Tag Archives: Facebook ads

5 Facebook Marketing Mistakes and How to Fix Them

This is a rewrite of an article that I wrote for MaximizeSocialBusiness.com

Are you a small business owner or marketing manager for a medium sized business? If you are, and you’re successful, you’re probably using social media channels, like Facebook, to market your business. These powerful tools have tremendous reach and active user bases.
If you want to maximize your digital marketing efforts, review these 5 common Facebook marketing mistakes and learn how to fix them!

1. Mistakes with an Ad Budget

You won’t be able to avoid spending money if you want to reach an appropriate audience on Facebook. The key to maximizing your ROI is determining the proper budget.

Because many small businesses make the huge mistake of being too stingy, it pays to evaluate your limitations and to construct cost-effective and engaging Facebook ads. As you can see, it’s very easy to misjudge your Facebook advertising budget, which can waste time, money and can keep you from earning the attention you seek.

How to fix the problem: If you have a limited budget, make the most of it by using a good portion of it for strategies that are proven to work. Using Facebook’s Power Editor tool will target a specific audience by allowing you to specify, in great detail, where and when ads will be placed.

2. Not Engaging Your Audience

You never want to talk “at” your followers, ignore your audience or isolate any individuals by making your page appear unapproachable.

How to fix the problem: Create and share content that your followers can use and make an effort towards humanizing your brand. You want to start a dialogue between your business or brand and your followers.

3. Weak Content

Your content will be considered weak if it comes off as a continuous sales pitch or a boring mess of information.

How to fix the problem: You want posts that are relevant, attractive and helpful. Additionally, research shows that including pictures, video, infographics and other visual content gets more engagement than text.

4. Violating Facebook Rules

Violating Facebook rules can get your page penalized, or even taken down, which can be a real nightmare! However, having Facebook pull the plug on your page is a situation that can be avoided.

How to fix the problem: Go to the source (Facebook) and carefully read their guidelines and go over their terms of agreement. Become familiar with how to correctly follow the rules set out by Facebook.

5. Neglecting Your Page

You may be thinking; this one sounds too easy to be true. Well, you’re right. All you need to do is update your page every once in awhile. You’d be surprised at how many businesses don’t regularly update their Facebook page. As a result, these pages may appear to visitors to have been abandoned!

How to avoid the problem: Remind yourself to post content consistently by setting up a regular updating schedule, which means posting a few times a week at minimum, if not multiple daily posts. Then your followers or fans learn to expect regular content updates from you, and they’re more likely to keep coming back on a regular basis.

Hopefully reviewing these 5 common Facebook marketing mistakes will allow you to maximize your content’s potential digital reach. Facebook is a great place for businesses to connect with their potential audience. But, just like anything in business, you must diligently plan your Facebook marketing strategy to make the biggest return on your investment.

Read the original article on MaximizeSocialBusiness.com

Facebook ads, facebook business page marketing, facebook marketing plan, Facebook tipsMarch 8, 2016

Ways to Overcome the 20% Text Rule for Facebook Ads

Facebook can be a powerful tool for your business, even though its organic reach not quite what it used to be. Facebook advertising gives you the ability to target to your exact customer and reach many more people than traditional advertising.

There’s one huge complaint about Facebook’s ad rules, the 20% Text Rule. Facebook wants all ads to be high-quality ads, so that means some pretty ridiculous rules that don’t always make sense.

In this case, your ad image can’t contain more than 20% text. At least, it can’t contain more than 20% text, according to Facebook’s grid tool. Facebook has a tool that’ll put a grid on top of your ad image. If text exists in more than 20% of the boxes, then your image is not allowed. Luckily, there are some ways to try to work around this.

1. Move your text around.

Unfortunately (and annoyingly), sometimes the amount of text isn’t even the issue. It’s the placement of the text. If there is any amount of text in one of the grid boxes, Facebook assumes the entire box has been filled. So if the text is overlapping eight boxes, you may be able to move the text into four boxes, allowing your ad image to be approved.

2. Use an image of your product in action.

Rather than trying to use text in your image to show your product, use an image or video of your product in action. This way, you can reduce the possibility of your ad being rejected because of a text issue completely.

3. Use creative font treatments.

No marketer is entirely sure how Facebook’s ad review process works, but somehow, some ads get past with plenty of text. Many marketers claim that by creatively switching up their copy, like using vertical, circular, or angled text, they were able to get their ads approved.

4. Resize your image.

This may not work for every ad, but try making your image smaller and placing it on a different background. This decreases the likelihood that you’re using up 20% of text space. Double check using Facebook’s grid tool.

5. Create a reusable template.

Running lots of ads? Get your graphic designer to assist by creating a reusable template that follows the 20% text rule. This is incredibly efficient, because every single time you run a new ad, you know the image will pass, and you won’t have to worry about it again.

6. Take advantage of the caption and link description.

Facebook does give you a lot of space to write out your message, so including text in your image may not even be necessary. Use the caption, headline, and link descriptions to flesh out what your product/service is and why people should click through to your website.

So, yes, Facebook’s 20% Text Rule is obnoxious and pretty much every marketer will agree that it is unnecessary. However, that doesn’t mean that all is lost. There are still several ways to get around it or create an ad that simply doesn’t need text on the image.

Read the original article in MaximizeSocialBusiness.com

Facebook ads, Facebook MarketingMarch 1, 2016

Facebook Ad Demographics

This infographic is vital if you use Facebook Ads. Facebook Ad demographics are laid out visually for a better understanding of how to use them. A big thank you to PremiumITSolutions.com.au for this engaging and information infographic.

The ability to target your customers through Facebook advertising is becoming increasingly refined.

Facebook now allows marketers to target ads based on the following demographics:

Geographic location – Great for local businesses like restaurants and retail stores.

Age & Gender

Relationship status – Hotels and travel agents can target newly engaged people.

Educational level – Graduate schools can target undergrads with invitations for upper-level degrees.

Employment – Training programs and CEU unit providers can target people working in their specific field.

Ethnic affinity and generation – Use this to target parents with children in a specific age bracket.

Political beliefs – You know all the Presidental candidates will be using this targeting option.

Major life events – Like anniversaries, job status, birthday, away from home, and even more.

Language, Interests & Behaviors – Target by sports team, foreign language or topic.

Think about your typical consumer profile and match it to your advertising audience.

For example, if your local business sells baby clothes, you can target customers in your town (location), who just had a child (major life event).

The better you know your customer, the more likely you’ll see your business grow.

demographics, Facebook ads, facebook audience analysis, facebook for business tips, Facebook MarketingSeptember 11, 2015

Social Media Ad Size Cheat Sheet

This is an awesome infographic on social media network ad sizes from our friends at Bannersnack.com

Expert use of ads on social media involves understanding these tips and tricks.

Facebook:

Make sure your ad has a clear call to action
20% of your ad can be text. The rest should be a high-resolution image that conveys your brand personality.

Twitter:

Make your ads compelling
Test your cards frequently

LinkedIn:

Give your audience a reason to pay attention to your ad
Monitor your ad’s click through rate

Pinterest:

For the best results on Pinterest make your ad
- Helpful
- Beautiful
- And/Or Actionable

Google+:

Keep your ad actionable
Monitor comments and posts

Facebook ads, google ads, LinkedIn ads, pinterest ads, Twitter adsJuly 31, 2015

Facebook Ads vs Google Ads

Rock em Sock em Robots help to illustrate Facebook ads vs. Google ads.

Reach – Google comes out swinging with a better reach … approx 90% of all internet users.
Targeting Options – Facebook throws an uppercut to Google’s chin with the amazing and extensive demographics to focus ad audience targeting so that people who are likely to purchase are the people that receive the ads.
Mobile Advertising – Google comes back with a crippling gut punch by being more mobile ad friendly.
ROI – Facebook and Google are trading punches as this really depends on how well your ads are created and placed, which can be a function of the person placing the ad and not the ad service. But with Facebook’s tight ad targeting ability, it’s landing a few more punches and getting more points.

The Winner! We like Facebook marketing. It has great demographics that allow you to reach the people that have demonstrated an interest in your product or service, so your ROI is higher. But don’t exclude Google, for mobile ads and immediate sales.

Infographic by our friends at WishPond

digital marketing, Facebook ads, google ads, internet marketing, social media marketingFebruary 20, 2015