Susan Wenograd will be speaking on Facebook Ads at Engage 2018, which will take place March 8th, 2018 in Portland, Oregon. For more information or to purchase tickets, please click here
1) Please give us your background and let us know what you do for a living.
I am a paid media consultant that specializes in paid social and paid search strategies for all different kinds of clients. While I manage the media itself, I also focus intensely on helping clients understand the larger goals of their media money. I build customer journey funnels for clients and help them strategize their content and offerings in order to maximize the budget they put towards their ad efforts.
I started in ecomm in 2005, working for Circuit City’s website as a writer, and then editor, and finally moving into overseeing their email retention program. It was amazing to handle a piece of business that drove over $65m in sales in my 20s, but that was it: I was hooked on digital marketing. I discovered PPC in 2007 and went on to manage it for various clients as a consultant, and then some various in-house and agency positions before deciding the agency world is where I belonged.
2) Please share some characteristics of an effective Facebook ad.
Quite often I find that advertisers run ads that lack information. They’re very used to search, where there is a lot that can be assumed about what the user knows, given that they searched for you. Facebook ads are different, because it’s interruptive. You have to establish a “what” and “why” pretty quickly, because users lack context. I also find a lot of folks are afraid to do longer-form copy on ads, but it can work fantastic, while helping to pre-qualify your clickers.
3) For the newbie Facebook advertiser faced with a ton of prospective campaign types and ad choices, where would you steer them and why?
I would tell them to start with the data they have – website traffic, email lists, anything like that. Those are a goldmine. Upload them to Facebook, create a lookalike, and use that as your initial target to get started.
As far as the campaign type, it’s heavily dependent on their goal. Most users pick Conversion campaigns by default, but I caution people to only pick Conversion if you are optimizing towards something that happens often on your site. Conversion CPMs tend to be higher-stakes. If you don’t have a lot of Conversions happening, the Facebook algorithm will struggle to deliver for you, and meanwhile you’re paying some of the highest CPMs. Otherwise, you might want to start with Traffic or Post Engagement just to get your footing – they are much cheaper.
For ad creative types, I’ve usually have great luck with Carousels. Static images can still work well, also. Think colorful and eye-catching. Anything blah with lots of white, gray or blue just fades right into the Feed and isn’t noticeable. High contrast shots or those featuring a real human usually do much better.
Todd Mintz knows PPC…knows Social Media…knows SEO…knows Blogging…knows Domaining…and knows them all real well. He runs growth marketing for )and is also a Director & Founding Member of SEMpdx: Portland, Oregon’s Search Engine Marketing Association, and he can be found here on Twitter and Facebook.