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Maximize Your Facebook Ad ROI With These Three Proven Strategies

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By Jonathan Durante

Imagine you’re standing at the edge of a bustling marketplace where billions of potential customers are shopping. In this digital age, that marketplace is none other than Facebook, a vibrant hub of connections, interests and endless possibilities. It’s here that businesses big and small vie for attention, hoping to captivate the hearts and minds of their target audience.

But amid the flurry of ads competing for attention, how can you ensure that your Facebook advertising campaigns stand out from the crowd? How can you unlock the secret to maximizing your return on investment and turn your advertising efforts into a flourishing success story?

Below I’ll share three proven strategies that will help you navigate the dynamic realm of Facebook ads. My agency uses these strategies to guide our clients toward success.

1. Change Your Creative Frequently

Frequently changing your creative is important for keeping people engaged with your ads and getting more clicks. It helps keep things fresh for potential customers, so they will not get ad fatigue from being bombarded with ads featuring the same message or visuals every time they scroll through their social media feeds.

Changing your ads up also provides you with the opportunity to experiment with different types of content and gain valuable insights into what works best for your target audience. Try creating several variations of your ad creative, testing each one for a period of time and then switching it out for something else.

This will allow you to make more informed decisions when creating future campaigns, which will ultimately lead to higher ROI from your advertising efforts. By regularly modifying and testing different ad content, you can ensure that you are always making the most of your campaigns and getting the best possible results.

2. Use Strong Calls To Action

Effective calls to action can increase your click-through rate and drive conversions. They help guide potential customers through the sales process and encourage them to take actions, such as making a purchase or signing up for an email list. So make sure to include a CTA in every ad you create. This could be something as simple as “Sign up now,” “Learn more today” or “Get started here.” Make sure your CTAs are clear, concise and direct. Keep them simple, but use powerful language to encourage people to take action.

Another key tip is to create urgency. Include phrases like “Get it now,” “Limited time offer” or “Ends soon” to prompt people to act quickly before the opportunity passes.

Try experimenting with different CTAs and tones of voice in order to see what resonates best with your target audience. Remember, a strong CTA can be the difference between a successful and unsuccessful campaign.

3. Scale Your Budget Incrementally

If your ad campaigns are successful, you may be tempted to scale up the budget quickly. However, it’s usually best to take a slower approach and test each budget increase before committing fully. This will help ensure that you don’t overspend on campaigns that aren’t performing well and will also give you a better idea of the budget you need for maximum success.

Start with a small budget and gradually increase it as you get more data on the effectiveness of your campaigns. Analyse the data to identify areas where you can improve, and then adjust your budget accordingly. Scaling gradually by 10%-20% is a good rule of thumb we use at my agency.

As you start to see results, you can increase your budget more aggressively. Remember, digital advertising is a science—take your time and be patient to maximize your ROI.

Stand Out To Make Your Ad Dollars Count

In the vast virtual marketplace of Facebook, where billions of potential customers roam, it’s critical to make your advertising campaigns stand out. Refresh your ad creative frequently, and experiment with various visual styles and copy techniques to discover what works best for your audience. Use compelling CTAs to motivate users to take action. Lastly, don’t overlook the importance of strategically scaling your budget over time. Make every ad dollar count.

Feature Image Credit: getty

By Jonathan Durante

Co-founder at Expandify Marketing, a leading digital marketing agency. Read Jonathan Durante’s full executive profile here.

Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website.

Sourced from Forbes

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Facebook, Instagram face Norwegian ban from tracking users for ads

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By Clothilde Goujard

Meta’s social media platforms will be barred from behavioural advertising in August.

Social media giants Facebook and Instagram will soon be temporarily banned in Norway from tracking users online to target them with advertising.

The Norwegian Data Protection Authority ordered U.S. technology firm Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, to stop showing users in Norway personalized ads based on their online activity and estimated locations. The ban kicks in from August, according to an order obtained exclusively by POLITICO and sent to Meta on July 14.

Meta’s advertising practice on Facebook and Instagram currently involves the “processing of very private and sensitive personal data through highly opaque and intrusive monitoring and profiling operations,” wrote Norway’s Datatilsynet agency.

The ban on so-called behavioural advertising will last three months, starting from August 4. Facebook and Instagram will be able to show people customized ads but only based on information given by users in the “about” section of their profiles.

Meta will face daily fines of 1 million Norwegian Krone (€89,500) if it doesn’t comply with the order.

The temporary ban could be lifted if Meta finds a way to legally process personal data and give users the rights to opt out of targeted advertising based on tracking, the order said.

The restriction comes after the Court of Justice of the European Union on July 4 ruled that Meta was unlawfully collecting people’s data to target them with ads without their explicit consent and based on the firm’s “legitimate interest.”

Meta is also currently under scrutiny from its lead privacy regulator, the Irish Data Protection Commission, over its advertising practices. The Dublin-based authority fined the social media company in January a total of €390 million for infringing Europeans’ privacy. It ordered Meta to find a new legal basis for its business model. The tech company has appealed the decision.

The Irish Data Protection Commission plans on making a decision on Meta’s legal basis for its targeted advertising operations “by no later than mid-August,” said the agency’s Deputy Commissioner and Spokesperson Graham Doyle.

The Irish regulator oversees Meta under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) for the whole of Europe because the tech company has its regional headquarters there. Other European countries such as Norway are able to issue national decisions for a time limit of three months in a “case of urgency” under the GDPR.

“The persistent state of non-compliance following the [Irish] decisions demand[s] immediate action to protect the rights and freedoms of European data subjects,” wrote the Norwegian data agency in its order.

The Norwegian regulator is the first European privacy authority to severely restrict Meta’s data-driven business following the EU’s top court ruling. It said it also plans to request an urgent binding decision from the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) — the region’s network of privacy regulators — to decide on final measures.

The Irish Data Protection Commission said it has consulted with other European authorities and sent them a provisional assessment of Meta’s compliance with the GDPR for targeted advertising following the new court ruling. Authorities have until July 21 to make their submissions to the Irish DPC, Doyle said.

In a response, Matt Pollard, spokesperson for Meta, said: “The debate around legal bases has been ongoing for some time and businesses continue to face a lack of regulatory certainty in this area … We continue to constructively engage with the Irish DPC, our lead regulator in the EU, regarding our compliance with its decision. We will review the Norway DPA’s decision, and there is no immediate impact to our services.”

Feature Image Credit: Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty Images

By Clothilde Goujard

Sourced from Politico

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The power of Facebook – can it really be on the wane, asks media expert John Jewell

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By John Jewell

Remaining relevant will be key as other platforms such as TikTok surge in popularity…

I doubt whether this will come as much of a surprise to anyone, but the ubiquity of Facebook continues, seemingly unbound. At the beginning of this year the company, since 2021 rebranded under the name of Meta, released figures which placed it’s number of monthly active users at 2.8 billion worldwide. This figure is made all the more remarkable by the fact that it doesn’t include users for either WhatsApp or Instagram, which are also owned by Facebook.

In global terms, India has the biggest overall number of users with 351 million. Which, as online statistics company Statista says, if India’s Facebook audience were a country then it would be ranked third in terms of largest population worldwide. In the US, 71.43% of the country spend time on Facebook, in the UK the number is 66%. In terms of time spent using the platform, the average user will spend is 33 minutes a day on it, three hours 15 minutes a week and 16 hours 30 minutes a month.

The impact of Facebook upon the lives of those who engage with it is remarkable. It is, in fact, a massive database of information which collects vast quantities of personal material. Facebook records everything that’s done. Everything that’s favoured, every single page visited, every profile. Think of what is personally volunteered when someone signs up: name, age, marital status, city of residence, employment and education, all these details are harvested and stored. This information can then be used.

It’s not sold on to advertisers as such, Facebook says. It states on the online help desk: “We don’t sell your information. Instead, based on the information that we have, advertisers and other partners pay us to show you personalised ads on the Facebook family of apps and technologies.”

However, as the New York Times reported in 2018: “Facebook can learn almost anything about you by using artificial intelligence to analyse your behaviour,” said Peter Eckersley, the chief computer scientist for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights non-profit organisation in the US. “That knowledge turns out to be perfect both for advertising and propaganda.”

Over the years the company has found itself at the centre of major scandals involving what it does with user data. The most high profile of these occurred in 2018 when the Observer newspaper revealed that Cambridge Analytica, a UK-based consultancy firm, had used the personal data of millions of US Facebook subscribers to build profiles of potential voters for the successful presidential campaign of Donald Trump in 2016.

And just a matter of days ago, Ireland’s Data Protection Commission, which acts for the European Union, announced that it had fined the company 1.2 billion euros for transferring information from its European users to its US servers. In one of the biggest fines of its kind ever delivered, the ruling, according to the Columbian Journalism Review, calls into question “not just Facebook’s data-collection apparatus—and the multi-billion-dollar business model that it supports—but the similar data-handling and monetisation practices of almost every other global social network and online service”.

So, despite the mind-bending usage figures quoted at the beginning of this article, and the fact the net worth of Facebook is around $320 billion in 2023, there are signs that it is in decline. Indeed, in 2018 it lost around one million users in Europe and, in the US, it’s market share among social networks dropped to 50.8% from 54.3% in 2019.

In the UK, usage has been steadily dwindling for some years. The Daily Telegraph reported in July 2019 that “the number of online interactions made on Facebook’s mobile app in the UK plummeted by 38 percent between June 2018 and June 2019”.

So, why are Briton’s leaving the platform? There are a number of reasons, some of them explored by Mark Whitehead of Aberystwyth University. He has found that the public scandals Facebook has been involved in, contrary to his own assumptions, are rarely the “primary reasons for leaving the network”. Some explanations are relatable and perhaps speak of a growing distrust of social media in general. People are asking: Why am I spending time and so much energy constantly comparing my life with others?

Amongst the younger generations the issue is choice. Teenagers, who let’s remember have grown up with the online world as a constant companion, see Facebook as outdated and the area where their parents gather. Instagram, also owned by Facebook’s parent company, is clearly much more geared toward younger users. It has a basic, understandable design which focusses on imagery rather than self-involved narrative.

Then there is the Chinese-owned phenomenon of TikTok. TikTok allows its aficionados to make and broadcast short videos. It is unbelievably popular with 18-to-24 age range. Forty percent of its users are in that age bracket and it is now the most downloaded of all the apps – more than three billion times, in fact.

So, whilst some may say that the age of social media is in entering its death throes, the popularity of the newer forms, with an evolving audience, suggests otherwise. And maybe Facebook will find a way to stay relevant. After all, its global range and presence is startling. It also offers so many things that its younger competitors don’t. It still appeals to people of all ages – and we all grow up, unfortunately.

 

Feature Image Credit: Western Mail

By John Jewell

Sourced from WalesOnline

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10 Top AI Content Marketing Tools: Use These To Get Free Traffic Without Paying Google or Facebook a Cent

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By Jeff Bullas

Free traffic. It is the digital marketer’s nirvana. Get eyeballs for zero cost and then turn that into sales and revenue. The big question: Do these new AI content marketing tools provide the answer?

Why it matters

At the beginning of the web revolution if you wanted traffic for free then you needed to master the search engine game. Create great content and get ranked on the first page of Google.

Then there was a new game in town.

Social media.

Social media offered another option. They gave that attention away for free (for a while) until they realized that they could change the game… from free attention to “pay to play”.

Since then it has been a dance of creating content that gets attention while making sure you keep Google and social media happy.

And that is hard work. Or is it?

Google was the only game in the digital town until social media showed up.

Social media offered the keys to the promised land. Build followers and get a shit load of attention and traffic for free. But that time is over.

We now need to spend to send.

Our content.

To the masses.

So…

That paradise looked like it would continue for eternity.

Until it didn’t.

The other reality is that creating content at scale and distributing it to the world is tough. It takes time, money, and resources.

We now have a new revolution and it is a firestorm.

And here is some perspective.

Facebook took over 5 years to reach 100 million users. TikTok took 18 months and Chat GPT took only 8 weeks.

Going deeper

Now we have the new kid on the block.

ChatGPT.

This is a generational game changer.

First, we had Google.

Then we had Social media.

Now we have “Generative AI”

The innovative Generative AI platform, ChatGPT, provides an easy solution for creating high-quality content that can be quickly optimized for search engines. With its cutting-edge tools, ChatGPT enables users to effortlessly generate optimized content in a snap.

The new top 10 AI content marketing tools

Here is the top 10 AI content marketing tools that can help businesses improve their search engine rankings and optimize their content for better visibility online.

These tools use artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms to analyze and optimize content for relevant keywords, readability, and other SEO factors.

Surfer SEO

An AI-driven content optimization tool that uses data-driven insights to analyze content and provide recommendations for optimizing SEO factors such as keyword usage, content length, and heading structure.

SEMRush

A comprehensive SEO toolkit that offers AI-powered content optimization features, such as topic research, content templates, and SEO writing assistance, to help optimize content for search engines.

Yoast SEO

A popular WordPress plugin that offers AI-powered content optimization features, including keyword analysis, readability checks, and content suggestions to help improve on-page SEO.

Clearscope

A content optimization platform that uses AI to analyze content and provide insights on keyword usage, content relevance, and competitor analysis, to help businesses optimize their content for SEO.

MarketMuse

An AI-driven content optimization platform that offers content analysis, topic modeling, and content recommendations to help businesses create optimized content that ranks well in search engines.

Frase

A content optimization tool that uses AI to analyze content and provide insights on keyword usage, content gaps, and competitor analysis, to help businesses create high-performing content for SEO.

Textmetrics

A content optimization platform that uses AI to analyze and optimize content for SEO, including keyword analysis, content structure, and readability, to help businesses create content that is search engine-friendly.

WordLift

An AI-powered content optimization tool that uses natural language processing (NLP) to analyze content and provide recommendations for improving SEO, including entity recognition, structured data markup, and content enrichment.

CognitiveSEO

A comprehensive SEO tool that offers content optimization features, including keyword analysis, content performance tracking, and content ideas generation, to help businesses optimize their content for search engines.

ContentKing

An SEO auditing tool that offers content optimization features, including content analysis, keyword tracking, and content suggestions, to help businesses optimize their content for SEO.

The future of content marketing is happening now

In the beginning, content marketing was primarily driven by the realization that generating high-quality content can aid in the discovery of businesses on Google search.

By providing valuable and informative content, businesses were able to build trust with potential customers, leading to increased sales. This approach was commonly referred to as “inbound marketing.”

When it started it was the wild west and raw. There were hardly any tools apart from a blog and some rough and ready SEO tools.

Today we have content publishing platforms, AI-enabled SEO optimization tools that help create content that is designed to be found in search (SurferSEO), and sophisticated SEO tools like SEMRush that are also assisted by Artificial Intelligence technology.

You can now use all these tools to create SEO-optimized content that will help you rank high on Google and get the free traffic we all want.

By Jeff Bullas

He is the owner of jeffbullas.com. Forbes calls him a top influencer of Chief Marketing Officers and the world’s top social marketing talent. Entrepreneur lists him among 50 online marketing influencers to watch. Inc.com has him on the list of 20 digital marketing experts to follow on Twitter. Oanalytica named him #1 Global Content Marketing Influencer. BizHUMM ranks him as the world’s #1 business blogger. Learn More

Sourced from Jeffbullas.com

 

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Mark Zuckerberg Ends the Tech Party

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The CEO of Meta Platforms announces a new day in tech: conventional normality.

The party’s over.

In tech, this amounts to saying that the cool and Zen culture marked by an office transformed into a cosy lounge is over. Used to be we came, we entered and we were at home. The fridge was full; everyone helped themselves. The buffet was permanent.

The employee was in the centre. Work-life balance was the principle. The well-being of the employee came first. Companies were required to do everything to put their employees at ease to get the best out of them.

No more.

It’s all a distant memory now, says Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta Platforms  (META) – Get Free Report. Welcome to the real world, he proclaimed on March 14.

The social media emperor just announced the elimination of 10,000 additional jobs, after 11,000 jobs were cut last November. In all, the parent of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp has cut 21,000 jobs in four months.

‘Year of Efficiency’

It’s not just the cuts themselves that’s striking here. It’s the tone with which Zuckerberg announced the new wave of austerity measures. He adopted the vernacular of the boss of an old-economy company. He was a cost-killer. He was cold. It’s isn’t personal; it’s just business. He was a normal boss.

“In our Year of Efficiency, we are focused on cancelling projects that are duplicative or lower priority and making every organization as lean as possible,” Zuckerberg wrote in a blog post.

He continued: “As part of the Year of Efficiency, we’re focusing on returning to a more optimal ratio of engineers to other roles. It’s important for all groups to get leaner and more efficient to enable our technology groups to get as lean and efficient as possible.”

He used the word “efficiency” fully a dozen times, including three times in the first two paragraphs. These two paragraphs are a catch-all of classic corporate lingo that says everything and nothing: “improve our financial performance,” “difficult environment,” “execute,” “optimize,” “workstreams,” “processes,” “changes,” “uncertainty,” and “focus.”

He sounds like the CEO of a traditional company. His post is a manual, a guide that other tech CEOs will use as well.

The tone is cold. And it changed. In November, when Zuckerberg announced the elimination of 11,000 jobs, he played the sensitive chord. He apologized.

“I want to take accountability for these decisions and for how we got here,” the CEO said at the time. “I know this is tough for everyone, and I’m especially sorry to those impacted.”

This time, there is none of that. He is not sentimental, as if to put a wall between him and those for whom the music just stopped and who were asked to go home while the evening was in full swing. He just killed the fun.

A New Normal

Tech and Silicon Valley now enter the normal corporate world. In this world, what matters is to please the markets. And markets like cost cuts. The employee is secondary. If you make big profits with the least possible cost, the markets applaud.

Interestingly, Zuckerberg’s announcements come at the same time as the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, a major player in the startup ecosystem and in Silicon Valley.

The two events cannot be separated. Their symbolism is strong. It is the end of an era and the beginning of a new one, or rather the meeting of the old economy and the new one.

In case anyone still has any doubts, Zuckerberg also appears to be ending remote work at Meta. Tech companies previously backed off from from forcing employees back to the office.

“Our early analysis of performance data suggests that engineers who either joined Meta in-person and then transferred to remote or remained in-person performed better on average than people who joined remotely,” he said.

“This analysis also shows that engineers earlier in their career perform better on average when they work in-person with teammates at least three days a week.”

“I encourage all of you to find more opportunities to work with your colleagues in person.”

The party is over. It’s time to grow up, Zuckerberg seems to be saying.

One last tip to reflect on, while you’re on your way home: “I encourage each of you to focus on what you can control. That is, do great work and support your teammates.”

Tech workers: Welcome to a normal boss and a normal company.

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Sourced from TheStreet

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Facebook Is Bringing Messenger Back to Its Mobile App

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By Kourtnee Jackson

Meta is testing how to unify functionality for both apps.

Meta is working on a way for you to view your messages from Messenger within the Facebook mobile app, according to a blog post from Facebook boss Tom Alison. Facebook reports that it has 2 billion active users who connect on its platform daily, and its team is working to enhance how people have online conversations.

The company is “testing the ability for people to access their Messenger inbox within the Facebook app,” Alison wrote. Facebook plans to expand testing in the coming months.

First launched in 2011 as part of Facebook’s functionality, Messenger was dropped from the social media platform and became a standalone app in 2014. Shortly after, it added the ability to share locations, handle voice calls and enable peer-to-peer payments.

Over the last decade, Messenger has received a variety of new features, including encrypted chats, custom emojis and video chats. Facebook has also been working to integrate and enhance multiapp communication among Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram. Those who use Messenger and Instagram can already contact each other with the direct messaging feature.

Meta says it also saw some success with community chats, a conversation feature that it rolled out to Facebook Groups in 2022. The company aims to fold in more messaging functionality within Facebook to make it easier for people to connect.

Feature Image Credit: James Martin/CNET

By Kourtnee Jackson

Sourced from CNET

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Facebook Is Building a Twitter Rival. Here’s What Marketers Need to Know

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By Dom Nicastro

Facebook’s mulling a decentralized platform that rivals Twitter and Mastodon, but can it be a marketing goldmine?

The Gist

  • Step aside, Twitter and Mastodon? Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, is planning to build a standalone text-based app that integrates with ActivityPub, an open, decentralized social networking protocol that controls notifications and content. This could potentially rival Twitter and Mastodon.
  • Marketing goldmine, or landmine? Smaller social media apps like Mastodon and Post.news, which foster a decentralized, ad-free platform, could pose challenges for marketers since they don’t allow personalized content or ads.
  • Meet P92, eventually. Meta’s new social media app is still in the development stage and has been codenamed P92.

Remember that whole social media thing? You know, before generative artificial intelligence took over our brains last fall?

Well, the big social media platforms are still out there. Really out there, in some cases. Smaller ones have emerged, and emerged again. And the bigger ones are contemplating creating smaller spinoffs.

The latest: Meta, owners of Facebook and Instagram, wants to build a standalone, text-based app that integrates with ActivityPub, the open, decentralized social networking protocol that delivers APIs for content management and federated server-to-server content management that controls notifications and content. Moneycontrol first reported this news March 10.

Twitter rival? Mastodon rival? Maybe so.

This development means more questions for marketers and customer experience professionals. Particularly, this: will we be able to build true marketing content real estate and valuable customer experiences on these new rising social media apps?

The news comes as Facebook March 14 announced another round of layoffs — 10,000 employees.

Marketer- and Customer Experience-Friendly Social Media Apps?

Here’s the biggest problem with some of these new apps. They’re not exactly marketer-friendly. The point of Mastodon, for instance, is to foster a decentralized, open-source social media platform that has no ads and presents posts in chronological order rather than using an algorithm to predict best-matched content. The site describes itself as a federated network.

Wait, no ads? No personalized content? What is a marketer — and a brand — to do?

Meanwhile, the vision for another new social media app, Post.news, is to be a “virtual watercooler for journalists.” The model: access premium news content without subscriptions or ads where writers share their articles on the site under a paywall. Marketers, advertisers and brands will be limited to posting relevant, informative or entertaining content, rather than running advertisements or posting promotional material.

So that’s good, but not quite marketing nirvana, right?

What We Know About Meta’s Potential Social Media App

Will marketers and customer experience professionals be able to get more pieces of the Meta social media innovation pie? Outside of, of course, the tried and true Facebook and Instagram?

It’s early to tell. News of the possible new social media app from Meta — said to be a Twitter rival — came out just over the past few days. Here’s what we do know so far:

  • Meta’s confirmed the development. “We’re exploring a standalone decentralized social network for sharing text updates. We believe there’s an opportunity for a separate space where creators and public figures can share timely updates about their interests,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement.
  • It has a name. The project for this new social media app is codenamed P92, though sources told Moneycontrol it’s still in the idea stage and a work in progress. So it’s entirely unclear how far along it is on the development trail.
  • It may give users ability to share across servers. A source told Moneycontrol the Meta new social app would give users the ability to post to other servers. With Mastodon, you have to pick a server. What are servers related to decentralized social platforms? Mastodon servers, also called “instances,” are individual communities, each with its own rules and culture. A server can be owned by a person, a group or a professional organization, and the server owner is the one who dictates the community’s guidelines. (Imagine trying to crack some marketing eggs over that).
  • Preview, followers and likes. Sound familiar? This new app would have features like tappable links in posts with previews, user bio, username and verification badges, according to Moneycontrol. Comments and messages? Not clear yet. A source did tell Moneycontrol, “The team is also discussing whether to have the ability to reshare content like Twitter apart from business and creator accounts. A rights manager will be integrated from the beginning for first party content, but probably not for third party content from other apps and servers,” said another source.

With No Hard Plans for Meta, Focus on Content

The ultimate message with this latest social media development out of Meta for marketers and customer experience professionals? It’s hard to take any action on Meta’s plans since, for now, they are just that: plans. Nothing concrete.

Social media marketing will always be about what your customers and prospects think it is, and where they are, not you or your brand.

“Plan for more exploration of how to repurpose content, as no single format or platform will serve every moment or need,” CMSWire author Pierre DeBois wrote in an article on his social media vision for 2023: “Marketers should also plan campaign labels to compare channel lift and ROI. Doing so will deepen understanding what intent data streams are created from the video campaigns and events.”

By Dom Nicastro

Dom Nicastro is managing editor of CMSWire and an award-winning journalist with a passion for technology, customer experience and marketing. With more than 20 years of experience, he has written for various publications, like the Gloucester Daily Times and Boston Magazine. He has a proven track record of delivering high-quality, informative, and engaging content to his readers. Dom works tirelessly to stay up-to-date with the latest trends in the industry to provide readers with accurate, trustworthy information to help them make informed decisions.

Sourced from CMSWIRE

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How to Write Persuasive Facebook Ads That Convert

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Do you wish your Facebook ads had a higher conversion rate? Looking for proven copywriting techniques that works?

In this article, you’ll discover how to write Facebook ads that move people to action—whether you want to generate leads, secure sales, or get prospects to take other key steps.

Technically, you could squeeze an entire blog post into the primary text section of your Facebook ad. Although Ads Manager gives you a ton of space to work with, it’s often better to keep your ad copy as concise as possible.

For most ad types, Meta recommends keeping primary text copy to 125 characters. The platform recommends keeping both the headline and the description to fewer than 30 characters.

Keep in mind that longer Facebook advertising copy gets buried behind a See More link. In fact, Facebook truncates primary text copy after about 115 characters. When you build campaigns in Ads Manager, use the ad preview to see how the copy will display for each placement. If it appears truncated, consider reworking it to display in full.

For example, the @repurpose Facebook ad below uses concise copy. Because it’s short and sweet, the primary text displays in full. To get the message across, the sustainable tableware brand uses other opportunities—including the headline and the video—to share features and CTAs.

Start With an Irresistible Hook

Between paid campaigns, suggested posts, and content from connected profiles and pages, Facebook feeds are packed with competing sources of information. Since the average Facebook user’s attention span lasts for 2.5 seconds or less, capturing interest right away is critical for conversions.

With a compelling hook, you can instantly draw in Facebook users, get them to read your message, and encourage them to act. Without a hook, your ad copy doesn’t give prospects a reason to keep reading, which can cause them to scroll past before getting to the sales pitch.

So how can you write irresistible hooks for your Facebook ads? Here are some ideas to test in your ad copy:

Click HERE to read the remainder of the article

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Sourced from Social Media Examiner

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One year on: how Apple’s privacy changes are still hurting Meta

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By Chris Sutcliffe

Facebook owner has found its status as an advertising giant more precarious than it could have imagined. As part of our Data & Privacy Deep Dive, we look at what it is doing to ameliorate effects of Apple’s updates.

When Meta announced its Q2 financial results earlier in the year, it had ready-made excuses to explain away its first-ever revenue drop. Reason number one, a global slowdown in ad spend, had also hit the other tech giants, but the elephant in the room was the impact Apple’s privacy changes had had on the company’s ability to operate – and Meta wasn’t shy about saying so.

The company announced in February that Apple’s AppTrackingTransparency feature would cost it in the region of $10bn in advertising revenue over the course of 2022 alone. At the time, Raj Shah, lead for telecom, media and technology at Publicis Sapient, said: “Five factors contribute to the decline. These are the competition from TikTok, reduced ad spend in a downturn, iOS privacy changes and questions about Meta leadership, both with COO Sheryl Sandberg’s departure and negative PR about corporate policies.”

While the company’s foray into the metaverse (or lack thereof) has been responsible for some of its more recent and more talked-about losses, the Apple tracking changes have in many ways presaged those conversations. Upon opening an app, users were prompted to agree whether to share information; without that permission, the developer is forbidden from accessing the IDFA – the device ID used to target and measure the effectiveness of digital ads.

The changes, which Apple argues are made in service of user privacy, gave a billion iOS users the option to opt-out of being tracked by apps, with an estimated 62% of them choosing to do so.

That tracking tool was how digital advertising giants created user targeting profiles for advertisers and was the basis for how Facebook became one of the largest digital advertising companies in the world. It is small surprise that the changes caused huge consternation among brands that had been used to having access to those targeted tools, or that Facebook’s revenue suffered significantly as a result.

Making the best of it

Prior to publication of its Q2 results, Meta had clawed back a little of the ground lost by the changes. It announced it had narrowed the underreporting estimate from around 15% to around 8% as a result of fine-tuning its measurement and analytics capabilities. That mitigation was welcome news for investors and advertisers, but it also demonstrated that the damage of Apple’s changes would haunt Meta for some time to come.

That was further demonstrated by the changes Meta made to its feeds to prioritize higher-yield ad formats, with a particular focus on short-form video. The company was also accused of trying to circumvent the changes by collecting data from websites users visit using its apps’ built-in browsers, although the company strenuously denies that.

For Meta, the challenge comes from the fact that users are broadly in favor of privacy and Apple has managed to communicate that its changes are in their best interests.

Matt Navarra is a social media and tech analyst. He says: “The impact now, in terms of the relationship with Apple and other tech companies, is converging on this and that makes it a challenging environment [for Meta]. And that is something that Apple has done very well to navigate and still come out looking like the good guy.”

As a result, Meta has attempted to push back against Apple’s changes in a number of ways, from appeals in public-facing media to regulatory efforts. In May, the company announced it was filing a complaint with the US Department of Commerce, stating that: “Despite having some of the most popular apps in the world, Meta’s ability to innovate on its products and services and even reach its customers is determined, and in some cases significantly limited, by the most popular mobile operating systems, such as Apple’s iOS.

“Apple’s self-serving tactics prevent consumers from realizing the innovation and benefits of a dynamic and otherwise well-functioning mobile app ecosystem.”

Sailing into the headwinds

That undercutting of its advertising capabilities continues to impact Meta. While much of the coverage of its Q3 results earlier this month focused on the huge losses accrued by its metaverse division, as well as encroachment from TikTok and the 11,000 jobs lost as a result, the underlying issues remain Apple-related.

Insider Intelligence’s principle analyst Debra Aho Williamson explained: “Meta in 2022 is a far cry from Facebook one year ago. Many aspects of its business are in disarray and its near-term prospects do not look promising. After a dismal earnings report in Q2, we aren’t expecting Q3 to be any better. It’s very possible it will be much worse.

“Many people want to blame TikTok, but it’s not the main reason why Meta is having challenges. Even if some advertisers are moving ad budgets from Meta’s properties to TikTok, it’s likely not a very significant portion of Meta’s overall ad revenue. Instead, Meta’s revenue growth problems stem primarily from the weak economy and from Apple’s privacy changes, which are affecting many digital platforms, not just Meta.“

Notably, during the announcement of the job cuts, Mark Zuckerberg blamed two things. The first was his decision to increase the number of investments the company had made over the past few years, while the second was the changes enforced by Apple.

While the company may have found and be seeking ways to ameliorate the changes, the reality is that Apple’s privacy changes have shaken Meta’s foundations. Its once insurmountable status as an advertising giant has been questioned and while the company isn’t going anywhere for the foreseeable future, it has been proven to be vulnerable.

By Chris Sutcliffe

Sourced from The Drum

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It’s Official: Meta Is a Disaster

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The recent story of Meta, née Facebook, has really been two stories. One of them, going back some time now, is about a brand in crisis. 2016 was “the year Facebook became the bad guy.” The next two years were the ones that “shook Facebook.” 2018 brought 15 months of “fresh hell” for the company, before, in 2020, amid some perhaps more salient issues facing the company and the world, Fast Company awarded it “worst brand of the year.” 2021 was “Facebook’s very bad year,” according to The Guardian. “No, really, it might be the worst yet.”

The other story, which didn’t discredit the first one but certainly didn’t agree with it, was basically a line going up and to the right:

This chart ends in September 2021 — a moment when things were still looking good for the company then known as Facebook.

Was Facebook destroying democracy, driving your family and friends insane, racking up thousands of dollars in future therapy bills for your kids, and fracking the discourse until the water isn’t safe to drink? Okay, maybe. But, and, it was also a strong buy — every “worst” year also its best one yet.

These parallel stories started converging right after the crop in this chart, in September of 2021, when Facebook’s stock peaked above $353. The next month — almost exactly a year ago — Facebook molted into Meta, a “Social Technology Company” with a foot in the metaverse.

Over the next year, its stock halved in value and Meta saw its first reported declines in daily users, as well as its first year-over-year decline in revenue.

With its Q3 earnings announcement, Facebook’s two stories became one, with the stock chart corroborating that the company is indeed in crisis. For the second quarter in a row, its revenue declined, and the company projected more pain next quarter. Its operating margin fell from 36 percent to 20 percent year over year, and its net income fell by a shocking 52 percent. “While we face near-term challenges on revenue, the fundamentals are there for a return to stronger revenue growth,” Mr. Zuckerberg said. The stock tumbled in after-hours trading and at Thursday’s open it was below $100 for the first time since 2016 — the first of its Very Bad Years. It is now down about 70 percent from its highs last year shortly before the rebranding.

A broad slump in tech stocks, challenging macro conditions, and even-worse-than-expected fallout from Apple’s restrictive App Tracking Transparency rules share some blame here. Meta has company: Snapchat’s earnings were a disaster, and Alphabet blamed its own bad quarter on “pullbacks in advertiser spends.”

But Meta’s bad quarter, and bad year, also belong squarely to Meta. The company lost more than $9 billion on Reality Labs, which encompasses most of its VR and Metaverse ventures, so far this year. This new line of business — the plan for a post-Facebook Meta — has been losing more money by the quarter as its revenue has decreased. Recent reporting from both the New York Times and Wall Street Journal suggested that the project is internally regarded as a disaster and a distraction. (If you’re still not sure what the metaverse is, or is supposed to become, Meta has happened upon an early use case: It’s a place where you can send billions of dollars to make it disappear.)

Mark Zuckerberg’s story here remains the same: The core business still makes a lot of money, and the metaverse is the next big thing, and we’ll be ready for that, but it’s going to take a while, so please be patient. Which, sure, but we should be as clear as possible about what this means. That core business does continue to make a lot of money, but every possible alarm is going off regarding its future prospects.

Facebook, the main app, is not a healthy platform; within Facebook, it’s understood to be in a sort of managed decline, as users in its most mature and lucrative markets continue to use and enjoy it less; Meta’s big plan for the platform is to replace its guts with a TikTok-style recommendation engine, which, considering the raw material it will be working with, sounds like a rolling family reunion hosted in a chumbox. Instagram is hemorrhaging attention to TikTok, and is midway through an unbecoming transformation into a TikTok clone — a playbook that worked for Facebook, when it copied Twitter for the News Feed, and for Instagram, when it incorporated a version of Snapchat’s Story feature, but which, this time around, seems mostly to be alienating users, creators, and advertisers. Meta, in other words, is profoundly remaking the older services that make the vast majority of its money. It’s taking a serious risk in doing so — materially, tampering with or failing to save these services is much more significant than Meta’s metaverse spending. But it’s also not clear that the company has a better option. It took half a decade for Facebook’s foul vibes to catch up with it, which doesn’t bode especially well for Instagram in 2023.

And while it’s easy to joke about the specifics of Meta’s metaverse work, the promotion of which has included staggering quantities of raw Zuckerberg, this, too, should be understood as riskier, and weirder, than Meta would have us think. Meta became one of the largest companies in the world by selling ads on two of the largest social-media platforms on the internet; it did this with a combination of shrewdness, ruthlessness, and a great deal of good timing and luck. Now, the plan is basically to manifest a whole new more favorable environment in which it’s free to grow without limits again. It’s a blank slate within a blank slate! It’s nothing like anything the company has succeeded with before. It’s ambitious, because it has to be, and we can’t ignore it, because Meta is spending billions to make it happen. But nobody has to pretend it makes much sense, either! Not even Wall Street.

Feature Image Credit: Virtual Zuck has legs, but Meta stock very much does not. Photo: Meta

Sourced from Intelligencer

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