Are you taking advantage of the most recent Facebook features?
Want to know how to improve your Facebook marketing?
Staying on top of the latest Facebook updates will help your business get better results.
Here are five ways to incorporate recently revealed Facebook features into your marketing.
#1: Craft Multi-Product Ads
Traditional Facebook ads include an image, a headline, post text, a description and a display URL. Each ad has a unique landing page.
Facebook now offers the ability to create multi-product (also known as carousel) ads, which allow you to rotate several products in one ad. Each product has its own title, image and landing page. All products share the same text and social (like, comment and share) buttons.
Set up these Facebook ads only using the API or Facebook’s Power Editor. While you’re able to add two or more images to the multi-product ads, the best practice is to test to find out what number of displayed products maximizes your conversion rate.
Here’s how the Ad tab of your editor looks while you’re creating a multi-product ad:
There are a few things to keep in mind when creating a multi-product ad. First of all, keep the headline and description text short so they’ll fit the screen. For best results, limit your headline to 25 characters and your link description to 30. As per other ads on Facebook, you can’t have more than 20% text in the image. You can measure the ratio using the Facebook Grid Tool.
Remember, multi-product ads work on a square dimension of 600 x 600 pixels (both for desktop and mobile ads), so don’t use large, wide images. Multi-product ads only run on the news feed and are not allowed in the right column of Facebook.
#2: Add Featured Videos
Facebook is making a big push for video content. It hit 1 billion video views per day in September.
One of Facebook’s latest updates is encouraging pages to upload a featured video and show it prominently to people when they visit your Video tab.
It’s easy to set up a featured video. Simply click Videos in the tab below your page’s cover photo. Note: Your videos might be in the More section. Upload videos if you haven’t already done so. Then, click Add Featured Video.
Featured videos effectively bring attention to your page.
#3: Create Video Playlists
Facebook has also created video playlists, which should engage users to watch and share more content.
Setting up your video playlist is easy. Just click Videos in the tab below your page’s cover photo (which you may find in the More section). Then select Create Playlist.
Now, add a title and description and click Next.
Select the videos you want to add to your playlist and click Next.
Now, click and drag videos to order them and select Create Playlist.
Your video tab will now display one section with your playlists and one section for all videos. This is an excellent way to group and share themed or topical video content.
#4: Customize Advanced Remarketing Features
While custom audiences have been around for a while, Facebook recently rolled out advanced features that allow you to customize remarketing audiences even more.
In addition to people visiting any or specific pages of your site, Facebook added two preset options. These are designed to make it easy to create lists that exclude conversion pages or to try to bring people back into the funnel after their first visit.
One of Facebook’s preset options is for “people visiting specific web pages but not others.”
The other preset is for “people who haven’t visited in a certain amount of time.”
There are some best practices you can incorporate to take advantage of these advanced segmentations. Create promotions to attract people who visited your site but did not yet buy. Also, give visitors information that supplements what they already know; added value may help conversions.
Finally, set up list sizes that make sense for your business. For example, if your business has clients who make fast decisions, even 30 days may be too long. However, if your clients take part in a lengthy decision-making process, you can increase the list size to up 180 days, and keep your business in the front of their minds.
#5: Explore Dynamic Product Ads
Facebook is rolling out dynamic product ads for advertising accounts. This feature, currently available only using the API, enables you to promote relevant products from your entire catalog on any device.
This ad type is going to show items to Facebook users based on what products they have seen on your website or mobile app.
This approach is similar to a remarketing campaign, but with a couple of add-ons. Facebook will show additional products that might be of interest to the user. Plus, you will be able to use lookalike audiences to expand your reach. This means that you can have Facebook match people who are interested in a product with other Facebook users with similar profiles, since they could potentially be interested in products from your catalog.
Finally, dynamic product ad campaigns will be automated, so there will be no need to manually create ads for your products.
Even though Facebook dynamic product ads are available only to selected partners, Facebook announced they will be available via the Power Editor very soon.
Conclusion
Test all of the newly available Facebook features to find out what works best for you and your business.
What do you think? Have you tried advanced remarketing or multi-platform ads? Do you have access to dynamic product ads yet? Are you utilizing the Facebook video features? How are they working for you? Please share your thoughts and experience in the comments.