Facebook Friday. Focus On Basics

social media May 26, 2015

One of the most important, (and repeated) terms I heard over and over from my Sensei in Japan was 'focus on basics'. Practice does not make perfect, especially in the world of marketing online, where the environments and technology change so rapidly. But if your basics, your foundational framework is solid - both in your skill set AND commitment to practice - then your ability to adapt to the evolving and ever changing space of the web will be much easier.

Too often we pigeon hole ourselves into practices that have less and less to do with the greatest possible outcome for our time invested. In facebook terms, when people I've worked with are running ads, they have never ventured off into discovering their analytics, monitoring their reports, split testing their ads, creating their look alike audience groups, building their interest lists from their campaign results and so much more.

Instead, they continue the same cycle of posting bullshit photos, boosting them with zero call-to-action and patting their own asses when fifty people like the photo. To me, it's the equivalent of breaking those silly pine boards in a martial art school. You think you're doing something awesome, but not really. In fact, you're doing nothing other than wasting time and resources.

Besides, "Board don't hit back" Mr. Miyagi.

He was right, they don't. But statistics do.

You bet. Your results and knowing how to read and use them to promote a positive ROI on your facebook campaigns will often times make you feel like you were back kicked right in the gut.

Let me share an example with you about being able to quickly adapt. We just saw this in a recent ad set we ran that pointed our audience to a Shopify account. I was certain this ad group was going to kick ass and show some nice results, but it didn't. In fact it showed very, very poor results. Conversions were strong, coming in at around $0.82 per click, but for some reason I didn''t get the expected results from this audience group and landing page. Facebook conversions were pretty good, but where I pointed them to obviously didn't have value to that group.

I saw the problem immediately, and this is where most small business owner bow out.

My conversion pixel see was able to see that the ad was working, but the extra action that Shopify wanted them to take bounced nearly ALL of my traffic out. Whoah!

So, knowing my numbers and armed with some solid advice from my facebook trainer, I moved that same campaign to a different link onto our Amazon store, where the buying process was a mere click. The results were positive, but that's not my point - the speed in which I was able to adapt our campaign target - supported by the tools facebook provides us with - is the message.

Get busy making sure your facebook basics are all in place and then begin training from this platform. Stop thinking that facebook is a scrapbook that will somehow magically produce business for you because people like you.

Begin getting the framework for your page correct, this will yield you the highest in accurate results on well planned and properly deployed ad campaigns.

Second, start educating yourself on best practices for whatever type of business you are trying to promote. The strategy facebook offers differ greatly to yield best results for their clients, so get smart. Be willing and able to adapt, protecting your cash and demanding traffic that converts to leads on your end. Remember, facebook can't help you with content quality on your end, but through their conversion pixel, they are still working for you off-site.

In the next article, I want to dive into the most basic elements of your facebook page, providing you with a checklist of what you must have up and running to maximize your results.

Adam

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