Beware of Unsafe User-Generated Content [Infographic]

Most marketers get very excited about user-generated content (UGC) because it can boost brand awareness and business. But beware: Some UGC can actually damage your brand. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

#SocialSkim: What Facebook's Algorithm Change Means, Plus 12 More Stories in This Week's Roundup

This week's all about optimization and user experience--from the social network and brand perspectives. Facebook grabbed headlines with a big algorithm change that aims to reward high-quality content, and social media industry leaders united to stress the gravity of live video. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

Online Marketing News: Short Attention Spans, Google Feed Rules, Starbucks Emojis

The Shortening Human Attention Span (And What it Means for Marketers) [Infographic]
Down from 12 seconds in 2000, the average human attention span is now 8.25 seconds. That leaves marketers with very little time to make a meaningful impression. But, don't sweat it too much. This infographic has some solid tips on how to capture and hold the attention of your audience, like using clear and brief messaging and telling your audience a story. Social Media Today



Google adds Merchant Center Feed Rules to make formatting shopping feeds easier
For a long time, Google shopping feeds have been a bump in the road for digital advertisers. So much so that there's a whole industry dedicated to helping advertisers manage their shopping feeds. On Tuesday, Google announced a new feature in the Merchant Center -- Merchant Center Feed Rules, that will help advertisers fix errors themselves in a simple way. Search Engine Land

Starbucks launched its own keyboard app so you can text emojis of unicorns drinking coffee
Starbucks is now allowing users to send unicorn and coffee emojis to their contacts. That's it folks, the world is complete. The app was released under a partnership with Snaps Media, and is Starbucks' first consumer app that is focused on entertaining their audience. What could this mean for other brands? I'm willing to bet we'll see more custom emoji keyboards in the near future. TechCrunch

Facebook's mobile ad revenue grew by 76% to $4.26 billion in Q1 2016
Facebook reportedly grew revenue in Q1 of 2016, which is a contrast to reports issued by Twitter and Apple with revenue reportedly being less than expected. Not only is mobile ad revenue up, but Facebook's daily audience grew by 16%, with money made from each audience member increasing by 33%. This post is full of useful information from that report, and some highly entertaining gifs to boot. Marketing Land



Twitter Q1 2016 Revenue Falls Short of Analysts' Projections
Twitter reported that while revenue was up 36% YOY for Q1, the $595 million fell short of analysts predictions. According to SocialTimes, "Twitter reported a GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) net loss of $80 million, or 12 cents per share, less than one-half the company's net loss in the first quarter of 2015." SocialTimes

Marketers Choose Responsive Email Templates Over Fluid Hybrid Design
New research shows that marketing professionals worldwide are overwhelmingly choosing to use responsive email templates (56.9%) over fluid hybrid design (7.9%). Interestingly, 19.9% are using both types of templates, and 15.2% aren't using either. Designing for mobile first may sound like a trendy marketing idea, but smart marketers know that if your emails don't look great on mobile, they aren't nearly as effective. eMarketer

What were your top online marketing news stories this week?

I'll be back next week with more online marketing news! In the meantime, send your thoughts and ideas to me @Tiffani_Allen or @toprank!

The post Online Marketing News: Short Attention Spans, Google Feed Rules, Starbucks Emojis appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

Stop Neglecting Analytics in Your Customer Engagement Strategy

Customers desire experiences, not transactions.

In a world full of distractions, engaging customers beyond the typical purchasing routine is vital for SaaS success.

And B2B consumers crave unparalleled engagement. They want personalized advice, solution-oriented features, and revenue-generating products.

An IBM annual survey noted that “as many as 65% believe customer engagement will be the primary driver of growth going forward.”

Analytics is one of the few ways to gain insights to meet your customers' needs. It helps bridge the gap between providing a service to solving real challenges.

Enhance the experience between your brand and consumers. Build data into your customer engagement strategy.

It Starts With Value

Studies show that “86% of buyers will pay more for a better customer experience, but only 1% of customers feel that vendors consistently meet their expectations.” That's a major disconnect for SaaS companies striving to improve customer engagement.

B2B customers aren't concerned about aesthetic features. And they aren't amped to hear how your team worked around the clock to fix a bug.

Your consumers want a service dedicated to solving their problems in an efficient manner.

Natalie Chan, an expert handling customer retention at Outbrain Amplify, writes:

“Businesses that focus on customers engagement are focused on value creation, not revenue extraction. These are businesses that know how to engage their customers by providing them with real value whether it be through an exceptional end-to-end customer experience, great content or strong customer support that are about delivering more than the traditional sell.”

Offering value means addressing your customers' desires. And it's all about how they perceive what's important.

For example, if a prospect is concerned about increasing open rates in email campaigns, it's not in their best interest to discuss layout designs.

Image Source

Value requires laser-focus. And that's where analytics steps in.

Monitor usage data to assess the customer experience. Track acquisition channels to observe where customers are coming from and if they're converting.

Interview customers and ask them why they chose your product. Figure out how they expect to use your product and what business goals they want to achieve.

Create and deliver unprecedented value. Connect with the customer.

Know Your Buyer

In order for customer engagement to work effectively, your team must know your buyer. And that goes beyond the usual demographics, like annual revenue, company size, and location.

More importantly, for B2B companies, your team must not only focus on the business itself, but also on the employee of the business. Learning about the decision maker is crucial to your sales.

“Leveraging big data to better understand and act upon customer behavior, forces you to think differently not only about what data to keep (all of it!) and how long to keep it, but also which data you should begin capturing,” states Duane Edwards, Co-founder and Senior Vice President of Globys.

Analyze your primary behavioral data to create in-depth customer personas. Understand the decision maker's goals and challenges. Also, know how you can provide short-term and long-term guidance.

Image Source

Bruce Swann, Sales and Marketing professional at Adobe, suggests applying predictive analytics:

“Once you've compiled data attributes to create a panoramic view of customers, you can begin to understand and predict customer behavior, which adds depth to that view. Examples include using a range of analyses, including customer value analysis, market basket analysis, customer profitability, response modeling, and churn analysis.”

Use data as an indicator of future behavior. If you know your client's customers, it may lead to helping your client differently.

For example, NoWait is an app that simplifies the process of waiting for a table at a restaurant. Instead of having a guest tote around a clunky pager with a range of 50 feet, restaurants only need the person's cell phone number.

When the table is ready, the guest receives a text. Plus, after dining, restaurants can text customers additional discount offerings.

Moreover, with the app, restaurants learn “who their patrons are, what time they come and go, which patrons come back the most frequently, who purchases more.” This data can be used to create messaging that appeals specifically to each customer.

Know your buyer and your buyer's customers.

Content That Resonates

Content is more than just blog posts. It includes everything from checklists to webinars.

Research shows that “64% of visitors who watch a video are more likely to buy a product online.” Therefore, content isn't just helpful for your brand awareness; it's a vital part of your customer engagement strategy, which leads to sales.

Examine heat map data to improve your content. It will help you learn what content is important to the consumer. Then, your team can focus on content placement and how different images and colors in your content affect your website visitors.

Pete Mehr, Principal at ZS Associates, says, “By quantifying which content the customer engages, and how frequently, it becomes straightforward to continue to provide content back to the customer. This continuing content consists of an ongoing series of messages to a customer.”

Moreover, analytics will uncover which type of content matters to your customer. Is it eBooks? Or maybe 30-second video clips?

Mention understands their audience. They produce content that resonates.

The social monitoring company creates webinars highlighting experts in the field. For instance, Mention invited Sujan Patel (who is hosting a webinar with Kissmetrics next week) to talk about ways to create content for “boring” industries.

Study your data to find content that speaks to your customer. It's an effective way to boost engagement.

Multi-Channel Customer Service

In America, “the cost of poor customer service is $41 billion per year.” That's a heavy burden for most companies.

Moreover, a report found that “retailers are not listening and responding to their audience enough. Some 89% of consumers' comments are left unanswered.”

Approach customer service differently. Think beyond phone support and Q&A forums.

Social media has presented another solution. Now, SaaS businesses can provide Twitter and Facebook support.

Under Armour created a Twitter handle solely for the purpose of answering customers questions about their products.

From your analytics reports, determine what channels of support satisfies your customers. What works for your competitor may not work for your SaaS.

“It's not about deploying on all channels, but deploying the right channels that align with your business. Only deploy on the channels that make sense for your business,” says Kate Leggett, a principal analyst at Forrester Research.

In addition, you must streamline your processes when using multiple channels. For instance, phone support data for a specific customer must also be available to your Twitter service reps.

At ComputerWeekly.com, Lisa Kelly suggests that “organisations need an accurate knowledge base where companies can link information from other channels, including peer-to-peer interactions, web self-service and communities, to share with customer service agents.”

It's not enough to offer various customer service routes. Your team must work together to use data to enhance the overall customer experience on each channel.

Respect The Data

Customer engagement isn't anything new. However, your SaaS can approach it differently with the help of analytics.

Add unmatched value to the customer's experience. Use data to gain insight on your buyer's habits and preferences. And provide customer service from a multi-channel perspective.

Stop neglecting, and start respecting your data.

About the Author: Shayla Price lives at the intersection of digital marketing, technology and social responsibility. Connect with her on Twitter @shaylaprice.

SearchCap: Bing Ads updates, latest Windows 10 release & the Jelly relaunch

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

The post SearchCap: Bing Ads updates, latest Windows 10 release & the Jelly relaunch appeared first on Search Engine Land.



Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Five Examples of How Publishers Have Used UGC to Grow

Today's successful publishers are integrating new ways for readers to contribute content on their site. Doing so helps those companies increase customer loyalty and promote community. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

Microsoft blocks Google Chrome & other browsers from Cortana in latest Windows 10 release

Microsoft says blocking third-party browsers & search providers improves user experience and is in keeping with how competitors act with their own digital assistants.

The post Microsoft blocks Google Chrome & other browsers from Cortana in latest Windows 10 release appeared first on...



Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Spotlight on Attribution 360, part of the Google Analytics 360 Suite

Your marketing strategy isn't single channel so why should your measurement practices be? 

Looking at marketing performance one channel at a time no longer makes sense. In today's complex, micro-moment, cross-screen landscape, the lines between marketing efforts are blurred. Traditional marketing and digital marketing overlap, with investments online delivering results offline, and vice versa. Cross-channel marketers have an opportunity to shift away from channel-by-channel thinking to better understand how to optimize their entire marketing strategy.

Google Attribution 360 allows you to measure and optimize marketing spend for all channels, online and off, at once. Use it to uncover insights, make a true impact on the customer journey, and improve ROI.

The Digital Attribution, Marketing Mix Modeling, and TV Attribution capabilities within Attribution 360 allow you to analyze all your available data streams and create a highly accurate model of your full marketing efforts.

• Digital Attribution helps you combine and interpret siloed data sources, apply data-driven attribution modeling, and optimize your digital marketing mix. Rather than using a limited first-touch, last-touch, or arbitrary rules-based model, Digital Attribution awards the appropriate credit to each and every touchpoint on the customer journey. 
• Marketing Mix Modeling adds a top-down, aggregated view of performance across all channels, including media such as radio, television, print, out-of-home, and digital. You'll also get insights into how external factors such as economic conditions, seasonality, and competitive actions impact your marketing efforts. 
• TV Attribution helps business relying on TV to build awareness and demand to integrate digital and broadcast data and understand their cross-channel performance. Down-to-the-minute TV ad airings data is analyzed alongside digital site and search data to reveal the attributable impact of specific broadcast ad placements. 

Here's how one of our customers, Open Colleges, uses Attribution 360 to make the connection between TV and digital advertising.

Google Attribution 360 helps Open Colleges see how TV ads turn into online leads 

Open Colleges, Australia's leader in online learning, felt television advertising could be a powerful tool to reach its audience, but in a data-driven and lead-driven culture they found it difficult to measure and justify the actual impact of TV ads. They wanted to see how TV ads translated into real leads, understand the cross-channel customer journey, and find new opportunities in their marketing mix. That's when they turned to Google Attribution 360.

For three months in 2015, the team tested Attribution 360 with a series of TV campaigns focused on their key user base of women aged 25-54 who are looking to enhance or change their careers. They ran ads on a variety of TV programming - cooking shows, series, soap operas, and news and morning shows.

Getting results 

With Attribution 360, the Open Colleges team could see clearly what was engaging TV viewers and driving them to search. While news and morning shows delivered larger impression volume, light entertainment shows like Ellen and Grey's Anatomy had higher impact on leads. Open Colleges also learned that while Saturday was their most engaged day, Monday and Tuesday spots were more cost-efficient by an average of 12%.

“We gained insights into day-parting, 15-second versus 30-second spots, and campaign flighting - just a level of insights we've never had before,” says Matt Hill, Head of Brand & Communication for Open Colleges.

They also learned that dual-screen TV viewers were far more engaged on mobile than on desktop, and far more engaged on smartphones than on tablets.

“People sitting on the couch who see a TV ad, they're not going to run and get their laptop,” notes Hill. “They pull out their phone and search for us right there.” In prime time (6-10pm), for example, 81% of attributed visits were from mobile.

Making adjustments 

As results came in, the Open Colleges team made adjustments to campaigns, ad buys and creatives to capitalize on what they learned. The realized they had to make sure their online ads were at or near top position for web searches using keywords like online courses any time their TV ads were driving response. “Your search bidding strategy has to be aligned with your TV activity,” says Hill. “If your TV ad drives a mobile user to search for online education and you aren't there, you won't make the most of your investment.”

In the first three months, Open Colleges saw a significant uplift with its key target audience of women aged 25–54. As a result, the team is now testing many new approaches, like targeting smaller audiences in Western Australia, trying programming alternatives at off-peak hours, and exploring the hours where 15-second ads get the best ROI.

“Traditional metrics just don't cut it anymore,” says Hill. “You need to understand what your marketing dollars are doing for you in detail, and TV attribution has given us the visibility and confidence that TV does deliver against hard business metrics. If you're serious about understanding the pathways to conversion and the full impact of your offline spend for maximum ROI, Attribution 360 is a must.”

Read the full case study with Open Colleges for more details.

Stay tuned for more updates on Attribution 360 as we continue to invest in new and exciting capabilities.

Posted by Dave Barney, Product Manager, Google Attribution 360

How a GREAT Marketer Befriends an Influencer

Have you ever watched a reality competition? You know, one of those Survivor-style shows that puts strangers in a stressful situation to battle for a last-person-standing prize?

Don't be ashamed if you have. I'm a pop culture snob, but still found myself transfixed by ten seasons of America's Next Top Model. On that show, amidst the freak-outs and tantrums, I noticed one recurring line of dialogue:

“I'm not here to make friends.”

You'll hear it on almost every reality competition. There's always one person who alienates everyone else with that specific phrase. Usually it's followed by, “I'm here to win.”

The funny thing is, in all the hours I wisely invested watching would-be models snipe at each other, no one who said that ever won. Not once. In fact, they tended to get kicked off earlier than anyone else.

It's easy for marketers to feel like we're not here to make friends. Even in influencer marketing, it's all about that ROI. Influencer, you get me what I need, we'll compensate you, and that's the end of it. We're here to win.

But just like the models and aspiring pop idols of the world, you'll find that putting effort into building friendships pays off in the end. If you want influencers who are excited about working with you, creating work they're excited to promote, it pays to cultivate a friendship. Not just from a, “it's nicer to work with people when you're nice” angle, either-it's better for the business side, too.

Here are three ways you can cultivate friendships with your influencers.

#1 – Consider People outside of their Interaction with Your Business

This is a piece of advice I've given to marketers thinking about their customers, but it applies to influencers as well. Yes, you're vetting the influencer for the size of their audience and if their audience aligns with your message. But while you're doing that, consider what they do when they're not answering your email.

What are they like? Do they have a good sense of humor? What are their hobbies? Do they talk about their family, their pets, their collection of vintage chainsaws? What kind of music are they into? What movies do they love? It's worth doing a little digging to find out. And I don't mean just social media stalking, either. These questions can start a conversation you might not have had otherwise. We all love talking about ourselves-give them a chance to share interests you might have in common.

#2 – Take – Don't Fake – A Personal Interest

Last December, I got a greeting card in the mail. It had my name and addresses hand-written on the envelope, but no return address. Intrigued, I opened it to read: “Best holiday wishes to you and yours from your friends at [Insurance Company].” I looked at the envelope again, and this time could tell their hand-written address was just a handwriting font. Just like that, any illusion of personal interest they were trying to create was gone.

With your influencers, it's worth taking time to express a genuine personal interest. Let your correspondence show that you have taken time to learn something about them. Send a meme that made you laugh, that you know they would love. Send them a vintage chainsaw to add to their collection. That thoughtfulness goes a long way.

Just make sure you do your homework under point #1, so you're not faking the funk. You wouldn't want to send chocolates to a diabetic, or a vintage chainsaw to someone who collects old Happy Meal toys. That's just a waste of a good chainsaw.

#3 – Strive for Genuine, Enthusiastic Co-Creation

At TopRank, we try to involve influencers in the creation process as actively as possible. We make sure influencers know exactly what project we're working on, why we would love their input, and which other influencers are already on board. We keep the enthusiasm up throughout the process with progress reports. We show them the finished project before we publish it so they can make final edits. And we always make sure to message them right before the project posts, to make it easy for them to promote it.

Compare that approach to simply saying, “Hey, can we get a quote about Happy Meal toys for a blog,” followed by…well, no follow-up at all. There's no comparison.

How a GREAT Marketer Befriends an Influencer

Let's face it: We are here to make friends. In marketing, as in life, friends make good things even better. So to help you cultivate lasting friendships with the influencers in your life, we created this cute-but-serious storybook with some key points to keep in mind. Read it to your kids before bed tonight…or to your significant other while you're binge-watching America's Next Top Model.

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© Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®, 2016. |
How a GREAT Marketer Befriends an Influencer | http://www.toprankblog.com

The post How a GREAT Marketer Befriends an Influencer appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

7 Ways to Step Up Your Email Marketing Game in 2016

Email marketing is a great, cost-effective way to engage prospective customers and nurture relationships with current customers. And email is actually welcomed by consumers. In fact, recent research has found that a whopping 91% of Americans say they want to receive promo emails.

But let's face it. With email being one of the most common forms of communication these days, your customers inboxes are most likely a little full. And it's time for you to step up your game if you want to continue connecting with subscribers and encouraging them to do business with you.

While we're almost halfway through 2016, there's still time to make the most of the latest email marketing tricks and trends. Below are seven considerations for creating an emails that will resonate with your audience and help you up your game.

#1 – Remember: It's All About Mobile

This one may seem like a bit of a no-brainer, but nonetheless it needs to be mentioned. Mobile has become an increasingly important consideration for website designers and digital marketers. People rely on their mobile devices for a lot of things–and email is certainly one of them. In fact, studies show that 55% of email is now opened on a mobile device.

Typically, the content should be focused and not too text heavy. But the most important thing to remember is that people want fast loading times. So, if you're using large video or image files, make sure they'll open quickly and easily.

#2 – Personalize Your Message

A one-size-fits-all approach to email marketing is simply not reasonable these days. Your email recipients are interested in messages that are focused on their personal tastes and preferences–addressing them by their first name in the opening is not good enough. Use data insights to create different messaging for individual target groups.

For example, Pinterest does an excellent job at personalization. Every week, I can count on receiving an email with suggested pins or boards to follow that are based on my interests and behaviors on the platform.

Can you tell I'm attempting a diet?

#3 – Understand the “Why”

Spend some time actually thinking about why your subscribers actually open an email. An enticing discount or a new product launch may not be the only reason they click. Think about who your customer is, what they're usually looking for, what's important to them and what season it is. In addition, think about what device they are looking on. Is it a tablet? Smartphone? Basically, dig into the psychology of your customers. This will directly correlate with your ability to personalize your messaging.

#4 – Explore Automation

Automated email campaigns allow you to use a triggering event such as an asset download, contact form fill out or a webinar signup to kick-off a tailored series of emails. Your monthly newsletters or specialty campaigns are definitely important components of your overall email marketing strategy. But email automation can be a very powerful tool that can help you nurture relationships and drive customers to a desired outcome.

For example, if you're hosting an in-person event or webinar, email automation can be used as a way to communicate with attendees before, during and after the event. Content delivered before or during the event would include information on accommodations or the event schedule. Content delivered after the event ends would include special access to event assets and presentations, or perhaps direct them or information on another upcoming event they're interested in.

Determine your triggering events and then create an automation workflow that details what you'll send to them throughout the automation campaign. Here's an example:

#5 – Add Dynamic & Interactive Content

Dynamic and interactive content is something that is pretty new to the email marketing world. Dynamic options could include changing the content of an email based on location or weather, and interactive content could be features like animations or carousel elements. Software tools that can help you do this type of content are HubSpot and MovableInk.

#6 – Use a Lightbox to Grow Your Email List

Lightboxes–or pop-ups–can be an effective way to quickly grow your email list. While some may think they're a bit annoying, lightbox pop-ups bring a connection option to your audience–rather than relying on them to search it out.

If you go this route, make something that's unique rather than using a generic template. Also, use active language that will compel people to do what you're asking. Here's an example from HouseLogic, a home improvement tips and tricks website operated by the National Association of Realtors. They know why their audience is there and uses visuals to entice a sign up.

#7 – Implement Tracking

Having the proper tracking in place so you can gather data and pull insights from your email campaign is crucial. (And really tracking should be an important part of your entire digital marketing campaign.) If you're using Google Analytics, add campaign parameters to the source URL to get a better idea of how many people are coming to your website from email. Check out Google's Email Tracking – Measurement Protocol for step-by-step instructions.

What are some of your email marketing best practices? Tell us in the comments section below.

Header image via Shutterstock

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The post 7 Ways to Step Up Your Email Marketing Game in 2016 appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

10 Must-Know Facebook Ads Tips & Features

It's no secret that paid social is drastically on the rise. Social advertising spend jumped 50% year-over-year in the last quarter of 2015. Social media ad revenue is expected to reach $35.90 billion by 2017, reaching a staggering 16% of the total global digital ad market.

Facebook (including Instagram) unsurprisingly comprises a big piece of this pie, making up an estimated 65.5% of all 2015 social ad spend. This is driven by changes in their CPC model, launch of Instagram ads & the addition of powerful new features.

This post will arm you with 10 important tips & features to ensure you're getting the most out of this channel.

1. Facebook Lead Ads

One of the most recent campaign types added by Facebook are Lead Ads. This campaign type allows advertisers to collect lead data without a landing page and directly through a form without leaving Facebook.

Some early advertisers found Lead Ads to result in a 4x reduction to their CPL (according to Facebook).

Example experience on mobile

To get started with Lead Ads, simply:

1. Create a new campaign with the “Lead Generation” objective

2. Build out your campaign/advert set, as you would for any campaign

3. Create your lead form at the advert level

4. Choose the questions you'd like added and optionally add up to three custom questions

5. Link to your privacy policy, add your disclaimer and destination URL

6. Customize your form

7. Preview then create your form

Now you're ready to get started with Facebook's newest and most powerful lead generation tool.

Tip: Twitter has had this campaign type for years, they call it Twitter Lead Cards.

2. Reporting, Reporting, Reporting

Some of the biggest wins are always found within the reporting section. One of the most important parts of reporting is the 'Breakdown' section.

• Are your mobile placements converting?


• What age group has the strongest CPA?


• What regions aren't converting?


• What gender is responding to your adverts?

These are all important questions that can be answered under the 'Breakdown' drop-down.

In this example, the Instagram placement converted a near 500% better than mobile news feed placement, at a fraction of the CPA. Knowing this, we'd shift more spend to Instagram and remove budget from the mobile news feed placement to maximize performance at our budget (if there's volume available).

3. Attribution models

It's important to understand Facebook's attribution models, where to change the view and what makes sense for your conversion goal. These are the 'rules' for how each conversion is counted, in regards to the timeframe after an interaction with your advert and the method of the interaction (click or view).

This is important to take note of so you have a clear understanding of the value of your conversions and how they compare to the other networks you may be running.

Within 'Manage adverts', the option to change the attribution model can be found under 'Columns' > 'Customize Columns…' > 'Change Attribution Window'.

4. Test Instagram

Since September 2015, Instagram placements have been made public in 30+ countries within the Facebook Ads Dashboard. Getting started with this is as simple as connecting an Instagram account and choosing the Instagram placement.

Break out some test budget and see how this placement compares.

Tip: Here are some helpful best practices when running Instagram Ads

5. Lookalike audiences

I've found lookalike audiences to be one of the most effective targeting methods on paid social.

A lookalike audience is a targeting criteria where Facebook generates an audience of user who are similar to your current customers or audience.

This audience can be based off an email list, segments of your Facebook Pixel or any conversion goals you have set up. Facebook matches these users with Facebook profiles then finds similarities in demographics, interests, behaviors, etc. Lastly, Facebook uses these finding to generate a list of similar Facebook users which you can target in your campaigns.

Learn how to create a lookalike audience here.

6. Keep an eye on Facebook's location options

An often overlooked targeting criteria is Facebook's more granular location targeting options. It's important to keep this in mind while creating your campaigns and use the targeting option that makes the most sense for your business.

Are you trying to target people living in a specific city, or all people within this city? These are two very different targets.

Take for example, a local service business operating only in downtown SF. You wouldn't want to be targeting people visiting for the weekend, or commuting in for work.

7. Speak to your audience

With Facebook's granular targeting methods, in most cases you know who you're speaking to (at least the interest, behaviours, etc. that define your audience).

Use this knowledge to tie copy and creative closely with each specific audience you're targeting.

Targeting a recent homebuyer? How about something like “Your new home would be complete with [Brand Name's] contemporary/ modern furniture line”.

8. Remarketing

All digital marketers know the importance of remarketing, so don't level this out of your Facebook Ads strategy be left out.

Make sure to take advantage of Facebook's audience segmentation options, where you can include/exclude specific pages & domains, as well as choose the remarketing window length.

Tip: Did you know Facebook now offers Dynamic Remarketing?

This feature allows advertisers to remarket specific products to users who've previously viewed or added them to their cart. The creative and copy of your ads will dynamically change based on what products your visitors have viewed.

9. Test multiple creative and copy

Always test many creative and copy variants to see which ones resonate best with your audience. Facebook will optimize ad serving based on performance and your conversion goal.

An interesting and relatively new creative type I recommend testing is the 'Carousel', which allows you to fit multiple images and links into a single creative.

This creative type has been found to reduce your CPA by about 30-50% & decrease your CPC by 20-30% (according to Facebook).

Use this creative type to:

• Showcase multiple products


• Highlight multiple features


• Create a larger canvas


• Outline benefits


• Tell your brand's story

Tip: Don't forget to run a statistical significance test to see if the improvement you're seeing is indeed valid and not just by chance.

10. Breakout campaigns by placement

The different placements offered by Facebook perform very differently. It's important to keep an eye on their performance and where your spend is being directed (details of how to do this are found in #2 above).

When optimizing for clicks, I find most of your budget will get pushed to mobile or audience network (since these have the most effective CPC), however these placements may typically not have the best overall performance.

In most cases, I find it makes sense to break out your campaigns by placement (or at least mobile vs. desktop). This is especially true if you're setting manual bids, or if your campaign is set to optimize for clicks.

Conclusion

I hope you find these Facebook Advertising tips & features useful. If you have any questions or additional tips/features that you think merit discussion, let us know if the comments section, or email me at jacob@cleverzebo.com.

About the Author: This guest post is written by Jacob Young, world-traveling digital nomad and Senior Manager, Ad Operations at Clever Zebo. Currently writing from the Co-Work office in Sayulita, Mexico. To learn how Clever Zebo can jumpstart your paid social efforts, shoot us a note at igor@cleverzebo.com or Tweet us at @CleverZebo.