5 Things You Need to Know about Facebook Messenger Adverts

Some of you may have already seen the little adverts popping up in between pictures of your friends on Facebook messenger.

Facebook messenger advertising has been around for a while, although dropping them in the middle of conversations is relatively new. Here’s what you need to know:

1. The ads will look similar to the ones you’re used to on Facebook

Adverts in Facebook messenger look nearly the same as the advertisements on the home page. They will have your page name, a short headline, an image, and then a button for people to click. That can take them straight through to ticket sales, album downloads, your website – whatever it is you’re trying to achieve.

Source: Facebook.com

2. You can make them personal

Photo by Christina Morillo on Pexels.com

You can send your advert to anyone that’s interacted with your page before with a personal message, or a series of them. So let’s say for example they’ve watched your videos, followed your page, and now you want to get them to come to your show. You can set up a Facebook Ads campaign that lands straight into the messenger inbox, telling them all about your awesome act.

What’s more, the number of people who click through from messenger is massively bigger than your typical home-page ads.

3. You can make it super specific

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The normal Facebook advertisements allow you to narrow down your audience. You don’t want to shout out to 12 year olds and 60 year olds when you know your shows are best for 18-35.

You can also set it up based on location. That means you can target people local in London for your London shows, Dublin for your Dublin shows, and so on.

It gaves you way more freedom than traditional Facebook ads.

4. It’s great for engagement

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Messenger is a taking app, right? And what better way to get to know your audience than by talking to them. When you pop an add into messenger, people are more likely to get talking to you. That’s great if you want to build your audience’s loyalty, or simply get them chatting. Because when they’re chatting to you, chances are they’re also chatting to their friends about you.

And we all know how powerful word of mouth advertising is!

5. There are free courses to help you get started

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Facebook advertising is daunting if you’ve never done it before. It feels like a million steps and you’re never quite sure whether you’ve chosen the right settings, or whether you’re taking a stab in the dark.

Facebook seems to realise this, too. Which is why they’ve got a bunch of free courses that you can take before you embark on any new advertising.

Super helpful if this is your first time using Facebook ads.

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Penguin in the Room @prartsmarketing is a group of creatives with an arts marketing dream: penguin stepping our way into the arts industry and helping other creatives flourish! Specialising in online marketing, social media, branding, copy writing, media coaching and web design for actors, artists, casting directors, agents, production companies, theatre companies and creative individuals.

Contact us any time for penguin chats via email:info@penguinintheroom.com or Facebook.com/penguinintheroom or waddle over to our website: www.penguinintheroom.com

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Is Facebook Advertising Worth It?

For a long time, Facebook advertising was seen as the best way to spend your hard-earnt and painfully spent marketing pounds.

Not only did it reach your ideal audience with their trained targeting tool, but it also offered a higher conversion rate (ie. sold more tickets/got more clicks) than your more typical Google Adwords campaigns (those adverts at the top of google search engine). Well that was according to Facebook anyway.

However, with the new changes that have been brought in: is Facebook advertising still worth it?

The short answer is yes.

1. Facebook and Google are predicted to have a bigger market as large as $3 trillion (that’s about £3 trillion because of Brexit)

In a recent study conducted by Credit Suisse, they claimed that online advertising will be a bigger deal in the coming years than is currently predicted.

This has been put down to the ‘death’ (harsh) of traditional retail, with most shoppers going online to make their purchases rather than heading to their local shops.

This is a huge benefit to online companies because it means your audience online won’t dry up and it’ll continue to grow.

The $3 trillion figure is the amount of profit that is estimated to be sunk into online advertising in the coming years. That’s a lot of dollar! Staggering, right?

2. Facebook’s Targeting Will Only Get More Tailored

Facebook’s ability to draw in advertising money is due to the amount of data it collects on its customers. They use this to place your product in front of the people most likely to buy it: a service that Google also offers, but not down to the same amount of minute detail.

Not only can you target based on age but also down to interests, location and gender.

So if you know that the people who buy your tickets/product tend to be 20-somethings in the London area who love Peep Show: Facebook has you covered!

3. Facebook Allows You to Flex Your Budgets

One of the beauties of Facebook advertising is that you can achieve a lot for a little: and switch it off at any time.

Not that this is a comparison with Google (which also lets you do this) but Facebook has a much lower access point (you can spend less) than Adwords advertising does versus the amount of engagement and reach you’re estimated to get.

You’re just not battling the same algorithms you are with Facebook.

With facebook you can also set a lifetime budget, to make sure that you never unintentionally spend more than you can afford – so your two year old can spend thousands on your phone apps but not on your facebook ad account! Phew! This level of control is what makes Facebook advertising so attractive to small businesses with a tighter marketing budget.

4. You Can Get Creative

Facebook advertising can be as creative as you are, and there are only a few restrictions (such as text to image ratio) that you need to abide by.

This means you can let your flair and personality show a lot more than you can through Google Adwords, which requires some canny manoeuvring in terms of keywords and buzz terms.

As well as opting for image and video led campaigns, you can also run a collection campaign (using more than one image) or a canvas campaign, which allows users to have a full-screen experience of your ad (so it better be an awesome experience!)

5. The Numbers Say They Work

According to in-depth research conducted by Sprout Social 93% of marketers use Facebook regularly to advertise to their customers.

That means that there are nearly 3 billion businesses benefitting from Facebook advertising, earning Facebook nearly $8 billion.

Not only this, but 70% of these businesses were outside the US like us!

If that’s not reason enough, we don’t know what is! Want to talk about running a successful Facebook campaign? Contact us today! 

Penguin in the Room @prartsmarketing is a group of creatives with an arts marketing dream: penguin stepping our way into the arts industry and helping other creatives flourish! Specialising in online marketing, social media, branding, copy writing, media coaching and web design for actors, artists, casting directors, agents, production companies, theatre companies and creative individuals.

Contact us any time for penguin chats via email:info@penguinintheroom.com or Facebook.com/penguinintheroom or waddle over to our website: www.penguinintheroom.com

Are You Ready For Facebook’s Pages Update?

Facebook announced 7 days ago what we’ve all been expecting for a long time: that Pages will be shown less to their users in the News Feed and instead their friends and family will be prioritized.

Source: https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/01/news-feed-fyi-bringing-people-closer-together/

Adam Mosseri, who is Head of News Feed at Facebook, said:

With this update, we will prioritize posts that spark conversations and meaningful interactions between people.

We will also prioritize posts from friends and family over public content, consistent with our News Feed values.

If you’re one of the many Freelancers or independent businesses that benefit from referral traffic or even sales through your Facebook Page, then you need to pay attention.

Will the update negatively affect my reach?

The answer to this is: probably.

Facebook has claimed it’ll only negatively effect pages that don’t consistently post content that their followers want to engage with. They’ve said:

Pages making posts that people generally don’t react to or comment on could see the biggest decreases in distribution. Pages whose posts prompt conversations between friends will see less of an effect.

If you’re one of the pages that consistently drives good reach – which means getting lots of tags or comments from your users, then the update won’t cause you so much of a problem.

If however you are like most independent business and your engagement is hit and miss, you may want to start working on your content to get the best engagement out of it. Check back soon for a post on this.

How will I know if my Page is still showing in the News Feed?

Pages will be prioritised based on how many posts ‘generate a conversation’.

This could be anything from friends debating in your comments to people tagging each other in them.

Facebook wants to be seen as a place that “brings people closer together and build relationships” and they’ve put that at the heart of their News Feed update.

The algorithm will change to prioritise the types of posts people typically interact with. So if you have a core set of die-hard, loyal fans who comment on everything you do, chances are high they’ll continue to do so.

Also, people who’ve selected ‘See First’ for your page will continue to see your Page’s posts at the top of their News Feed. 

If you don’t know what this is, it’s a handy feature Facebook added so people can keep track of their favourite Pages by having their posts always stuck to the top of their News Feed.

It might also spell an end for click-bait

Facebook has categorically said it will demote any content that’s deemed as:

“engagement-bait” to goad people into commenting on posts

This is because Facebook doesn’t think these types of posts constitute a “meaningful interaction.”

How do I make sure people can still see my Page?

The best way, it seems, to make sure your Page stats don’t suffer too badly is by making sure your Page is ticking those crucial Facebook boxes.

These are:

• Bringing people together by encouraging conversations
• Posting content that inspires ‘back and forth’ discussion
• Posting content that people want to share and react to

Facebook has a good tip in their press release as well: Live videos often get six times as many interactions as regular videos.

Facebook suggests that Pages that post more Live videos will tend to be the Pages getting more engagement, and therefore the Pages more likely to keep their spots in their customer’s News Feeds.

Check back for our next post on how to give your Facebook Page an engagement check-up and stop the negative effects of the update.

Penguin in the Room @prartsmarketing is a group of creatives with an arts marketing dream: penguin stepping our way into the arts industry and helping other creatives flourish! Specialising in online marketing, social media, branding, copy writing, media coaching and web design for actors, artists, casting directors, agents, production companies, theatre companies and creative individuals.

Contact us any time for penguin chats via email:info@penguinintheroom.com or Facebook.com/penguinintheroom or waddle over to our website: www.penguinintheroom.com