Social Ads Archives - Page 2 of 3

BREAKING NEWS: Facebook App Install Campaigns Aren’t Just for Downloads

When advertising on Facebook, an often overlooked campaign objective is App Installs. When planning out your campaigns you may think, “I don’t need to get any more app installation, only purchases” and app install campaigns wouldn’t make the final cut. I’m here to tell you not to sell app install campaigns short… They can drive great results when used correctly! The most important thing is to have tracking set up within your app. Refer to Facebook’s help article about setting up in app event tracking for iOS and/or Android. If you have the dev resources it would be ideal to set up each valuable action within your app as an event. Now, that’s some coding and has the potential to affect your app up, so I’d stick to the top 4-5 things worth tracking. Things like; account creations, in-app purchases, passed level ‘x’, invited a friend, etc. This will allow you to not only track those in app events, but will allow Facebook to optimize your campaign towards one of them. If you know that users make lots of purchases from your app, you could create an app install campaign with the event of purchases being optimized towards. This will let Facebook’s algorithm know to focus only on users who have a higher likelihood of purchasing in your app. PRO TIP – Don’t exclude any remarketing audiences if your focusing on a purchase event. You can create a ‘deep link’ if the user has already downloaded your app and direct them to the store within your app if so. We’ve seen remarketing audiences perform much better when optimizing towards a purchase. When running an app install campaign and a basic conversion campaign at the same time, both focused on new registrations, we saw an interesting outcome between the two. The app install campaign actually had a better cost per registration than the conversion campaign by about 20%. Full disclosure, this wasn’t a true A-B test but definitely shows the potential use case for an app install campaign driving GOOD performance for something other than a basic install. A few other tips when running your app install campaign is to make sure your creative relates to the event your optimizing towards. For example, if you’re optimizing for in app-purchases make sure your creative is about buying something! That way the user doesn’t simply download the app and then say “Now what?” You want them to have it in the back of their mind already that “this app sells name brand shoes at a huge discount” or whatever value your app offers. As with all campaign types make sure that you’re attribution window is appropriate to the event. If you know it typically takes up to 7 days for a user to make a purchase be sure to look at that attribution window when evaluating your campaigns. Otherwise, you may be making a hasty decision to cut the campaign. To check other attribution windows from Facebook’s UI: If you have an app, the resources to set up tracking, and want to test new things to find your ‘homerun’ I’d highly recommend testing out app install campaigns. Even if you don’t have the last two things, if you have an app let us at Four15 Digital help you at with tracking and campaign creation.

My Top 5 Recommendations to Passing the Facebook Blueprint Test

I’ve recently passed the Facebook Certified Buying Professional exam and I wanted to share some insights that I believe will help you pass as well! I’ll be going over the top 5 keys to passing the test and becoming certified! 1) Take the Right Test(s) There are two ways to become certified (until October 1, 2019). The first way, what I did, is to take and pass the core competencies test and then take and pass the Facebook buying professional test. Each test costs $150 per attempt (pass or fail) and you must pass BOTH in order to become certified. Recently Facebook came out with one BIG test that combines the core competencies and buying professional tests which only costs $150 in total per attempt. What I recommend doing, if you’re okay with paying $150 each time you take a test, is to take the two tests separately, but this option is only available until October 1, 2019! From what I’ve read in forums and blogs is that the larger test is more difficult as well as about 45 minutes longer than the other two. That said, if you pass the test on your first try you’ll save $150. 2) Study, Study, Study I studied between 5-10 hours a week for about a month for each exam, core competencies and the Facebook certified buying professional. This may have been overkill, but hey I passed! I found it most valuable to read and take all the mini courses that Facebook provides for the exams. The recently updated the layout of this and gives you a clean and clear learning path to follow. I also found some third party study guides that I found useful as well, Markeko free study guide and this quizlet. All of this studying helped for the very specific questions about ad types, placements, how the auction works, etc., primarily for the core competencies test. This did not however help too much for the scenario questions which is my next point. 3) Have Digital Marketing AND Facebook Ads Experience This one is important. If you just studied the materials and never actually used Facebook ads or had experience in digital marketing you will NOT pass. There are a lot of questions about analysis and set up that I had to draw from my experience as a digital marketer. That combined with Facebook’s ‘best’ practices is key! Some answers I felt were ‘right’ but maybe went against Facebook’s best practices and in those instances I went with Facebook. It’s a Facebook test at the end of the day, isn’t it? I believe if you have at least 6 months of experience in managing and optimizing Facebook and other digital marketing channels you should be well equipped to pass. When I say ‘managing and optimizing’ I mean really owning the accounts and not simply being tactical. If you have 6 months of taking direction from someone else and just popping into the accounts and clicking around and launching ads with no analysis you will struggle with the test. This test isn’t meant to be an entry level test, take your time studying and get some experience managing accounts. 4) Research the Test(s) In addition to studying for the tests I did a lot of research of what to expect. Every test is different and it can be nerve racking when you aren’t sure what the questions will be like or even look like! Being as familiar as possible before you take the first test (Core Competencies) is best. I used Reddit to browse through a few forums regarding the tests. I also joined a Facebook group of people actively studying or have already taken the tests. After taking the first test you’ll have a good understanding of the process; checking in, how to sign in, what the questions look like, etc. The thing NOT to do when researching the test is to buy into how ‘hard’ everyone says it is. Yes it is difficult, but reading all of the ‘nightmare’ stories of how difficult it was made me more nervous than I should’ve been. I guarantee if you hit all 5 of these areas to focus on, you will do just fine on the tests. 5) Be in a Secure and Quiet Location You can either take the test at a testing center or in a quiet area where nobody else will be. I took mine at our office on Saturday since I knew nobody would be in, which I’d recommend because no one wants to go to a testing center. The tests are proctored through Pearson, a third party company that Facebook Blueprint uses. The set up is a bit intense, you must be on a secured browser, they check every inch of you room, hands, wrists, scan your ID, and make sure everything is unplugged in the office. During the test they literally watch you through your computer’s camera the whole time. I know this because on the 2nd to last question of my test I did the ‘look to the right while you think’ and the proctor paused my test and asked if someone was there. I had to rescan the room to prove nobody was in the office in order to resume. Simply, make sure you have all the proper documents and are in a place where NOBODY else will be otherwise they will fail you. Was it worth it? I certainly believe so. To me, this was simply validation of my knowledge of Facebook Ads. I knew that I knew my stuff when it came to Facebook Ads, but did my clients trust that, did my bosses know that, could I sell it well enough? Well now they certainly do and I have the proof. I know several marketing professionals that specialize in Facebook Ads and don’t have this accreditation, and I think this simply gives you a leg up on them when it comes to talking with new potential clients. It was shows

Online Ad Policies Related to Email List Uploads

With so much concern over data privacy of users, there are a lot of questions related to Google and Facebook policies on CRM uploads (email addresses) that advertisers have. These CRM contacts are used for ad target purposes as well as similar audience creation, and, for most advertisers, are an important part of their strategy. Below are the most relevant links and facts related to CRM list targeting. Google Google allows upload of CRM list uploads to its platform. This allows for targeting the following networks This means it does not allow for targeting on GDN (consider using adRoll for this instead) An overview of Google’s ‘customer match’ can be found here. Policies related to customer match can be found here. Within that, Google notes the following criteria Customer Match is not available for all advertisers. To use Customer Match, your account must have: If you want to start using Customer Match and you meet the requirements above, you’ll need to contact your assigned account manager to request access to Customer Match. Regarding the data source, the official language is the following When using Customer Match, you may only upload customer information that you collected in the first-party context—i.e., information you collected from your websites, apps, physical stores, or other situations where customers shared their information directly with you. Penalties for violating this are minor Operationally, Google supports hashed file uploads. Google also has partners approved who handle this data found here. Google’s matching can be improved if given extra data such as phone number. Expected match rates vary, but at Four15 Digital we typically see 30% – 70%. Facebook/Instagram The complete terms of hashing are found here. Advertisers must agree to these terms before being allowed to serve ads through the platform Facebook terms are more vague than Google, and simply says things like this relating to custom audience upload You represent and warrant, without limiting anything in these terms, that you have all necessary rights and permissions and a lawful basis to disclose and use the Hashed Data in compliance with all applicable laws, regulations, and industry guidelines. If you are using a Facebook identifier to create a custom audience, you must have obtained the identifier directly from the data subject in compliance with these terms. That said, their UI points towards a much more flexible acceptable use policy that doesn’t require the data be 1st party. Shown in the UI it looks like this Users will have information about this ad, which looks like this Both of the above images are taken from this blog post from Facebook. Summary Facebook is a bit more lenient then Google, however Google’s penalties are rather minor. Advertisers can email agencies hashed data, and both Google and FB have hashing practices in place to make data harder to intercept once it’s on the platform. Neither support downloading of original lists. A third party data handler, like LiveRamp, can be used to minimize risk as they can hash data at every step of the way, though these vendors are certainly not required. In short, Google and Facebook take a pretty passive role in prohibiting advertisers from different customer match options. As long as data is handled with care, and used to support advertising that is compliant (does not call out sensitive or PII data) advertisers can proceed. FB’s “why am I seeing this ad” disclosure, however, is perhaps reason for some concern for major brands who may not want users to be aware of their method of targeting. If you need help with your CRM user’s ad serving strategy, contact Four15 Digital here.

How to Setup a New Google My Business Account

Having a Google My Business (GMB) account allows you to control your Google company listing, and get insights into how people are interacting with your business online via Google search, Google Maps, and other Google properties. Beyond just having a GMB account, maintaining and optimizing your account is absolutely necessary if you are targeting local customers. If you’re unaware of what a GMB listing could look like I have attached an image below: These listings include your address, phone number, hours, website, Google reviews, and more! Having up-to-date information is essential for potential customers trying to reach or contact your business. Step 1: If you don’t already have a Google account, create one. If you already have an account, just make sure you are signed in. Step 2: Navigate to google.com/business Step 3: Enter your business name on the screen here and fill out the subsequent questions: Step 4: Verify Your Business You can do this a number of ways: If you would like more detailed information on how to use any of these methods, our team has put together a blog post here. On the other hand, if you do not think it is necessary to verify your business, I urge you to read more into the benefits here. There is an abundance of tools and information that can be used simply by verifying your business. You have already gotten this far, might as well take full advantage of what Google My Business has to offer! Next steps would be to keep your listing optimized, a few quick tips would be to: All of these tips are free to do and only increase the visibility of your business, so there are no excuses to avoid maintaining your Google My Business listing!

Frequency and CPA in Facebook Ads

When advertising on Facebook a few questions always arise around creative, when should you change ads, how often should you introduce a new ad, when is it time to get rid of an ad, etc. In this blog, I’ll shed some light into how to best answer questions like these and give you a better understanding of how much time to expect to put into creative needs for Facebook. Checking Frequency and Cost Per Results Before we really dive in I want to make it clear that there’s no universal timeframe for how often to rotate your ads. You need to be aware as an advertiser when your current ads or audience may begin to fatigue and need a quick refresher based on the data you’re observing in your ad account. One quick check you can do is at the ad set level. If your ad has been running for at least 5 consecutive days and had at least 500 impressions you’ll be able to set the delivery insights reporting within the Facebook UI. To get there simply hover your mouse over the delivery status on the ad set you’d like to check and a box will appear. In that box you’ll be able to select delivery insights. Once you’re in the delivery insights report of Facebook you’ll be able to see a few different charts; audience saturation, activity history, audience overlap, auction competition. These reports are all very useful, but the one we want to look at is the audience saturation. In that report you can change the metrics to show cost per result (CPR) and first time impression ratio. Here you’ll be able to see as your first time impression ratio declines what happens to your CPR. See example below: In this chart you can see that the first time impression ratio starts to steadily decline after about a week of being live. Around the same time you see a large spike in CPR. In layman’s terms, the amount of daily impressions has been staying about the same day over day, but you are reaching fewer and fewer new people with your ad. Since these users have already seen your ad and didn’t convert, and the users you already converted won’t convert again, the CPR starts to rise a bit quicker. You can see that in this chart as well. At this time you’ll most likely want to swap in new creative and test different messaging that might work better for the users who haven’t converted. Another area where you can look at when it’s time to rotate new ads in is by clicking view charts when at the ad set level. From here you’ll be able to see some of the same stats that the delivery insights section has, but you don’t need the minimum 5 days and 500 impressions. From here select the custom section and set your metrics to be Frequency (lifetime) and Cost per result. When looking at the same ad set, during the same time period you’ll see the same story. Around a week into the campaign the lifetime frequency is steadily climbing and CPR starts to increase at a greater rate. At this time you’ll want to test new creative for this audience. Testing Creative When testing new creative it’s important to learn from what worked well. You don’t need to make a completely new ad, use an image that performed weill and test out different ad copy or vice versa. If you’re trying to find a ‘true’ winner it’s important to structure your ads properly, test one element at a time. If you change your headline and your image and your new ad performs worse, you won’t be able to definitely tell if it was the image or the ad copy. Maybe the image you picked for that ad was the WOAT (worst of all-time) and your ad copy was actually pretty good. You’d have no idea and be scrapping great ad copy because of poor planning. It’s best to have at least 3-4 different ads running at anytime within Facebook. PRO TIP – When making new ads, leave one ‘winner’ from the old set but duplicate and repost the ad. This will tell Facebook’s algorithm that it’s a new ad, even though its not, and help increase your daily impression volume. Every account is different but it’s important to be aware of how often you’ll need to refresh creative. If you can do it, rotating creative every week or every other week would be ideal. This would allow you to test many different ad elements over a few months and dial in what truly works for your offering. If you think you’ve exhausted your current creative and need help testing new ads and ideas, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at Four15 Digital. We are experts anyway!

How to Have Personalized Ads in LinkedIn

LinkedIn’s advertising platform has the ability to make very personalized ads with user content, unlike Google and Facebook. We’ve all seen these ads, ‘Hey {First Name}, Four15 Digital is hiring!” But how do they dynamically insert your name into the ad? It’s called a macro. Macros can be used in dynamic ads as well as sponsored InMails, which I will go over in this blog. Macros in Dynamic Ads Utilizing macros in dynamic ads is a great way to generate more attention to your ads. The user will not only see their image in the ad, but can also see their name and company, depending on the dynamic ad type. There are 3 different types of dynamic ads; follower ads, spotlight ads, and job ads. With follower ads and job ads you can have a dynamic first name, full name, or company name in your ad copy. For Spotlight ads you can only have a dynamic first name and full name. Macros can be added to any part of your ad copy. Keep in mind these DO NOT count towards your character limits. This means that you can write your ads up to your character limits and still fit in the macros. Below is how to format that macros are input in your ad copy: For example, the below ad would be written as ‘%FIRSTNAME%, explore relevant opportunities with Clif Bar & Company’. Macros in Sponsored InMails Using macros in sponsored InMails is just as simple as using them in dynamic ads. See below for the dynamic Sponsored InMail values: If you wanted very custom ad copy for you InMail you could utilize all of the options here. Keep in mind that whatever the user’s profile is set to be the value that is added. Summary These dynamic value can create a very powerful message in used correctly. Take for example a Sponsored InMail I received the other day. At first glance, I thought ‘Hey these guys really did their homework to recruit me!’ When in reality they typed out one templated and utilized the %FIRSTNAME% and %COMPANYNAME% macros and probably sent it to 10,000 people. No matter where I worked, they would’ve called out ‘raising through the ranks’. Which makes the recruitment message less impactful then at first. That said, I’m a marketing professional and know how these messages work within LinkedIn. To someone who doesn’t use LinkedIn’s advertising platform, and isn’t very familiar with marketing in general, you can see how powerful this message could be. It’s best to use macros as much as possible in your dynamic ads and sponsored inmails as they create a much more personal ad drawing in the target user’s attention much more than an ad not using any macros.

What is Yelp Strict Category Targeting and Does It Work?

If you currently run ads on Yelp, did you know that Yelp Ads offers a feature called strict category targeting that allows advertisers to strictly target their Yelp ads toward one business category? What is Strict Category targeting? With this feature, advertisers can list up to three business categories on their Yelp profile but limit their ads to target only one of their listed categories. This is a benefit for advertisers that only want to target their paid ads towards a single category but at the same time want their profile to feature other services they may offer. The strict category targeting can be beneficial for certain uses cases. For example, a law firm may want to feature their contract law, employment law and personal injury law services on their profile but may only want to run ads targeting personal injury law services because it is the most lucrative. Note: This feature is not offered in the Yelp Ads user interface but can be enabled by sending a request to your Yelp Ads representative. Testing Strict Category Targeting At the suggestion of our Yelp representative we tried the strict category targeting feature for one of our clients who wanted to receive more leads in a particular business category. This was intended to increase sponsored actions and generate more ad clicks from Yelp searches related to their target category. As a test, we ran this feature for a one month period. Our hypothesis was that it would help increase their number of leads for the targeted category and reduce leads for the other categories. The first week after turning on the strict category targeting our client received one sponsored action related to this target category. No keywords related to their target category appeared in their Yelp keywords report which means that their ads did not show for Yelp searches related to their targeted category. Our client did receive fewer sponsored actions related to the business category they were not targeting. Surprisingly, for the remainder of the month our client continued to receive sponsored actions related to the business categories outside of their strict target category. They received these sponsored actions at the same volume they had received them prior to turning on the strict category targeting. What is also important to note is that during this period their Yelp ads did not receive clicks related to the target category. We contacted our Yelp Ads representative to inquire on why our clients’ ads kept appearing for categories outside of their strict target category and why our client was still receiving sponsored actions for outside categories. We also wanted to find other ways to generate more leads related to their target category. We learned there is actually little else we can do to help our client generate more leads in their targeted category other than Yelp’s suggestion of changing the client’s profile category and ad copy to only feature their strictly targeted category. This is intended to give Yelp users the impression that our client specializes only in this category in hopes of attracting a higher volume of potential leads. We decided not to move forward with this suggestion as we felt this would not appropriately reflect our client’s range of services and expertise. Results Ultimately, the strict category targeting on Yelp did not provide any leads in the long term in the targeted category and we continued to receive leads outside the target category. If you are running Yelp ads and only want to feature your ads towards certain user searches, we recommend frequently updating your list of blocked keywords that appear in your Yelp keywords list that you do not want your ads to appear for. As for receiving more sponsored actions related to your target category, it is important to note that there is little you can do to help generate more leads for your target category other than increasing your Yelp ads budget to generate more traffic and hopefully more leads. In a future blog we’ll go over Yelp features that may help improve your Yelp Ads performance.

Beginners Guide to LinkedIn Ads

If you’re considering running advertisement campaigns on LinkedIn and haven’t done so, this blog will help you quickly get live and start driving leads or sales! I’ll be going over: 1. Campaign Objectives There are 4 campaign objectives available to use now; website visits, engagement, video views, and lead generation. LinkedIn is, and has been, working on rolling out 4 others as well; brand awareness, website conversions, job applicants. These objectives simply help LinkedIn’s algorithm to optimize towards a specific goal. A. Website visits The campaign objective of website visits is very straightforward. LinkedIn will optimize your campaign, according to your bid and budgets, to get as many clicks to your website as possible. This is useful when you simply want to increase your website traffic. You can also use this objective in combination with the ‘optimize for conversions’ option I note later in this blog to focus on getting as many conversions as possible. B. Engagement The engagement objective will focus LinkedIn’s algorithm on getting as many likes, comments, and shares on your content. This is useful when you want to build engagement on your LinkedIn profile and don’t necessarily want users to click through to your website. C. Video views With the video views campaign objective LinkedIn will focus on getting as many video views as possible. This is useful when you want to leverage videos for social engagement. Again, LinkedIn won’t optimize towards getting users to click through to your website. D. Lead generation The lead gen campaign objective allows you to access lead ads. These ads don’t allow the user to click through to your website, rather when they click on an ad a customized lead form comes up for them to fill in. This is useful for any campaigns focused on gaining more leads. 2. Campaign/Ad types The reason campaign and ad types are grouped together is because the campaign type is what actually determines the type of ad you use. The options are sponsored content, dynamic ads, and text ads. Refer here to see which objective allows you to use which ad type. A. Sponsored content Sponsored content campaigns have 3 different ad types, single image ads, carousel image ads, and video ads. Single Image Ad: Video ad: Carousel Image ad: Sponsored content ads are great for highlighting key benefits of your product or service, upcoming webinars or events, and so much more! They are the most visual of the 3 campaign types LinkedIn offers. B. Dynamic ads We’ve all seen dynamic ads on LinkedIn “Hey Keenan, Four15 is hiring!” These ads are primarily used for recruiting purposes but are also great if you uploaded a custom audience list and want to call draw more attention to your product or services. You can utilize a few macros in order to show the user their first name, full name, or even company name Here’s the list: C. Text ads Text ads are very simple and, in my experience, don’t drive a lot of traffic. However they are the cheapest clicks in comparison to sponsored content or dynamic ads. If you want to focus on impressions, and believe your ad copy is strong enough or are targeting a very focused group, text ads are a great option for you. 3. Targeting options Linkedin has a very cumbersome selection of targeting options. You can overlay audience after audience to build an audience of exactly who you want to target. Keep in mind you need at least 300 active users in an audience to be able to use it for targeting ads. LinkedIn’s core targeting options are company (who you work for), demographics (age, gender, etc.), education (college, masters, etc.), job experience (entry, senior, etc.), and interests, which is a combination of member groups and member interests. You can also upload your own CRM list and target to just those users, you can upload a list of company names and target to just those companies, and lastly you can build audience from your website if you’ve added the LinkedIn insights tag to your website. 4. ‘Maximize for’ options There are three ‘maximize for’ options within LinkedIn. You can set your campaign to maximize for: If your goal is to drive leads or sales on LinkedIn you should use the ‘maximize for’ conversions. Note: when you select ‘maximize for’ conversions you will not be able to see any forecasting from LInkedIn as this is a fairly new feature for LinkedIn Ads. When your goal is simply to get as many eyes on your ads you should use the ‘maximize for’ impressions strategy. The last option, ‘maximize for’ clicks, is useful when you don’t have a particular event or action you want a user to take on the page rather consume the content. PRO TIP: If you have Google Analytics you’ll be able to track how long people are staying on the landing page after they click on your LinkedIn Ad. This will help you understand how effective your ads are and see if users are just bouncing off the page after they click on your ad. 5. Tracking LinkedIn uses a website tag much like Google and Facebook. The tag is called an ‘insights tag’. This can be placed on your website and will allow you to create conversion events as well as audiences when users visit specific pages on your website. At Four15 Digital we’ve helped many clients set up their insights tag on their website, and we have noticed that the tag DOES NOT work when placed by Google’s Tag Manager (GTM). This is a technical issue we’ve seen from LinkedIn and it’s best to add the insights tag to every page separately from GTM. Stay tuned for when I take a deeper dive into LinkedIn as an advertising platforms and share best practices, successes and failures, as well as any new tools that LinkedIn releases in the future.