You may have noticed that Facebook has been in the news quite a bit recently. And here at Good & Gold, we’ve noticed because of that harsh spotlight, confusion and misconceptions about the way the social media giant actually works tend to spread rather quickly. We find ourselves constantly fielding questions from clients and friends about how the platform collects, stores, and uses data. Given all the questions, we thought it’d be helpful to address some of the more common Facebook misconceptions and do a bit of old-fashioned mythbusting.
Reality: You CAN, as long as you have an active account! Go to your account settings, then click on Ads. Here you can find out everything Facebook knows (or thinks they know) about you, including your interests, any current advertisers you’ve interacted with (including websites you’ve visited or apps you’ve used), and any categories it places you in. Categories include things such as what type of cell phone you use, what race Facebook thinks you are, what types of locations you visit (for example, maybe you frequent seafood restaurants), how engaged of a shopper you are, and more.
Reality: Yes...and no. When you delete your account, in theory most of your data is removed from Facebook’s servers within 90 days—but not your “shadow profile.” Shadow profiles are essentially data points on users and non-users alike that continue to collect information that Facebook stores, including when you make a purchase on or browse any page with a Facebook pixel installed (much of the web at this point). So, not only does the company collect data points on you if you delete your account, but that they are able to even if you’ve never had an account.
Reality: This used to be true, going back to 2013, but it changed this year. Previously, Facebook would beef up your user profile with information they got from Datalogix, Epsilon, Acxiom, and BlueKai, and would allow advertisers to target you based on this information. Now, advertisers on the platform can only target you based on Facebook’s data or the information advertisers themselves provide Facebook about you.
Reality: No, Facebook doesn’t listen to your conversations—they don’t need to. They know your location, they know your friends, and they know your friends’ location. If your friend has spent the last week researching new stereo equipment, for example, and you’re hanging out with them, Facebook assumes there’s a decent chance that they might be telling you all about it. Or if your spouse has been looking at kitchen appliances and you spend a lot of time together in the same location, Facebook generally assumes that you may also be interested.
Also, you’re predictable. Yes, even you! But you have fairly well-defined purchase behaviors based on past purchases, and Facebook is smart and agile enough to figure it out and know that if you bought a new house a month ago you might be looking into window treatments today.
Reality: Based on the above, we know this isn’t entirely true. There are good reasons to hyper-target your audience, and it can help make your campaigns more effective. But assuming your own customer data is accurate, the truth is that uploading customer lists and telling Facebook to find lookalikes is likely the most effective strategy for your advertising campaigns.
In the dynamic realm of digital marketing, Facebook offers a treasure trove of options to boost your content's visibility and connect with a broader audience. Among these options, boosted posts and paid ads stand out as popular strategies. At first glance, they might appear similar, but they serve distinct purposes and come with their unique attributes. In this blog post, we'll embark on a journey to uncover the key disparities between boosted posts and paid ads on Facebook, shedding light on their individual strengths and best-use scenarios.
So, what’s the difference between boosted posts and paid ads?
So, what exactly is a boosted post?
A boosted post represents a feature that empowers you to amplify the reach of an existing Facebook Page post. In essence, it takes content you've already shared on your Page's timeline and infuses it with an advertising budget to expand its visibility and impact.
Now, let's explore the world of paid ads on Facebook.
A paid ad on Facebook represents a meticulously crafted advertisement tailored to achieve precise marketing goals. It stands as a comprehensive and versatile tool compared to its boosted counterpart.
The decision between a boosted post and a paid ad hinges on your marketing budget, objectives, and strategy.
If your quest is to attain maximum reach for a particular piece of content you've already shared with minimal time investment, boosted posts can yield impressive results. They often boast some of the lowest costs per result, occasionally as low as $0.02 per post engagement, along with cost-effective reach, defining how many accounts lay eyes on your post.
When your ambitions set sail towards well-defined business objectives such as driving website traffic, lead generation, or purchases, your best companions will be ads designed for these specific goals. While you can still leverage reach and engagement objectives and repurpose previous posts within your ads, the advanced targeting and expanded goal options will play a pivotal role in steering you toward your desired outcomes.
At Good & Gold, we understand that choosing between boosted posts and ads on social media isn't about what's "better." It's about selecting the right tool for your unique marketing goals and strategy. Both boosted posts and ads have their distinct advantages, and the decision should align with your objectives.
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When deciding between boosted posts and paid ads, we believe in aligning your choice with your campaign objectives. If your aim is to quickly promote existing content and foster social engagement, boosted posts are your friendly companions. However, when you have specific business goals beyond engagement and require laser-focused targeting, paid ads become the strategic choice.
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Both boosted posts and paid ads on Facebook are valuable tools for expanding your reach. Understanding their nuances and making the right choice based on your campaign objectives is paramount. Ultimately, it's not about one being "better" than the other; it's about selecting the right tool for the job and ensuring it fits seamlessly into your broader social media marketing strategy. Whether you're nurturing engagement or steering your audience toward conversions, Facebook provides the tools to help your agency scale its digital marketing efforts effectively. At Good & Gold, we're here to help you make strategic decisions and create impactful campaigns tailored to your unique needs.
Need some help navigating the world of social media marketing? We’ve got your back. Reach out today!
The time has come for Google to launch a new advertising product, and it’s one we’re very excited to present to our clients—Performance Max has arrived!
So, what is Performance Max? Well...it’s a little complicated. But here’s the simplest overview we can muster: Performance Max allows you to create a single, goal-based campaign that is deployed across all of Google’s channels, including YouTube, Display, Search, Discover, Gmail, and Maps. Essentially, you provide the objective, the creative assets, and the Audience Signals, and Google’s automation and machine learning handles the rest. The goal? To dynamically deliver the right ad to the right people on the right channel at the right time.
As a new product with a new algorithm, we like to give it plenty of runway to gather learnings. Therefore, we’re rolling this channel out to our clients slowly and deliberately. But Google’s internal study of Performance Max shows that most campaigns see an increase of at least 11% more conversions at the same CPA, and we're excited about the potential for quickly reaching clients’ target audiences.
So, are you ready to learn how Performance Max works? Let’s get to it.
Performance Max ads generally focus on traffic, engagement, and conversions, giving you the opportunity to work toward the following campaign objectives:
While it is more of an “all in one” solution, there are campaign goals that are outside of what you would look to accomplish with Performance Max:
Although Google doesn’t allow us to optimize toward brand consideration or awareness objectives specifically under Performance Max, Google has made sure to make this campaign type an extremely viable and multifaceted option.
For us, Performance Max is the initial all-in-one approach for new accounts to give us a solid performance baseline across Display, Shopping, Youtube, Search, and Gmail. Although it does include Search as a feature, it will not outperform single Search campaigns and they are to be used in concert.
If you are already running these campaign types, odds are that you will be adding to your data sets that measure how people have interacted with your business. This includes, but is not limited to:
This will help new campaigns get off on the right foot, especially in this transition. We can expect an initial learning phase with Performance Max that will be slightly different for every account and depend on many factors including products, industry, and prior data accrued in the account.
We use Performance Max as the pivot from Smart Shopping and Local Search, although there are times when we can’t fully extend the performance in terms of RoAS and CPA because the campaign is both conversion and awareness based.
In a case like this, we would use a combination of segmented Standard Shopping and Performance Max to achieve the most desirable results. That leads us to the assets we can and can’t use.
That’s a lot of content, right? Google uses the algorithms we know and love from crowd favorites like Local Search, Smart Display, and Smart Shopping to show people the kind of assets it needs across different devices.
Google has introduced Audience Signals alongside Performance Max, which allows us to target audiences tailored to a business. When creating an Audience Signal, we can look at data related to how people interacted with your business and get info on Demographics, In-market Audiences, and Affinity Audiences.
Performance Max uses Signals to find new audiences to target with Google Insights and can market to audiences across different platforms—it’s great.
For example: imagine we’re selling coffee. We would use Affinity Audiences and demographics to target past purchasers, product viewers, general site visitors , and target interests like Coffee, Coffee & Tea Shops, and Organic Coffee from In-Market Audiences and Coffee Shop Regulars.
We're also excited to see how well Performance Max optimizes toward New Customer Acquisition (available in the coming months). While we hate to see some of our favorite great Google products leave, we’re always excited to see new digital tools coming our way!
New to Performance Max or simply want to nerd out about digital marketing? Contact us and let’s get down to business!
Given the vast landscape of platforms, strategies, and ad types that it encompasses, Search Engine Marketing is one of the toughest parts of the ever-changing digital marketing universe. Need some help navigating it? We’ve got you covered.
The world of social advertising is a complicated and ever-changing place. For instance, advertising through Facebook means advertising on more than Facebook. Because the Facebook family supports multiple advertising types across Facebook, Instagram, Audience Network, and Messenger. And every single ad has three key components: The placement (where it will be displayed), the format (what it looks like), and the objective (how success will be measured).
When we develop social advertising campaign strategies, we recommend a selection of placements, formats, and goals based on a combination of business objectives, historical data, gut instincts, and general channel expertise. But the options and permutations are limitless. Below, you’ll find an overview of these components, so that you can better understand the tools you can use to leverage your brand’s offerings and available assets.
The places where you can run your ads are called Placements. Depending on the objective you choose when you create your campaign, your ads can appear on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Audience Network.
Facebook News Feed: Your ads appear in the desktop News Feed when people access the Facebook website on their computers. Your ads appear in the mobile News Feed when people use the Facebook app on mobile devices or access the Facebook website through a mobile browser.
Facebook Marketplace: Your ads appear in the Marketplace home page or when someone browses Marketplace in the Facebook app. Learn more about ads in Marketplace.
Facebook Video Feeds: Your video ads appear between organic videos in video-only environments on Facebook Watch and Facebook News Feed.
Facebook Right Column: Your ads appear in the right columns on Facebook. Right column ads only appear to people browsing Facebook on their computers.
Facebook Stories: Your ads appear in people's stories on Facebook. Learn more about ads in Facebook Stories.
Facebook In-Stream Videos: Your ads appear as short videos in Video on Demand and select Gaming Partner live streams on Facebook (ads in live streams are currently limited to approved Gaming Partners as part of a test). Learn more about in-stream video.
Facebook Instant Articles: Your ads appear in Instant Articles within the Facebook mobile app. Learn more about Instant Articles.
Instagram Feed: Your ads appear in the desktop feed when people access the Instagram website on their computers. They appear in the mobile feed when people use the Instagram app on mobile devices or access the Instagram website through a mobile browser.
Instagram Explore: Your ads appear in the browsing experience when someone clicks on a photo or video. Learn more about ads in Instagram Explore.
Instagram Stories: Your ads appear in people's stories on Instagram. Learn more about ads in Instagram Stories.
Messenger Inbox: Your ads appear in the Home tab of Messenger. Learn more about ads in Messenger.
Messenger Stories: Your ads appear in people's stories on Messenger. Learn more about ads in Messenger Stories.
Messenger Sponsored Messages: Your ads appear as messages to people who have an existing conversation with you in Messenger. Learn more about sponsored messages.
Audience Network Banner, Native, and Interstitial: Your ads appear on apps and websites on Audience Network. Learn more about banner ads, interstitial ads and native ads.
Audience Network Rewarded Video: Your ads appear as videos people can watch in exchange for a reward in an app (such as in-app currency or items). Learn more about rewarded video.
Audience Network In-Stream: Your ads appear as short videos that run before, during or after video content (pre-roll, mid-roll, post-roll) in a video player on a website. Learn more about in-stream video.
Whether you want to use video, images or words—or a combination of those elements—there’s an ad format for every business story. Here are the formats available within the Facebook family.
Photo: Photo ads offer a clean, simple format to feature engaging imagery and copy. Convey who you are and what you do through high-quality images or illustrations.
Video: Tell your story with sight, sound and motion. Video ads come in a range of lengths and styles—from short, feed-based ads you watch on the go, to longer videos you watch on the couch.
Collection: Collection ads let people discover, browse and buy what you offer. People can tap an ad to learn more about a specific product, all within a fast-loading experience.
Carousel: Carousel ads let you showcase up to ten images or videos in a single ad, each with its own link. Highlight different products or tell a brand story that develops across each card.
Slideshow: Slideshow ads are video-like ads made of motion, sound and text. These lightweight clips help you tell your story beautifully across devices and connection speeds.
Instant Experience: Instant Experience, formerly called Canvas, provides a full-screen, mobile-optimized experience instantly from your ad.
Lead Generation: Lead ads on Facebook and Instagram help you collect info from people interested in your business. A lead ad is presented using an image, video, or carousel, and followed by a lead form when the user engages with the ad.
Offers: Offers are discounts you can share with your customers on Facebook. You can design your offer ad to appear as a image, video, or carousel.
Post Engagement: Most Page posts on Facebook can be boosted to deliver more likes, comments, shares, and photo views.
Event Responses: Event response ads can be used to promote awareness of your event and drive responses. You can design your event ad to appear as an image or video.
Page Likes: Page likes ads can be used to drive users to like your page. You can design your Page likes ad with a video or an image masked to a ratio of 1.91:1.
Your advertising objective is what you want people to do when they see your ads. As businesses grow, the goals we create for campaigns often change. First, our campaigns may focus on building awareness and acquiring new customers. Later, we will likely encourage people to make a purchase, sign up for an event, or fill out a form. Objectives fall into three buckets, or user journey phases: Awareness, Consideration, and Conversion.
Brand Awareness: Increase people's awareness of your business, brand or service.
Reach: Show your ad to as many people as possible in your target audience.
Traffic: Send people from Facebook to any URL you choose, such as your website's landing page, a blog post, app etc.
Engagement: Reach people more likely to engage with your post. Engagement includes likes, comments and shares but can also include offers claimed from your page.
App Installs: Send people to the store where they can download your business's app.
Video Views: Share videos of your business with people on Facebook most likely to watch it.
Lead Generation: Collect leads for your business. Create ads that collect info from people interested in your product, such as sign-ups for newsletters.
Messages: Connect with people on Facebook, communicate with potential or existing customers to encourage interest in your business.
Conversions: Encourage people to take a specific action on your business's site, such as having them to add items to a cart, download your app, register for your site, or make a purchase.
Catalog Sales: Show products from your e-commerce store's catalog to generate sales.
Store Traffic: Promote your brick-and-mortar business locations to people that are nearby.
Like we said up top...it's a lot. Some of the most time-intensive work we do is on developing the strategy and campaign architecture for paid media campaigns. Once that's in place, we can start having fun testing copy, images, audiences, and more.