Best practices for newsfeed page post ads
Published: September 14, 2012
Author: Molly Shotwell
Today’s post is by Franco Puetz, Social Ads Manager for Veterans United Home Loans. Franco has used his innovative practices to build a 1.8 million-member social media following for Veterans United. Connect with Franco on Twitter or on Google+.
If you are interested in substantially raising your success in directing traffic off of Facebook with an extremely high CTR, then this article is for you. It is a strategy that isn’t immediately apparent to most Facebook advertisers, but with a little creativity in how you use the tools available to you, generating successful campaigns leading traffic off of Facebook will be a breeze.
Regardless of how awesome your targeting is, or how captivating your ad creative seems, some users refuse to let their eyes drift over to the right side of their screen when they visit Facebook. As advertisers, we have the habit of positioning ourselves in front of the consumer’s eyes; our success depends on it! Instead of spending copious amounts of energy trying to veer your potential customer’s eyes to the right side of the page, I encourage you to pick your creativity up and jump directly in front of them, right on their precious newsfeed!
Landing your posts in the newsfeed not only ensures that your ad will actually be seen more often, it allows your ads to show up on the users’ mobile devices – which is an entirely different jackpot to be enjoyed by advertisers. Facebook’s users have had a number of years to adapt to the ads located to the right of their newsfeed, but seeing as how newsfeed ads are a new addition (and a vastly unhampered addition at that), the success rates experienced when advertising in this space properly are absolutely fantastic.
I will walk you through the process of getting your News Feed ad started below in four easy steps:
Step 1: Create a Backdated Post
Let me begin by saying that your post doesn’t have to be backdated, this just helps page admins avoid disrupting their content flow by throwing an advertisement in front of their current users. Each page post ad only displays in the user’s news feed once, during the time frame selected on your wall, so if they see it and don’t interact with it, they don’t have to look at it every time they look at your page.
This technique does spur engagement on that particular post. If users are saying great things about the product you are offering directly on the post containing the link, your conversion rate is increased even further. Make sure you are checking the comments and engaging with the customers asking questions, as this will show potential customers that you are available to help them.
Creation-wise, you want to design your post with a strong call to action that will lead your users to your landing page, or possibly your online store that has the item(s) being advertised on the other side of your link.
After designing your message, click the clock icon at the bottom left of your post and select a date at least two months in the past to make sure it doesn’t show up on your current wall. This time frame could be much longer or shorter depending upon how often you post new content.
Finally, make sure you check the ‘hide from newsfeed’ option so your users don’t have to see this ad multiple times and feel as if they are being spammed.
Step 2: Get the Page Post ID
After creating your post, you will need to find the post’s ID, which will be used to tell Facebook’s Power Editor which post we will be advertising.
You find this ID by locating the post you just created and clicking the date listed below the title of your page.
Once you click the date on your post, look at the number displayed at the end of the URL for the page you are directed to; this is your page post ID.
Without collecting this ID, you are restricted to Facebook’s limited selection of your most recent posts. Save this page post ID for the following step.
Step 3: Create Your Page Post Ad
You should be all too familiar with the targeting used to reach your desired demographic. How you target your users is entirely up to you; I’ve seen the greatest success in sending users who have already ‘liked’ our page off-site, but this strategy is also effective when targeting users who haven’t already ‘liked’ your Facebook page.
Your settings should resemble the following image in Power Editor under the ‘Creative’ tab – you will obviously replace the current Page Post ID with the one you found in step 2.
Step 4: News Feed-Only Placement
Once you’ve crafted your ad targeting to your liking, wander over to the ‘Placement’ tab. Here you will find the option to select the ‘News Feed Only’ radio button. This is where your ad will thrive, so I highly encourage you to select this option.
From here, you have the option to advertise to desktop users exclusively, mobile users exclusively, or both. If you don’t have a landing page optimized for mobile devices, you may want to stick to just using the desktop option for now. If you do have a landing page that can handle mobile traffic, you should thoroughly enjoy the results you see from placing this ad in front of Facebook’s mobile users! I encourage you to test different options and find out what works best for you.
Facebook provides advertisers with so many tools and different ways to be creative on their platform. If you want to see unique results in your campaigns, develop unique ways to deliver your message to Facebook’s users. There are a number of new advertising products being released on Facebook, which means a slew of new ways to be innovative. Now is such a great time to be wrapped up in Facebook advertising!
– Franco Puetz
