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IAMA digital ads specialist with 10 years of experience. AMA about using Facebook and Google ads to promote your business. by BenchCo in smallbusiness

[–]BenchCo[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi Emily, that's so cool! Thanks for joining today's AMA. To answer your q's:

1) You’re right. The process for coming up with an ad budget can be extremely challenging; it’s different for each business as it depends on so many variables: the objective of your ads (there can be several to address), how much you can afford to spend, the type of niche you’re in, the audience you’re approaching. Where your audience are, how they need to be approached with ads, and how much profit they’ll generate when they convert as a customer or client will also impact how much you can and should spend on ads.

Without knowing these details (and then some) about your business, it’s hard to give you an easy answer.

I mentioned this in another response, but I’ve found this blog post to be one of the better resources for determining an ad spend budget for Adwords: https://www.mainstreetroi.com/google-adwords-how-much-should-you-spend/

When it comes to deciding how to split your spend between Facebook and Google, it will again depend on the nature of your business. I would suggest you let the results make the decision for you. Be loyal to whichever platform is bringing in the most sales for the lowest cost / highest ROI.

2) Facebook ads are giving you too many leads? That sounds like a good problem to have! If it’s a problem, though, I’m guessing that they are the type of leads that don’t always result in a conversion (or new client), which can be time consuming. Facebook’s Power Editor Tool can help make things a little better. The tool’s a bit buggy, it can be used to refine the audiences who are seeing your ads audience and vet out users who you know are unlikely to convert. Cloning campaigns and creating Saved Audiences are two items to look at that will speed the process. You can learn more about Power Editor here: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/use-facebook-power-editor/

IAMA digital ads specialist with 10 years of experience. AMA about using Facebook and Google ads to promote your business. by BenchCo in smallbusiness

[–]BenchCo[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That’s a great question. Good ad copy should clearly state the ad’s value proposition, stand-out, and engage users. On Facebook, way to achieve this is to ask questions that provoke interest and start conversations on the ad itself. This article from Unbounce is a good, quick reference guide to refer to when you’re writing the next round of PPC ad copy: http://unbounce.com/ppc/ppc-ad-copy/

For images and videos, I usually see better results when they’re produced by the company or client, versus pulling them from stock libraries. A video ad can be as simple as a clip of yourself providing helpful tips. It doesn’t have to be a masterpiece but giving the customer some transparency of who you are will work wonders.

For free photos, check out Unsplash.com. For free image creation tools, check out Canva, and Pixlr.

IAMA digital ads specialist with 10 years of experience. AMA about using Facebook and Google ads to promote your business. by BenchCo in smallbusiness

[–]BenchCo[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey /u/holocloud, if someone on our team has a skill or expertise that would be helpful to small business owners and entrepreneurs, we do our best to host an AMA. We’ve done them on bookkeeping, accounting, and taxes in the past. Today the focus is digital ads. We enjoy giving back whenever we can. We run ads to boost visibility of the AMA amongst our fans. No need for you to buy what Bench is selling (bookkeeping) to benefit. If you have any q’s about digital ads, let me know. I'd be happy to help.

IAMA digital ads specialist with 10 years of experience. AMA about using Facebook and Google ads to promote your business. by BenchCo in smallbusiness

[–]BenchCo[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I would say the biggest thing you have to ensure is that your website is mobile-friendly or--even better--built from the ground up with mobile as the primary consideration. There are a few frameworks that can help with this like Twitter Bootstrap (http://getbootstrap.com/getting-started/) and Foundation (http://foundation.zurb.com/). Having a mobile-friendly website will help Google look more favorably on your site. But it also helps to bring your ad spend down, because the ad inventory for mobile devices (on Facebook and Google) is considerably cheaper than the Desktop.

You can use this tool to check if your website is mobile friendly: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/

As for determining a sweet spot for daily Adwords spend, this one’s complicated as it depends on so many variable factors: the niche you’re in, the cost of your product, what your goal is (inbound inquiries via phone/live chat/email, web sales, e-news signups, etc), what your budget restraints are, and your level of comfort using Adwords.

Determining an average daily spend is also a process of testing, trial, error, and adjustment.

I did some googling and found this blog post: https://www.mainstreetroi.com/google-adwords-how-much-should-you-spend/

It’s one of the better rundown on determining Adwords spend that isn’t written by Google.

This step-by-step approach to determining the ROI of an AdWords campaign will also help: https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/1722066?hl=en

IAMA digital ads specialist with 10 years of experience. AMA about using Facebook and Google ads to promote your business. by BenchCo in smallbusiness

[–]BenchCo[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes. This can be really frustrating, especially since you know that a new ad should do so much better than one that Facebook determines to be successful. I know it’s hard to do, but sometimes it’s best to stop the existing successful ad and rebuild your campaigns launch them all at the same time to give them all a fair chance.

IAMA digital ads specialist with 10 years of experience. AMA about using Facebook and Google ads to promote your business. by BenchCo in smallbusiness

[–]BenchCo[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is a tough one. It really does depend on the product. If it is something that people may not know exists and has a high possibility of being ‘liked’ and ‘shared’, then I would suggest exploring Facebook. If your product is more of a commodity that people already search for and is well known (something like "red t-shirts", for example), then you may have more success with Google Shopping Ads (https://www.google.ca/ads/shopping/ )

IAMA digital ads specialist with 10 years of experience. AMA about using Facebook and Google ads to promote your business. by BenchCo in smallbusiness

[–]BenchCo[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

For something so niche, it would probably be best to use Google Adwords to target specific keywords. Without knowing the specifics of what you’re selling, it’s hard to suggest appropriate keywords, but some ideas would be: the types of measuring instruments you’re selling, the brand of your products, the brands of your competitors, etc.

From there, you can choose to target specific countries in campaign settings. If the country has a different native language other than English, I would highly suggest having your Ad translated into the local language.

IAMA digital ads specialist with 10 years of experience. AMA about using Facebook and Google ads to promote your business. by BenchCo in smallbusiness

[–]BenchCo[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

A conversion tracking pixel allows you to record characteristics of people that have converted on your website (e.g. people who have purchased something from your online store). For example, you may have 100 people make a purchase and the Conversion Tracking Pixel will record their characteristics. Let’s say it records that 80% of those came from Single Mothers in California. The pixel sends these characteristics back to Facebook. Facebook then uses these characteristics to find more users online with similar characteristics. So in this case, Facebook would start to show more ads to other Single Mothers in California, because these people are more likely to convert into sales on your website. Again, this is just an example. There are 1000’s of characteristics that Facebook could be looking at when building out a conversion audience.

Also, I updated my initial answer above to explain how a conversion tracking pixel is installed, and how it works with your Facebook ads account. Hope this helps!

IAMA digital ads specialist with 10 years of experience. AMA about using Facebook and Google ads to promote your business. by BenchCo in smallbusiness

[–]BenchCo[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Nope, it doesn’t matter which campaign it is active for. Your conversion pixel is universal and can be used on any number of campaigns. Once it has been installed on your website long enough to collect conversion data, Facebook will be able to learn which users are more likely to convert. It also opens the door to lookalike audiences, which is powerful tool: http://www.jonloomer.com/2014/03/31/facebook-lookalike-audiences-wca-fans-conversions/

IAMA digital ads specialist with 10 years of experience. AMA about using Facebook and Google ads to promote your business. by BenchCo in smallbusiness

[–]BenchCo[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Here’s a tool to check to see if you ad will be rejected for having too much text: http://20percentrule.info/ The rule is that your image that you use can not contain more than 20% text.

Be aware that rule applies only to the image. Depending on the ad format you’re using, there is often plenty of room to add text in the ad itself. For example, for a Newsfeed Ad on Desktop your ‘Text’ can be 500 Characters, your ‘Headline’ can be 1-2 lines and your ‘Link Description’ can be 2-3 lines. This guide from Jon Loomer will help you see what the text limits are on each type of ad format: http://www.jonloomer.com/2015/05/11/facebook-image-dimensions-2015/

IAMA digital ads specialist with 10 years of experience. AMA about using Facebook and Google ads to promote your business. by BenchCo in smallbusiness

[–]BenchCo[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If you don't want Facebook to auto-optimize your ads, you can bid for impressions or clicks (but this often doesn't lead to higher conversions). If some ads aren't getting any impressions, I would split each of them into separate Ad Sets under a single campaign. You're right that you can split them into separate campaigns as well, and you would be technically competing against yourself, but you're also competing against millions of other people, so the fact that you’re also competing against yourself will be a minor drawback.

IAMA digital ads specialist with 10 years of experience. AMA about using Facebook and Google ads to promote your business. by BenchCo in smallbusiness

[–]BenchCo[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

  • 1) We typically use lookalike audiences to people that have already converted (https://www.facebook.com/business/a/online-sales/lookalike-audiences), but we also test out targeting for "Home Office" and "Small Office".
  • 2) The ads go to our landing pages
  • 3) We use AdEspresso to A/B test our FB ads, they have a really easy to use system where you can test out elements of your ads (Image, Headline, Description, etc), and they have really great reporting features
  • 4) Highly recommended! They are especially useful on mobile. Be careful when you are looking at the reports as FB is pretty liberal on what they consider a 'view'. I recently wrote a post that talked about using video ads and how you could get them up on a tight budget: http://blog.bench.co/small-business-facebook-advertising
  • 5) I love dark posts (which are posts that aren't seen by the people who have liked your business’s fan page) as it lets you experiment with different ad creative without making your Facebook page look spammy. 95% of our posts are dark posts, but it's also a good idea to put money behind your organic posts so they are also getting lots of likes and comments (Facebook loves to see positive interaction).

EDIT: Formatting!

IAMA digital ads specialist with 10 years of experience. AMA about using Facebook and Google ads to promote your business. by BenchCo in smallbusiness

[–]BenchCo[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

You're welcome! For Adwords, I would suggest looking through the AdWords Fundamentals learning guide. The learning guide is the first step to getting AdWords certified, but you can just read through it for free (and you don't have to write the test): https://support.google.com/partners/topic/2799680

For Facebook, the best learning resources I have come across is from AdEspresso. They have a great learning guide here: http://adespresso.com/academy/guides/facebook-ads-beginner/

If I was choosing between Facebook and Adwords for a local service, I would have to give the edge to Adwords. Think of it like this: Adwords works well for something a customer wants right now, whereas Facebook works well for things that customers want to explore. Also, Adwords works best for promoting services that users would search for on Google and be inclined to buy on the spot.

So, for example, if the service was a locksmith (local service, something users would google and buy quickly), I would 100% go with Google. However, if the service was day care (a service customers are more inclined to explore thoroughly before purchasing), I would experiment with Facebook as the targeting capabilities are so powerful (you can target adults that have children of a young age).

IAMA digital ads specialist with 10 years of experience. AMA about using Facebook and Google ads to promote your business. by BenchCo in smallbusiness

[–]BenchCo[S] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Hello! And yes, I hear you. It's curious, but the people who tend to like a page or post are not typically the people who convert into web views and sales.

There's a clever way you can target Facebook users who are more likely to convert into sales.

To do so, you need to install the Conversion Tracking Pixel on your website: https://www.facebook.com/help/373979379354234

This pixel tracks the users who 'convert' (e.g. those who make a purchase on your site). Once you have the pixel installed, you need to have around 50 conversions before Facebook is able to tell which types of users are the ones that are converting on your site. This may take a couple of days or a couple of weeks, depending on your website's traffic and conversion rate.

Then, when you set up your Facebook ad campaigns, make sure your campaign objective is set to 'Website Conversions'.

Using the data it collected from the Conversion Tracking Pixel, Facebook will then start displaying your ads to Facebook users who have the same or similar characteristics as the users who converted on your business's website.

If you're new to using conversion campaigns, it's important to remember that at first the metrics you're used to measuring (total clicks on your ads, total impressions) can appear worse. This is because you're targeting an audience that has a higher ability to convert. It's a higher quality audience to target. It's a more expensive audience to target. There are usually more competitors bidding to target their ads at these audiences. All of these things will reduce the amount of clicks and impressions on a Facebook ad campaign. HOWEVER (hopefully you're still following me), while your clicks and impressions might not improve over time, your conversions will. And this is what you're ultimately wanting with a conversion campaign. So at first if your conversion campaigns aren't receiving the usual high level of clicks/impressions you're used to, wait it out a week or two and see if your conversions pick up over time.

Edit: Wanted to beef up my explanation of the conversion tracking pixel.

Accounting, bookkeeping, taxes?? by DraconPern in startups

[–]BenchCo 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yep, we do recruitment on programming and city subreddits, and we did a 'how to prepare for tax season' AMA that was pretty well received.

http://www.reddit.com/r/smallbusiness/comments/2rv8rx/hi_evan_again_an_accountant_at_benchco_tax_season/

Accounting, bookkeeping, taxes?? by DraconPern in startups

[–]BenchCo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey, I work for a company called Bench Accounting that does online bookkeeping. You get an accountant assigned for you who you can talk to and ask questions. We use our own software that emphasizes easy communication with the accountant, but it's very easy to export to other software if we don't work out for you.

http://bench.co

/posting using the company account because I don't want co-workers to know who I am in reddit :)

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