Advanced Tips for Advertising on Facebook

Advanced
Tips for
Advertising
on
Facebook
Best practices from
Facebook Ads experts

1Copyright © 2010–2014 Simply Measured, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Intro
While Facebook has proven itself as one of the most effective advertising platforms
worldwide, the advanced tools and technology offered can often seem like a lot to
take on. For major brands and media and advertising buyers, we’ve gathered a list of
tips for Advanced Advertising on Facebook that will help you institute best practices in
your marketing strategy. These tips come from industry experts, Forbes Top 50 Power
Influencers, Community Managers and Digital Strategists. Our own marketing team
also weighed in, providing Facebook Ads insights with data analysis.
A quick course on Facebook Ads
Facebook Ads are a great way for businesses to have their business Page served to
a wider audience than just their Page fans. The benefit of paying for ads on Facebook
is the ability to target ads to specific audiences based on location, demographics,
behavior, connections, interests and keyword data. In addition, your content will appear
on both desktop and mobile versions of Facebook.
Successful Facebook Ads follow several best practices – primary among them is
having actionable and measurable goals. Without knowing what you want to say, and to
whom, what actions you want that audience to take, and how you will measure those
actions, creating a Facebook Ads strategy would be like driving blindfolded.
The Facebook Advertising platform allows you to choose goals based on the above
data. You can use the platform to drive engagement, drive web visits, and even drive
web conversions. It allows for advanced targeting and lets marketers know how large
the spend will be based on the audience demographics and interests.

Facebook’s Interest targeting currently allows you to target a wide section of users
who have expressed an interest in a topic. The Interests targeting algorithm looks at
Pages these users like, their interests and activities.
This is a pretty broad segment, but by adding Custom Categories marketers have the
ability to target more specific audiences based on things like job status, marital status,
or whether the user owns or rents their home.
As you narrow the scope of your audience, your targeting becomes more refined,
allowing your ads to reach people who are more likely to take action.
The Ads platform even lets you bid
on objectives, clicks, or impressions,
determining how your budget is
allocated and which users your
content is served to.
Sample audience size
from Facebook Ads
creation dashboard
AUDIENCE DETAILS:
• Location: United States
• Interests: Marketing or Social Marketing
• Category: Broad categories management,
Sales, Small business page owners or
Event creators
SPECIFIC BROAD

The new ads structure
Last month, Facebook rolled out a new structure for Facebook Ads that has three
levels: campaigns, ad sets, and ads.
Campaigns: Campaigns are the highest level in the new Facebook Ads structure
and are based on high-level advertising objectives. Here, you’ll determine what type
of action you want your users to take, whether it’s a “Like”, web conversions, shares
and so on.
Ad Sets: Ad Sets allow you to determine the schedule and budget for your ads. In
addition, you’ll define your audience segments and metrics specific to your audience –
such as when the ad will be served and how much of your budget is allotted to serving
that content.
Ads: Ads are most detailed level and are where you’ll continue to target your
audience, define your creative goals, and bid on impressions, clicks, or other objectives.
Facebook recommends creating multiple ads for ad sets so that their system can
automatically optimize for variations in text, images, links, videos, and placements
on users’ News Feeds. These variations on your ads should all be targeted to the
same audience and should have the same bid type so Facebook can serve the top
performing content to your target audience.
For details on Ad types and pricing visit Facebook’s Ads Product Guide.
For an overview on the new Ads structure,
visit the Facebook for Business Advertising page.
Ads AdsAds Ads
Ad Set Ad Set
Campaign

Tips from Facebook Power Users - Facebook Ads
As a media buyer, it takes a relatively short amount of time to become familiar
with the ads buying process. Nevertheless, it can be hard to develop an ads strategy
that is truly successful without having significant Facebook Ads experience. There are
a ton of tips and tricks out there that promise to help you tweak your strategy to yield
higher engagement and higher conversions. Many of those tips, though, are written for
more general audiences or do not address Facebook’s current ads structure.
That’s why we contacted a number of Facebook power users and asked them for
advanced tips that may not be as obvious to seasoned Ads users. Then we weighed in
on how these tips can impact the success of your Ads campaign.
10

LILACH BULLOCK @LilachBullock
Social Media Consultant
Forbes Top 50 Power Influencer
Founder of Socialable
“News Feed ads with photos generate more engagement.”
One of the things we’ve noticed with Facebook Advertising is that News Feed ads
tend to work much better than other forms of ads, and they usually get more clicks
and more engagement. In our experience, the best way to ensure you get the attention
of Facebook users is to use beautiful, eye-catching images and videos.
But the most important thing is to check your ad analytics regularly to see if you’re
getting the results you were hoping for - and if you aren’t, then be prepared to make
the changes needed to get them there!
Simply Measured’s take
We’ve dug through a lot of data that shows that photos and video work best in driving
Facebook engagement. In fact, running a Complete Social Media Snapshot report for
the Interbrand 100’s performance in just the first week of March, we found that photo
posts generated 69% of all engagement.
When using images in your ads, consider rotating that creative content in your ad sets
to keep your content looking new and interesting. This will eliminate ad fatigue, leading
to better performance as people are continually intrigued by your content.
Lilach also points out that News Feed ads seem to perform better than non-News
Feed ads. This may seem surprising, but considering how many users access
Facebook from mobile devices, it’s not hard to see how News Feed ads and
Sponsored posts have much more visibility than ads that appear in the sidebar. Not
only that, News Feed ads feel more “native” to the user because they blend into the
same visual space where people also see posts from friends and family.
1
CONTENT OPTIMIZATION
Photo
Content breakdown for your accounts
with 90th percentile or higher engagement.
Status Link Video
68%
3%
21%
9%

“Gather audience data.”
Don’t guess about your audience on Facebook. Click on the insights tab and find
out who your audience really is, what’s resonating with them and when - and target
from that information. Make your content visual, lean, interesting and fresh. Track your
posts in the analytics at the top of the page and boost those that are doing well with
targeted promotions. And don’t let customer messages go unloved.
Facebook Insights captures a good amount of relevant data on your audience
and it’s worth using this to your advantage. In addition, you may want to consider
monitoring keywords and hashtags to find out what your audience is talking about.
Use the Simply Measured Facebook reporting tools to analyze your Facebook
audience and what content they engage with the most.
Doing this for your brand and others in your industry (competitive analysis) will help
you determine what types of ads drive engagement among your audience. In addition,
discovering social media influencers who are brand advocates will also help you in
developing engagement and driving conversions.
GLEN GILMNORE @GlenGilmore
Marketing Strategist
2
47% 38%
17% 11% 7%
Where influencers follow brands

“Generate brand awareness rather than clicks.”
There are many objectives for utilizing Facebook Ads, and for most companies
it comes down to either increasing brand awareness through “Like” campaigns or
promoting a campaign through Sponsored Posts. These ads are dependent on visitors
to click through to “Like” a landing page, and each click requires a cost. While this
won’t work as well for Sponsored Posts, there’s an easier, less expensive way to
generate brand awareness inside the Facebook community: Create a series of ads
that no one would want to click on.
There is a company that I have heard of that did this with great success, creating ads
which no one would want to click-through on yet generating brand awareness. After a
few months of spending very little money on ads that very few clicked on yet generating
many impressions, the company started getting calls from people saying that they
“see them everywhere on Facebook.” It’s important to note that, like other ad platforms,
your ad will not appear as often if it doesn’t generate any engagement, but perhaps
experimenting with high bids in hopes that very few users click on your ad is a high-risk
high-return approach to potentially generating a lot of engagement for very little budget.
However, you’ll need to make sure you’re actively monitoring the negative impact ads
like these might have on your fan page - through unlikes, hides and spam reports.
Remember that Facebook optimizes your ads based on two factors: spend and how
well your ad meets performance goals based on your Campaign Objectives.
NEAL SCHAFFER @NealSchaffer
Social Media Consultant
Founder of Maximize Social Business
3

“Custom categories allow for better audience targeting.”
Tap into the power of Facebook’s partners’ data (Acxiom and Datalogix),
which you can use to target Facebook users with more focus using the “custom
categories” tool. This allows you to target ads to more categories of people – for
instance, targeting Facebook users based on demographic info (home owner, renter
etc) and on their purchase history (type, model and price of car; date of purchase
and a whole lot more).
Using this feature will make your ads more relevant and powerful.
We recommend ad buyers test and use Facebook’s Custom Audience feature and
experiment with the Lookalike feature. The Custom Audience option allows you to
upload a list of user attributes (email addresses, phone numbers, Facebook user IDs,
App user IDs and IDFAs) and target these users with ads. The Lookalike option allows
you to use these lists to tell Facebook you would like to target users similar to that list.
This is a great feature if you’re trying to target users similar to your current customers.
JEFF BULLAS @JeffBullas
Social Media Strategist
CEO of JeffBullas.com
4

“Understand the true value of Facebook advertising.”
Facebook is a tremendously powerful and unique platform for acquiring users.
Other acquisition models negatively incentivize user acquisition & retention (for
example, rewards programs for installing and trying new apps or games). This results in
a large percentage of that audience un-engaged because they’re not truly interested
in your product or service and joined simply to get that tchotchke. Facebook empowers
the marketer to properly incentivize prospective customers and existing customers alike.
For new customers, targeted Facebook ads put the onus on you and your brand to
sell prospective customers to like your Page or engage with your content. At the end
of the day, the consumer is the one making the conscious and deliberate decision to
“Like” your page and/or interact with your content for no other reason than to say, “I
like what you have to say, and want to hear more.” That leads to an incredibly valuable
proposition for your organization, in contrast to the weaker methods of acquisition I
described before.
Know who your audience is and what they want to hear. Find out what types of
content drive the most engagement (you can use our reports for that), and using
this data, tailor your strategy to cater to that audience and build your status as an
industry leader. If you use content as the driver for “Likes,” clicks and other objectives
you are trying to achieve, you will gain fans that are interested in your content and
not your incentives.
5
JOSH OLIN @JD_2020
Community Development
at Turtle Rock Studios

“A/B testing makes all the difference.”
Don’t think of your Facebook ads as “set it and forget it.” That’s one surefire way
to blow through your budget and limit your success. It’s important to not only monitor
your ads’ initial performance, but also A/B test which variation of copy and imagery
is converting the highest. I’d also suggest incorporating customer/buyer persona
development research into your ads, which will help you tailor effective messages
specific to each audience or recognize new targeting opportunities.
Though Facebook removed the option to set a Default Landing Tab for your Page
with the implementation of Timeline in March 2012, having a landing tab set as the
destination for your Facebook ads is still a viable option. A landing tab could elaborate
on the initial ad’s value proposition and combined with a fan-gate (i.e. “Like” to see
more) can be very effective in converting more paid traffic to fans.
At Simply Measured, we are major fans of A/B testing as part of any marketing
strategy. This is why Facebook Ads now ask for Ad Sets – multiple ads instead of
just one. This allows Facebook to optimize for the ads that perform best with your
target audience and budget. That doesn’t mean, however, that you can stop testing.
You should continue to A/B test ad sets, landing pages, calls to action, or even target
audience and devices.
For example, when you’re thinking about mobile versions of ads, treat them as
completely different ad sets. Use the Power Editor to target your mobile set to mobile
customers. You may find more ROI on your mobile ads than you do on your non-mobile
ads. At that point, you’ll be able to determine how to best allocate your ad budget.
JACOB CURTIS @JacobKCurtis
Digital Strategist & Community
Manager at Bonfire Marketing
45 signups
VERSION A
85 signups
VERSION B
6

“Native advertising is the goal.”
Craft your Facebook Page wall posts in as friendly and personable a way
as possible. Aim for short, concise narrative that catches people’s attention and
ideally makes them want to share with their friends. Then, when these wall posts in
the News Feed, you want your paid content to seamlessly integrate with personal
posts that friends of your target audience share. As Mark Zuckerburg stated at
the last TechCrunch Disrupt event, “I talked about our efforts to grow our business
through improving the quality of our ads rather than just increasing the quantity. Our
goal is to reach a point where the ads are as relevant and timely as the content your
friends share with you.”
Zuckerburg’s quote highlights the “native” aspect of Facebook Ads. Native ads are
designed to look like organic content that isn’t selling something but is more like a
user’s friends’ posts. This is the entire onus behind the revisions to which posts appear
in News Feeds. Ads need to look sophisticated, with high quality images and design,
and specifically curated text.
Lilach notes that News Feed ads seem to perform better than non-news feed ads.
This may seem surprising, but considering how many users access Facebook from
mobile devices, it’s not hard to see how News Feed ads and Sponsored Posts have
much more visibility. Not only that, News Feed ads feel more integrated - or “native”
- because they appear in the same visual space where people also get news from
friends and family.
MARI SMITH @MariSmith
Facebook Marketing Expert
www.marismith.com
7
Our goal is to reach a point
where the ads are as relevant
and timely as the content your
friends share with you.
- Mari, quoting Mark Zuckerburg

“Focus on amazing content.”
Facebook’s changes to their News Feed algorithm have changed the type of
content that lands in users’ feeds. If you are relying on targeting alone to get the job
done, you’re missing a big piece of the puzzle. Teams that are agile in terms of creative
development and armed with data to help them make targeting and budgeting decisions
are going to be incredibly successful in the future. Think about it this way, you can have
an amazingly-targeted ad, but if your content is dull compared to the content in a user’s
feed, they’re going to scroll right by - especially on mobile. Your content (copy, image,
etc.) needs to be as interesting as the stuff they’re seeing from friends, family, and other
brands. Knowing what type of content resonates with your audiences and being able to
make changes on the fly go a long way in the Facebook ad world.
“Combine display and social.”
Facebook advertising is becoming more and more like display advertising, and that’s
not necessarily a bad thing. Using a stepped approach to engaging with your target
audiences and walking them through your funnel (or whatever-shaped process you
have) will help drive results and achieve business objectives. Brands have been using
partners like AdRoll, Turn, and others to connect their audience insights and data with
FBX ads for a while, but taking those audiences and engaging them with FBX content
in the News Feed is a more engaging experience, especially on mobile. When bringing
in a partner for retargeting might not be an option, you can always use the native
Facebook “Website and Mobile App Custom Audiences” option to re-engage users. This
combination of what were once digital display tactics with Facebook advertising gives
brands the chance to right-set their strategies and combine efforts toward business goals.
RON SCHOTT @ronschott
Director of Client Services
at Simply Measured
Former Head of Social at
IGP Mediabrands UK
8

“Leverage the platform accordingly.”
This value also means you have a great deal of responsibility as a marketer on
this platform. And Facebook goes that extra mile to provide us with the tools we
need to succeed at that job. For example, Facebook gives marketers the ability to
track multiple different ads within a campaign and adjust spending parameters
accordingly based on which ads are performing better. This allows you to A/B test
a variety of different strategies concurrently, across multiple different campaigns
(and even products & demographics).
But what good are the tools if you’re not leveraging them properly? It’s critical to
strategize your campaign around well-defined goals and objectives. Don’t try to do
too many things with a single campaign - know your goal and align your creative
process around those objectives. Doing this facilitates decisive conclusions about
the relative success or failure of a given campaign. Then measure those results in
real-time, and don’t be afraid to modify the parameters of your campaign as needed
to maximize its effectiveness.
Josh’s tip shows the importance of defining goals and objectives based on in-depth
audience analysis and competitive benchmarking. It also shows the need for effective
social CTA strategies that are interesting, informative, and engaging.
9
JOSH OLIN @JD_2020
Community Development
at Turtle Rock Studios

“Start by setting SMART goals.”
Like with any other marketing activity, you need to start with a goal. Ask
yourself “why am I spending this money on Facebook ads?” If you don’t have a clear
answer, don’t do it. Your goal should be S.M.A.R.T.: Specific, Measureable, Actionable,
Relevant and Time-bound. For example, I want to drive more downloads of my new
app. Your goal, in this case, should be: get 1,000 downloads by the end of the
quarter with a budget of no more than $10,000. When the end of the quarter comes,
it should be fairly easy for you to determine whether or not you achieved your goal.
And then set a new one.
URI BAR-JOSEPH @uribarjoseph
Director of Marketing
at Simply Measured
10
Goals should be simplistically written and clearly define what you are going to do.
Specific
You need tangible evidence that you’ve accomplished your goals.
Measurable
Your goals should stretch you slightly so you feel challenged,
but defined well enough so that you can achieve them.
Attainable
Goals should be instrumental to the mission of the entire
marketing team and/or organization.
Relevant
Set a definite target date for completion as well as
frequencies for specific action steps.
Time-bound

Conclusion
Advanced advertising on Facebook can seem daunting but with smart strategies from
industry experts, it’s easy to tweak your ad campaigns to drive performance. For many
of the research and development options, Simply Measured reports will provide the
data you need to set your strategy.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
News Feed ads with photos generate more engagement
Gather audience data
Generate brand awareness rather than clicks
Custom categories allow for better audience targeting
Understand the true value of Facebook advertising
Leverage the platform accordingly
A/B testing makes all the difference
Native advertising is the goal
Focus on amazing content + Combine display and social
Start by setting SMART goals

18 Copyright © 2010–2014 Simply Measured, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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