September 2013

10 Opportunities you are Missing by Not Using Facebook Power Editor

Last month, we conducted a workshop on ‘Lead Generation using Facebook Ads‘. We had an excellent event with several marketers participating. One of the things that came up during the discussions was the challenge to manage large number of campaigns and ads on Facebook. We spoke about Facebook Power Editor and realized that not many were aware of it. So we thought of sharing this post for the benefit of those marketers who haven’t used this tool yet. Here are 10 opportunities you are missing by not using Power Editor.

What is Facebook Power Editor?

Power Editor helps marketers in creating, editing and managing a large number of campaigns and ads. For example, it helps in mass editing campaigns settings, targeting, bids, budgets across ads, campaigns and multiple accounts. It works well with your Excel too. So if you have not been using it, here are the 10 reasons of using it now!

Here are 10 opportunities you are missing by not using Facebook Power Editor…

1. An opportunity to target very Specific ‘Custom Audience’

Facebook now allows advertisers to target their audience based on email addresses, phone numbers or Facebook user IDs. So, how does this function? Facebook Power Editor’s Custom Audience has a significant potential because you are serving your ad to an audience which knows your product. You can see this blog for a step-by-step guide to creating Custom Audience for Facebook.

Here is an image and its explanation:
Here is an example: Lets say you have a list of students who have purchased Physics study modules from you. Now, you have launched a new Chemistry module. Create an ad on Facebook to target people who have purchased the Physics modules and alert them of the study material on Chemistry. The people who have already purchased Physics need not be your Facebook ‘fans’, but they already trust your product. Hence, they are more likely to convert than any other user.

2. An opportunity to target people with similar interests with ‘Lookalike Audience’

Lookalike audiences allow advertisers to target more people whose likes and interests are very similar to that of their already existing customers. The lookalike audience is created off an existing custom audience list who have similar tastes. This is beneficial to advertisers in a sense that once your custom audience list is exhausted, the lookalike audience allows you to expand your reach.

So, say for example, you are targeting an email list with the goal of getting more Facebook page likes. When people in your custom audience list have already liked the page, there is not much to do. This is when your Lookalike audience will help you expand your reach to people who have similar interests and thereby increasing your page likes.

Meanwhile, see this blog to find out how you can create your custom audience.

3. An opportunity to save a lot of time with ‘Saved Target Groups’

When you create an ad on Facebook, you have to determine countries, states, cities, ages, genders, precise interests, broad categories, advanced interests…and a lot more! Phew! This becomes extremely cumbersome if you have a dozen of ads to look after. Luckily, with Facebook power editor, you can create saved target groups. This way, you can save a particular set of audience whom you will use again and again without having to go through the entire process of targeting. It saves you so much time!

4. An opportunity to get a very specific type of engagement with ‘Conversion Specs’

A Facebook page post is by default optimized for engagement. But, what if you are looking for a specific type of engagement only? This is where, Conversion Specs helps. Facebook optimizes your ads and serves it to people who are most likely to take the action that you desired. You can optimize your ads manually or let Facebook do it. Here are the types of engagements that you can track with conversion specs:

comment
like
link click
photo view
post engagement
post story
receive offer
playing a video

5. An opportunity to share website engagement with ‘Domain Sponsored Stories’

We are all pretty much aware of Facebook sponsored stories, aren’t we? These ads promote a Facebook page or content where a friend has engaged. Domain sponsored stories on the other hand work a little like sponsored stories, but instead of taking a website visitor to a Facebook content, they promote content where a friend has engaged with a domain (website). This way, you get to post an ad which mentions engagement from friends with an article, an image etc on your website.

Domain sponsored stories are highly effective for marketers who have fresh and exciting content on their blogs or websites.

6. An opportunity to place Ads where YOU want

When placing an ad using Facebook’s self serve ad tool, your targeting options are limited. But, a major attraction of Facebook Power Editor is its targeting capabilities. When setting up an ad, there are a variety of targeting options that you can choose…from running ads only in news feed to the kind of mobile device.
You can also choose the type of ad that you want to run, sponsored story, mobile ad only or a video ad. Based on this, each type is sub divided into the kind of action you want from your users. Then again, an ads success depends heavily on its placement. Make sure you split test your ads to determine which one is faring better.

7. An opportunity to get access to better ‘Bidding Options’

8. An opportunity to stop wasting time by creating & editing Ads in Bulk

Creating a dozen ads using Facebook’s self serve ad tool can surely be a pain, and we do know it, don’t we? But, with Power Editor’s ‘Duplicate’ and ‘Saved Target Group’ ads, creating, editing and serving ads to many people is not that painful a task. So each time you create an ad, you will not have to waste time targeting.

9. An opportunity to manage your Images a lot better

So, next time you want to get an image that you have used earlier, you will not have to go about hunting it from your computer memory, they will be waiting for you in Power Editor’s Image Library. This way, you can also select and use an image which has fared well in the past and has got more conversions.

10. An opportunity to serve your ads better with Partner Categories:

Third party sources or data mining companies – Acxiom, Datalogix and Epsilon collect data from various online and offline sources to know the interests of users’ when they are off Facebook…like what they shop for, what they read, cars they like etc. They then provide these details to advertisers who target these users on Facebook based on the products they have purchased or have shown interest in purchasing. (This is currently only available in USA).

Here is an example to explain this.

You run a chain of shops which sell Physics books. Partner categories collect information about people who like Physics books or have shown some interest in buying Physics books in the near future. They feed this data into Facebook. An advertiser will be able to target these groups with ads of special discounts on Physics books or promotional offers etc either on Facebook or at their physical store location.

How to install Facebook Power Editor?

1. Once you have installed Power Editor (it works only on Chrome, so if haven’t downloaded Chrome yet, click this link.

2. Once you have downloaded Chrome, you will be asked to download your Facebook ad accounts.
3. Once you are through with this process, you will be able to use Power Editor. Facebook Power Editor is an amazing tool for marketers to make Facebook advertising easy and fun for them.

So if you are not using Power Editor, you have no clue what you are missing out on. Have any queries, do leave me a comment.

Add custom tabs on your Facebook pages that link to LeadSquared’s landing pages here.

September 27, 2013/0 Comments/by Deepu

Landing Page Basics – HABITS Framework Webinar Recording and FAQs

Marketing Webinar

Our last webinar on Best Practices of designing conversion optimized Landing Pages was a great success. It not only saw outstanding participation, but was such a big hit that we had to do an encore of the same. We recently held another webinar and the topic of discussion was “How to Create Conversion Optimized Landing Pages with HABITS framework”. Some brilliant questions were posed at us and a few of them have been compiled in the form of a FAQ.

Question 1

Is it good to use calls-to-action multiple times on a landing page?

One of the first and foremost landing page basics is to have one primary CTA per landing page. For a well optimized landing page, calls-to-action should direct visitors onto one particular course of action. If there are too many CTAs in a single landing page, the main objective may not stand out and may lose its importance, thereby increasing bounce rate.

However, if it is absolutely necessary, you can also have more than one CTA on your landing page. This again entirely depends on your offer and campaign.

For example, like you can see in the image below, there are 3 CTAs on the same page. This is so, because it shows the pricing details of our product. As soon as a website visitor decides which plan he wants, he can click on the ‘Sign Up’ CTA and buy the deal immediately.

You can also you a secondary CTA beside the primary CTA.

Here’s an example for this. Say, a college has a registration form on its website and its main goal is to get students to fill in their details on the form. So, the primary CTA has to be around the sign-up form. But, what if the landing page also offers a ‘Download’ for the college brochure, then a secondary CTA has to be placed for people who wish to know more about the same.

The above example can also justify the statement that you can have one CTA above the fold and another below. You can have the primary CTA around the form fill above the fold, the first half of the landing page and the secondary one, the ‘Download’ CTA below the fold, the lower half of the page.

Question 2

What are some of the best practices for a call-to-action (CTA) button?

A good call to action should by all means ‘call’ and prompt a website user to take an ‘action’. It is one of the most important part of a landing page and should not be neglected. It can be a button or a text that will aid in eliciting a response from your website visitors. You can take a look at this blog for best practices for call to action buttons that convert.

Question 3

Is it good to add full description on a landing page?

NO, do not add too much information on your landing page. The content that you mention on your landing page should be

a. Straight to the point

b. Show what benefits a website user will get

c. Powerful enough to drive him to take the next step

d. Should have the right keywords so that the website user can find you easily through organic search

e. You should ideally add more information about your product and company in the 2nd fold of your landing page

You can take a look at this article for tactics for compelling landing page copy.

Question 4

Which layout is preferred for a landing page – two columns or a single column?

This completely depends on what you are offering and the visual elements present on the landing page. However, normally 2 columns is considered better than 1. Just make sure that you A/B test single column landing pages against two-column landing pages to see which one is faring better.

Question 5

Should I link my home page to a landing page?

Yes, it is a good practice to link your website home page to your landing page.

For example, a visitor who wants to get more information about your product/service should be taken to a landing page via a strong call to action where he can fill the lead capture form and connect with you.

Question 6

Should there be a navigation on Landing Pages?

Ideally, there should be no navigation bar on a landing page. Its is highly distracting.

But, if you want to have a navigation tab, place your company logo on the landing page and link it to your website. Another practice is to keep the navigation bar really small and at the very bottom of the page. (However, we recommend that you don’t have a navigation bar at all.)

Question 7

What is an ideal page that a user should see after clicking on the ‘Submit’ button?

Once a website user has filled in his details, he should ideally see a ‘Thank You’ page. This page should have the next course of action from your end, like, ‘Thank you. Someone will get in touch with you soon’ or ‘Thank you for downloading this EBook’ etc. You can also provide a link to your website home page or blog on this page. If not a page, then a pop-up thanking the user also suffices.

You may also take website users to your homepage directly after form fill, but this comes with a drawback. They may get confused as to whether the form fill happened or not.

Question 8

Should you optimize a landing page for SEO with keywords?

Yes, you should place keywords in your landing page so that its is searchable, but do not stuff keywords deliberately. Also, add the keywords to your images on the landing page.

Question 9

Is it a good practice to have a phone number on a landing page?

It is a very good practice to implement a phone number call to action on a landing page. It makes it easy for visitors to take an action immediately. If you want your website visitors to know you, why not make things easy for them to help them get in touch with you directly? By strategically placing a phone number, you will increase your chances of getting more leads.

September 21, 2013/0 Comments/by Deepu

Remarketing with Google Analytics – Have you tried it yet?

Marketing

If not, then it’s high time that you get started with it soon.

But wait, do you know about Remarketing with Google Analytics?

If the answer is “NO” then let’s first discuss…

What is Remarketing with Google Analytics and how does it work?

It’s really simple! Google Analytics allows you to create Remarketing lists based on your visitors search trends (the pages they have browsed one after another). You would understand it better with an example…

Let’s say, you have an online education website (with a Google Analytics script already installed). The tracking data helps you know that there are a few visitors who came to your homepage and navigated to the courses page. They surfed the course categories and also their respective fee structures.

A few of them signed up, while a few did not; and that’s not all. The data also showed that this visitor trend is quite frequent on your website. So, what’s next?

Here is where you begin with Remarketing and follow those visitors (who did not signup) on the Google Display Network. With Analytics you can create a Remarketing list that will help you target the visitors who follow this search trend, i.e.

Comes to the website
Visit the specific course category pages
Check the fee structure
Navigate out of the website

You can then create display ads with specific messages like “Discount on registration fees for the first 50 candidates on particular courses” (specifically on those courses that they navigated). Your visitor are likely to get interested and come back to your website.

Still confused?

Okay, let’s take another example.

Have you ever visited an E-commerce website or Online shopping site? Did you notice that after you exit and visit any other website, the ads of those e-commerce sites follow you with pictures and messages of the same products that you checked out.

It is a great strategy to attract back your audiences. You can keep reminding them that they have to perform the “desired action” or complete the sales cycle like a signup, registration or purchase. So,…

How would you Begin Remarketing with Google Analytics?

It is easier than you might think. Just follow these two steps:

Step 1: Changing the ‘line’ in Analytics Tracking Code

You will just have to replace this line:

ga.src = (‘https:’ == document.location.protocol ? ‘https://ssl’ : ‘http://www’) + ‘.google-analytics.com/ga.js’;

with this line:

ga.src = (‘https:’ == document.location.protocol ? ‘https://’ : ‘http://’) + ‘stats.g.doubleclick.net/dc.js’;

Looks complicated?

It is not! It is as simple as that.

Go to your Google Analytics account
Click on Admin
Click on Tracking Info.

You can see the tracking code there on the page in a box.
Just above the box, you see the option ‘Display Advertiser Support’.
Switch on the button beside it and that line in your tracking code automatically changes itself to enable Remarketing.
Copy and Paste this on your website and you are good to go with Remarketing.

If you already have a Analytics tracking code on your site, just update it with this code and begin tracking your visitors.

Now that you have set the foundation of your Remarketing strategy, let’s discuss…

Step 2: How to Create a Remarketing List on Google Analytics?

Go to Admin
Click on Remarketing
Click on Lists
Click on + New Remarketing List

Here you can choose your targeting options.

For first time users, target all the visitors of your website. So, you can choose the first option which says “All of my site visitors”
If you want to target specific pages or sections on your website choose- “Visitors who visited a specific page/section of my site”
You might also choose to use Visitor Segments. This will help you create specific filters to narrow down your targets.

Finally,…

Give a Name to your list
Choose a Membership duration wisely (depending on your business requirement)
Choose the Adwords account, to which you would like to associate and use this list
Click on Save Remarketing List

And you are have created your first Remarketing list on Analytics.

Great job! So just go to your Adwords account and create the display ads to start re-engaging those lost opportunities and bring them back to your website.

Do you share your experience and expertise with us below. Keep reading!!!

September 20, 2013/0 Comments/by Dhivya B

10 Ways to Use Facebook Targeting to Reach the Most Relevant Audience

Marketing

Google’s effectiveness as an advertising platform, among other things, lies mainly in the fact that Google ads are served on users’ queries, thus making them highly relevant. Facebook on the other hand, does not serve ads based on user queries (with the exception of Sponsored Results). This might lead advertisers to believe that Facebook cannot compete with Google as an advertising platform. This however, is far from the truth.

The Reason: The targeting options allowed on Facebook. Because users list their interests and other information on their Facebook profiles, it is easy to find your perfect target audience. Here are 10 Ways to Use Facebook Targeting to Reach the Most Relevant Audience.

Let me use an example to explain the different targeting options:

I run an online coaching institute in Bangalore to help students prepare for IIT JEE entrance exams. I also have a branch in Mumbai and have multiple mobile applications that students/parents can download.

I. Location

When you post an ad on Facebook, you have to target people in a particular location/s. The prerequisites of location specific targeting given by Facebook are…

Country specific Facebook targeting	City specific Facebook targeting
Minimum target: 1 country, Maximum target: 25 countries per ad	If you target one country, you can target further by state, province, city and zip code
If you select multiple countries, you cannot target specific cities	Within cities, you can also target places located within 10, 25 or 50 miles radius from your current target location
Fine tuning like state, province, city and zip code not available when targeting multiple countries

Since I run an online coaching institute in India, though its accessible everywhere, IIT JEE is an India specific examination. Hence, I have selected the ad targeting country as India.

Now, there may be some people who will want to visit my physical office location or get in touch with me personally as well, for them, I will have to create a separate ad where my location target will be Bangalore and Mumbai. This will make my ad location specific and website visitors living around Bangalore and Mumbai only will be able to see the ad. Since, the ad will be served to an appropriate audience, clicks on my ad will be very specific and I will not waste a lot of money on rogue clicks. In this option, I have further targeted my ad to people who are located within 10 miles from my current location.

II. Age & Gender

The age group to which you will want to show your ad will depend on your ad campaign objective. Select the age group which is most suitable to (a) your ad and (b) your product. Like in the example above, my target group will comprise:

Students in their 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th who are preparing for engineering entrance exams
Have given their 12th board exams
Had dropped a year and are giving the entrance tests this year

You can also target which gender your ad is targeted to – All, Men or Women. Hence, like you can see in the image below, my target group will be young adults in the age group of 13 to 19. My courses are not gender specific and I have selected the gender as ‘All’. Alternatively, if you want to target your courses to parents/teachers who are looking for such courses for their children or students, you will have to create a separate ad and select your target audience accordingly.

III. Interests

Interests can be divided into 2 categories – Precise and Broad.

Precise interests is a major factor in your Facebook targeting process. It lets you define your ideal audience by what they are interested in and what they have shared on their Facebook profiles. These interests may be drawn from their listed interests, activities, education and job titles, pages they like or groups to which they belong. Having several keywords in your ad covers more ground when you are trying to market your ad to a specific interest group.

Yes, selecting precise interest does take time to put together, but the benefit is that you not only target a lot more people who are most likely to take action on your offer, you also get higher CTR, reduced cost-per-clicks and finally relevant and happy customers.

For example in the image below, I have selected interests which suit the needs of my target group – Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, Indian Institute of Technology Joint Entrance Examination, Engineering etc. As and when you select precise interests, Facebook also suggests likes and interests that you may want to include in your ad.

You can also add hashtags here. Hashtags will help you reach everyone who has expressed interests closely related to that term. For example, #Physics will help you reach people who are also interested in Physics, Particle Physics, Astrophysics etc.

Whereas a topic without a hashtag becomes highly precise. For example, Physics (without#) will include only people who have shown an interest in Physics.
Broad Interest is used to narrow down your target audience. Since my ad does not relate to any broad category, I have not selected any. The below shown image is just an example.

IV. Advanced Targeting Options

Under the ‘advanced targeting’ section, you can further narrow down your Facebook targeting under these categories:

Interested In: Select ‘All’ unless you want to show your ad to a specific gender, men or women.

Relationship Status: This allows a business to target Facebook users who are married, single, engaged or are in relationship.

Languages: The Languages targeting option is best used when targeting an audience that speaks a particular language that is different from most of the people you have targeted.

Education: Under the education targeting option, I have selected the ‘Anyone’ option under lest you want to show the ad to a group of people with a specific education.

Workplace: The ‘Workplace’ option is for Facebook ads targeting people who work in a particular company or organization.

I have left this option blank. Since these options are not relevant for my ad and product, I have mentioned them as ‘All’.

V. Custom Audience

This is the new kid on the block where you can upload a database of email ids, phone numbers or App ids of existing and prospecting customers and target them with your Facebook ads. I will briefly explain you how this works with the help of the example that I am giving.

I have a database of email ids of my existing customers, interested leads, potential leads already in the purchase pipeline willing to buy Physics study modules.
Now, I have launched a new study module on Chemistry.
I will upload the email ID list as a CSV or TXT file onto Facebook.
Facebook will hash and match this data against the data that Facebook already has because most people use their personal ids to log into Facebook.
Email IDs that match my and Facebook’s database become my Custom Audience.
I will now start targeting this set of people with my Facebook ads because they are already my existing customers and may be interested in my product.

Once you have uploaded it on Facebook, your tab should show as ‘Ready’ and this is how the window looks.
I have already discussed custom audience in great detail here.

VI. Excluded Audience

Now, say I want to place an ad on Facebook for the Chemistry module. There may be many people on the list list who have already purchased it or are in the pipeline to buy the product. There is no point showing them my ad, right? Waste of time and money! Hence, if I add them in the ‘Excluded Audiences’ category, Facebook will refrain from serving them my ad. This way I will target people who are genuinely interested in my product and thus spend less on PPC.

For further detail on the step-by-step procedure of creating Custom and Excluded Audience, please go through this blog.

VII. Lookalike Audience

Lookalike audience is a way to find similar people on Facebook with the same interests as your custom audience. Let me explain this to you with my example:

1. I conduct classes for IIT JEE coaching.

2. I have customers/students who fit a bill…age group, location or an interest, in my case science subjects.

3. Now, if these students are on Facebook (which is most likely they are), there is a very high possibility that their Facebook profiles will also reflect their interests.

4. They will have liked Facebook pages related to science, post status messages related to a science subject etc.

This kind of Facebook targeting helps you enhance your reach. So, for my example, once I have a set of students/parents/faculty who are my custom audience, I will click on the create Lookalike Audience tab to create a set of people whose interests are very similar to that of my custom audience. This way I will not only reach more people through my ads, but also target very specific sets of people.

VIII. Mobile specific Facebook targeting

You will find this option in Facebook’s Power Editor. Marketers can create ads for people who use Facebook on mobile phone only and even target specific mobile devices.

IX. Facebook Retargeting (FBX)

The way this Facebook targeting tool works is very interesting! Here is again a scenario bases on my example:

1. A student has been checking out Physics online modules on an online coaching institute.

2. He does not get exactly what he is looking for and moves out of the website and logs into Facebook.

3. Here, he sees an ad of the same Physics module that he was viewing in the previous site.

4. Now, chances are that he changes his mind, clicks on the ad on Facebook, visits the online coaching institute website and buys the product.

Mission accomplished!! Facebook partners with a company like AdRoll,Triggit & Perfect Audience to carry out this kind of Facebook targeting.

X. Partner Categories

Note: Partner categories is currently only available to U.S. advertisers and of course, it is not relevant to the example that I have used here.

Through partner categories or third party sources, Facebook targeting is better and more relevant. Third party sources like Acxiom, Datalogix and Epsilon collect data from online and offline sources to know the interests of users’ who are active off Facebook, like what they shop for, what cars they like, baby cereals..and a lot more. They then provide these details to advertisers who target these users on Facebook based on the products they have purchased or have shown interest in purchasing on mobile or desktop.

Until now, advertisers could target people based on the ‘interests’ that they mentioned in the Facebook profiles. With Partner Categories, advertisers can target users who are already actively looking out for products which are similar to yours. Well, you never know…they may just buy your product when they see your ad on Facebook.

Then again advertisers will not be privy to any user info, only the size of the audience that they will target.

Each of the 500+ categories includes information such as the number of users, their spending patterns and the source of the information like you can see in the image below.

Here’s an example to explain this process:

Say you run a chain of shops which sell books. Partner categories have already collected information about people who like books and have fed in into Facebook. An advertiser can then target this group of users with ads of special discounts at your stores. Or say if a user has shopped at a store of yours, then you can target the user with store specific discount ads.

If you have stayed with me this far, I would appreciate if you would share this post for someone who might find this article useful. If you have any questions, please leave me a comment. :)

Add custom tabs on your Facebook pages that link to LeadSquared’s landing pages here.

September 18, 2013/0 Comments/by Deepu

WordPress Optimization for Lead Generation – Webinar Recording and FAQs

Marketing Webinar

Did you know that, 22% of all new websites are driven by WordPress? More than 1700 free themes, and 25,762 WP plugins (and growing) in the plugin repository are just a few of the reasons behind the popularity of WordPress as a Content Management System.

This is why we conducted a webinar on How to Setup WordPress Website Optimization for Lead Generation where we received many interesting queries which have been discussed below: