Show notes
What is Facebook advertising?
It’s basically sending targeted ads to people based on tracking results collected by Facebook and Instagram. It could get super specific, not just targeted to people that visited your website, but for example if people opted into a certain freebie, or if they put something in their cart, but abandoned their cart, Facebook would have all that information. We can send a specific ad to people that looked at a certain item they didn't buy, or maybe they did buy it and then you want to send them another item similar to that. For the listeners, that's how you got that perfect dress that you knew would look great at your Aunt Sue’s wedding. It just showed up in your Instagram feed, because you maybe bought a similar dress from that website before or for whatever reason.
Before the IOS14 update, most Apple users were tracked on apps because we weren’t given the option - you could work it out and switch it off but it wasn’t that straightforward. Now about 96% of people have asked not to be tracked on these Apps, so it makes Facebook advertising a little harder.
How do we work with Facebook and the iOS update?
In April, Apple released an update to their phone, which changed the privacy rules. Facebook spent a billion dollars fighting Apple on this and they lost. They weren't quite ready to lose because they've had some great measures in place to counteract the privacy rules that Apple created, which has meant Facebook weren’t ready when they should have been ready. So there’s been a lot of changes every few weeks with ads because they'll announce one thing, and they'll say, this is what you definitely, definitely need to do to make sure your ads work properly with Apple's new update and then three weeks later, they'll say actually, you don't have to do that do this instead.
You can still put in measures to track your Instagram, you can show ads to your followers. But there's an argument for a lot of online marketers who will say, don't invest in your Instagram followers only invest in your email list because your email list you own and Mark Zuckerberg owns your Instagram followers. But, maybe those Instagram followers are more worth your time because you can target an ad to your Instagram followers, where you can't necessarily your email subscribers.
Other tips from Meredith:
- Follow all of the new rules that FB is implementing as a result of ios14 (verifying your domain, prioritizing your events, etc)
- Use the best practice "work arounds" that experienced digital marketers are suggesting. (my favourites are (1) duplicate landing pages (2) run an "iOS only ad set" (3) prioritizing video views in all campaigns)
- Consider using Google Analytics to track your marketing result
How do I get more Instagram followers using ads?
- Create a campaign in Facebook business manager
- Pick the objective ‘traffic’ (to run a traffic campaign to a website)
- Input website: www.instagram.com/yourIGprofil... (put the URL where you want to send the traffic in the ad itself)
- At the ad set level, there’s 3 levels. Campaign level where you put the objective. Ad set: get rid of every placement except Instagram Story, this will run ads to Instagram stories.
- Give people exact directions on the ad, for example ‘My name is… and I talk about… on my profile, swipe up and follow up.’
Why do I want to grow my Instagram following?
We want to grow our Instagram following so we can target paid ads to them. Once we’ve grown our following, we’ll run a conversion ad to promote a product or a service to that person. But between those two ads, take the time to nurture those people with organic Instagram content.
Black Friday's coming up and you want to offer people a purchase campaign (another conversion campaign to get people to your website to buy a cute blouse). So in order to do this, we can target all of your Instagram followers, and your Facebook followers and your warm audience. (Your warm audience are people that have heard of you before but not necessarily bought anything from you) If you’re posting organically, you're gonna have to deal with the algorithm and we don't know who else is going to see that. But if you pay for a conversion ad, we’ll be able to see who can see it and we can test this to ensure next time it’s optimised to your audiences.
If you only have $500 a month, I would recommend increasing your Instagram followers, and then sell to them organically. That's a way to start.
What's the video view strategy?
Video views strategy helps us target a warm audience with a conversion campaign. Give yourself six weeks before you're ready to launch the campaign. When selecting the campaign you're going to optimise for video views. You want to create a video that you think your ideal buyer would be interested in. Ideally, it's a brand video that a videographer made with you talking about your business, it’s got to be catchy. Keep it around 45 seconds. If it’s a short video, loop it on Canva to make it about 30 seconds to 45 seconds. Then we're gonna run a video view campaign to what Facebook optimises for three play.
Facebook will call a ‘result’ somebody that watched the video for at least 15 seconds. If we find 1000 people that watch your video for at least 15 seconds, they become part of your warm audience. Then we go into events manager, and create an audience called ‘a custom audience of video viewers’, then in four weeks from now we create a conversion campaign to your warm audience, your Instagram followers, your Facebook followers, and the people that watch this video for 15 seconds. After that, we're going to create a lookalike audience. So Facebook's going to find 3/4 million people, that have very similar demographics of people that watched your video for 15 seconds, lookalike audiences do so well. They've always done well.
If you were in a hurry, but budget wasn't necessarily a problem, I would start the video view campaign. And then as soon as you have 1000 views, you could start your purchase campaign.
Tip: do a square video except for the one for Instagram stories which is going to be the portrait long form video. Try to keep it under a minute, so you can put it in as many places as possible.
How do I test ads?
Ideally, pick a video, and spend $20 a day. So that's gonna spend $140 on testing. Identify who your ideal buyer is - maybe she’s a woman in her 40s that lives in the United States, she's English speaking she shops at Neiman’s, she’s a teacher and she’s into self help so she likes people like Brene Brown, Oprah and Elizabeth Gilbert. Using her personality, create four different cold, detailed targeted audiences, and spend $20 a day on ads ($5 on each one) For each audience pick different parts of her personality. So one of those audiences could be teachers, the other could be those who shop at Nieman's, or those into self help. Then we start the campaign, and we start collecting video views, to see which lookalike audience performs best, and then you can target those.
How much should I invest?
We like people to invest $1,500 a month. $50 a day will often get great leads.