September 9, 2019 By Jess Austin Leave a Comment

3 Facebook Ads Pro-Tips

We understand that running Facebook ads can seem daunting at times. Not to worry! I’m sharing 3 tips that help make Facebook ads easy, efficient and effective:

1. Create your core audiences from the start so they are available to use across all your ads. Doing it in one sitting will help you think through your strategy and plan your attack. Create audiences that support each of your business goals. 👉🏻 Top Tip: Use FB’s Suggestions when creating Interest-based audiences; it helps show you options similar to the ones you’re using

2. Make use of Facebook’s ads creation tools. Inside Ads Manager, there is a whole suite of tools that help you create video slideshows, add graphic overlays and even music. 👉🏻 Top Tip: Be on the lookout for Facebook’s special holiday-themed video templates and overlays.

3. Use the duplicate feature. After all the effort you put into building audiences and creative, don’t let it go to waste. You can duplicate campaigns, ad sets, and individual ads. Just change the sections you want and you’re good to go. 👉🏻 Top Tip: Duplicating copies everything under the level you duplicated. For example, if you duplicate the campaign, the ad set(s) and ads will be duplicated. If it’s the ad set, the ads will be copied.

November 5, 2018 By Crystal Leave a Comment

Stop Hitting Boost Start Seeing Results With Facebook Ad Campaigns: The Modern Marketing Show, Episode 70

We had 100’s of retailers register for our Facebook and Instagram Ads Masterclass. It took place over two weeks in October and covered everything one needs to know about running social ads. Not only did students walk away with tons of valuable information, but also with confidence in their ability to run successful Facebook ad campaigns. Which is why we’ll be sharing the top three takeaways from the masterclass in this post. We absolutely believe you can benefit from them too!

Watch the full episode:

Takeaway #1

There’s so much more you can be doing than just boosting your posts. With all the ad types and tools available at your fingertips, you’re doing yourself a disservice by not utilizing them and running ad campaigns.

Takeaway #2

You should test different audiences with different ad types. You can use Facebook’s Detailed Targeting feature to find your Perfect Customer Groups, or what we call your PCGs, and advertise to them.

Takeaway #3

The holidays mean more competition from other retailers running ads in November and December. This typically means you’ll see higher ad costs and a lower reach. You may want to consider setting aside a little extra money for your ad budget these next two months.

Ads are going to be the most cost-effective way to gain exposure, engagement, and traffic (online and offline) during the holidays. Remember, you can do this! We know retailers who are seeing results from ads every single day. Click here to find out how you can get your hands on the Ads Masterclass.

You can catch new episodes of The Modern Marketing Show every Monday at 10 a.m PST on our Facebook Page. Never want to miss an episode? Click here to join our list!

December 11, 2017 By Erika Castorena Leave a Comment

Social Edge Live, Episode 32: Facebook Ads Made Easy Plus Tips For Success

It’s not a secret that Facebook Ads can be one of the best tools small businesses can use to grow their businesses online. When done the right way they can even increase sales and engagement online and offline. But they’re time-consuming, technical, and can we hard to learn/understand which is why Social Edge can help make running ads easy for you.

Watch the full episode below:

For those of you currently running Facebook ads here are some important factors/tips to remember:

During the holiday’s Facebook Ad costs are higher and overall reach is down.
- There’s an influx of people trying to advertise this time of year. More competition means more people bidding over limited advertising space make it harder to get in front of your audience.
Use video to help reduce ad costs.
- Video is here to stay. Clients we work with see some of the best results when they use videos in their ads. It allows for more free, organic reach and more engagement across your social media platforms.
Create and promote online events, like 12 Days of Christmas campaign.
- Online events and sales can be fun to run because they create buzz and something to talk about. You create a sense of urgency for people to take part so they don’t miss out on the latest deal.

Social Edge offers Facebook and Instagram Ads management for qualifying businesses – taking all the hard work that comes with running ads off your to-do list. Below you’ll find an overview of what this service offering entails and how we can help.

You need to advertise, your customers are on Facebook – but you don’t have to be the one to do it. Your focus should be on the daily operations that come with running your business and focuses on helping your customers.
We become an extension of your marketing team. Your Ad Account Manager will take a look at your social media and overall business goals in order to come up with a content and ads strategy that is catered to reaching those goals. They’ll provide you with post/event ideas, tips, and inspiration in order to help jumpstart your efforts, save you time, and have it be strategic.
Allows for some accountability to post on social media consistently. We provide you with the ideas, but it’s your responsibility to implement and execute them.
Bringing in QUALITY LEADS versus sales. While we can’t guarantee sales, our ad clients have had record-breaking sales days within days or a few weeks of working with us. Ads help get people through your doors and then it’s your job to sell them while they’re in your store.
One client said, “I really feel safe knowing you are always looking out for me.” This is true because we’re in your account daily making sure make sure everything is running smoothly, checking ad costs to make sure they’re where they should be, as well as making adjustments to your ads when needed to make sure they’re fulling optimized and performing well. It’s all about having peace of mind in knowing you’re being looked after.
Our ads management service works if you work it – you need to participate, but the results will be worth it. It’s all about teamwork because we can only do our job if you’re implementing our strategy. Your account manager will check in with you to see how everything’s going and to see how sales are. You can provide them feedback and adjustment will be made accordingly.

If you’re interested in having us run your Facebook and Instagram ads for you in 2018? You must go through our application process to be considered. Click here to learn more.

You can catch new episodes every Monday at 10 a.m PST on our Facebook Page. Replays will be available on the blog each week.

February 27, 2017 By Crystal Leave a Comment

3 Things You’re Doing Wrong with Facebook Ads

Running ads on Facebook is one of the best ways to ensure your posts are being seen by your audience in order to grow your local exposure and increase store traffic and sales. But with so many ad types and targeting capabilities, we’re consistently seeing retailers miss opportunities to significantly increase their results.

Here are the three things retailers are doing wrong when it comes to Facebook ads.

1. Not Targeting.

One of the main reasons Facebook ads are so incredibly powerful are the targeting capabilities. You can not only target current customers, but there are several ways to target new customers as well. However, if you don’t target or if you’re not running ads that are relevant to the audience you’re choosing (Your perfect customer group(s)), you’re wasting money.

We have a Social Edge member who ran an ad for $20 that received over 10,000 impressions, which seems like a lot for just $20. However, only two people clicked on her ad. This tells me that only a couple of people were interested in the content she was advertising. She asked me if her results were good, and I said, “It’s a lot of impressions for just $20, but what was the goal of the ad? If it was to get more people to your website, and you only had two clicks, then $10/click is not a good result. That’s pretty high for a website click.” I learned that she advertised to anyone 18-65+ in a 20-mile radius of her store, which is located just outside of a major city. In the end, she wasted money advertising to people who will not shop with her and who are not interested in her products.

Get familiar with the targeting options available, and strategically plan who you want to see your ad, as well as what you want them to do. Then make the ad relevant to them using an image or video that relates and copy that connects. Some examples of the targeting capabilities inside of Facebook:

Target users who:

Are on your email list
Are similar to the people who currently like your business page
Have been to your website
Purchase luxury items
Purchase dog food and are a pet owner
Have engaged with your Facebook Page in the past 7 days
Have watched your video on Facebook

These are only a few examples. There are many more options out there, with the ability to combine exclude audiences, improving targeting even further.

2. Not Testing.

Most of the retailers we work with are incredibly busy. They’re trying to run their business, purchase, stock and sell inventory, train and manage staff, clean the store and market it; just to name a few tasks. 🙂 Because they’re so busy, they don’t have much time to test the ads they’re running and analyze the posts and ads that are successful to understand why or make changes to see if it performs even better.

WIthin Facebook Ads, you can test things like images or videos, copy, audiences, placement and ad types. For example: You’re trying to raise awareness and increase sales for a new product line you just brought in. You’re advertising to a targeted group of people who would love the new line (like we discussed earlier), but you’re not sure which image of the product will capture the audience the best. So, you test three images: One from the manufacturer that’s more of a lifestyle shot of someone using or wearing the item, one from the manufacturer that’s on a white background and one that you took in store. You keep everything else the same, using the same ad type, placement, audience and copy. Let the ad run for at least 48 hours and check to see which image is getting the most activity, for the lowest cost. You can then pause the other two ads that are not performing as well.

When we test, we have a better understanding of the content our audience responds to best on Facebook, which saves us time in the long run as we know what type of content, ad or audience will perform the best. This will optimize our budget so that we spend less for better results.

Testing tip! As I’m writing this blog post, Facebook LOVES video and puts a heavier weight on video posts, meaning this type of content is typically shown to more people than other content types, like images or text posts. If your ads are not performing well, or ad cost is high, try advertising a video instead. We’ve seen ad costs drop by up to ⅔ by changing a product image to a video.

3. Only Boosting.

I get the opportunity to travel the world and speak to retailers about how to successfully use social media to market their stores and products. I often ask my audience, “Raise your hand if you’re advertising on Facebook.” A few people out of 100 will raise their hand. Then I ask, “Raise your hand if you’re boosting posts on Facebook,” and half the room raises their hand. Boosting IS advertising, but there are several other ad types available to help support your business goals.

If you’re only boosting, you’re missing out on other opportunities to reach people near your store and build local awareness, get people on your email list to like you on Facebook, build website traffic or increase attendance at your event. Boosting is the fastest and easiest way to advertise, which is a major reason retailers are only boosting. But to have more of a well-rounded ads strategy, you should be using other ad types to support goals.

Boosting can also add up if you’re not planning boost spends. For example, if you don’t have an allocated Facebook ads budget, and you’re just boosting a post here and boosting a post there, you might add up the cost to see you’ve spent over $400 this month boosting some posts. You may not be sure if this is high or low, or what the results were (Can I get an “Amen!” in the comment below if you know what I’m talking about?!). When you set an ads budget based on your current marketing budget, goals and audience size, and allocate it appropriately to goals (For ex: Building foot traffic, increasing web traffic, selling items online), you’ll know if what you spent was worth the result.

A lot of the retailers we work with have a $250-$500 a month Facebook Ad budget, seeing results like more store traffic (One retailer is seeing an additional six new customers a day in her store since starting Facebook Ads at a $350/month budget), busiest events they’ve had and some are selling out of items within days after the ad goes live. These results were achieved with a few ad types, and none were by boosting. So, familiarize yourself with what types of ads are available to support your goals. Then, combine the right ad types with the right audience, test your ads and start tracking the results.

New to ads, or need to know how to leverage what you’re currently doing to see better results? We’ve got you covered in the “Click Your Way to Customers: Facebook and Instagram Ads” training course, which is now available!

Click here to learn more about what’s inside, and email [email protected] if you have any questions about this being a good fit for your business.

Leave a comment below: Are you running ads? If so, successfully? Do you have some room to grow, or are you feeling like you’re wasting money?

February 9, 2017 By Crystal Leave a Comment

mADness: How Two Retailers Boosted Their Social Media Results with Facebook Ads

It seems like we never stop talking about Facebook Ads, right?

That’s because they are such an important part of being successful on Facebook. But as much as we bring them up, you may be wondering, “What kind of results can I see if I improve my ad strategy?”

We’ve got two examples today from retailers we worked with 1-on-1. Though they are different from one another in both location and product selection, both were able to see great results from smart posts and videos promoted with Facebook Ads.

Skirt

Skirt is a high-end women’s clothing boutique in Bryn Mawr, near Philadelphia.

Maureen, Skirt’s owner, really wanted to promote a sale that the store was having, and she wanted to make sure that shoppers in her local area knew it was happening. We helped her create a Page Post Engagement Ad, the ad with a main objective to get users to engage – via sharing, liking, clicking or commenting – with the ad. We targeted her page’s Lookalike Audience and people who like the brands she carries on Facebook and set the radius to 25 miles from the store.

For the ad image, we used a slideshow of the looks that were on sale in the store, and completed the ad with copy that said, “Shop our Spring Sale now! Tag a friend and save 30%-75% OFF!”

We had a $50 budget for this ad, which ran for 3 weeks.

How did the ad perform? The first two days of the promotion broke store sales records, and the ad engaged customers who had not been to the store for a while:

“I noticed an old customer had liked my video,” Maureen said. “I hadn’t seen her in a few years. She came in with her daughter later that same day and said that she was not a ‘fan’ of our page, but it showed up in her feed and she watched the video and had to come in. She spent $4,800!”

Summary:

We ran an ad to Facebook users in a 25-mile radius of Skirt who already liked brands that they carry on Facebook
The ad ran for 3 weeks with a $50 budget
In just ONE transaction, the store covered their ads budget and made an additional $4,750

Coriander

Coriander is a gift, jewelry, home and clothing store with locations in Guelph and Collingwood, Ontario.

They were prepping for a big 12 Days of Christmas promotion and really wanted to get the word out. We suggested that they announce each deal the night before it premiered on Facebook Live. Each night before a new deal premiered, they would go live with their latest announcement, and promote that video with a Video View Ad to local users who had interests related to store products and brands.

They had a $45 budget and ran for 12 days.

In the end, the store had consistently good sales numbers throughout the promotional period. They sold out of several items and had customers calling or commenting on videos asking to put products aside for them to come in and get later.

Summary:

We ran a Video View Ad for Coriander’s Facebook Live announcements
The ad ran for 12 days and had a $45 budget
The store ended up selling out of multiple items and had a record number of people asking to put products aside for them

What can these case studies tell you about your own ads strategy?

Ad success is attainable no matter your location or product selection
You don’t need an outrageous budget in order to see results
Ads can revolutionize the way you sell online

If you have questions about ads, you’re not alone. That’s why we’ve created the most comprehensive Facebook and Instagram ads course just for retailers. In fact, the latest version of our course is scheduled to launch at the end of the month! Retailers who are members of Social Edge get additional support as they can ask any of their ad questions in our private Facebook group and get responses from fellow retailers as well as the Crystal Media team.

If you’re already a Social Edge member, be on the lookout for more information on our updated ads course, and be sure to ask your questions in our Facebook group, which can be easily accessed under “Community” in your Social Edge dashboard. If not, consider joining the Social Edge community!