Recent Facebook Ads updates that all sellers need to know

With nearly 1 billion active Facebook users logging on every day, competition is fierce among businesses vying for a piece of the action.

It’s challenging for small businesses, especially those that are facing increased competition with corporations that have large advertising budgets. It’s of utmost importance that small business owners stay up-to-date with Facebook ad changes and updates.

It’s also important to note that businesses with smaller ad budgets can flourish in areas that large companies struggle—building relationships with their customers. Generally speaking, small businesses are better at building and maintaining customer relationships.

Keeping social media interactions with your customers personal, providing real value (i.e. an educational post that they’ll want to share), and injecting your business with personality builds brand loyalty and translates to word-of-mouth marketing. As Sir Richard Branson said, “A business has to be involving, it has to be fun, and it has to exercise your creative instincts.”

We have compiled the most recent Facebook ad updates and useful info that you can start using in your business today.

Facebook Slideshow

Where there are Facebook users, there is ad revenue to be made. Facebook ads have higher conversion rates when they are video ads. Road block? Places where there is slow internet speed and poor wifi. Slow loading video ads just frustrate the user and result in poor conversion rates. There is a feature gaining significant traction that isn’t necessarily brand spanking new, but it is being used more and more with great conversion rates. Slideshows are solving the issue of slow loading, data devouring video ads!

Advertisers can now promote engaging content and their products with a scroll of pictures. You can have a maximum of 7 images running for up to 15 seconds. The important thing to remember when using the Facebook Slideshow feature is that ‘stories sell, facts tell’. Use photographs that are engaging and interesting. Would you be more likely to click on a photograph of a stock image pair of flip flops, or a photograph of someone in flip flops walking on a gorgeous beach?

Facebook Pixel Is A Marriage Of The Custom Audience Pixel and Conversion Tracking

If you thought the Custom Audience Pixel Code and Conversion Tracking were the greatest things since the invention of string cheese, you will be ecstatic with the latest FB development. Facebook Pixel is an awesome innovation that combines both the custom audience pixel code and conversion tracking into just a few lines of code that you embed into your web pages. You no longer need two separate codes, as they’re both seamlessly interwoven into this little gem. This gives you the freedom to spend your advertising dollars more effectively. By identifying those that have visited your website and learning how they use your website, you will be able to tailor your ads with more specificity, ideally creating more conversions and increasing sales.

Perhaps someone read your latest blog post, signed up for your newsletter, or viewed your ‘About’ page six times in three days. By embedding the Facebook pixel code within the pages of your website you will be able to get more insight into the habits of your target audience. Remarketing to website visitors and building an audience from people who already at least recognize you is brilliant. To quote Bob Berg, “All things being equal, people will do business with, and refer business to, those people they know, like, and trust.”

To find out how to setup Facebook Pixel, please visit the official Facebook Pixel Setup.

Carousel Ad

The carousel ad was created to allow businesses to showcase multiple products in one ad. It has since evolved from being an advertising format regularly used by advertisers on a tight budget to being a much-loved advertising format used by big brand names (e.g. Coca Cola). Advertisers have used the carousel ad to demonstrate quick how-tos, feature fan photos of their products, and cross-promotion opportunities. The typical carousel ad has 3-5 images. A maximum of 5 images are allowed per carousel ad.

Prominent Call-to-Action Buttons & Page Additions

In October 2014, Facebook introduced more prominent call-to-action buttons. It’s located front and center, directly beneath your cover photo. It is easily the first thing a customer will see when when using FB on mobile. The call-to-action options include ‘Shop Now’, “Call Now’, ‘Contact Us’. or ‘Send Now’.

In addition to the updated call-to-action button, there are more page tabs within the primary FB business page. ‘Shop’ and ‘Services’ are the two new pages rolled out. Within the next six months or so there will be additional pages created.

Embedded Video Player API

In March 2014, Facebook introduced the ability to embed high-quality video to your website. Victory! Advertisers reported a huge spike in engagement and conversion rates. In December 2014, two new tools for embedding videos were introduced. These tools hand over more control to the advertiser. You have the ability to change around the order of video presentation, adjust sound levels, and customize buttons. The ability to share video content is also made easier with the social media sharing options built right into the HTML5 Interactive player. The second tool gives you the opportunity to customize overlays. To see this feature in action visit uStudio, the company that has developed this ‘next-generation video experience’. The new Embedded Video Player API ‘brings audiences closer to the brands they love and converts attention to action’.

Webhooks

Formerly known as Realtime Updates API, webhooks will automatically send updates and leads to your application, allowing you to capitalize on the very short time frame you have to potentially convert ‘customer-driven leads’ to sales. For a more in-depth discussion of the incredibly short life of online leads, the Harvard Business Review published an excellent article that might make you feel like a failure for not having heard of or used Realtime Updates API/Webhooks in the past.

There is no time like the present though, so click on over and follow the tutorial to begin setup. Also, if you are at all technology-impaired, like myself, the video tutorial makes it an easy process.

Brand Awareness

The new Brand Awareness campaign gives the advertiser additional metrics, including maximum reach of their ad campaign as well as user attention to the ad campaign. Not all Facebook ad accounts have this feature available yet, but by the middle of 2016 all accounts should have it. To check and see if your ad account has this available, you need to follow the instructions provided by the Facebook development team.

Send a GET HTTP request to following endpoint:

/act_<AD_ACCOUNT_ID>?fields=capabilities&access_token=<ACCESS_TOKEN>

“capabilities”: [
…
“CAN_CREATE_BRAND_AWARENESS_OBJECTIVE_ADS”
…
],
“id”: “act_<AD_ACCOUNT_ID>”
}

Reactions

Facebook has added 6 new emojis representing ‘love’, ‘sad’, ‘haha’, ‘yay’, ‘wow’, and ‘angry’. What does this have to do with advertising and business?

One word, everything. Business 101 teaches you that purchasing decisions are based on emotion. So, with users now able to contribute their ‘emotions’ in the form of these little emojis to a post, businesses will be getting more in-depth feedback.

This could be positive for businesses that start using these emojis themselves and start empathizing with their customers. Businesses that use these emojis to respond to an emoji-using customer will naturally create a bond with that customer, whether positive or negative (but hopefully positive!).

Emojis will be negative for businesses that don’t take them for more than face value or understand their significance.

2015 Global Partners Summit

Leading Facebook innovators and partners from across the world gathered together in San Francisco. Seminars were held discussing everything from the direction that Facebook is headed in the coming years to ad optimization. A short 32 page book was published and given to Summit attendees. Those 32 pages are full of information regarding ad optimization, advertising auctions, how to test your ads, and creative audience targeting. Now for the awesome news, you didn’t have to attend the Summit to receive a copy of the Direct Response Playbook! Cha-ching! You can download your free copy here.

While these are the most recent Facebook ad updates, there is always something coming down the pipeline. Its changes and updates are not always the most popular, at least initially. Facebook’s aggressive, almost-parental approach to not asking for your feedback but essentially saying, “you will thank me later, this will benefit you in the long-run even though you can’t see the benefits now”, has so far done just that and worked.

We will keep you posted with the latest FB ad updates and changes. Also, if you want to be one of the first to use a new FB ad feature and be a step-ahead of the game, be sure to opt-in to any beta testing.

References:

http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/facebook-reactions-savvy-marketers/300886/

http://newsroom.fb.com/company-info/

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/252533
http://recode.net/2015/10/29/facebook-wants-more-video-ads-in-emerging-markets/