We know that it is difficult to keep up with all of the latest updates that come out for all of the social media platforms each month and that’s why we want to give you monthly updates that we think will benefit you and your business.

Facebook

Facebook is in a real transitioning period at the minute after the very public issues that they had with their privacy settings, this has resulted in a whole bunch of changes and therefore this months post focuses heavily on the updates that Facebook has provided us with over the last month.

As we have already mentioned there has been a lot of updates to Facebook over the last month that you will want to know about, a lot of these updates have cool features that you can use to either promote your brand or to get the most out of your business’ Facebook and these are the kinds of updates we are going to focus on, the ones that can benefit you.

Video.

Video advertising is something that we promote quite heavily here as we have seen the shift in focus of advertising strategies for social media heading over to video advertising. You might be sick of reading this as the budget that you have for advertising doesn’t usually cover video, well then this update is for you.

Facebook has introduced a new feature that enables you to be able to turn still images into simple, but attractive, video that could help you when developing an advertising campaign enormously.

Here are your three options for video creation:

1. Video Creation Kit

To access this feature all you have to do is simple; go to Ads Manager, select ‘single video’ or ‘slideshow’ and then click Templates. This will then give you a drop down of 4 different templates that you can choose from, all of which have been targeted for different reasons to help promote your business.

Promote a Product (6 Seconds): Promote one specific product to help drive the products sales up.

Sell Multiple Products (6 Seconds): Show the selection of quality goods you have an offer, here you can highlight a special offer to drive sales.

Show Product Benefit (15 Seconds): Highlight the different features of your goods, explain how to use your product or use previous customers to promote a case study.

Drive Product Discovery (15 Seconds): Reach as many people and show the individuality of your business.

After selecting the images and text that you want to use the video creation kit will do the rest, this now gives you the ability to use moving image in your future advertising campaigns which will undoubtedly make you stand out from the crowd.

2. Video Cropping 

The second new feature available which is equally as beneficial as it could save you a lot of time and frustration is the video cropping tool. We understand how frustrating it is to have a video that you want to post somewhere but the dimensions of the video don’t fit well with the platform you are trying to post it to, well Facebook is here to help with that. You can now crop your video to, 1:1, 4:5, 16:9 and 9:16, this means that you will have no problem when trying to use your videos across a number of platforms, on stories, whatever it is you want to do you can make it look very professional as it is the size that you are desiring. Where this feature will be most effective will be stories, this gives you the ability to reuse videos on stories from previous Ad campaigns but also have a little bit less to worry about when planning your campaigns themselves, however always remember that this isn’t going to be perfect and if you can get it right the first time then it’s better to not need these features at all.

3. Simple Video Tools

Another addition to Facebooks new video elements is a mobile-focused, video creation tool for Ads. When you are creating your Ad you will now see ‘Animate’ next to the images that you have selected, this then takes you to the next step of creating the animation. At this point you choose; background colours, framing, images, text and then Facebook creates you essentially an animated slideshow.

Very simple to do but could be that little thing that you need to stand out from the rest.

Group Admins Can Now Pin Comments. 

Facebook has noticed that people are moving away from public sharing but aren’t necessarily leaving the site, maybe just taking their public sharing to other social media platforms. While people are sharing less there is still over a billion users that are engaged in groups this is why they are still rolling out good quality updates with regards to groups, they hope that this will keep their users happy and it should!

A small but highly effective new feature of Facebook groups is that admins can now pin a comment to the top of the comments section on their posts. The two most effective ways that we can see this being used;

1. With Customers – if you have a group that includes your customers you can then promote their comments to the top of the feed. This could be something of really high praise, an example of someone using it or a question that a lot of people might have been asking. Whatever it is it allows you to address a customer comment directly, which is always good for customer service, but also a free advertisement from a real-life person that everyone who clicks on the post will see.

2. With Your Employees: This is more of a creative thinking tool when for the benefits of your employees. If for example, you are in a closed group with people you work with and are trying to brainstorm a new idea, by pinning the objective or an idea that you want to develop on from the top it keeps the most creative of ideas at the surface for your workforce.

Facebook Looks to Stamp Out Ad Discrimination.

Ad manager has an absolutely enormous amount of targeting options, however, while a lot of people do use these legitimately to reach out to target people who they think will be interested in their company it can also be used negatively. This is the reason why Facebook has decided to pull 5,000 Ad Targeting options in an attempt to stamp out discrimination.

We support this decision as it is too easy for people to be targeted with the current format, but this won’t make a difference to your advertising campaigns as they still have an abundance of different ways to edit your campaign to target the right audience.

Pinterest. 

The next platform we are going to look at is Pinterest, a platform that doesn’t get covered quite as regularly as some of the bigger platforms, however, the new updates added to Pinterest are both hugely beneficial for advertisers and users.

Pinterest Increases Engagement. 

People are always focusing on the algorithm shifts of each platform and are usually focusing on how to get their content to the top of everyone’s feed, however, this update is hugely beneficial for your average user as it is to do with the recommended ‘pin’. Pinterest works by trying to show you images that it thinks that you will like based on what you have viewed in the past, people you follow and pins that you are viewing. This update specifically focuses on the ‘related pin’ feature a quote from Pinterest: 

“The benefit of our approach is that by borrowing information from nearby nodes/Pins the resulting embedding of a node becomes more accurate and more robust. For example, a bed rail Pin might look like a garden fence, but gates and beds are rarely adjacent in the graph. Our model relies on this graph information to provide the context and allows us to disambiguate Pins that are (visually) similar, but semantically different.”

This best explains the update, where before the algorithm used images that looked similar they are now showing images that actually are similar (it isn’t as complicated as it sounds). The best way to show the success of the update is to highlight that there has been an improvement of 30% relative improvement in user engagement rate and 25% increase on impressions from the platforms ‘shop the look’ product. This stat is especially impressive when you take note of the fact that people go to Pinterest to buy things, this new update is not only creating a friendlier user interface but also broadening business potential as it is connecting you with the people who want to buy your goods. Overall an excellent update by Pinterest which will help develop the app’s popularity.

Full-Screen Ads. 

Having had a test period of the ad format Pinterest are now ready to roll out the max width ad format to advertisers globally.

While ‘max-width’ might sound a little bit over the top to someone who doesn’t regularly use Pinterest the reason that this will develop into a really successful feature is that things don’t tend to really be full screen on Pinterest. The purpose of the platform is to create your own digital ‘pinboard’ and therefore there is usually a lot of images on the screen, this means that should your full-screen Ad come onto the page it is difficult for audiences to not notice the advert. If you are an artistic company or have an Ad that will appeal to the average Pinterest user then we recommend using this new Ad feature as everything about it suggests it will be good for conversion rates as the app itself has a higher potential of monetizing you Ads than some of the other social media platforms.

Pinterest has released a set of recommendations to include in your advertisement:

– Videos should include a logo and strong branding, ideally visible in the first few seconds. People will engage even more if products are integrated into the video.

– Instructional videos to generate longer watch times and people save them more.

– Keep your videos short, simple and focused on a key idea or message. 6-20 seconds is the sweet spot.

Is Pinterest advertising something that you had considered previously or as one of the more unknown apps has it gone underneath your radar as we feel that this advertising platform could be a great new feature for businesses!

LinkedIn

Platform reaches 575,000,000+ members. 

Linked in has reached a milestone after hitting 575 million members also supplying a map of the breakdown of where all of their users are based.

This shows the LinkedIn is still growing and still something that you should be updating and connecting to new people constantly, this business profile can often be the first part of your business that people come across and therefore ensure that you keep it up to date and full of important information.

It has taken the platform 16 months to get from 500 million to 575 million which shows it is still growing at a reasonable rate, should you not be part of this platform yet then we recommend that it is something you sign up for, because as shown it can connect you to businesses and potential clients from all over the world.

Whatsapp

Introduction of Group Calls. 

The messaging App has just had a new update which allows for group calls both with or without video. This new feature will allow your team to have conference calls or even meetings via video in a very easy to use format.

To make a group call you simply call one person and then after that click the ‘add participant’ button. This will then allow you to add more people to your call (Up to 4).

As WhatsApp has 1.3bn active users, this could compete with the likes of FaceTime and Messenger. It will be interesting to see how this progresses.

That’s it for our Social Media round up this month, we hope you enjoyed it! We’ll see you same time next month!

As much as 98% of users who visit your site won’t take the action you want them to, whether that be to read your blog and leave a comment, share something on social media, sign-up to your newsletter or make a purchase.

98% – that’s huge!

That means, of all the time you spend setting things up on your website, creating engaging content and perfecting your sales funnel process, all in an effort to encourage users to take some sort of action, just 2% of people actually do the things you want them to. That’s got to be disheartening.

But fear not, because this article will give you some crucial insights into the ways you can target some of that sub-zero 98% and share some of the warmth around.

That’s right:

The ones that got away may not stay away for very long, if you follow some of the guidelines and ideas laid out herein.

But first, let’s get some things cleared up…

Remarketing vs Retargeting

While you may see some people using these terms interchangeably, it’s important to understand that there is a distinction between remarketing and retargeting and that one is not merely a synonym for the other (and vice-versa).

You see:

Remarketing actually covers a whole host of things and you’ll likely encounter some remarketing tactics on a daily basis, whether you’re sat at your computer or not.

• Ever received a flyer from a company more than once?
• How about that “2-4-1 Tuesdays” sign you pass at your local watering hole every week?
• Or perhaps you entered a free prize draw and the company contacted you later on – not to tell you that you’d won, but that you’ve qualified for their special discount rate?

You guessed it – they’re all forms of remarketing. Strategies set up so you, the individual, are exposed to the same company – and sometimes the very same offer – over and over again until finally, it hits home, and you find yourself sipping on your sixth beer on a random Tuesday evening.

What is Retargeting?

Retargeting is actually a subset of remarketing.

The strategies are similar, of course – the company has a system in place that delivers the same or similar messages and/or offers to you repeatedly.

But with retargeting, we’re specifically focusing our efforts on those who have visited our website (or indeed, our competitor’s website – more on that later) but left before they took the action(s) we wanted them to.

Let’s say, for instance, you have a new article that you’ve shared around social media and got

dozens of brand new visitors to the site as a result. Great! They read your article, find it incredibly

useful and entertaining, and once they’ve finished they… leave.

Well, that’s not what you had in mind.

After all, there’s a series of shiny, bright and beautiful social media sharing buttons that some of them might have clicked to let their social world know of your masterpiece.

And there’s a lead capture form in the middle and at the end of your article that clearly states: “If you like this, why not sign-up so you can be alerted straight away when our new articles get published?” They liked it. Heck, some of them loved it! But not one of them signed-up.

Well, ignoring the fact that that’s not a very enticing offer to get people to sign-up, it generally takes more than just the one article to get someone onto your mailing list.

It would have been nice if they’d decided to jump around your site a little bit and taken in some more of your killer content, seeing as they enjoyed the first one so much.

But alas, it wasn’t meant to be.

So, what now? Are they lost to you forever? Or is there a way of alluring them back to the site so they can take the action you hoped they would?

Retargeting Using Facebook and the Facebook Pixel

Of course, there is a way. There are several ways in fact. But the one we’re going to focus on today is Facebook Retargeting using something called the Facebook Pixel.

We won’t get into the intricacies of setting up your Facebook Pixel here as there are plenty of other places online where this information and step-by-step guidance can be found

In a nutshell, a pixel is a tracking cookie that you create inside Facebook (or inside Google, when using them for AdWords purposes) and then install the relevant code onto the various pages of your website.

Even though it sounds ‘technical’, it’s not nearly as complicated as it may appear at first glance, and this one simple implementation will provide you with an abundance of opportunities to remarket to those who visited your site just once.

What follows is our 5 favourite ways to employ this wonderful little tool, plus one bonus tip.

Enjoy!

And be sure to let us know your favourites in the comments below.

1. Retarget People Who’ve Read One of Your Articles

Think about it:

If a visitor to your site leaves after viewing just one page – which is going to happen, it’s inevitable – you now have the power to retarget them when they open up their Facebook feed later that day (or even later that week/month, if you set up the pixel in that way).

Given the fact that Facebook has 2.19 billion active users every month, it’s maybe not quite inevitable that your readers will browse Facebook after having been on your site, but it’s not far from it.

And because you cannily had your Facebook pixel set-up, you now have the option to present a perfectly suited ad that appeals to them and sends them right back to your site, displayed seamlessly right there in their news feed.

If it was an article about building muscle through heavy compound weightlifting that they’d read,

for example, then chances are they’ll be interested in something along the lines of optimal timing for protein intake too, right?

So, they leave your site, but later that day they magically get presented an ad telling them all about your article “The Best Times to Consume Protein After Your Workout”, and lo and behold, they click the CTA on the ad, and there they are again, right back on your website reading more of your wonderful content. Lovely.

And how does one do that, we hear you ask?

Inside Facebook >> Create a Custom Audience, you’d simply set the “Include people who meet the following criteria” to:

1. Facebook Pixel
2. People who visited specific web pages
3. In the past 30 days (this can also be 60 days, 90 days and so on)
4. URL contains
5. /blog
6. Or, to be even more specific in your targeting, you could swap /blog with a specific article such as /build-muscle-heavy-compound-lifting

Then, your ad which promotes your protein optimal timings article is being presented directly to the very same people who already read the heavy compound lifting one.

2. Retarget People Who’ve Visited a Landing Page but Didn’t Take Action

Good news: people are arriving at your chosen landing page – the one that tells the user all about your new time tracking and productivity tool.

Bad news: generally speaking, people read it, click around a bit, and then go about their merry way without completing the action you want them too. Dammit!

But wait, there’s more good news.

Using the pixel, you can set up a Facebook custom audience so that your ads target those people.

Once you have the pixel created, you’ll need to make sure that it’s added to the relevant pages. So, on your website TimeIsMoney.com you have a landing page called TimeIsMoney.com/TimeSavingMachine that tells the users all about the machine you have that apparently saves time.

In order to track the people who go to that page but don’t follow through and make a purchase, you need to make sure the Facebook Pixel code is added to this page.

Then, once again inside Facebook >> Create a Custom Audience, you’d set the “Include people who meet the following criteria” to:

1. Facebook Pixel
2. People who visited specific web pages
3. In the past 30 days (this can also be 60 days, 90 days and so on)
4. URL contains
5. /TimeSavingMachine (this is the part where you add your own specific landing page URL)

It’s as easy as that.

And to make sure you don’t waste money targeting people who visited that page and then did make a purchase, you simply need to exclude all of those who completed the purchasing process.

You’d do that by repeating steps 1. – 4. above, but this time, when you reach the “Exclude people who meet the following criteria” section, you’d need to add the URL that people reach once they’ve completed a purchase: /thank-you-for-your-purchase, for example.

3. Retarget Shopping Cart Abandoners

If you have a site that sells products rather than services, and several products at that, you may be familiar with the concept of shopping cart abandonment.

For the uninitiated among us, this is the action some people inexplicably take when they browse around your eCommerce store, add items to the shopping cart and then leave your site without making a single purchase. Very frustrating.

But, by following some of the same tactics and rules set-out above, you can start showing them customised ads to get them to come back to your site and complete a purchase.

Have you ever wondered how it’s such a bizarre coincidence that, two days after you’d spent time bouncing around Amazon and even added a few things to the cart, suddenly one of those things has been reduced in price? Jeez, what are the odds!

Well, not all that high, actually, since this is merely shopping cart retargeting at it’s finest. So, we regret to inform you, the universe didn’t conspire to provide you with that little nudge you needed to purchase that brand-new handbag. Some scheming little marketing guy did. Sorry.

To achieve this level of inception yourself, simply retrace the steps laid out above, but make sure you include the URL associated with your check-out process (/check-out or /complete-check-out or whatever it may be), while simultaneously excluding those that reached the Thank You page, thereby avoiding the embarrassing scenario of offering a discount to someone who’s already bought the thing.

4. Retarget Existing Customers

Hooray! Somebody bought something. Oh, rejoice! But don’t rest on your laurels just yet.

That’s because it’s far, far easier, not to mention cheaper, to turn an existing customer into a repeat customer than it is to turn a prospect into a first-time buyer.

So, let’s take advantage of this by following some of the steps laid-out previously, but this time we’re looking to target all of those wonderful people who completed the purchase and arrived at the Thank You page. To do that, simply add your Thank You page URL to the “Include people who meet the following criteria” as outlined above.

And even though it is easier to get these guys to convert, why not give them a little extra incentive by creating an ad specifically for them, offering a 10% discount to all customers who return to make a second purchase.

5. Retarget and Collect Data Using Facebook Lead Ads

Getting people to take action once they’re on your site is tricky enough. Getting them to firstly click through from your Facebook ad to your site, process the information on your landing page and then fill out the form with the correct relevant data is asking a lot in one website visit, even if it doesn’t seem like much.

That’s why Facebook Lead Ads can be so successful.

If you’re looking to obtain user information so you can send them offers or initiate a drip-sequence via email, you can eliminate the middle step of asking people to visit the landing page on your website entirely but getting them to complete the form right there on the Facebook ad.

They simply click the CTA (“Learn More” for example) but instead of it taking them to your website, they’re presented with a seamless lead-capture form, right there in Facebook. Sending them away from the site they were browsing is sometimes risky, so this eliminates that entirely.

Facebook will even pre-populate the fields with the data they have stored about that user, such as name, email address, phone number etc.

The best way to utilise this functionality is to retarget people who’ve already interacted with your Facebook page in the past.

Let’s say that they liked a post, made a comment or started following your page – all of that counts as an engagement inside Facebook, so you can be sure that you’re targeting users that are both active on Facebook and are also likely up-to-date on the new brands that pop up all the time.

To set-up this type of retargeting, you’d simply need to select ‘Engagement’ when you’re asked, “How do you want to create this audience?”

Then you select your own Facebook page as the retargeting effort and finally chose how specific you want to be in your targeting efforts, ranging from “Everyone who engaged with your Page” to something more generic like “Anyone who visited your Page”.

After you’ve got the audience set-up, it’s time to head over to your Facebook Ads Manager where you this time need to select “Lead Generation” as your marketing objective, in order to create the kind of Lead Ad discussed above.

Bonus: Target Users Who’ve Visited a Competitor’s Site

OK, OK, strictly speaking, this isn’t retargeting as we’ve defined it above, since the people we’re focusing our attention on here may not have technically visited your site at all. But this is the bonus one, so we figured you’d cut us a little slack!

Let’s imagine you own a showroom that sells made-to-measure suits. You’re new in the market, so you don’t have a lot of people visiting your website just yet and you’re struggling to get traction with your content.

But buying and owning a suit isn’t a zero-sum game: most people will own more than one suit and it’s quite conceivable, even likely, that they’ll have purchased them from different stores. Also highly likely is that each suit will be of a different brand.

So, how can we use this information to our advantage? Quite simply, we’d look to convert some customers who have shopped at one of our competitor’s stores by setting the audience to target people who have liked your competitor’s pages.

Additionally, when coupling this with people who have a hankering for high-cost brand labels such as Hugo Boss, Ralph Lauren, Gucci etc., we’re likely to have an audience with a make-up which is exactly the type of people we’d want to target with our high-end, made-to-measure suits.

And to throw in an extra dynamic, you can exclude all of those who’ve already visited your site, ensuring your ad targets new people all the time.

Summary

Hopefully, by this point we’ve convinced you that retargeting is not only an incredibly powerful and influential marketing strategy, it’s a course of action that simply must be a part of your overall marketing efforts.

People won’t be convinced by you at the very first glance. They prefer to take time to consider their options, and the more expensive your product or service is, the more time it’s likely to take them to reach that buying decision. Retargeting tactics and remarketing practices, in general, ensure that you stay in the forefront of your prospects mind when that crunch time does eventually arrive.

And furthermore, you can be sure that the people you’re targeting and dedicating your marketing budget towards have already shown some interest in your company, so you’re not shouting into the supermassive black hole that the internet can sometimes represent.

Oh, and if you didn’t read it yet, make sure you don’t miss the Rule of 7 theory. If you’re not already convinced that remarketing is a good idea, you most certainly will be once you’ve learned about that.

Did we miss any Facebook Retargeting strategies out? Has one of the ideas on our list proven successful for you in the past? Let us know in the comments below.

Still a little unsure about remarketing? Book a free call with us and we will be glad to help you with your Facebook advertising.