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Understanding the Facebook Ads Algorithm (3 Factors)

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Creating a Facebook Product Catalog (2020)

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Placing a Facebook Pixel on Shopify (2020)

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4 Email Automation Sequences you Need to Use | eCommerce

Email automation is oftentimes overlooked, but it needs to be a part of the foundation of your eCommerce brand if you’re looking to increase your revenue and be as profitable as possible. Here are 4 simple to set up email sequences you can use to maximize your marketing efforts this year –

Here’s a link to a more in-depth article I wrote on the 4 automation sequences.

Also if you aren’t using Klaviyo, we highly recommend them – here’s a link to sign up.

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Answered: What is my customer lifetime value (LTV)? Plus a Free Calculator

Understanding your customer lifetime value is paramount to the future success of your eCommerce brand. In the video below I explain its importance and how you can figure out what the customer LTV is for your company.

Here is a link to a free calculator to know what your businesses customer lifetime value (LTV) is.

Link to the free calculator.

Cheers and talk soon!

Jacob Chandler

Learn to be a Better Marketer

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Understanding the Facebook Algorithm for marketers (2020)

It seems that after the whole Cambridge Analytica situation Facebook is starting to be more transparent in regards to how their algorithm works. Which is good for both the users of the platform and all of us marketers. The better we understand how the algorithm works the better we can create ads that resonate with our intended audience.

Facebook’s goal is to make ads as relevant as possible to their users. As much as some users don’t like seeing ads, they would rather see ads that are relevant to them than ones that aren’t. So let’s dig into the 3 big fundamentals that play into who sees what on Facebook.

1. Bidding

There are several different optimization options for Facebook ads, you can do landing page views, engagement, conversions, etc. The one that I’ve consistently found to provide the best ROI is conversions. (Shocking, I know…) So this bidding info is specifically for Conversion Optimized campaigns.

Bidding options: You can do auto-bid (what FB calls Lowest Cost), Target Cost, or Max Bid (what they now call Lowest Cost w/bid cap).

a. Auto Bid/Lowest Cost Bidding: really allows you to leverage Facebook’s algorithm. This bidding style will come shooting out of the gate targeting those in your audience that the algo thinks will buy for the cheapest rate. This is why you may notice when you launch campaigns that they will often times perform really well in the beginning then fall off after a couple of days. This is because the audience exhausted itself of the low hanging fruit and is now focusing on people that aren’t as likely to buy. This is why duplicating an ad after a few days will often give you good results again after the original stopped working.

Summary – Auto Bid/Lowest Cost bidding is still the best option.

b. Target Cost Bidding: in this strategy, you can tell FB that you want to have a CPA of $20. What they do is take out all of the people that they think will be significantly higher than $20 and significantly lower than $20. This causes your impressions to be SUPER low and your ads won’t go after the lowing hanging fruit because you told the algo “No I don’t want those people.” I know, it sounds silly that it would do that, but the word on the street is that it does. After testing out this method on various campaigns I’ve noticed that indeed impressions are way lower than campaigns that are using Lowest Cost bidding. Conversions are also really hit or miss with Target Cost campaigns. I wouldn’t do them again until someone says they algo changed.

Summary – don’t use Target Cost bidding.

c. Max Bid/Lowest Cost with Bid Cap: this bid strategy is somewhat useful if you’re on a budget. It tells FB “Hey go after the low hanging fruit, but I don’t want to spend more than X to get a customer” which is good. What this does though, is it limits your impressions after a certain point because someone that is using Auto Bid/Lowest Cost bidding without a bid cap is outbidding you for impressions.

Summary – Max Bid/Lowest Cost with a bid cap is great for those on a budget. Your ads won’t scale as much as those without a bid cap but this gives you a good chance at being profitable.

Bidding Summary – Your best bet to create scalable campaigns is to just let Facebook’s algorithm work and use Auto Bid/Lowest Cost (the default bid). This allows you to continue to win the bidding auctions which makes your ads keep showing up. To extend the shelf life of your ads start using FB’s dynamic creative function. This will show ads to the people Facebook thinks are most likely to buy from you more often as the creative will keep switching dynamically.

2. Estimated Action Rate

The 2nd big part of the algo is the estimated action rate. Things that play into it:

  • Recent ad activity
    • What type of people clicked, engaged, purchased in the past
  • Page activity – how healthy and active is the page? Does it benefit FB/IG users?
    • Is the page actively posting
    • Age of the page
    • Does the page get a lot of engagement with their posts
    • Does the page reply to comments quickly
    • Has the page been hacked recently? (If so, you’ll have higher CPMs for a bit)

Your past ad activity plays a big role in who your ads show up too – the more purchases and webstie events the FB pixel sees the better. Your organic page itself also plays a big role, so the more active and healthy your page is the lower your advertising costs will be. Facebook is about giving users the best experience possible so if you’re adding to that experience they will reward you.

3. User Value

Facebook has recently said that they have an Ad Quality Panel. This is a 3rd party, outside of Facebook, that looks at and reviews ads giving them a score. These people aren’t digital marketers, they are actual users of the platform giving out the grades. Think of people in there 30’s – 50’s that aren’t too tech savvy. So it is really important that when you make an ad you look at it and ask yourself if you truly think the campaign is going to resonate, will your audience actually be interested in what you’re promoting? Make ads that resonate and you will get a higher grade which means more impressions at a cheaper rate, giving you better performance.

Another thing the algorithm looks at now is the post-click experience. The biggest factor I was told was the bounce rate, if someone clicks your ad, gets to your landing page and instantly leaves your website Facebook is going start docking you impressions (and most likely raise your CPM) because it thinks by users doing this the page you are sending them too isn’t relevant. This means, now more than ever, it’s time to have a good site experience that makes people want to stay, click around, and eventually make a purchase. As marketers, we often care so much about the creative, copy, and targeting we use in ads that we push our site experience off to the side. Our ads could be perfect (creative, targeting, copy) but if we’re sending them to a shit landing page we’re gonna be wasting money. This was true in the past but now we know Facebook is taking notice, so if your landing pages suck, fix them.

Summary

Optimize your ads for conversions (unless you don’t get many sales, then landing page views) and use the default Auto Bid/Lowest cost bidding without a bid cap. You can use a bid cap if you’re on a budget. Never use Target Cost bidding, unless you’re a fearless bastard that likes to gamble. Constantly be creating new ads and use the dynamic creative feature. Keep your organic pages active and engaging, respond to customer comments; give people a good experience and Facebook will reward you for it with better ad performance (lower CPM’s). After every ad you make ask yourself “Will this actually resonate with my intended audience? Is this something they’ll want to see?” If not, make a new ad. Also, make sure your landing pages are good and people don’t bounce/leave right away. The longer they stay on your site and the more they engage with it the better you’ll look to Facebook. That’s what I know about the algorithm from the horses mouth. If you know anything else that I should add let me know!

Cheers,

Jacob

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Science of Persuasion

A useful video by Robert Cialdini on the Science of Persuasion:

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People Act on Emotion and Justify with Logic

The human brain is separated into 2 parts – left and right; Logical and emotional.

Think of all of the actions that can be caused by love or fear, happiness or sadness, typically against ones better judgement. As a marketer you can convert on this while giving a person a logical reason to take an action. (i.e. make them feel an emotion then give them a logical incentive to take action right now.) This is how you need to craft your campaigns – make people feel something in their hearts then convert that emotion into intent to buy with logic.

 

 

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Setting up your Facebook Ads Manager

Often times when I talk with someone that is new to using Facebook ads they have their accounts columns set up incorrectly. Well, maybe not incorrectly, but they’re simply using the default “Performance” columns that are standard. In this video, I talk over why you shouldn’t use those columns and what columns you should be using.

 

If you’re looking for some help feel free to reach out – let us know what business you are looking for help with.

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Cialdinism Digital Marketing Food for thought Uncategorized

Cialdinism #2 – The Rule of Reciprocation

This rule comes from Robert Cialdini’s book, Influence. The Rule of Reciprocation says that we should try to repay those who have provided us with something. This can be utilized to persuade someone into doing an act by giving them an item or gift. If someone sends us a birthday present, we should be sure to send them one back. If someone offers you tickets to the game, you should repay them somehow – buy them some beers will ya!

When someone gives you something, that is actually worth value to you (weather monetarily or emotionally), and you don’t pay them back you get this weird feeling in your gut. This feeling is caused by the Rule of Reciprocation. I first hand felt this feeling last week when I was down in Cabo. My wife and I were walking around the Marina in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico when we stopped to check out the sea lions and seagulls that were by the boat ramp. After standing there for a few seconds one of the fisherman called us over and offered to us a few fish to feed the wild sea lion that was begging at the edge of the water, of course my wife jumped at the opportunity! She was able to feed him and pet him a couple times. We even got to witness the sea lion chase off a seagull that was trying to snatch the fish from my wives hand before she could give it to the sea lion. It was great!

Right after she got done feeding the sea lion we left… and I got this weird feeling in my stomach. It felt like I owed that guy something, he was probably expecting money, but I didn’t have any cash with me. I thought for the next several days on my trip about going back to the marina to pay him, but I never pulled myself to doing so because around that same time I read about this rule. It caused me to realize what that guy had done, he had created a highly profitable niche business in the harbors of Cabo. He was also utilizing a highly effective psychological tool to get people to willingly and happily give him money. A fish for him can’t cost much at all, he is a fisherman after all. It may have cost him $.20 for the 2 little fish he gave my wife, if I had cash I would have easily have given him $10 for the wonderful experience- those are damn good margins mi amigo!

Pay every debt, as if God wrote the bill. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

So anyways, the idea is to give your customers something for free so that they can return the favor to you in a way that makes sense for your business. I didn’t know about this rule when we did it, but we used it for one of our apparel brands a few months ago by giving away free shirts to our top 50 customers over the past year and the experiment has worked stunningly. Many of the customers we sent free shirts too ordered new shirts soon after.

Takeaway: Find a way for your business to use the Rule of Reciprocation to your advantage, weather it be sending your customers something for free unexpectedly or giving someone at the harbor a fun experience that costs you pretty much nothing. It will be worth it.