was already engaging with social media and have been doing so for about 6 years or so. But, did I know how to use social media in a marketing and business sense? No, I simply did not. This course was a great way to show me how to do that.” — Sheryl K, online marketer

WHO SHOULD TAKE THIS COURSE
Any Business Owner or Manager, Marketing, Advertising, PR or Communications professional who, while they may have a fair knowledge of Facebook, realises that they need to know more about Facebook Advertising.

TIMING

This course begins on Thursday 02 January, 2020.

INVESTMENT

This nine-part eCourse is available for $697+GST. However we offer a $100 Early Bird Discount for bookings received and payment made by midnight on Thursday 26 December, 2019. Pay only $597+GST for this course!

Bookings are confirmed on receipt of payment, which can be by bank deposit or credit card. We can raise an invoice in advance if you need it.

To reserve your place in this course, please pay by credit card through PayPal by clicking here.

If you would prefer to pay by bank deposit, or require an invoice before making payment, please send an email to [email protected] with details of your request.

(The service provider will be shown as Netmarketing Courses in your transaction and on your credit card statement).

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

Your booking will be confirmed by email (if you have not received a confirmation within 24 hours, feel free to email [email protected]).

On the first day of the course you will be supplied by email with login details and Course Notes for Lesson One.

7 Common Facebook Advertising Mistakes That NZ Marketers Make

Facebook advertising has become a significant ingredient for social media marketers, but New Zealand businesses are still making a number of mistakes that reduce the effectiveness of the medium. Here are seven common problems:

Mistake #1: Not paying to advertise on Facebook

New Zealand marketers are spending far less than their overseas counterparts on paid social media advertising — and, alas, it’s not because we are somehow smarter. Our organic (unpaid) social media posts are performing just as poorly as those elsewhere in the world. Too many Kiwi marketers just haven’t yet got the message that to get seen on Facebook we need to pay to advertise.

According to NZ Interactive Advertising Bureau figures, NZ expenditure on paid Facebook and other social media advertising represents around 10% of New Zealand’s total digital advertising expenditure.

That’s less than half of the ad revenue market share enjoyed by Facebook in the US or the UK.

Mistake #2: Selling Instead of Engaging

Too many marketers forget that the medium is called “social”. That implies conversations, not monologues.

Mistake #3: Posting Boring Facebook Content

Does your advertising stand out on Facebook? Or does it just blend into the background, just another easily-avoided sales pitch amongst the hundreds of posts on your prospect’s newsfeed?

Mistake #4: Not Monitoring Your Competitors

The neat thing about Facebook is that it’s all transparent. You can see your competitors’ pages, both locally and globally. You can see the posts that they are paying to advertise, you can see the content that they’re using and you can see what engagement they’re getting from their followers – reactions, shares and comments.

It’s a goldmine of competitive intelligence, and if you’re not taking advantage, shame on you!

Mistake #5: Not Testing Strategically (or Not Testing at All)

Forbes Magazine notes: How do you choose what audience on Facebook should see your ads? What are the interests you should consider targeting? How do you scale up your campaigns? These are the questions that require a whole lot of space and time to think about before you decide.

What I have noticed with many inexperienced Facebook entrepreneurs, however, is they actually don’t have a methodical and clear approach towards testing. They jump around different interests and try out every option in the ad setup menu.

When it comes to testing, developing a clear, step-by-step approach and understanding what key performance indicators (KPIs) to analyze and why is key to avoiding a wasteful resource investment.

Mistake #6: You’re Posting Too Often (or Not Often Enough)

Frequency matters in social media. If you don’t post frequently enough, two things happen:

your audience won’t see your posts (because of Facebook’s algorithms); and
your audience will forget about you, because of all the other wondrous enticements flashing before their jaded eyes.

On the other hand, if you post too frequently, your audience just might get tired of all your messages (especially if the messages are creatively bereft and repetitive).

So how often should you post? Typically, once-a-day, at a time when the largest portion of your audience is visiting Facebook. How do you know when that is? The answer is in your Facebook analytical data, just waiting to be discovered. If once-a-day seems not enough, take a look at your competitors and see how often they are posting. Again, all that information is available for you to review and understand.

Mistake #7: Not Measuring the ROI

As Jeff Bullas points out: Arguably the most important part of your whole social marketing efforts is the ROI.

Did you achieve what you set out to do? And how do you measure that in the first place?

If you’re not following this step, then all your marketing efforts might as well go to waste.

Each step of the way, you need to be measuring and tracking the results so you know if a tactic is worth pursuing or not.

At the end of the day, you need a set of data or a number that says if your strategy was worth it or not. And no single metric tells you this better than the ROI.

So how can you avoid making such mistakes — and move on to make Facebook advertising work for you?

Check out our online training course, “Mastering Facebook Ads”.

In this nine-part online training course, we will take you step-by-step through what you need to know to understand and master Facebook Advertising.

Lesson One: Getting Started

why you shouldn’t just boost your Facebook posts and expect to get effective results
the key differences between Google Adwords and Facebook Ads and why they matter to you
the limitations faced by New Zealand advertisers compared with our foreign counterparts
how (if you’re not careful) you can end up competing with yourself and drive up your Facebook advertising costs
an analysis of the New Zealand Facebook marketplace
why mobile is so important with Facebook (and why that matters to you)

Lesson Two: Setting Campaign Objectives

the surprising importance of Awareness campaigns for your future success
why you shouldn’t just go straight after Conversion and Sales objectives
when, where and how you should trust Facebook to meet your objectives (and when you shouldn’t)

Lesson Three: Targeting

the comprehensive sets of filters available to you to segment your audience
the enhanced capabilities that are NOT available to NZ businesses (and how you can compensate instead)
how you can reach out to your own customers and prospects through Facebook Custom Audiences
the surprising implications of Europe’s new GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation, introduced in May 2018) for New Zealand targeting on Facebook

Lesson Four: The Offer

All offers are not alike on Facebook. To understand what works on NZ’s most popular social network, we need to review some of the key elements of social shopping. In this lesson, we review:

The 10 most important factors that consumers look for when deciding whether or not to buy from you (and how you can improve each aspect)
The five most attractive offers that you can make, to close a sale
The six factors that consumers are most likely to consider when comparison shopping
The most popular items that Kiwis are buying online these days
The four most-important offerings you can provide that will have consumers recommending you to their friends
The five most likely reasons why consumers abandon their shopping cart in the middle of a purchase

Lesson Five: Advertising Creative

By now, you’ll be unsurprised to learn that all advertising is not alike on Facebook. In Lesson Five, we review the ads that work (and those that don’t) on Facebook. Included in this lesson:

identifying the most effective types of visual elements for Facebook Ads
when and how you should use video in your Facebook Ads
determining the copy elements that will work best to meet your objectives
establishing an effective Call to Action
considering the most important components of the Landing Pages (where you send people after they click on your ads)

Lesson Six: Remarketing and the Facebook Pixel

use remarketing to truly customise your Facebook Ads for your visitors
reach out again to prospects who visited your website but didn’t buy
follow up with prospects who made an enquiry or downloaded an ebook but have yet to buy
avoid wasting money, by not advertising again to those who did buy
remarket to visitors who have already liked your Facebook page

Lesson Seven: Measuring the Performance

who saw your Facebook Ads
who clicked on those ads
the percentage who then took the desired action
the comparative Costs Per Click and Costs Per Conversion (and how to evaluate the effectiveness of your ads as a result)
the Lifetime Value of your Facebook-generated customers

Lesson Eight: Testing

which elements you might test (and why)
how and why you should only test a single element at any time
how to determine which variant is working and which is not (hint: it can be more complex than you think)
how much data you need to determine the outcome of a test

Lesson Nine: Creating Effective Facebook Posts

Finally, we review the types of posts that you should consider promoting with Facebook Ads, accompanied by a wide range of examples, including:

Plenty of stories from local and international businesses who are using Facebook effectively
The hotel chain that has twice as many people talking about it as the chain has followers
The radio station that has truly mastered the art of Facebook
Examples of posts that really tug at the heartstrings
The Facebook page that had 247,756 Facebook likes but managed to get 775,600 people talking and 160,000 people sharing
Practical posts that get people sharing

Course lessons will be provided in nine parts, for participants to access in accordance with their own timetables.

CUSTOMER FEEDBACK

Feedback from previous Social Media Marketing online training course participants:

“this was the best professional development course I have done in many years” – Mark R, senior Agency Exec responsible for social media
“thought the information within was outstanding” – Ed P, General Manager
“What I loved was that I started with a fairly rudimentary understanding of social media but have learned a lot – including where to find more information as I need it.” – Fiona W, Marketing Manager
“I found it relevant, informative, topical, insightful and a bloody good read. It’s never evangelical, too techy, patronising, assumes that you know too much or too little about digital and has a warm sense of humour in the communication throughout which helped faciliate the learning process for me.” — Adrienne B, new media senior executive
“Thanks for pointing me in the direction of this course! It’s been extremely enlightening” — Shayne P, design agency director
“Rapt with what I have seen of the course” — Julia R, fashion editor
“I’m really enjoying the course – learning a lot – and I know the two friends I persuaded to join us are also loving it.” — Lavinia C, designer
“Am thoroughly enjoying the content!” – Kara B, magazine co-ordinator
“I completed the first lesson today and found it really interesting and love the interaction already! I am so looking forward to the second lesson already …” — Annette B, public relations director
“I was already engaging with social media and have been doing so for about 6 years or so. But, did I know how to use social media in a marketing and business sense? No, I simply did not. This course was a great way to show me how to do that.” — Sheryl K, online marketer

TIMING

This course begins on Thursday 02 January, 2020.

INVESTMENT

Bookings are confirmed on receipt of payment, which can be by bank deposit or credit card. We can raise an invoice in advance if you need it.

To reserve your place in this course, please pay by credit card through PayPal by clicking here.

If you would prefer to pay by bank deposit, or require an invoice before making payment, please send an email to [email protected] with details of your request.

(The service provider will be shown as Netmarketing Courses in your transaction and on your credit card statement).

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

Your booking will be confirmed by email (if you have not received a confirmation within 24 hours, feel free to email [email protected]).

On the first day of the course you will be supplied by email with login details and Course Notes for Lesson One.

—

PS You might also like to check out our other Facebook courses:

Facebook Accelerator Programme

So you have a few hundred (or a few thousand) followers on Facebook but now you want to know how to get to the next level? Our Facebook Accelerator seven-part online course will lead you through the steps necessary to supercharge your Facebook presence and get Kiwi consumers engaging with you and your brands.

For more details of the Facebook Accelerator programme, please click here.

The Complete Facebook Marketing Course

For those who wish to master Facebook Marketing in its entirety, we’ve created a ten-week online training programme which will take you from absolute beginner on Facebook to highly effective Facebook communicator.

For more details of the Complete Facebook Marketing programme, please click here.

—

Mastering Facebook and Instagram Marketing

In 2019, by far the most powerful social media channels for NZ marketers are Facebook and Instagram.

That’s where the audiences are, and that’s where YOU need to be.

Through Facebook you can reach an estimated 3.3 million Kiwis 13+
Through Instagram you can reach an estimated 1.7 million Kiwis 13+

Of course, there’s rather more to Facebook and Instagram marketing than making a few posts or taking a few pretty pictures and hoping to reach large numbers of your target audience.

Effective social media marketing requires the right knowledge, tools, tips and techniques to help you get noticed and to encourage your audience to engage with you and your brand.

That’s where we can help.

In recognition of the combined strengths of Facebook and Instagram, we’ve taken the best of our popular Facebook and Instagram courses, and blended them together into a powerful thirteen-part Mastering Facebook and Instagram Marketing online training course.

This combined will bring you up to speed with what’s required to make your social media marketing on Facebook and Instagram really work for you in 2019.

For more details of the Mastering Facebook and Instagram Marketing programme, please click here.

Are 99% of Your Facebook Ads Failing?

As you’re probably well aware, if you want to get seen by more than a few percent of your followers, you have to PAY to promote your posts.

That’s not news. But there’s another BIG BAD SECRET that you might not know about: just paying to promote your Facebook posts is not enough.

IF YOU pay to promote posts that no-one wants to read

Guess what, no-one will read those posts even though you’re paying to show them to your followers.

IF YOU use poor creative content that doesn’t attract attention

You’re just flushing money down the drain.

IF YOU make offers that don’t appeal

Sorry, your advertising won’t convert into sales.

IF YOU target the wrong audience

Your ads just won’t work.

IF YOU use the wrong Facebook ad objectives

Prepare to be very disappointed.

What makes a successful Facebook Ad in 2018?

The good news is, we don’t have to guess. AdEspresso has analysed 752,626 Facebook ads, crunched plenty of numbers and emerged with the five key elements of successful Facebook Ads.

We’ve included the results of that research, along with plenty of other up-to-the-minute insights, into our online training course.

If you’d like to know more about effective Facebook advertising in New Zealand, check out our “Mastering Facebook Ads” online training course:

In this nine-part online training course, we will take you step-by-step through what you need to know to understand and master Facebook Advertising.

Lesson One: Getting Started

In this lesson we introduce you to the principles and practices of Facebook Advertising, and take you on a tour through Facebook Ads Manager (which is the tool that most of Facebook’s two million advertisers use to advertise on Facebook). We also discuss:

why you shouldn’t just boost your Facebook posts and expect to get effective results
the key differences between Google Adwords and Facebook Ads and why they matter to you
the limitations faced by New Zealand advertisers compared with our foreign counterparts
how (if you’re not careful) you can end up competing with yourself and drive up your Facebook advertising costs
an analysis of the New Zealand Facebook marketplace
why mobile is so important with Facebook (and why that matters to you)

Lesson Two: Setting Campaign Objectives

the surprising importance of Awareness campaigns for your future success
why you shouldn’t just go straight after Conversion and Sales objectives
when, where and how you should trust Facebook to meet your objectives (and when you shouldn’t)

Lesson Three: Targeting

the comprehensive sets of filters available to you to segment your audience
the enhanced capabilities that are NOT available to NZ businesses (and how you can compensate instead)
how you can reach out to your own customers and prospects through Facebook Custom Audiences
the surprising implications of Europe’s new GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation, introduced in May 2018) for New Zealand targeting on Facebook

Lesson Four: The Offer

All offers are not alike on Facebook. To understand what works on NZ’s most popular social network, we need to review some of the key elements of social shopping. In this lesson, we review:

The 10 most important factors that consumers look for when deciding whether or not to buy from you (and how you can improve each aspect)
The five most attractive offers that you can make, to close a sale
The six factors that consumers are most likely to consider when comparison shopping
The most popular items that Kiwis are buying online these days
The four most-important offerings you can provide that will have consumers recommending you to their friends
The five most likely reasons why consumers abandon their shopping cart in the middle of a purchase

Lesson Five: Advertising Creative

By now, you’ll be unsurprised to learn that all advertising is not alike on Facebook. In Lesson Five, we review the ads that work (and those that don’t) on Facebook. Included in this lesson:

identifying the most effective types of visual elements for Facebook Ads
when and how you should use video in your Facebook Ads
determining the copy elements that will work best to meet your objectives
establishing an effective Call to Action
considering the most important components of the Landing Pages (where you send people after they click on your ads)

Lesson Six: Remarketing and the Facebook Pixel

use remarketing to truly customise your Facebook Ads for your visitors
reach out again to prospects who visited your website but didn’t buy
follow up with prospects who made an enquiry or downloaded an ebook but have yet to buy
avoid wasting money, by not advertising again to those who did buy
remarket to visitors who have already liked your Facebook page

Lesson Seven: Measuring the Performance

who saw your Facebook Ads
who clicked on those ads
the percentage who then took the desired action
the comparative Costs Per Click and Costs Per Conversion (and how to evaluate the effectiveness of your ads as a result)
the Lifetime Value of your Facebook-generated customers

Lesson Eight: Testing

which elements you might test (and why)
how and why you should only test a single element at any time
how to determine which variant is working and which is not (hint: it can be more complex than you think)
how much data you need to determine the outcome of a test

Lesson Nine: Creating Effective Facebook Posts

Finally, we review the types of posts that you should consider promoting with Facebook Ads, accompanied by a wide range of examples, including:

Plenty of stories from local and international businesses who are using Facebook effectively
The hotel chain that has twice as many people talking about it as the chain has followers
The radio station that has truly mastered the art of Facebook
Examples of posts that really tug at the heartstrings
The Facebook page that had 247,756 Facebook likes but managed to get 775,600 people talking and 160,000 people sharing
Practical posts that get people sharing

Course lessons will be provided in nine parts, for participants to access in accordance with their own timetables.

CUSTOMER FEEDBACK

Feedback from previous Social Media Marketing online training course participants:

“this was the best professional development course I have done in many years” – Mark R, senior Agency Exec responsible for social media
“thought the information within was outstanding” – Ed P, General Manager
“What I loved was that I started with a fairly rudimentary understanding of social media but have learned a lot – including where to find more information as I need it.” – Fiona W, Marketing Manager
“I found it relevant, informative, topical, insightful and a bloody good read. It’s never evangelical, too techy, patronising, assumes that you know too much or too little about digital and has a warm sense of humour in the communication throughout which helped faciliate the learning process for me.” — Adrienne B, new media senior executive
“Thanks for pointing me in the direction of this course! It’s been extremely enlightening” — Shayne P, design agency director
“Rapt with what I have seen of the course” — Julia R, fashion editor
“I’m really enjoying the course – learning a lot – and I know the two friends I persuaded to join us are also loving it.” — Lavinia C, designer
“Am thoroughly enjoying the content!” – Kara B, magazine co-ordinator
“I completed the first lesson today and found it really interesting and love the interaction already! I am so looking forward to the second lesson already …” — Annette B, public relations director
“I was already engaging with social media and have been doing so for about 6 years or so. But, did I know how to use social media in a marketing and business sense? No, I simply did not. This course was a great way to show me how to do that.” — Sheryl K, online marketer

TIMING

This course begins on Thursday 02 January, 2020.

INVESTMENT

This nine-part eCourse is available for $597. However we offer a $100 Early Bird Discount for bookings received and payment made by midnight on Thursday 26 December, 2019. Pay only $497 for this course!

Bookings are confirmed on receipt of payment, which can be by bank deposit or credit card. We can raise an invoice in advance if you need it.

To reserve your place in this course, please pay by credit card through PayPal by clicking here.

If you would prefer to pay by bank deposit, or require an invoice before making payment, please send an email to [email protected] with details of your request.

(The service provider will be shown as Netmarketing Courses in your transaction and on your credit card statement).

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

Your booking will be confirmed by email (if you have not received a confirmation within 24 hours, feel free to email [email protected]).

On the first day of the course you will be supplied by email with login details and Course Notes for Lesson One.

The 5 Secrets of Successful Facebook Ads

What makes a successful Facebook Ad in 2018?

The good news is, we don’t have to guess. AdEspresso has analysed 752,626 Facebook ads, crunched plenty of numbers and emerged with the five key elements of successful Facebook Ads:

In 2018:

The length of ad text has increased.
Link descriptions are shorter.
There has been an uptick in brands that link to specific landing pages.
The top five CTAs in 2018 and how brands’ usage of CTAs have increased.
Companies are using a greater variety of Ad types.

The data below, from more than three years of research, will help marketing teams of all sizes improve their ROI.

Now, for the results!

1) Headline Length Is 5 Words on Average, but Ad Text Has Increased

The message is tried and true: A five-word headline is the perfect length. What has shifted over time, however, is the amount of ad text:

Inching up from 14 words on average in 2015 to 19 in 2018, brands have decided to squeeze more information into this initial field.

This tells us that marketers (1) believe viewers will read more up top and (2) that they’re homing in on content that best hooks viewers’ attention.

Who better to illustrate this than Facebook itself?

A clear, no-nonsense (and five-word) headline, “See how Facebook is changing,” paired with 20 words of ad text is the recipe for a perfect Sponsored Post.

In the text itself, we see Facebook doing away with regular punctuation and grammar rules — keeping it chill and relatable.

In a time of heightened security risks, particularly around consumer data, if, like Facebook, you store a lot of personal information, it’s absolutely critical to keep an open line of communication with all of your stakeholders — yes, even in your Sponsored Posts!

Although the average length for ad text has increased, it’s still important to find a sweet spot between a catchy description and staying concise.

The travel brand Away struggles with this:

Although the company nails their “Meet the Perfect Suitcase” headline (again — nothing extra, four words, and in line with Facebook’s own recommendation of 25 characters), the ad text is repetitive and quickly becomes boring after the first sentence.

Sticking to the 19-word median will help you stay on point and choose your words carefully, making sure nothing escapes viewers’ notice.

Here are some additional proven tactics for crafting the best headlines:

Use numbers at the beginning of your headline.
Create a sense of urgency with limited-time offers.
Be clear about your offer (avoid being too vague).
Ask questions that people want to be answered.

Overall, remember to keep your text clear, concise, and relaxed. While ad text has expanded, the most successful posts are still direct and succinct.

2) Link Descriptions Have Become Shorter

In 2015, the average link description was a whopping 18 words. Three years later, it has been whittled down to 13.

Why is this happening? To shed some light, let’s study an example of a link description that doesn’t work:

Well exceeding Facebook’s 30-character suggestion, the link description is too verbose and trails off without enough information to prompt the viewer to click the “Learn More” CTA.

Also, it doesn’t add any new information.

Upserve has already mentioned its restaurant management software in the ad text. The link description simply takes up space and makes the post feel crammed.

In contrast, WeWork nails it with a shorter link description that packs the most important information into the space provided.

Although it is below the 13-word average, this four-word link description underscores how less is more.

Facebook has even come out and stated that the average human attention span is just over 8 seconds.

Take this to heart, and don’t push your viewers’ limits with run-on sentences.

3) More Ads Are Using Specific Landing Pages

In 2015, marketers incorporated specific links for viewers in 88.7% of Facebook ads. While the result has fluctuated a bit in the past three years, the overall trend has been upward, with close to 90% of Facebook ads highlighting page links in 2018.

Including landing pages makes a post more direct and removes the effort of additional research for the viewer. Given the heightened attention to ad text in recent years (see Result #1), incorporating your link directly into this field is a great option!

You don’t have to be a big corporation to adopt professional tactics. Above, a small nonprofit, the Williamstown Theatre Festival, displays expert aesthetics by placing its link description front and center.

Pro Tip: Using bitly.com will shorten a longer url into a bite-size piece to fit your word count.

While landing pages are almost always helpful, they’re critical if you’re running Facebook Ads with the objective of lead generation, video views, or conversions. You need to be sure your viewer doesn’t just absorb information from your post but actually takes action!

4) Top 5 CTAs: Learn More, None, Shop Now, Sign Up, Book Travel

Choosing the perfect Call to Action (CTA) is more difficult than you’d imagine, which is a major reason why this category has seen so many changes over the years. Marketers have experimented with several different kinds of CTAs (including none at all). At the same time, Facebook constantly rolls out new options to test.

Facebook has three main types of ads that are aimed at increasing awareness, consideration, or conversion. Each of these has its own set of CTAs. While some, such as “Comment,” overlap among categories, others, like “Play Game,” are unique to a particular channel.

While the above CTAs are vetted to help drive success on the majority of Facebook ads, branching out and using CTAs that didn’t make the top-five list could set you apart in your viewers’ News Feeds.

The New Yorker could have gone with a simple “Shop Now” or “Learn More” — but the “Subscribe” CTA is more specific to its objective and is unique among the majority of other offers. It adds an artistic flair to an already-creative brand.

There are more than 30 unique options for Facebook ad CTAs. Here are a few of the quirkier ones:

Listen Now
Get Directions
Donate Now
Send Message
Image Click (where the image itself is the CTA)

Whether you go with a vetted approach or one that’s more daring will depend on your brand, your audience, and your ad budget — but having the correct data should always be your first step.

5) Companies Are Using a Greater Variety of Ad Types

Finally, more companies are deciding to get creative with the new ad offerings Facebook keeps rolling out.

Clearly, video ads have soared in popularity, while links, photos, and events have remained relatively steady or declined.

For more visual learners, another way to view the breakdown of ad types is below:

While traditional links still represent the majority, they are no match for the rapid rise of the video format.

There are so many ways to get creative and stand out with your video ads. And now is clearly the perfect time.

A few ideas from the pros:

Put the good stuff into the first 5–10 seconds.
Work in primary colors (red, blue, yellow).
Incorporate scrolling text.

While you should invest in learning the video format, don’t discount photo ads (particularly with all of the new image technology), which have remained a steady bet since 2015.

If you’d like to know more about effective Facebook advertising in New Zealand, check out our “Mastering Facebook Ads” online training course:

In this nine-part online training course, we will take you step-by-step through what you need to know to understand and master Facebook Advertising.

Lesson One: Getting Started

In this lesson we introduce you to the principles and practices of Facebook Advertising, and take you on a tour through Facebook Ads Manager (which is the tool that most of Facebook’s two million advertisers use to advertise on Facebook). We also discuss:

why you shouldn’t just boost your Facebook posts and expect to get effective results
the key differences between Google Adwords and Facebook Ads and why they matter to you
the limitations faced by New Zealand advertisers compared with our foreign counterparts
how (if you’re not careful) you can end up competing with yourself and drive up your Facebook advertising costs
an analysis of the New Zealand Facebook marketplace
why mobile is so important with Facebook (and why that matters to you)

Lesson Two: Setting Campaign Objectives

the surprising importance of Awareness campaigns for your future success
why you shouldn’t just go straight after Conversion and Sales objectives
when, where and how you should trust Facebook to meet your objectives (and when you shouldn’t)

Lesson Three: Targeting

the comprehensive sets of filters available to you to segment your audience
the enhanced capabilities that are NOT available to NZ businesses (and how you can compensate instead)
how you can reach out to your own customers and prospects through Facebook Custom Audiences
the surprising implications of Europe’s new GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation, introduced in May 2018) for New Zealand targeting on Facebook

Lesson Four: The Offer

All offers are not alike on Facebook. To understand what works on NZ’s most popular social network, we need to review some of the key elements of social shopping. In this lesson, we review:

The 10 most important factors that consumers look for when deciding whether or not to buy from you (and how you can improve each aspect)
The five most attractive offers that you can make, to close a sale
The six factors that consumers are most likely to consider when comparison shopping
The most popular items that Kiwis are buying online these days
The four most-important offerings you can provide that will have consumers recommending you to their friends
The five most likely reasons why consumers abandon their shopping cart in the middle of a purchase

Lesson Five: Advertising Creative

By now, you’ll be unsurprised to learn that all advertising is not alike on Facebook. In Lesson Five, we review the ads that work (and those that don’t) on Facebook. Included in this lesson:

identifying the most effective types of visual elements for Facebook Ads
when and how you should use video in your Facebook Ads
determining the copy elements that will work best to meet your objectives
establishing an effective Call to Action
considering the most important components of the Landing Pages (where you send people after they click on your ads)

Lesson Six: Remarketing and the Facebook Pixel

use remarketing to truly customise your Facebook Ads for your visitors
reach out again to prospects who visited your website but didn’t buy
follow up with prospects who made an enquiry or downloaded an ebook but have yet to buy
avoid wasting money, by not advertising again to those who did buy
remarket to visitors who have already liked your Facebook page

Lesson Seven: Measuring the Performance

who saw your Facebook Ads
who clicked on those ads
the percentage who then took the desired action
the comparative Costs Per Click and Costs Per Conversion (and how to evaluate the effectiveness of your ads as a result)
the Lifetime Value of your Facebook-generated customers

Lesson Eight: Testing

which elements you might test (and why)
how and why you should only test a single element at any time
how to determine which variant is working and which is not (hint: it can be more complex than you think)
how much data you need to determine the outcome of a test

Lesson Nine: Creating Effective Facebook Posts

Finally, we review the types of posts that you should consider promoting with Facebook Ads, accompanied by a wide range of examples, including:

Plenty of stories from local and international businesses who are using Facebook effectively
The hotel chain that has twice as many people talking about it as the chain has followers
The radio station that has truly mastered the art of Facebook
Examples of posts that really tug at the heartstrings
The Facebook page that had 247,756 Facebook likes but managed to get 775,600 people talking and 160,000 people sharing
Practical posts that get people sharing

Course lessons will be provided in nine parts, for participants to access in accordance with their own timetables.

CUSTOMER FEEDBACK

Feedback from previous Social Media Marketing online training course participants:

“this was the best professional development course I have done in many years” – Mark R, senior Agency Exec responsible for social media
“thought the information within was outstanding” – Ed P, General Manager
“What I loved was that I started with a fairly rudimentary understanding of social media but have learned a lot – including where to find more information as I need it.” – Fiona W, Marketing Manager
“I found it relevant, informative, topical, insightful and a bloody good read. It’s never evangelical, too techy, patronising, assumes that you know too much or too little about digital and has a warm sense of humour in the communication throughout which helped faciliate the learning process for me.” — Adrienne B, new media senior executive
“Thanks for pointing me in the direction of this course! It’s been extremely enlightening” — Shayne P, design agency director
“Rapt with what I have seen of the course” — Julia R, fashion editor
“I’m really enjoying the course – learning a lot – and I know the two friends I persuaded to join us are also loving it.” — Lavinia C, designer
“Am thoroughly enjoying the content!” – Kara B, magazine co-ordinator
“I completed the first lesson today and found it really interesting and love the interaction already! I am so looking forward to the second lesson already …” — Annette B, public relations director
“I was already engaging with social media and have been doing so for about 6 years or so. But, did I know how to use social media in a marketing and business sense? No, I simply did not. This course was a great way to show me how to do that.” — Sheryl K, online marketer

TIMING

This course begins on Thursday 02 January, 2020.

INVESTMENT

Bookings are confirmed on receipt of payment, which can be by bank deposit or credit card. We can raise an invoice in advance if you need it.

To reserve your place in this course, please pay by credit card through PayPal by clicking here.

If you would prefer to pay by bank deposit, or require an invoice before making payment, please send an email to [email protected] with details of your request.

(The service provider will be shown as Netmarketing Courses in your transaction and on your credit card statement).

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

Your booking will be confirmed by email (if you have not received a confirmation within 24 hours, feel free to email [email protected]).

On the first day of the course you will be supplied by email with login details and Course Notes for Lesson One.

Are You Paying For Facebook Ads That Simply Don’t Work?

Are you failing on Facebook? Do your posts attract plenty of likes, comments and shares — or do they just sit there, covered in cyberdust?

As you’re probably aware, over the years Facebook has steadily dialed back on organic (i.e. free) reach of Facebook page posts. Nowadays, if you want to get seen by more than a few percent of your followers, you have to PAY to promote your posts.

That’s not news. But there’s another BIG BAD SECRET that you might not know about: just paying to promote your Facebook posts is not enough.

Pay to promote posts that no-one wants to read — “Sale Today”, “Here’s some dull news about our company” — and, guess what, no-one will read those posts even though you’re paying to show them to your followers.

You need to promote posts that already work. Otherwise you could be just throwing your money away.

There’s a bit of a Catch-22, though. If hardly anyone sees your unpaid posts, how will you know which works and which doesn’t?

Two Solutions

As you may or may not know, we’ve been focussed on Social Media in general, and on Facebook in particular, for the last eight years. We’ve been running online training courses since 2010.

Along the way, we’ve purchased or commissioned a number of software tools to enable us to dig deep into Facebook, gather data and crunch numbers.

As a result, we have tools that have allowed us to:

build a 150,000-strong global database of Facebook pages (including more than 25,000 NZ Facebook pages)
add thousands more in any specific category at any time
track Facebook page performances in terms of likes and talks whenever we wish (typically weekly and monthly)
identify the most effective Facebook pages in terms of likes, talks and overall engagement
drill down into those pages and find their most effective posts

So, for example, if we wanted to identify the most effective types of posts in the Real Estate category, we would:

assemble from our database all the Real Estate pages we currently monitor (several hundred)
using our specialist Facebook search tools, gather additional NZ Facebook real estate pages (around 2300 relevant Kiwi pages at last count)
gather additional Facebook real estate pages for major towns and cities in Australia, the UK, the US and Canada (i.e. the primary English-speaking markets)
upload that specialist real estate database to our Facebook monitoring software to determine the most effective, most engaged Facebook pages amongst them
select the top-performing pages and then, using another software suite, identify the most effective (in terms of likes, comments and shares) posts for those pages
reverse-engineer the most effective posts and then recommend the strategies to follow to develop engaging content that your followers will want to share

For example (sticking with our real estate category), we’ve uncovered:

killer wording that almost forces prospects to like and engage with your page
a strategy that turns a dollar donation into a compelling engagement tool
a tactic that you simply must not use — because you’re attracting totally unqualified leads
a truly delightful content strategy that really pays off and proves the power of words
a low-cost but dramatically effective way to use Facebook video

You could do all that too, if you had our software tools, our database, our eight years of social media expertise and our forty-plus years of marketing experience.

Or you could opt for one of our two recommended solutions:

1. JOIN OUR “MASTERING FACEBOOK ADS” ONLINE TRAINING COURSE

Sign up for our “Mastering Facebook Ads” online training course, which will introduce you to the principles and practices of Facebook Advertising (crammed with tons of examples). Full details of this course are here: https://socialmedia.org.nz/ecourses/mastering-facebook-ads-course/

This course begins on Thursday 02 January, 2020.

However we offer a $100 Early Bird Discount for bookings received and payment made by midnight on Thursday 26 December, 2019.

2. CUSTOM ANALYSIS OF YOUR PRODUCT CATEGORY ON FACEBOOK

Alternatively, you could sign up to for our extensive analysis of your Facebook product category, out of which we will identify at least 15 content strategies for you to use to create effective and compelling posts.

During our custom analysis we will:

assemble from our database all the pages in your category that we currently monitor
gather as many additional Facebook pages in your category as possible, for major towns and cities in New Zealand
gather additional Facebook category pages for major towns and cities in Australia, the UK, the US and Canada
determine the most effective, most engaged Facebook pages in your category, based on current, real-time data
select the top-performing pages and identify the most effective (in terms of likes, comments and shares) posts for those pages
recommend at least 15 content strategies to follow to develop engaging content that your followers will want to share
suggest strategies that enable you to create original compelling content that will stand out from the crowd because it is unique

As you might imagine, despite the software tools we have at our disposal, this project requires significant individual analysis and insight, which is why we’re limiting the offer to just six clients.

For this service, we could easily charge $2500 or more, and that would be a fair price for all the effort involved.

Still, since this is a new project for us, we’re looking for some social proof in the form of very satisfied customers. So we’ve decided to offer our Facebook Custom Analysis programme for just $997.

Here’s the link to sign up and pay via PayPal (and yes, it will automatically switch to sign you up for a waiting list once all six spots are taken): http://bit.ly/fbcustomanalysis

You’ll be taken to our PayPal payment page, where you’ll be asked to provide your name and email details and to pay for the programme.

If you would prefer to pay by bank deposit, or require an invoice, please send an email to [email protected] with your requirements.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

You’ll receive our emailed confirmation of your booking (normally fairly quickly, but please do allow up to 12 hours for us to get back to you). Then we’ll be in touch by email to gather more information from you.

PS Sure, you can pass these offers by. We just don’t want you to have any regrets if/when your Facebook advertising fails.

Spy on Your Competitors and Their Facebook Advertising

Facebook has just introduced a new tool for marketers, and now provides Facebook Advertising campaign details attached to each Facebook page.

The social giant’s stated intention: to provide more transparency into advertising on Facebook. The welcome side effect for marketers: we can now see exactly what brands are opting to advertise on the network, which is valuable competitive intelligence which was not previously available to us.

So how do we get details of Facebook Advertising activities?

On a desktop computer, you’ll find it on the left-hand column of a brand’s Facebook page, under “Info and ads”.

On a mobile device, “Info and Ads” can be found near the top of the screen, on the right-hand side:

Even though this information is made available, however, sometimes there’s nothing to see (as in this example, where ‘DoritosANZ’, Doritos Australia/New Zealand, is not currently advertising on Facebook, either in Australia or New Zealand):

If we turn our attention to a brand that has been advertising recently, such as the example below from the Body Shop, we can see copies of any ads they are running on Facebook. It’s a useful pointer to where they’re putting their promotional efforts.

We’re not provided with any campaign information such as timing, spend levels or targeting — but at least we can see their creative executions, which provides us with insights into their thinking.

Facebook Advertising Across More Than One Market

We can learn still more about brands’ Facebook Advertising activities by viewing their efforts in multiple markets.

For example, if we turn our attention to the Australia/New Zealand Facebook page for Walt Disney Studios, we can see that the company has been advertising Incredibles 2 in New Zealand:

We can also see what the company is advertising on Facebook in Australia, simply by choosing a different location from Facebook’s dropdown list near the top of the page.

Then we learn that, apart from Incredibles 2, the company is also promoting the DVD/Digital release of A Wrinkle in Time. If you were a competing film distributor, that knowledge could assist you with your own campaigns.

Even More Market Intelligence about Facebook Advertising

Your Facebook Advertising access isn’t only limited to pages that jointly promote New Zealand and Australia. You can also go to international pages for insights.

For example, Ford New Zealand has an active NZ-only Facebook page, but is currently promoting only its SUV range:

If you want to see what else might be in the pipeline, you might head to Ford’s Australian page to check out their ‘Info and ads’ section.

First you’ll have to use the dropdown menu to see ads currently served in Australia:

Then you can see where they are putting their promotional efforts across the ditch:

And:

You might also decide you also want to check out what’s happening with Ford Canada:

All in all, this new Facebook Advertising capability will give you additional insights into your competitors and their plans. Add it to the list of tools you should use to improve your Social Media Marketing efforts.

—–

Need help with your Facebook marketing? Check out our Social Media Marketing online training courses:

Here are the current courses (click on the links for more details about each course):

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING COURSES

Facebook Accelerator Programme

So you have a few hundred (or a few thousand) followers on Facebook but now you want to know how to get to the next level? Our Facebook Accelerator seven-part online course will lead you through the steps necessary to supercharge your Facebook presence and get Kiwi consumers engaging with you and your brands.

For more details of the Facebook Accelerator programme, please click here.

The Principles & Practice of Social Media Marketing

This is a thirteen-part eCourse providing a comprehensive introduction to Social Media Marketing, from the Basics to detailed instructions on how to build and run a Social Media Marketing programme.

For more details of the Social Media Marketing online course, please click here.

The Complete Facebook Marketing Course

For those who wish to master Facebook Marketing in its entirety, we’ve created a ten-week online training programme which will take you from absolute beginner on Facebook to highly effective Facebook communicator.

For more details of the Complete Facebook Marketing programme, please click here.

Mastering Facebook Advertising

This is a nine-part eCourse providing a comprehensive introduction to Facebook Advertising.

For more details of the Mastering Facebook Ads online training course, please click here.

How to Prepare an Effective Social Media Brief

Even if you don’t intend to become directly involved in social media yourself, you may still need to understand the principles, practices and opportunities of social media — for example, if you need to brief someone about running a social media campaign. This programme is designed to provide you with the insights necessary to prepare an effective brief.

For more details of the How to Prepare an Effective Social Media Brief programme, please click here.

——-

Also, check out our Social Media NZ Marketing Trends 2018 special presentation.

Details here.

In 2018, If You Don’t Pay to Advertise on Facebook You Simply Won’t be Seen

If you’ve been in denial about Facebook, and hoping that your followers will see your posts without you spending any money, it’s time for a reality check: not going to happen.

Unless you pay to advertise, most of your Facebook messages will simply go unseen.

For many years, Facebook has been reducing what it calls Organic Reach (the number of people who see a post for free, without you paying to promote the post).

In early 2018, Organic Reach took yet another hit, as Digiday reports:

If any brands haven’t already shifted their Facebook strategy entirely to paid, then they may have to soon.

The social network is changing its news feed to prioritize what friends and family share, which will reduce the amount of content that users see from brands and publishers.

Agencies believe brands will have to spend more on paid ads on Facebook in order to get the same number of views — further lining Facebook’s pockets. This is just the “final nail in the existing coffin” of organic reach, said Doug Baker, director of strategic services at digital agency AnalogFolk.

Our own data confirms the local decline and fall of Organic Reach. We took a look at our New Zealand database of more than 23,000 Facebook pages as at 28 February 2018 and found that:

80% of NZ Facebook pages are now achieving less than 2% engagement
Just 3% (750) of the NZ Facebook pages we measured achieved more than 10% engagement (people liking, sharing or commenting on their posts) in the previous week
A mere handful of NZ Facebook pages (31, 0.13%) achieved better than 50% engagement — typically driven by the strong performance of a single post. Most then returned to normal low engagement in the following weeks

It’s time to stop denying and start paying.

We should warn you, though — it’s really easy to spend money on Facebook Advertising and not achieve much.

Here are some of the common mistakes that people make with Facebook Advertising:

Not doing enough homework on audience selection. Facebook allows you to slice and dice its two billion active users into finely-targeted segments — which, if you don’t know exactly what you’re doing, means that you can easily target precisely the wrong people. Or you might target too broad an audience and waste most of your money preaching to those who simply aren’t interested in your products or services.
Having the wrong objectives. Facebook gives you a wide range of possible objectives as it guides you through the advertising process. Typically, they fall into three broad categories: Awareness, Consideration and Conversion. If you select the wrong objectives, you won’t achieve what you really want with your advertising.
Expecting results like Adwords. Millions of people search Google for items they want to buy. If you choose the right keywords for your advertising (those that demonstrate “buyer intent”, such as “cheap flights to Sydney”), your ads will be read and, if the offer is right, generate action. Not so on Facebook — here, your ads are more interruptive, consumers are not directly in buying mode, so you need to choose different strategies to succeed.
Your Images are Boring. The Facebook News Feed is a constant flood of over-stimulation, and you only have a fraction of a second to catch the attention of your targets before they swipe on for their next fix. If your images don’t catch their attention, they’re gone.
You’re Missing the Best Bits. Facebook has developed a wide range of tools to help you manage the whole relationship with your target audience, including remarketing pixels to track and segment your Facebook audience on your own website. If you don’t know how these tools work properly, or if you’ve put them into the “too hard” basket, it’s like leaving a whole pile of money on the table.
You’re Not Testing Enough (if at all). More than a century of Direct Mail advertising has shown us that it’s possible to get dramatic improvements in advertising performance by testing different variants of ads against each other, selecting a winner and then testing that winner against other ads. But we live in an instant gratification, everyone’s-an-expert age where we think we know what we’re doing and why do we need to test? Facebook thanks you for your donation, shame you didn’t do enough testing.
Your Ads Worked at First, Then They Didn’t. Ads burn out quickly on social media. What starts out as interesting and different quickly becomes wallpaper on Facebook — far quicker than on TV or in other traditional media. You’ll need to restrict the frequency of even the most effective ads, and introduce new creative variants on a regular basis, or watch your campaigns crash and burn too soon.

So what can you do to improve your Facebook Advertising activities and minimise your mistakes?

Introducing our newest online training course, “Mastering Facebook Ads”.

In this nine-part online training course, we will take you step-by-step through what you need to know to understand and master Facebook Advertising.

Lesson One: Getting Started

In this lesson we introduce you to the principles and practices of Facebook Advertising, and take you on a tour through Facebook Ads Manager (which is the tool that most of Facebook’s two million advertisers use to advertise on Facebook). We also discuss:

why you shouldn’t just boost your Facebook posts and expect to get effective results
the key differences between Google Adwords and Facebook Ads and why they matter to you
the limitations faced by New Zealand advertisers compared with our foreign counterparts
how (if you’re not careful) you can end up competing with yourself and drive up your Facebook advertising costs
an analysis of the New Zealand Facebook marketplace
why mobile is so important with Facebook (and why that matters to you)

Lesson Two: Setting Campaign Objectives

the surprising importance of Awareness campaigns for your future success
why you shouldn’t just go straight after Conversion and Sales objectives
when, where and how you should trust Facebook to meet your objectives (and when you shouldn’t)

Lesson Three: Targeting

the comprehensive sets of filters available to you to segment your audience
the enhanced capabilities that are NOT available to NZ businesses (and how you can compensate instead)
how you can reach out to your own customers and prospects through Facebook Custom Audiences
the surprising implications of Europe’s new GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation, introduced in May 2018) for New Zealand targeting on Facebook

Lesson Four: The Offer

All offers are not alike on Facebook. To understand what works on NZ’s most popular social network, we need to review some of the key elements of social shopping. In this lesson, we review:

The 10 most important factors that consumers look for when deciding whether or not to buy from you (and how you can improve each aspect)
The five most attractive offers that you can make, to close a sale
The six factors that consumers are most likely to consider when comparison shopping
The most popular items that Kiwis are buying online these days
The four most-important offerings you can provide that will have consumers recommending you to their friends
The five most likely reasons why consumers abandon their shopping cart in the middle of a purchase

Lesson Five: Advertising Creative

By now, you’ll be unsurprised to learn that all advertising is not alike on Facebook. In Lesson Five, we review the ads that work (and those that don’t) on Facebook. Included in this lesson:

identifying the most effective types of visual elements for Facebook Ads
when and how you should use video in your Facebook Ads
determining the copy elements that will work best to meet your objectives
establishing an effective Call to Action
considering the most important components of the Landing Pages (where you send people after they click on your ads)

Lesson Six: Remarketing and the Facebook Pixel

use remarketing to truly customise your Facebook Ads for your visitors
reach out again to prospects who visited your website but didn’t buy
follow up with prospects who made an enquiry or downloaded an ebook but have yet to buy
avoid wasting money, by not advertising again to those who did buy
remarket to visitors who have already liked your Facebook page

Lesson Seven: Measuring the Performance

who saw your Facebook Ads
who clicked on those ads
the percentage who then took the desired action
the comparative Costs Per Click and Costs Per Conversion (and how to evaluate the effectiveness of your ads as a result)
the Lifetime Value of your Facebook-generated customers

Lesson Eight: Testing

which elements you might test (and why)
how and why you should only test a single element at any time
how to determine which variant is working and which is not (hint: it can be more complex than you think)
how much data you need to determine the outcome of a test

Lesson Nine: Creating Effective Facebook Posts

Finally, we review the types of posts that you should consider promoting with Facebook Ads, accompanied by a wide range of examples, including:

Plenty of stories from local and international businesses who are using Facebook effectively
The hotel chain that has twice as many people talking about it as the chain has followers
The radio station that has truly mastered the art of Facebook
Examples of posts that really tug at the heartstrings
The Facebook page that had 247,756 Facebook likes but managed to get 775,600 people talking and 160,000 people sharing
Practical posts that get people sharing

Course lessons will be provided in nine parts, for participants to access in accordance with their own timetables.

CUSTOMER FEEDBACK

Feedback from previous Social Media Marketing online training course participants:

“this was the best professional development course I have done in many years” – Mark R, senior Agency Exec responsible for social media
“thought the information within was outstanding” – Ed P, General Manager
“What I loved was that I started with a fairly rudimentary understanding of social media but have learned a lot – including where to find more information as I need it.” – Fiona W, Marketing Manager
“I found it relevant, informative, topical, insightful and a bloody good read. It’s never evangelical, too techy, patronising, assumes that you know too much or too little about digital and has a warm sense of humour in the communication throughout which helped faciliate the learning process for me.” — Adrienne B, new media senior executive
“Thanks for pointing me in the direction of this course! It’s been extremely enlightening” — Shayne P, design agency director
“Rapt with what I have seen of the course” — Julia R, fashion editor
“I’m really enjoying the course – learning a lot – and I know the two friends I persuaded to join us are also loving it.” — Lavinia C, designer
“Am thoroughly enjoying the content!” – Kara B, magazine co-ordinator
“I completed the first lesson today and found it really interesting and love the interaction already! I am so looking forward to the second lesson already …” — Annette B, public relations director
“I was already engaging with social media and have been doing so for about 6 years or so. But, did I know how to use social media in a marketing and business sense? No, I simply did not. This course was a great way to show me how to do that.” — Sheryl K, online marketer

TIMING

This course begins on Thursday 02 January, 2020.

INVESTMENT

Bookings are confirmed on receipt of payment, which can be by bank deposit or credit card. We can raise an invoice in advance if you need it.

To reserve your place in this course, please pay by credit card through PayPal by clicking here.

If you would prefer to pay by bank deposit, or require an invoice before making payment, please send an email to [email protected] with details of your request.

(The service provider will be shown as Netmarketing Courses in your transaction and on your credit card statement).

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

Your booking will be confirmed by email (if you have not received a confirmation within 24 hours, feel free to email [email protected]).

On the first day of the course you will be supplied by email with login details and Course Notes for Lesson One.

7 Facebook Advertising Tips for 2017

Facebook advertising continues to evolve, so it’s important to keep track of the latest trends and developments.

If you’re planning to advertise on Facebook this year, here are seven key considerations:

1 Make it Video

According to statistics quoted by Social Media Today, video on Facebook accounts for just 0.9% of all posts but 7.15% of all reach on the network. And that number is growing.

The popularity of video is driven by a number of factors, including:

Facebook’s algorithmic encouragement of video posts (Facebook is more likely to show your followers video content)
the spread of unlimited broadband (more than half of Kiwi households are now on unlimited data plans), so we now have the capacity for lots of video content
generational preferences (Gen Y and Gen Z prefer pictures and video to text)
limited attention spans, now less than a goldfish
scroll speeds on mobile — as we swipe through post after post on Facebook, moving pictures are far more likely to catch our eyes

In other words: if you can, go video, your posts are far more likely to be effective.

PS Check out our Online Video Marketing course if you need help with the medium

2 Use High Contrast Images

The AdEspresso blog suggests:

Ad images are the first touching point between people and your offer. And there’s a lot at stake. It’s either love at first sight or a sorry attempt to gain potential buyers’ attention. If your ad image catches people’s attention, they’ll read through your ad copy as well. It is incredibly important that your ad visuals manage to catch attention in crowded news feeds.

One of the best pieces of advice about Facebook ad design that I’ve ever heard is this: Use a high level of contrast.

Utilize contrasting colors and bold fonts, mix positive and negative space, and spice up your ad with complementary colors.

A high-contrast example:

3 Use an image of a smiling woman

Yes, apparently, according to Kim Garst:

This little trick has proven itself again and again; images of happy, smiling women lead to the highest click-through rates. Facebook also suggests showing people using your products rather than just images of your products:

“Remember that your ad may show in someone’s News Feed, and it should feel like it belongs there. Your image is competing for people’s attention with stories from their friends and family.”

Here’s an advertisement that follows Kim’s advice:

Our own view: if she’s relevant to your product and your target audience, sure, use a smiling woman in your advertisement. Otherwise, don’t.

4 Choose Your Target Location Carefully

Moz warns us to proceed with care when choosing a target location on Facebook:

Let’s say you want to target people who live in Wellington. You might type “Wellington” into the Locations box, leave it at the default 40-kilometre radius, and keep moving.

But, if you did that, you might miss the small drop down menu above the map that says “Everyone in this location.”

See it now? Well, if you click on that drop down, you’ll find out that Facebook’s Locations targeting gets way more granular:

That’s right — not only can you target actual residents whose home is in the selected area, but you can target people currently visiting Wellington who live more than 100 miles away, and people recently in Wellington.

As an example, a 40-kilometre radius for Wellington shows 310,000 audience members for “Everyone in this location,” but only 290,000 audience members for “People who live in this location.”

In other words, 20,000 people, 6% of the default audience, are irrelevant if you’re only trying to reach Wellington residents — which means you could have been wasting at least 6% of your ad budget.

5 Optimise your Ad Specifications

The ideal Facebook Advertisement specifications in 2017, for a single-image ad, according to Buffer, are:

Text: 90 characters
Image size: 1,200 x 628 pixels

If the post contains a link to a website, ideal link specifications are:

Link Headline: 25 characters
Link Description: 30 characters

The recommended image size ensures that your image always looks high-quality. The recommended text length is how many characters of advert copy could be displayed on smaller screens (the vast majority of your audience will see your Facebook ads on mobile devices).

Your image should include a minimal amount of text, ideally less than 20%, otherwise Facebook will restrict delivery.

6 Add a call-to-action button

These days, Facebook enables you to include a call-to-action button as part of your advertisement.

It’s a familiar sight to Facebook users, and they are now well conditioned to clicking such buttons, so make sure you take advantage of the option.

You have ten different possibilities:

Choose the one that is right for you.

7 Track your ads to see which are the most effective

As Kim Garst notes:

There is nothing more frustrating than paying for ads and then having no idea if they are working. Conversion tracking solves this problem by allowing you to know exactly which ads led to conversions.

For more on this, see Facebook’s help article on Conversion Tracking and Optimization.

LEARN MORE

There are, of course, plenty of other tips that we offer to help guide your Facebook activities and 2017 beyond. We recommend that you check out our Complete Facebook Marketing course (for those new to Facebook marketing) or our Facebook Accelerator course (for more experienced Facebook marketers).

Atlas by Facebook

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Facebook is relaunching its Atlas advertising programme, enabling marketers to tap into its treasure trove of consumer data. Re/Code explains:

Facebook is reintroducing Atlas, the underused platform it bought from Microsoft last year.
Facebook says Atlas can help marketers track the effectiveness of their ads around the Web; it also says it will allow them to buy ads on non-Facebook websites and apps, using Facebook targeting data.
Facebook makes a point of saying these ads aren’t “Facebook ads.” But it is also playing up the notion that the ads marketers buy via Atlas will be more effective than other big ad platforms, because they use Facebook’s data.
Facebook says it is working with lots of partners, but so far has named only two. Ad holding giant Omnicom, which already has deals with Facebook, Google, Twitter and most other big digital players, says it will buy ads with Atlas. Facebook’s Instagram will also work with the platform. The most tantalizing notion I’ve heard this week is that Facebook has talked to Twitter about joining up, and that the idea remains a possibility.
What’s that? You’re worried about people using your Facebook data to serve you ads? Facebook says you shouldn’t worry, because your identity will remain anonymous to advertisers and publishers — they’ll just know some basic facts about you. But really, if you’re worried about this kind of thing you shouldn’t be on Facebook. Actually, the whole Web is probably a no-go zone for you. Sorry.

From a marketer’s perspective, the Atlas initiative is an inevitable development, as Facebook attempts to out-monetise Google.

As Pando notes, there’s another important side-effect to the Atlas initiative, as the world goes mobile:

Atlas solves a technical problem that has frustrated advertisers since consumers flocked to mobile devices: the inability to see how ads viewed on one device influence purchases made on other devices because digital “cookies,” the Web’s little stalkers, can’t track smartphone activity.

Check out the video, and check out Atlas, coming soon to a marketer near you.

Facebook Ads: Smart Or Not?

Are Facebook Ads a good idea?

As we’ve pointed out in the recent past, marketers can no longer rely on “organic reach” to build a relationship with followers: a steady succession of algorithm tinkering by Facebook, accompanied by more and more noise on the social network, means that now you can typically expect no more than 2-6% of your followers to see your Facebook posts.

Oh sure, there are exceptions. Take for example Team Midwives Whangarei, which has around 20% of its followers talking about its Facebook Page:

Clearly, Whangarei midwives don’t need Facebook Ads, at least not right now. But what about the rest of us?

If we want more people to talk about us on Facebook, then we need to either:

1. Create posts that are relevant to our brand but have the potential to go feverishly viral (like this one by NZ-based Paw Justice):

2. Pay to boost any of our posts that we believe are worth promoting:

3. Buy Facebook Ads

PS Facebook Ads are one of the topics we cover in our Facebook Accelerator course. More details by clicking here.