A tutorial on creating ads in Facebook comparing Power Editor to Facebook's self-serve Ad Manager
Most people I meet on training courses who advertise on Facebook, naturally start with Facebook's Ad manager since they don't know about Power Editor. In this tutorial I will explain the ad creation process using the self serve tool and I'll show you how much better it is with Power Editor.
If you don't know it Facebook's Power Editor is a Chrome application which I'd strongly recommend for anyone creating ads in Facebook. It's pretty essential for big, regular advertisers, but what you may not realise is how many benefits there are even in a single ad.
First: go to the Ads Manager
You'll see something like this. Select "Create Ad".
Step 1: choose your campaign objective
Now compare the approach in Power Editor…
Newsfeed algorithm changes which could affect the number of organic site referral visits you get from Facebook in future
Importance: [rating=3]
Recommended link: Facebook Official Newsfeed FYI post from 21 April 2015
We're alerting Smart Insights readers to this change to personalisation of the Facebook newsfeed algorithm since it could potentially affect the volume of referrals that your site gets from Facebook if you're not posting the right type of content or at the right frequency.
In their announcement of the change Facebook explain that their algorithm aims to...
"give you the right mix of updates from friends and public figures, publishers, businesses and local organizations you are connected to.
This balance is different for everyone depending on what people are most interested in learning about every day. As more people and pages are sharing more content, we need to keep improving…
Stay up-to-date with Facebook marketing
During the first part of 2015, Facebook has started rolling some small and large newsfeed changes. On the one hand, most of these changes benefit users and help them filter, prioritize and consume their newsfeeds, but on the other hand this means more companies, like our venture, investing more money in advertising trying to keep their social traffic near the goal, and to avoid getting lost in the Facebook content limbo.
Facebook's views on organic reach declining
The latest change involves the drop in company page 'likes', which I believe is the right move, since they will remove deactivated and memorialized accounts. In their words, they will discard users whom we cannot expect them to interact with our brand. What worried Page / Community Managers the most was the organic reach drop during the second week of February, and…
Is it best to boost a Facebook post, create an ad using the post or create a separate ad that's not in newsfeed?
I used to strongly advise clients against “boosting” posts on Facebook. It’s not that I’m generally against paying Facebook for reach (although of course a little more free reach would be nice), it’s just that boosting used to be the sloppy, non targeted way that the newbies and amateurs used. It cost them more money, got them fans they’d probably prefer to avoid and whilst quick and simple, wasn’t very clever.
So back in the day, I used to recommend going into the Ad Manager or Power Editor, and creating an ad using the organic post as the source but promoting it rather than boosting it. You got far more targeting control and consequently…
Facebook's Power Editor ads platform is certainly not for the faint hearted, but once you're confident with it, it's unlikely you'll return to the native "self serve" ad platform.
I've used Facebook's Power Editor for ads for several years now, and went through the pain barrier because, back in the day, it was the only way to surface really good sized newsfeed ads (using the now virtually defunct "dark post" function). As with many things Power Editor, this and other features has been rolled out onto the self serve platform, but there are still good reasons to be using Power Editor.
Here's a compilation of reasons to use Power Editor. As with all things Facebook, functionality changes on a near daily basis so please do correct me if I've missed something:
16 reasons to use Power Editor when creating Facebook ads
New features are rolled…
Facebook to remove deactivated accounts from Page Like counts
Importance: [rating=2]
Recommended link: Facebook blog announcement
We aim to only alert members to the biggest changes happening on the main digital marketing platforms. This one is relatively small, but we thought we’d do a brief alert since you should keep an eye out to see how big the drop is and you may be asked by colleagues or clients, so will have an answer ready for when they ask?
What marketers need to know about this change
1. Your Facebook likes will fall by a small amount Facebook explains:
“Page admins should expect to see a small dip in their number of Page likes as a result of this update. It’s important to remember, though, that these removed likes represent people who were already inactive on Facebook”.
2. Why will Likes Fall? Facebook will remove deactivated and…
An example of using Audience Insights and Ad Manager to reach your target audience
If you’re a digital marketer there is a high chance that over the last year you have noticed the increased relevance of content as the key factor to a successful content strategy. Algorithm changes at Google have become more reader focused meaning that good quality content is now priority number one.
The most difficult part of distributing content is pretty much down to the fact you are posting it online. With over 3 billion active Internet users in the world and counting meaning that the net is becoming an increasingly difficult place to get noticed. Social, and particularly Facebook, has always been a great way to publish your content to people who care about your brand.
No need to worry right? We’ve got a huge Facebook page with 500,000 likes so plenty of people in our audience will see this…
A 9 step tutorial and example of Facebook's multi-product ads
Facebook has rolled out an exciting new update in recent weeks - the Multiple product ad - not to be confused with Dynamic Product ads which are a retargeting option most relevant to retailers .
The Multiple Product ad option means that you can feature more than one product or service (or blog post even) in the sponsored News Feed without having to create multiple adverts. You'll need to be using Power Editor (if you don't know about that well I have a one day training course as well as an Online Masterclass you can sign up for...). Multi-product ads will allow you up to five images at a time. Obviously you can use them to show more products, but you could also use a succession of images to tell a story or provide more details and close-ups of…
Dynamic Product ads bring product retargeting to Facebook
Importance: [rating=4] For Retailers looking to retarget their audience on Facebook
Recommended link: Facebook announcement of Dynamic Product ads
Facebook announced Product Ads this week. Here's an example to show why they're dynamic:
In their post announcing product ads, they explain:
“Product ads, a solution designed to help businesses promote multiple products or their entire product catalog, across all the devices their customers use. With product ads, businesses can showcase more products and people on Facebook can discover more relevant products”.
So this ad option extends Custom Audiences which can already be used for targeting to reference individual products. While it’s of most interest to retailers and all of Facebooks ads show this, it does look as if manufacturers or brands could use the service too.
Given the popularity of Google's PLAs this is likely…
What does the 'Relevance Score' actually mean?
Importance: [rating=4] (for Facebook advertisers)
Recommended link: Facebook for Business Advertising - new 'Relevance Score'
Facebook have introduced a new metric to help Advertisers refine and optimise their ads. They advise that it's not to be used as a single metric to review the effectiveness of your campaign, but is clearly a way to help them deliver more relevant ads which increase earnings in a similar way to Google's Quality Score. It's being positioned by Facebook for use in ad optimisation and testing to:
'Reach your audiences at lower cost, and to test and learn about your ad creative and ad targeting. But understand that having a good relevance score is not an end unto itself.'
So what does this new Facebook Metric look like?
The relevance score will be calculated when a Facebook Ad has been served more than…
