4 Biggest Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make With Facebook Ads (And How To Avoid Them)

Have total clarity on your ideal client’s pain point/desire/frustration and PLAN your campaign in advance!

I spend a lot of time in putting all the pieces together, revise, rethink until I feel the funnel is ready for Facebook ads.

Here’s the thing! It’s NOT hard to boost a post and attract traffic to your website/offer/lead magnet. Facebook is going to deliver, if you pay for that traffic! Everytime!  But it’s WHAT  you do with that traffic that’s going to determine the ROI of your campaign!

Here are 4 of the biggest mistake entrepreneurs make

1. No strategy
2. Not testing copy and images
3. Not knowing the numbers
4. Not mastering targeting

So, let’s talk a little bit about each one

MISTAKE #1 – NO STRATEGY

Most entrepreneurs don’t generate revenue with FB ads because there is no strategy.

38.6% of the GLOBAL online population is using Facebook, and 900 million users use Facebook daily.

The business that has a STRATEGY in place to efficiently collect qualified leads that lead to sales is a giant leap ahead of the rest.
Are you one of them? Do you have an effective strategy to collect qualified leads and get a piece of the pie?
If you don’t have a strategy, start creating one based on these three steps:

Step #1 – Attract
Use Facebook Ads to attract people to your FREE lead magnet (eBook, PDF, webinar, challenge, etc.)
Step #2 – Convert
Use your lead magnet to convert the traffic you are getting to subscribers
Step #3 – Promote
Create an email sequence to promote an offer that’s in alignment with your lead magnet

Make sure that your sales funnel converts to the best of its ability before you spend $1 on advertising.

Once you have this setup, you can put a plan in place to reach your income goals.

MISTAKE #2 – NOT TESTING COPY AND IMAGES

If you use Facebook ads to reach more people and go from overlooked to fully booked, don’t forget to use strong, eye-catching colors for your images!

How many images do you test with your campaign? 5? 3? Just 1?

Remember this…

“Consumer Acquisition found that images are responsible for more than 75% of ad performance. It’s crucial that you choose the most dynamic images possible,”according to Walgrove.

Blue is not noticed…“While blues tend to blend too much with Facebook’s theme colors, and blacks and grays are visually recessive (meaning the eye ignores them), vibrant colors like red, yellow, orange, and green appear in some of the most successful ads.” Source: Walgrove

Now, if you don’t test more than 2 images normally, go and create more images for your campaign.

You don’t want to leave money on the table, right? You don’t want to pay more than average for a lead, right?

Start implementing this little trick …

Start with 4-5 images and after 3-5 days, keep only 1-2 (the ones that perform best, of course). Create images that stop people from scrolling through their news feed and will pay attention to your ad image. Use strong colors for your images to stand out in the news feed.

User-generated pictures tend to perform better than professional images (stock photos) with models. You’ll look more *real*, and your ad will be more trustworthy. Therefore, it’s wise to avoid stock photos or images with models.

MISTAKE #3 – NOT KNOWING THE NUMBERS

Rome wasn’t built in a day! So, even if you build your campaign in one day, your job has just started. You need to measure, track and tweak to optimize your campaign until you start attracting the revenue you want.

Maybe it sounds overwhelming at first, but it’s not! Follow my steps…

Here are some of THE MOST important numbers to keep a very close eye on as long you run your campaign.

Get CRYSTAL CLEAR on how much are you willing to pay for a lead and how much are you willing to pay for a brand new sale?

Ready? Go and do that now and read the rest when you are done.

Done? Okay!

Let’s move forward then…

Now we will look at the following numbers….

1. Your Landing Page conversion rate – This is the page where your lead magnet and conversion rate should be between 10%-30% to be in the ‘okay’ category. If you keep optimizing your campaign, you may reach 50% or even more. I get 60% for some of my pages, and I target cold traffic.

2. Positive and negative score – Aim for more positive feedback than negative feedback to keep your account safe.

3. Relevance score – If it’s between 6 and 10, it’s great.

4. Click Though Rate (CTR) – You want to know how interested your audience really is in your ad and CTR tells you exactly that.

5. Ad placement – Over 900 million users visit Facebook each day and 700 million of them are on mobile, so targeting mobile users is a great idea for most business owners. However, I’ve seen ads perform better on desktop. Test mobile, desktop, and feed ads to see which one works best and then stop the ones that are not performing as well.

MISTAKE #4 – NOT MASTERING TARGETING

• Have you ever wanted to target
• People who have already expressed their interest in buying from you?
• Who visits your website most often?
• Who expressed their interest in booking a discovery call with you?
• People who bought similar products like yours?
• Everyone who lives near your local store and could be interested in special promotions?
•  Those who were on your Landing Page, but didn’t opt-in?

Well, you can do this with Facebook ads.

Facebook ads have more than 600 targeting options. A few examples: household income, level of education, home type, parents of children with specific ages, buyer profiles, people who frequently buy online, frequent travelers, and much more

Over 900 million users visit Facebook each day. If your customer is not on Facebook, then where are they?

Explore the targeting options, find out which one makes sense for your business, and find customers.

Organize your target following these three types of audiences:

• People who know you (Custom Audience)
  People who are similar to the ones who know you (Lookalike Audience)
  People who don’t know you (Saved Targeted Group)

Targeting Facebook Ads by custom audiences (rather than by category or interest) the cost-per-conversion is 64% lower.

It turns out when you target Facebook ads to fans, you get 700% more click through, according to the data king Web trends.

Additional data from TGB Digital shows that ads targeted at fans increase actual conversions (not just click) by as much as 400%.

If you don’t have many fans on your Facebook page, run a ‘like campaign’ to get more fans.

Once you have more than 1000 fans, start targeting them to lower your lead cost.

http://florentinaistrati.com/facebook-ads-mistakes/

We Analyzed 37,259 Facebook Ads and Here’s What We Learned

We’ve discussed plenty of times before what we think your Facebook ad should say, so we’ve analyzed the text from 37,259 ads from our Facebook ad examples gallery to find out exactly how the best Facebook advertisers are piecing together their ads.

We took the text, headline, and news feed link description from 37,259 ads, analyzing them for length, sentiment, and what type of words these ads were using. We also looked at the Call-To-Action they used and the links in these ads, and how Facebook advertisers were using these to generate as much interest in their products as possible.

Here’s what we found.

The Most Popular Headline Is Just 5 Words Long

You have three text fields for the copy in your Facebook ads: The headline, the main text, and the news feed link description:

When you’re putting together the copy for your ad, we have one piece of advice: keep your copy short and extremely clear.

It seems Facebook advertisers have taken this to heart. The median length for a headline is just 5 words long. This means that their ad is immediately clear and to the point each time.

This example from Thinkful shows a great ad. Not only is the headline nice and tight, but all the text is to the point. It gets your attention and then makes you want to click through to the site to find out more:

A few advertisers are making their headlines way longer than this and immediately losing the focus. This ad from Video Game Testers & Designers puts too much information into the headline — information that should be in the text. They even have an asterisk to explain more because they can’t fit it all in the headline:

Post Text And Link Descriptions Are A Little Longer (But Not Much)

The median length for ad post text is just 14 words long, again keeping it short and to the point. The link description is a little longer, at 18 words.

The post text for this ad from Gwynnie Bee has just the right amount of information in its 14 words:

And this ad has the median number of words in the news feed link description, describing what Falcon Social is succinctly in 18 words, so the user doesn’t feel overwhelmed:

We strongly suggest you keep your text tight and to the point. Facebook ads are expensive real estate, and aren’t there to tell your life story. Instead, use clear and catchy text to attract people to the ad, and then let them click through to your site to learn more about your service.

The Most Popular Word: You

Looking at the ad examples dataset this was one of my favorite things. It seems that Facebook Advertisers really are on their game. Recently I wrote about the best psychological tricks to make your ads unforgettable and included a list of the 5 words that you should always include in your ad if you want people to respond:

You

Why is you so powerful? Because it makes you think of you. If every ad could be hyper-personalized that would be even better, but in lieu of that, the word you will suffice. Our brain is activatedspecifically by hearing or thinking of our own name and ourselves.

Free

We value free highly. Free is the ultimate word for any viewer of an ad. We are always on the lookout for free. Including it in an ad and it’s almost guaranteed to catch the eye.

Because

We want answers. Humans are inquisitive souls. We are constantly questioning why? And because of that the word because means a lot to us.

Instantly

We love now. We discount things drastically into the future, so instantly nearly always seems like the better option. This has been backed up by brain scans, showing that if you offer something instantly, our brains go crazy.

New

We are novelty-seeking animals, so using new is a great way to show you are something fresh, or re-invigorate an established brand and put it back into the customer’s mind.

Here is a word cloud of the text from these 37,259 ads, where the size of the word is proportional to how often it occurred in all the fields.

OK, so ‘because’ isn’t there, but ‘you’, ‘free’, ‘now’ (instead of ‘instantly’), and ‘new’ are the words that you find most frequently in these ads.

Well done guys!

Here are a couple of examples of advertisers using these words well. First Hit the News using ‘You’ in their ad, making readers wonder if you are happy together:

Then General Assembly using the awesome power of free to get people to learn to code:

These words work. We are naturally drawn to these words as they signal something powerful to us. Using them in ads means you have a natural advantage over all other advertisers.

If You Want To Stand Out, Go Negative

Sentiment analysis is a way of analyzing text for how positive or negative it is. Certain words are assigned a valence score and you add up the scores for each word in a document to determine the text’s sentiment, either positive or negative.

Most ads are neutral, either because the words aren’t scored in the valence database (it only has scores for about 2000 words in the English language), or because positive and negative words in the ad have canceled each other out. Below you can see ads that were either positive or negative (0 scores have been removed).

The graph is skewed towards positive valence, with most non-neutral ads showing a slightly positive tone. These ads might contain words like ‘capable’ (+1), ’top’ (+2), or ’yummy’ (+3).

This ad for Lays scores highly because it has the word ‘yummy’ (+3), and ‘win’ (+4):

This DraftKings ad has high valence words such as ‘top’ and ‘win’ multiple times.

The ads that are really positive in tone, with a sentiment score of 5 or more can either be made up of a few of these slightly positive words (super-yummy or win-win-win), or might have extremely high valence words like ‘breathtaking’ (+5), as this VideoBlocks ad includes:

Not all the ads are positive though. Ads for news items or charities are often slanted slightly negatively. This Soi Dog ad contains the words ‘cruelty’ and ’torture’, scored as -3 and -4 respectively:

It will definitely grab a user’s attention, especially with the image of Ricky Gervais as well. This PandoDaily ad scores slightly negatively because of the inclusion of the words ‘war’ and ‘hurting’:

Of course, looking at this data it seems there is one way you can get your ad to stand out from the rest – go negative. If your ad is all the way off to the left of that chart, it will definitely stand out from the rest (though will people click on it?)

CTAs Aren’t Being Used Effectively

Including a call-to-action (CTA) button in your ad makes it easy for a user to click through to your site to learn more about your product, sign up to a service, or to download an eBook, app, or game. From the possible CTAs available to Facebook advertisers, our analysis showed that only a few are really used extensively:

‘Learn More’, ‘Shop Now’, and ‘Sign Up’ are all used significantly more than any other call-to-action. Below is a word cloud of the CTAs, with the size of the words proportional to how often they appeared in the ad example gallery.

The less-used ones, such as ‘Open Link’, or ‘Use App’ can barely be seen (they are the ones that look like an Umlaut above the ‘p’ of Shop).

Using a CTA makes it easy for a user to find out more about your product, and shows them exactly where on the ad they should click to get the information. Kabbage uses the ‘Learn More’ CTA so you can find out about their small business funding:

Don’t be scared of using those lesser-used CTAs though, if they have relevance to your service. Here Angel Stone uses the ‘Play Now’ CTA exactly as it should be used — to get people to their gaming site:

In total, only 56% of ads included a CTA, so this is an area where Facebook advertisers could really up their game, making it easier for users to click through to their sites to Learn More, Sign Up, or Donate Now.

69% of Ads Link To A Landing Page

Your Facebook ad should be advertising something specific, rather than just your site or whole service. Your Facebook ads should be targeted towards a specific audience, and you should offer them something that is unique to them. Your link from the ad should be pointed to a specific landing page for your service.

This is what most advertisers are doing:

69% of Facebook ads point to a specific referral or landing page on the product site. 11% of ads miss out on this targeting by pointing to the home page instead, and a further 20% point to another page within Facebook instead of moving out of the site to a product or service. The Localytics ad does it right by sending the user to a specific landing page for their eBook:

Why do we suggest have a specific landing page for your click-throughs? Because this is a great way to use Facebook ads for Lead Generation. You can then create a dedicated landing page for your lead magnet, using apps such as Welcome Mat from SumoMe, and capture information about your customers easily. If you are going straight to your home page, or to another page in Facebook, you’ll lose this information and lose customers.

Most Companies Only Have 1 Ad, But The Best Have 100s

Our final task was to look at how many ads each advertiser had in our gallery. Unfortunately, most advertisers had only 1 ad in the gallery. This is a massive mistake. It means they are only putting up 1 ad for their product. They’re not taking advantage of ways to optimize their campaigns, such as split testing different designs or text.

We did find a few companies that were doing to awesomely though. Shopify has over 200 examples in the ad gallery, using different images and text in each, to attract a different type of user. Here are 3 different Shopify examples with the same headline, but different images and text for different personas:

Awesome work, Shopify!

—

It seems that most Facebook advertisers really hit the mark. They keep the text nice and short, keep the ads positive, and even if they aren’t always using CTAs, they link to specific landing pages on their own sites so they can capture important user information.

Where they are letting themselves down is by not producing more ads, so they can’t optimize their campaigns effectively. If they did this, I’d expect there to be even better data in the other categories.

Are you playing by these rules? Or can you see ways of subverting these norms, such as going negative, to make your ads stand out even more? We’d love to hear about your strategies to optimize your ads and to get them to stand out from the rest!

https://adespresso.com/academy/blog/we-analyzed-37259-facebook-ads-and-heres-what-we-learned/

Follow For Follow? Or More Efficient And Respectable Ways To Get Subscribers.

You read an awesome blog post, and you’re so impressed with it that you continue reading the comment section. You see some insightful comments that add new perspective to the issue of that post, you see some hate you don’t pay attention to, and then you see the most annoying comments of all times: those that are after quick fame with instructions like  1/1 immediately, like for like, or follow for follow.

These people live in illusion. They think that if they post a comment on someone else’s blog, they immediately deserve something in return. Well, things don’t work like that in real life.

Why the Follow for Follow Tactic Doesn’t Work

The follow for follow tactic was made popular by instagrammers. When someone creates a new profile, they start following random people, with the hope they will return the favor. This strategy may work in social media. Why? – Because it’s not that aggressive when everyone else is doing it.

You follow people, and you expect them to follow you back, but you don’t beg them to do so. If you write a comment under their post “hey, I just followed you, can you follow me back?” it will probably backfire on you.

That’s exactly what such blog comments will do – cause a counter effect.

Here are few reasons why the follow for follow tactic doesn’t work in blog comments:

• They are misleading
  When people start reading this comment, they think you have something to say. Then, they see your request for follows and they understand your motif. Rest assured they won’t be happy with the conclusion that you only commented on the post to get some visits and follows on your own blog.

• There’s one word for these comments: spam
  Even when you add an actual comment before the follow for follow request, it will still look like spam. Think about it: when you’re constantly bombarding other blogs with the “follow me” message, you look like someone who has no idea about proper marketing. Instead of building long-lasting organic relationships, you’re wasting your time on writing useless comments.

• These comments send the wrong message
  When you write a comment on someone’s blog post, you should do it only if it awakened your genuine interest. Sometimes you’ll agree with the blogger and you’ll show your approval of their opinions. In other cases, you’ll have strong arguments against that blogger’s statements. Whatever the situation is, your comment shows you invested some effort to read that post and you have something to say about it. If you go for the like for like, share for share, follow for follow method, you’re not showing you enjoyed reading the post. People who read your comment will think you didn’t even bother understanding what the author tried to say. Your only motif was to comment and get something in return.

• Even if you get some followers, you won’t get engagement with this method
  Let’s say some bloggers or social media users are thankful for your comment and they will follow you back. You can rest assured that’s all they will do. You can’t expect them to check out your posts and start commenting and sharing, can you? In reality, this plan won’t result in long-term engagement.

What’s the point of getting a huge number of followers if you don’t get any engagement from them?

Your main goal should be attracting real readers, and there are way better ways to do that.

Comment Strategy that Works

So we got that out of the way: the follow for follow method is annoying and it does not work. Does that mean you should stop commenting with the purpose of promoting your blog or social media page? Absolutely not. You should definitely have a commenting strategy, but there is a right way to do that

1. First and foremost, create follow-worthy pages

Before you start posting comments all over the web, you have to create an awesome blog or social media page. If someone decides to click on your link, they should immediately see content that’s worthy of a follow.

Here are some common characteristics of follow-worthy blogs:

• They have a specific theme and they always stick to their niche.
• These bloggers have a unique, recognizable, and authoritative voice.
• The blog’s design is awesome.
• There is a consistent posting schedule.
• If you follow that blog, you know you’ll always find new content to explore.

2. Comment on posts relevant to your niche

It’s important to choose the right publications to comment on. If, for example, you maintain a blog that discusses different types of flowers and ways of growing them, you can’t promote it by posting comments on technology blogs. Of course you can follow any kind of blog and comment on the posts if you’re interested in the topics, but don’t try to promote your own blog if it doesn’t belong to their niches.

Here is how you can find blogs that can become part of your commenting strategy:

• Use the right keywords to search Google. You’ll easily locate the influencers in your area of interest. They have plenty of followers, so you can start posting insightful comments on their blogs and social media pages.

• Don’t limit yourself to the influencers, though. Dig a bit deeper and find prospective blogs that are still not insanely popular. Those bloggers will be more willing to visit your blog and return the favor even if you don’t include a follow for follow message.

3. Post valuable comments

Your comments should never indicate that you’re posting them with the sole purpose to promote your own blog, product, or service. Make sure to read the posts before commenting on them. Find one particularly interesting point the author mentioned, and use it to form your comment.

You should sound like someone who understands the message of the post and knows what they are talking about. Try to put the issues in a new perspective and add value in the comment section. That’s the only way to raise the interest of other bloggers and their audiences, and attract them to visit your own blog.

4. Include a signature

Needless to say, you should always include a signature in the comments you post. Otherwise, people won’t know you have a blog and they won’t know where they can follow you. Of course you won’t post as an anonymous user!

A signature under your comment can seem like an aggressive campaign for getting visits and follows. It may be distracting if you post useless comments. However, if you’re a regular reader and commenter and you always stay on topic with the discussion, the bloggers will want to encourage you, so they will naturally follow you back.

Effective Self-Promotion Is Always Subtle

When you precisely ask people to do something, you may entice them to do the exact opposite thing. If, for example, you ‘instruct’ bloggers or social media users to follow you just because you did the same thing, they won’t take your recommendation seriously.
If, on the other hand, you post a valuable comment that supports the discussion in the comment section and you present a subtle link, they will be thankful for your participation and they might return the favor.

In conclusion, you should always post high-quality comments that are on topic. You don’t have to show them love; you may also give constructive criticism as long as your comments are worthy of reading. If you present yourself as someone with great understanding of the topic, people will visit your blog. If the site attracts them with quality, design, uniqueness, and posting consistency, they will follow you. It’s that simple!

http://socialmediarevolver.com/follow-for-follow-or-more-efficient-respectable-ways-get-subscribers/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+socialmediarevolver+%28Social+Media+Revolver%29

11 Powerful Tips to Use Social Media Like a Master

Social media is a powerhouse of many of the things, whether you are promoting a business, product or yourself. For all of these social media is near the top of what will determine your success. There are so many social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and many other, which have become commonplace and maybe most modern forms of interaction today.

Now, the time change so does the social media platforms, and it means these platforms have to get harder with the time. So to be successful in social media marketer the tricks of past year might not help you for what you to what you want to get in this years. You will need a ton of tips and tricks to stay up-to-date with the social platforms. So the top 10 power tips which I am going to break down for you and I am going to explain each of them in the detail. So let’s roll.

10 Powerful Tips for Social Media

#1. Go live on Facebook

Facebook is the great social media platform wherein Facebook Live is the best feature for an honest brand building. This presents a significant new opportunity for a brand to use live video to showcase their knowledge to their followers and gain new followers to increase brand awareness.

The best part about live feature is, when you go Live on Facebook, people who follow you they get a valuable notification for your event. When you go live, and numbers will appear on your screen, which indicates the number of users is watching you live.

#2. Take Advantage of Hiding Comments Feature on Facebook

More often it may not be possible that every follower on Facebook do like your post, there will be at least one who ruins the fun for everyone by commenting. So the big advantage of hiding comments is that when some of the commenters comments on your Facebook post which you don’t like you can only hide it.

#3. Wirecast Is The Best Way To Publish on Facebook Live

As we all know that Facebook loves Facebook live, where this platform provides the ability to its all users to stream live video. With Wirecast, the user can now elevate the production value of their live videos by using multiple cameras, graphics, effects, transitions and other professional capabilities.

The advantage of using this feature is, there is direct integration between Wirecast and Facebook Live where Wirecast users can publish live streams directly to the Facebook Live platform from within the interface. This tool is quite difficult, but it is worth to learn it.

#4. Use Trello To Organize Your Social Media

For those, who like to keep their Social Media work organized or want to get organized and divide individual task to an individual team member then Trello is the perfect tool. This web-based application for social media management is like a whiteboard that is having the super powers. The advantage of Trello is truly the best to be more productive.

#5. Use LibreStock To Legally Use The Photos

From the numerous of sources every day you might search for right photos for your blog posts, Facebook or many other social media platforms. Not all but there are many of the images which are copyrighted that you can’t use it because it is illegal to use any copyright image. So if you are looking for free images for your posts use LibreStock.

This platform offers free images which are licensed under public domain-CCO license. Within this platform, all the photographs are divided into categories.

#6. SocialChamp The Great Platform To Post Multiple

Most of all we believe that posting messages multiple times on social media is important. SocialChamp has developed a platform to schedule messages on the major social networks. This platform knows if your message only appears once, and you will lose at least 75% of the possible views that your post has

It is important that you post your messages multiple times so all your fans could see that. With using SocialChamp, you can set your messages on a repeating schedule and can make sure it is continually hitting each social media network at your desired frequency of time.

#7. Use Canva For Awesome Graphics For Social Media

Canva is the great tool that will ramp up your social media campaign by adding beautifully designed graphics. With this tool, you can create your band kit with colors, logos, and fonts. Also, you can create templates for everything from social media graphics to presentations. So you can create your own on-brand graphics. Another advantage of using this tool is once you design the graphic, you can optimize it for different social media platforms in different sizes.

#8. Use of Lightroom is Best Way To Post on Instagram

Instagram is full of inspiring photography as many professional photographers, and a creative user has discovered this platform as a viable tool for promoting themselves and their work. But the problem is that Instagram remains as a mobile platform and the users of Instagram post pictures those have been taken with an other device or camera and edit them on a computer. Typically this involves some third-party uploading tool or image transfer to a mobile device for upload.

But to overcome this problem you can use Lightroom platform that also offer Instagram’s users a plugin which are LR/Instagram. This plugin lets you post images to Instagram directly from Lightroom. Images are uploaded by dragging them into your images collection and before you do, you can add hashtags or captions. You can also crop your images to an aspect ratio that is supported by Instagram.

#9. Use of Planoly To Manage Instagram

Did you ever want to upload photos to Instagram from your desktop? Well, now you can by using one tool and that is Planoly. The actual role of this tool is that it can schedule the Instagram posts from desktop version website. So typically this is scheduling app, which has a well laid-out calendar. This calendar shows on which dates you can manage your Instagram posts uploading. This will help you to create a day to day posts schedule for your Instagram account.

#10. Share Personal and Business Information On Instagram

Instagram indeed becomes the visual representation of your brand. And from that people get to know you from what you share. So be a multi-faceted jewel and share a variety of your personal information and business information in a mix, that works for you, and you can show your different sides. This will also help you to connect with the right kind of people, and this will also build a transparent and honest reputation for a brand online.

#Bonus: Use Their Own Analytics Which Social Media Provide By Default

Do you know that various social media platforms provide their own analytic system to track records of post-performance? Yes, it is true that Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest all these social media platforms, who provide fantastic analytics system with the upgraded free business accounts.

With these tips, you can take your brand to the next level and these power tips are the best to build an honest audience. If you have any other social media power tips, then don’t miss the chance to share with others. Share here with me by just commenting below.

https://www.bforblogging.com/powerful-tips-use-social-media-like-master/