Kathy Kelly has joined Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc., as Director of Business Development and Account Management. Kathy Kelly educates our clients on the right decisions and marketing channels in which to invest to optimize lead generation and sales and to maximize profits.

Kathy’s long career in marketing began in the video broadcast world of national cable news. She then moved on to video animation and commercial production to web and online marketing for entrepreneurs and start-ups up to national brands. With 25 years in the direct response industry market, she’s produced B2C Campaigns that included banner ads, web videos and infomercials garnering millions in direct sales. She has earned the honor of being recognized as the top Business Woman on the Central Coast by the Pacific Coast Business Times, and she has been a speaker and steering committee member for the Direct-to-Consumer Wine Symposium for over 6 years. Previous clients include: M&M Mars, Sony Home Entertainment, EMI/Capitol Records, Hoover, Ultimate Software, 10Rule, Toshiba, Murad Skin Care, Kal Kan, Pedigree Puppy, GNC, Motorola and Amgen. She earned her B. S. in Communications at Framingham State University in Boston.

About Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc.

Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc., is known for bringing the latest marketing strategies to online and direct marketing. Beasley provides services in inbound and outbound marketing including:  content creation, email marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), print advertising, social media advertising, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, Amazon Marketing Services (AMS), website design, media planning/public relations, direct mail marketing, lead generation and nurture campaigns, and database management. Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc., helps clients in both B2B and B2C marketing and is privately held and headquartered in the Silicon Valley suburb of Morgan Hill, California. For more information, go to https://www.beasleydirect.com/.

Need help with your digital marketing? Review our digital marketing offerings and get free SEO and PPC audits here.

The post Kathy Kelly Joins Beasley Direct & Online Marketing, Inc., as Director of Business Development and Account Management appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.

Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc., a full service direct and online marketing agency, is selected by Got It, Inc., to provide digital marketing services. The initial work will involve managing paid advertising on Google Ads, Google Display Network, Facebook and LinkedIn.

About Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc.

Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc., is known for bringing the latest marketing strategies to online and direct marketing. Beasley provides services in inbound and outbound marketing including:  content creation, email marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), print advertising, social media advertising, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, Amazon Marketing Services (AMS), website design, media planning/public relations, direct mail marketing, lead generation and nurture campaigns, and database management. Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc., helps clients in both B2B and B2C marketing and is privately held and headquartered in the Silicon Valley suburb of Morgan Hill, California. For more information, go to www.BeasleyDirect.com.

About Got It, Inc.

Serial entrepreneurs Peter Relan and Hung Tran with their YouWeb incubator have launched a “knowledge-as-a-service” (KaaS) company, Got It, Inc. Got It is a web platform to connect (human) experts with professionals seeking the answer to specific tech tool-related problems. The platform helps professionals, learners, and consumers quickly and affordably get personalized, interactive solutions to their questions. Got It matches a user with an expert to solve the user’s problem in a one-on-one chat session within a fixed time period, with a service guarantee.

In the first instance the target users are professionals wrangling Excel and Google Sheets. But the wider ambition is to be able to use its expertise-ranking algorithms to intelligently assess more categories of tech knowledge by connecting relevant experts with different professionals to solve them.

Get started with a free PPC Advertising audit. Contact us for a free consultation!

Find case studies and white papers at https://beasleydirect.com/resources/white-papers

The post Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc., is Selected to Provide Digital Marketing Services to Got It, Inc. appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.

John Thyfault, Vice President, Search Engine and Social Media Marketing for Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc., will be teaching a live online Social Media Advertising Best Practices workshop for the Direct Marketing Association of Northern California.

Workshop Date and Time: Wednesday, November 28, 2018. 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM Pacific Standard Time.

How to create and run ads on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter and Pinterest

As social media sites grow and mature, many marketers are adding targeted advertising on social sites to their media mix. Advertising on social media sites has the advantage of getting your message in front of the right people based on their activities and characteristics. Done properly it can deliver strong ROI, and help you to develop a more in-depth understanding of your customers. Procter & Gamble recently stated they were increasing their social media ad budget to 35% of their total spend. Many business to business marketers rely on social media advertising to fill their sales funnels with quality, actionable leads.

Understanding how to overcome poorly thought out campaigns and general ad blindness is a key to your long-term success with social media advertising. This workshop will walk you through five major social media sites, their offerings and the best practices to optimize your message to the site and the social media user. These best practices will look at both desktop and mobile advertising opportunities for both B2B and B2C. Learn more.

About the DMAnc (www.DMAnc.org)

The DMA of Northern California was formed to educate, inform and provide networking opportunities for Direct and Online Marketing professionals in the San Francisco Bay Area.

About Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc.

Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc., is known for bringing the latest marketing strategies to online and direct marketing. We provide services in inbound and outbound marketing including: content creation, email marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), print advertising, social media advertising, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, Amazon Marketing Services (AMS), website design, media planning/public relations, direct mail marketing, lead generation and nurture campaigns, and database management. We help clients in both B2B and B2C marketing and are privately held and headquartered in the Silicon Valley suburb of Morgan Hill, California. For more information, go here.

Get started with a free Social Media Audit. Contact us for a free consultation!

Find more case studies and white papers at https://beasleydirect.com/resources/white-papers

Get a Free Social Media Audit! Learn more here.

The post Join John Thyfault, Vice President, Search Engine and Social Media Marketing for Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc., in a Live Online “Social Media Advertising Best Practices” Workshop appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.

Our social media audience rapid growth program yields steady, increasing streams of avid customers for your products and services with four important benefits: 1) an increased likelihood of conversion through genuine engagement with your customers, 2) positioning your brand as an industry thought leader, 3) leveraging organic lift that platforms bestow upon brands with highly engaged audiences, and 4) encouraging community building and user-generated content.

Our multi-pronged strategy targets your audience, influencers, media and key followers of trade and competitor sites with sticky, entertaining and educational content. Next, we encourage social sharing and reviews, comments and participation by these highly engaged, like-minded followers, which triggers the boost from social media algorithms. Continuing efforts organically heighten awareness, mentions and search ranking, exponentially drawing new visitors and more actions.

This program primarily centers on the Instagram platform, with large volumes of visual content that is then re-purposed and distributed widely across social and other channels. In our extensive experience in managing rapid growth campaigns, our typical program generates 75-200 new followers per day.

We will never purchase fake followers, an unfortunate practice that defeats your goal to drive conversions and enhance reputation.  We use client content to attract genuine interest and desired actions.  For more information on this new service go to Beasley Direct and Online Marketing Social Media Rapid Growth Services.

About Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc.

Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc., is known for bringing the latest marketing strategies to online and direct marketing. Beasley provides services in inbound and outbound marketing including:  content creation, email marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), print advertising, social media advertising, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, Amazon Marketing Services (AMS), website design, media planning/public relations, direct mail marketing, lead generation and nurture campaigns, and database management. Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc., helps clients in both B2B and B2C marketing and is privately held and headquartered in the Silicon Valley suburb of Morgan Hill, California. For more information, go to www.BeasleyDirect.com.

Get a FREE Social Media Audit for your company. Go here.

The post Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc., Announces New Social Media Marketing Growth Services appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.

Launching a new brand of consumer electronics products is always a challenge. To raise brand awareness and drive the eventual purchase of a new product takes effort and time. The consumer electronics category is by its very nature competitive with short product cycles and shifting consumer expectations.

Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc. was approached by a European speaker manufacturer to launch a new brand of high end, wireless speakers in the US market. The company decided only to launch into the online channel, focusing its efforts on selling direct to the consumer and not via retail.  While this made for a more efficient sales model from a cost perspective, it did present a challenge around building brand awareness.

The visibility of a product on the shelf in a retailer, with the ability to interact with it in person, can be a compelling experience that adds to a brand’s awareness and eventual sales.  The “touch and feel” element, along with the experience of the speaker’s sound in person cannot be underplayed for a new brand. The downside of filling the retail channel is of course the product sitting on a shelf, with its revenue being frozen as it waits for a customer to purchase it.

We Implemented a Three-Step Brand Awareness Building Process for Launching this New Brand Online

We worked with our client to overcome the challenges inherent in launching a brand online in a very competitive category by developing a three-step strategy:

1. Raise awareness through display advertising and social media
2. Remarket to consumers who have seen the first “touch” with additional display ads and focused search ads
3. Take advantage of the awareness created by online media, driving the customer directly to the company’s website and giving them the chance to purchase either directly or with a “Buy with Amazon” link.

This approach allowed for the brand to go from being unknown with virtually no sales early in the year to meeting its revenue and margin goals in time for the holiday season.

Step one involved identifying the right target profiles and reaching out to them using the Google Display Network and Facebook.  The client came to the table with a robust profile of who the likely target buyers were based on focus groups and product research. We used that profile to put the ads in front of the right consumer.  The profile shifted over time as dynamic purchase data replaced static research.  This was done by paying close attention to click metrics, time on site, add to cart and other metrics with a focus on marketing channel and campaign attribution using Google Analytics.

As the marketing outreach progressed, we embarked on the second step of launching remarketing programs, testing both marketing channel sources (Facebook, specific sites on the display network, mobile vs. desktop traffic) and geographies.  Over time, the focus of these campaigns was narrowed to a select set of cities that demonstrated a high propensity to buy.

We Discovered Branded Ads Performed Better Than Product Feature Ads

One surprising result of the monitoring and testing of the messaging for search in AdWords was that the branded campaigns performed exceptionally well over time, but the general feature/benefit campaigns remained lackluster. Many of the individual feature/benefit campaigns were paused due to under-performance no matter how much the ads were tested and revised. Paying attention to the data was key in this decision to shift spend to where it performed the best.

The third step in the process, not necessarily linear, was to update the website to optimize it for the traffic once it arrived.  The site went through two iterations in design with input from us, improving overall metrics.  But most importantly, it was recognized early on that a challenge existed with brand recognition and trust for the consumer landing on the site.  This was addressed in two ways: shifting reviews to a more prominent location on the site and by adding the “Buy with Amazon” button in the checkout. This created a level of trust and endorsement from the Amazon brand, as well as allowing for an easy checkout process.

Throughout the campaign, the success metrics, sales, add to carts, time on site and repeat visits were refined and tied to actual revenue.  This allowed for a continual testing program that narrowed focus on supporting what was successful.

Net Revenue Goals Were Achieved in Time for Holiday Sales

The wireless speaker launch and follow-on marketing were very successful by the holiday season despite being part of an incredibly competitive segment of the consumer electronics category. The brand met its goals in both raw unit volume and overall net revenue.  This success of building brand awareness would not have been achieved without a well thought out strategy that had a willingness to revise underlying assumptions and a high degree of flexibility resulting in implementation changes as the market dictated.  Constant testing and refinement of messaging, targeting, ad creative, landing pages and the shopping cart were key to this success. By paying close attention to the real-time results of the marketing initiatives, constantly building off of successes and quickly ending poor performing campaigns, the brand, with our help achieved its goals and positioned the company for future growth.

By John Thyfault, Vice President of Search and Social Media Marketing

Would you like to build your brand’s awareness? Contact us for a free consultation.

Learn about optimizing landing pages to increase sales in this article.

The post Building an Online Only Brand Using Display and Search Advertising appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.

Why it pays to get in on the conversation

Immediacy, affordability and relevancy are only a few of the reasons Twitter advertising offers wide potential for advertisers. Its active user base is huge (300 million). It offers diverse targeting options. And, most important, tweeting is conversational. Users interact immediately, re-tweet what they like (or dislike), share offers and quickly disseminate information to your benefit.

Finally, Twitter advertising is inexpensive. It provides good tracking and analytics and offers decent targeting options. But it is important to remember that things move fast on Twitter. Old news is no-news on this platform. The relevancy of posts can be very ephemeral.

Your ad options with Twitter Advertising

There are three well-proven ad types that have stood the test of time. They are Promoted Accounts, Promoted Trends and Promoted Tweets. Let’s dive straight in to their usage scenarios and benefits.

Promoted Accounts. These are your brand builders. Promoted Accounts help promote your brand or company, in part by letting users know that you are active on Twitter. They can also make your tweets more effective moving forward. Also, they can appear at the top of the “Who to Follow” area when viewed on a desktop. Finally, they appear in line on mobile devices.

Twitter Promoted Account

Furthermore, promoted Accounts can be targeted to specific audiences, based on affinity groups. Or,specific users and those like them (for example followers of @baristabar). Targeting variables include:

• Interests
• Geography
• Gender
• Tailored Audiences
• TV Targeting
• Device Targeting
• Keywords
• Users like your current followers
• Languages
• Users who follow specific influencers

Promoted Trends. These are Twitter’s prime ad real estate. They’re expensive, averaging six figures per day. But they expose you to the widest audience possible as they are seen by millions of users. If you have a product whose promotional phase is top-of-sales-funnel, Promoted Trends are an excellent way to drive mass awareness.

Twitter Promoted Trend

Catching the moment, riding the wave

In Twitter advertising a trend can be anything you want. You create the hashtag. Then, pay to pepper it through other people’s conversations in a specific geographic or demographic target. Make them cool and interesting and people will pick up on them. Pass them around and all of a sudden you’re trending… and viral! Really great Promoted Trends capture the spirit of the moment, der zeitgeist.

True zeitgeist: The Trend people gobbled up

When the lights went off at the 2013 Super Bowl, Oreo had an ace in the hole. Their ad agency’s social marketing team. Literally within 5 minutes these guys conceived and promoted a Twitter trend. It had a cool visual and a simple headline: You can still dunk in the dark.

Oreo’s famous Super Bowl tweet

The Oreo team was monitoring the game looking for any excuse to tweet. Then a faulty electrical relay gave them a perfect opportunity. Half an hour of enforced quiet time shared by millions of people. And the results were tangible. A big spike in sales of Oreos.

Promoted tweets are ideal for engaging audiences beyond your followers.

Promoted Tweets. These are your scouts and infiltrators, sent to engage audiences beyond your followers. Additionally, you can broadcast them to current followers. Promoted tweets enable you to promote offers and include links to optimized landing pages. Typically one-shot promotions, they don’t have much staying power. But the right offers and call to action can make them measurable and monetizable.

Lead Generation Cards: Capturing Your Leads & Audience Interest

Twitter’s Lead Generation Cards make it simple for users to respond to your Promoted Tweets, Trends and Accounts. Here’s how they work:

1. You add Lead Generation Cards to your account
2. When a user hits your Tweet, it expands to show a description of your offer. In addition, a call to action PLUS a pre-filled form featuring their name and email address.
3. The user simply clicks a button to respond to your offer and send the above information to you.

Lead Generation Cards are excellent for promoting things like product clubs. However, if you’re going that route be sure to include a privacy policy. It’s not only best practice; it’s reassuring your user. You can choose between Cost Per Lead (CPL) or Cost Per Thousand (CPM). Note: The latter can get prohibitively expensive.

A Twitter Lead Generation Card

Analytics

Twitter advertising includes a dashboard providing good information on engagements, engagement rates, likes and link clicks. Some of the questions the Tweet Activity Dashboard can help answer include:

• First, how many impressions do my Tweets receive?
• Which of my Tweets resonates best with my target audience?
• How do my Tweet metrics break out by organic and promoted activity?
• How does my recent performance compare to past results?
• Lastly, do my engagement metrics break down by type?

Again, it’s not super comprehensive. But you can drill down far enough to see who’s interacting with your brand. And, how they’re interacting and what’s hitting their hot buttons.

Always remember that the power to target with pinpoint accuracy is the #1 advantage you enjoy with any social media advertising. Twitter may be conversational in nature – but precision targeting is key to profitable conversations.

Feel free to share this blog, Twitter Advertising – Social Media Advertising Series, Part 4. We only ask that when shared no changes are made, and credits are given to the authors.

John Thyfault

Laurie B. Beasley

The post Twitter Advertising – Social Media Advertising appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.

Designed specifically for professionals, LinkedIn is built from the ground up for delivering business-focused content to its community. Users provide high levels of information about their professional lives and LinkedIn advertising offers a wide range of targeting – providing everything you need to run B2B ads with pinpoint accuracy.

Unique, 360° coverage when it comes to reaching users.

While it’s frowned on to check your Facebook or Twitter accounts at work, LinkedIn is in a different category. This makes it possible to reach users who are checking LinkedIn before work, during, and after, with time-relevant messaging whether they are at the desktop or on a smartphone.

Plus, amazing targeting options and low CPM with LinedIn advertising

LinkedIn advertising offers two million targeting options, whose scope is remarkably diverse in terms of interests and viewpoints. And its CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions) is low: At an average price of $0.75, LinkedIn can be a highly cost-effective option.

LinkedIn Ads: Options and considerations

Before we get into your ad options, a few important considerations:

1. Apply the best practices mentioned in our previous post: Define goals and metrics; create daily and lifetime budgets; research your audience and target appropriately; respect privacy concerns; stay on target.
2. LinkedIn ads are much more affected by social sharing and ranking than on Facebook. Your Ad will have a much bigger effect when somebody shares it.
3. LinkedIn advertising is very appropriate for companies with long sales cycles. Many advertisers use it to encourage people to interact with their brands to build awareness and legitimacy.

So what are your options for LinkedIn advertising? Essentially, there are two:

Basic ads and Sponsored Updates. Basic ads appear in the right-hand column of users’ feeds, as in the screen capture below. Sponsored Updates, as you see, appear in the middle of a user’s feed. Let’s begin by describing their advantages first.

Sponsored Update is highlighted on the left. Basic ad is highlighted on the right.

Sponsored Updates. As users engage with content from news sites, professional connections and brands, Sponsored Updates bring you into the conversation front and center – posting right in the middle of their member feeds. You can combine text and visuals, and include videos. The only option for reaching mobile users, they appear in the member feeds on tablets and smartphones. Basic ads, because of their placement in the right column, won’t show up.

Important Note: You first need a Company Page to create Sponsored Updates!

A Company Page increases the visibility of your business and enables you to have followers.

Sponsored Updates support likes, shares, comments and follows – bringing the opportunity for third party validation from friends and colleagues. Here’s where you can engage users with offers for white papers, webinars and podcasts to build awareness, create ongoing engagements and establish relationships.

Bear in mind that users can dislike your ads and make negative comments. So don’t think of them as a way to makes quick sales. Consider them as long-term relationship builders.

Basic ads. These won’t appear on smartphones or tablets, but they do provide a quick way to promote offers. At their simplest they are text only, but for a little extra spend you can include simple videos, images and social options. Don’t dismiss basic ads, though: Target right and message well and you can get good results. They’re also more affordable than Sponsored Updates.

Building effective ads In LinkedIn advertising

Both basic text ads and Sponsored Updates offer complete bid and budget control, and good targeting and content options. Here are the basic steps:

Step One: Create Your Ad

LinkedIn’s interface walks you through building your ad. Click the appropriate fields to name your campaign, choose ad type and format, and then enter the headline, copy and the destination your ad takes users to.

Step Two: Target Your Audience

Now it’s time to apply the homework you’ve done on your target audience. Start pointing and clicking on the options; pop-up windows offer layer after layer of ever-more granular options enabling you to click to exactly the users you want to reach.

Step Three: Your LinkedIn Advertising Budget

Remember to create those minimum and lifetime budgets! The minimum daily budget is $10. And you can bid on either a Cost Per Click or Cost Per Thousand Impressions (CPM) basis. Prices range from $2.01 to $2.47 and you’ll see a minimum suggested bid.

Important: The look and messaging of your lander needs to connect people immediately with your ad!

The best ad in the world won’t do you any good if the landing page it leads to doesn’t instantly pay it off in respondents’ minds. And we mean instantly. Because if there’s any dissonance, viewers will hesitate before reading on. And he who hesitates is lost to you, the advertiser. So make sure things match up and pay off!

One final thought: Consider the LinkedIn Client Service Team

If you have the budget, LinkedIn advertising has the team for you: The LinkedIn Client Services Team. They’re expensive. But they will come up with creative ideas that will help ensure your campaign’s success. Plus, they’ll work with you to create richer, more customized options than are available with self-service.

Feel free to share this blog, LinkedIn Advertising – Best Practices, How to Use Basic Ads and Sponsored Updates. We only ask that when shared no changes are made, and credits are given to the authors.

About the Authors

John Thyfault

Laurie B. Beasley

The post LinkedIn Advertising – Best Practices, How to Use Basic Ads and Sponsored Updates appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.

Before focusing on Facebook advertising best practices: Justify your budget with the reasons it pays to advertise on social media’s biggest platform.

Facebook is more than the world’s biggest social network. Its targeting options are incredible and audience saturation is huge.

And as with all social media advertising, you enjoy cost-saving opportunities.

To sum it up: (1) Facebook’s reach hits more people than any other U.S. advertising media. (2) Its targeting options enable you to get seriously micro-granular when reaching out to its users. (3) Low minimum spends let you play on Facebook for as little as $50. (4) It’s the least expensive social media advertising available, with an average cost per thousand impressions of $0.25.

So now that we’ve seen the whys for Facebook advertising, let’s explore best practices. And, how to employ them in creating ads.

Facebook Advertising Best Practices

1. Micro Target

Facebook lets you layer targeting options one on top of another, making your audience more and more specific. Use this to reduce your audience into small sets that you can test against each other.

2. Track Conversions

Track ad conversions by adding a Facebook tracking pixel to your website. It enables the platform to automatically track click-through rates and conversions and provide you the metrics.

3. Use Auto Optimization

Facebook has auto-optimization features for optimizing conversions. Therefore, set your goal and Facebook will auto-optimize the ads and the targeting to achieve the highest performance.

4. Try Low Cost Conversions

Facebook supports you in getting lower cost conversions. Such as those where you can experiment with driving demand but not fulfilling it.

5. Finally, Use High Quality Images

And not just high resolution files, but original photography and graphics, too. The closer an image reflects your messaging and your audience’s lifestyle, the better your response and conversions.

TIPS

When you can, feature people in your Facebook ads. Lifestyle appeal tends to work well.

How to create Ads. But first we need to explore your biggest asset: Targeting.

Facebook advertising best practices includes precision targeting, which is what Facebook is all about. Therefore, let’s zoom in on some of your strongest options.

Life Events

People’s personal and business lives are riddled with milestones they share on Facebook as Life Events. As a result you can match your campaigns to virtually every conceivable kind of Life Event. The reason, users tend to post almost all of them on their timelines.

Match your campaigns to users’ lives with Life Events.

Custom Audiences

Your best new business often comes from old business. Custom Audiences helps you nurture leads and build loyalty by connecting with existing contacts and customers. This reinforces your brand and increases lifetime customer value, order frequency, and loyalty.

Create a custom audience by uploading your customer phone or email list in CSV or TXT format to Facebook.

Lookalikes: Your Audience Multiplier

Lookalikes let you rapidly create audiences that look like current customers or targets. Just upload your email or phone list to find a Lookalike audience that mirrors your current one. Also, you can use your Facebook following to create Lookalikes.

Psychographics

Demographics describe who users are, where they are and what they do. While Psychographics explain the whys. Understand these and you can expand your advertising to a wider range of audiences and micro-target within them. For example, include interests, occupations, life roles (mother, father, mentor), spending habits and values.

Getting creative with Facebook.

OK, we’re nearly ready for a walk through of building your ads using Facebook Ad Creator and Facebook Power Editor. But first let’s look at the types of Facebook ads offered:

Marketplace Ads

These standard Facebook ads are a good starting point for most small businesses. They appear on the right sidebar of your Facebook newsfeed.

Marketplace Ad

Page Post Ads.

Page Posts display on users’ newsfeeds like status posts. They’re big and prominent, but remember: Your messaging needs to be spot-on relevant.

Page Post Ad

Sponsored Stories.

These show up in a user’s newsfeed if a friend engaged with the sponsor’s Facebook page – an implied endorsement if you will. But importantly, like Page Posts, they’re prominent.

Promoted Posts.

Promoted Posts display just like Sponsored Stories. They’re only shown to your existing fans and your existing fans’ friends. But they are a great way to make sure fans see your ads.

Sponsored Story

Premium Ads.

Lastly, Premium Ads. Premium ads run only on users’ homepages and feature “friend” information (i.e. you and ten friends like this). Plus, Facebook only shows one ad at a time. Therefore, spend is high: $5,000 a month minimum.

Premium Ad

Ad Creator: 10 Steps to Your Ad.

Ad Creator lets you create ads easily and with a decent level of targeting granularity. The steps are the same for all of the Facebook ads we’ve discussed. In this example we’ll setup a Marketplace Ad.

Step 1. First, find and click the “Create an Ad” button in Facebook.

Step 2. Next, choose your goal or objective.

Step 3. Upload photos for your ad.

Step 4. Connect your brand’s Facebook page.

Step 5. Add your headline and description.

Step 6. View how your ad will look.

Step 7. Create your audience.

Step 8. Create your account and campaign settings.

Step 9. Add your campaign optimization settings. Then hit “Review Order”.

Step 10. Finally, place your order and pay for your ad.

Facebook Power Editor

What’s the difference between Power Editor and Ad Creator?
There’s not a lot to know about Ad Creator. It gets you where you need to go – slowly, but surely. But with Power Creator there is plenty to know. Understand its features and you can do in minutes what would take hours. And, create far more effective Facebook ads.

But don’t worry, Power Creator isn’t complicated…

Duplication
The Duplicate Button lets you create multiple versions of a campaign, set of ads, or a single ad. Imagine you have one campaign and you want to test it according to two different targets. Just highlight that ad, hit Duplicate and you’ve got two identical ad sets.

Unpublished Page Posts
This enables you to create ads for the news feed that look like Facebook posts, but without showing up on your Facebook page.

Custom and Lookalike Audiences
We’ve spoken to these but here’s a recap. Custom Audiences let you upload current customer lists using email addresses or phone numbers. In contrast, Lookalike Audiences let you target users similar to your customers.

Saved Audiences
This feature allows you to save and reuse targeting groups.

Mobile Device Targeting
Remember, only Power Editor enables you to show your ads to users of specific mobile devices and platforms.

But remember, whatever type of ad you’re running, relevancy to the user is key.

Feel free to share this blog, Facebook Advertising Best Practices, and How to Use Facebook Ad Creator and Facebook Power Editor. We only ask that when shared no changes are made, and credits are given to the authors.

About the Authors

* * * *

John Thyfault

This post was authored by John Thyfault, Vice President of Search & Social Strategy, and Laurie B. Beasley, President of Beasley Direct & Online Marketing.

* * * *

Laurie B. Beasley

The post Facebook Advertising Best Practices, and How to Create Ads Using Ad Creator and Power Editor appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.

]]>