Facebook is the most popular social media platform in the world. Not only does it have the largest user base of any other platform, it also has the most even age distribution and is the most commonly used social media application.
This is the reason why it is such a popular advertising platform, and it is also in view of the limitations we face due to privacy: we have developed a good backup strategy based on the platform’s participation in targeting ads. Traditionally, these types of activities are not as beneficial as website traffic or conversion activities. But they are the new cool kids in town. Read on to find out why and how to use them to outperform your competitors.
Why participate in Facebook on the platform?
As we all know, the digital advertising landscape has been changing in the past few years, especially in terms of user privacy and third-party tracking. Whether it’s the GDPR or the latest iOS update, tracking user behavior and the performance of Facebook advertising campaigns has become increasingly difficult.
One way to alleviate the pain you feel from these restrictions is to use the power of Facebook itself and user participation in it (it’s in our Post iOS Facebook Strategy List).
Since the user has signed any terms and conditions for using Facebook, and no third-party tracking is involved, this means that all behaviors and participation tracking are complete and accurate.
It is not necessarily a substitute Attract users to your website, But I think Facebook engagement on the platform can still play an important role in your online marketing strategy.
So with this in mind, here are ways you can use Facebook engagement to improve marketing.
Strategy 1: Use engagement-centric activity goals
One of the things that Facebook does best (in my opinion) is to help optimize your specific goals through their campaign goals. Every time you create a new event, you tell Facebook what you want to follow, and their goal is to achieve it.
The following is a complete list of current campaign goals:
- consciousness: Brand awareness and influence
- consider: Traffic, engagement, app installs, video views, lead generation, news
- Conversion: Conversions, catalog sales, store traffic
1. Participate in activities
The first goal that focuses most on engagement is called, you guessed it, engagement. It belongs to the “consideration” category of activity goals.
With this campaign type, you can choose whether to optimize for page likes, post engagement, or incident response.
The goal is to allow users to take specific actions on the website. These actions are entirely located on the platform and tend to Facebook’s interactive indicators: sharing, likes, reactions, comments, etc.
Just like visiting a website, any user who takes these actions is interacting with your brand and becoming more and more familiar with you.Although these actions may not have a monetary amount directly related to them, such as online sale, This does not mean that they are not an important part of the buyer’s funnel (How to build an omnichannel Facebook strategy here).
2. Video Viewing Activity
Through video viewing activities, you can optimize for ThruPlay or 2 second continuous viewing Facebook video ads.
As you can see, Facebook recommends ThruPlay (like me) because if the length of the video is 15 seconds or less, it will be optimized to get the most complete number of video views. If it exceeds 15 seconds, it will be optimized for those who are most likely to watch 15 seconds.
Although this may not seem long, think about the amount of time you spend watching ad videos on Facebook or Instagram. Is the average value usually less than or more than 15 seconds? My guess is a lot.
But content that you watch for 15 seconds or more is usually very interesting for you. Take advantage of this behavior of your target audience and ensure that you get the most benefit by adding important information at the beginning of the video. This way, even if they don’t watch for 15 seconds, you will still have an impact.
Will you check it out-we have a post!Look at these 11 Ways to Improve Facebook Video Ads with Killer Hook.
3. News activities
In addition to video views or page and post engagement, you can also use Facebook messaging activities to start or reinvigorate conversations with users on the platform.
Think of this as a direct chatbot with your company, but without adding more friction by sending someone to your website.
You can also choose the platform for these conversations: Messenger, WhatsApp, or Instagram Direct.
If your customers want to get in touch with you, please make it easy. PPC expert Brett McHale told us How to create Messenger ads in this article.
4. Lead generation activities
Similar to message ads, you can use the Lead Gen form to collect user information directly on Facebook without them having to visit your website before filling out the form.
There are many ways to customize the lead form. So much that it makes no sense for me to outline all of them in this article.You can Learn how to customize your Facebook Lead Ads here or Watch this video, But for today’s purposes, it’s important to know Facebook Lead Ads Has the following benefits:
- Users can submit forms without leaving Facebook.
- Potential customer information can be directly related to your Customer relationship management Or a marketing automation platform to connect to your workflow.
- Questions can have answers automatically filled in by Facebook to help reduce friction when filling out forms.
- You can customize the form to ask almost any question you want.
Overall, Facebook lead generation activities are one of my favorite ways to target users on Facebook and can provide a lot of value to almost all businesses.Not to mention, they helped build First party data In a world where third-party data is increasingly difficult to obtain.
related: Examples of Facebook’s Leading Ads to Learn and Copy
Strategy #2: Retarget page participants
Facebook redirect Not only for website visitors. You can also retarget those who have visited and interacted with your page. Once someone has participated in your page, that person has higher value than others who have not participated. In theory, you no longer have to introduce them to your brand. Now you can focus more on connecting with them, just like the people visiting your website.
For website visitors, we create website audiences and target the Facebook pixel (As we know, it has lost most of its power).
With Engagement audiences, we can not only retarget people if They interact with your brand on Facebook (or Instagram), and how They are engaged.
The above list shows all the different types of audiences you can create on Facebook. The first group will come from your source. There are four lists, including website visitors, customer uploads, application activities, and offline activities.
The bottom (“Facebook source”) is much larger and is a complete list of all participating-only audience sources. There are many!I also talked about using these sources in my post Target Facebook ads in a world where privacy is paramount.
- video
- Lead form
- Instant experience
- Shopping
- Instagram account
- Activity
- Facebook page
- List on Facebook
Depending on the type of campaign you used in the first two sections or the way you participate organically on Facebook, you need to choose a different source. For lead generation activities, you can create a list based on who opened the form, opened and submitted the form, or opened but not submitted.
But, for example, if you choose the Facebook homepage source, you will get a more powerful list as shown below.
Then, you can create user audiences based on the following criteria:
- People who currently like or follow your homepage
- Everyone interacting with your homepage
- Anyone who has visited your homepage
- People who interact with any post or ad
- People who click any call-to-action button
- The person who sent a message to your homepage
- The person who saved your homepage or any post.
…And then position them as a training process, or you can exclude them to ensure that your message is tailored to your audience.
Treat these audiences like website visitors. If they have visited your page but have not yet purchased an item from your store, you can send them a catalog campaign to encourage them to do so.If they liked many of your posts or watched some videos, please send the lead form to Sign up for your newsletterJust because it happened on Facebook and not on your website does not mean it is not a user behavior that should be exploited.
Strategy 3: Expand your audience with similar objects
So far, we have discussed how to generate engagement through campaign goals, and then retarget users who take these actions.
But how do we use these same user lists to help find new target customers?
It’s simple: similar audiences.
Facebook’s bread and butter targeting options, Similar audience, Allows you to use almost any audience list you can create and find new users similar to those in those lists.
If you find that people who like your page do well, try to create similar users of these users and target them in a similar way, but in a new ad group or campaign. In this way, you will target people who behave similarly to the audience that your homepage likes, but you will be able to see how their behavior differs from the original list of your homepage likes.
Not sure what “good performance” means? Use our free Facebook Ads Performance Grader to find out!
One caveat of this strategy has to do with funnel building and patience.
If you have been working on generating a large list of users who like your Facebook page through a large amount of relevant content and community participation for many years (Facebook marketing In short), and then retarget them through website purchases. If the rewards are high, then you might think that creating these pages that are similar and doing the same thing is a powerful strategy, right?
Yes and no.
Although we do hope to use likes from similar pages to help build our audience, don’t forget the years of brand connection you have established with these users before driving them to buy.
Instead of creating a similar page likes and sending them directly to Bottom funnel Call to action, you’d better use the Lookalike to generate actual Page Likes from the audience, and then retarget them based on secondary engagement.
This strategy will definitely take longer than simply jumping directly to the bottom of the funnel, but Online marketing is not a quick way to circumvent good brands and contact customers. It should be used to help fuel.
Interactions on the platform are making a comeback-use them!
For a long time, the interaction between brands and customers on the platform has been neglected, because they obtain higher value and faster revenue generation channels through website traffic and conversion activities. Although these can definitely still play a role in almost all buyer journeys, they shouldn’t be your only concern. Take full advantage of participation on the platform. Understand how it drives customers’ buying behavior and understand it in depth. I guarantee that if you do this in the next few years, you will have an advantage over the competition and may establish closer ties with customers.
Recap:
- Use participation-centric activity goals
- Retarget page participants
- Expand your audience with similar things
