Tag Archive for: Facebook Advertising

Is Threads Ready for Facebook Integration?

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Meta has begun a new test for cross-posting between Facebook and Threads, with some users now being promoted to share their Facebook updates to the new, Twitter-like app. Here’s what you need to know.

In the fast-paced realm of social media, platforms like Meta are constantly exploring new features and integrations to enhance user experiences. One of the latest experiments involves the cross-posting functionality between Facebook and Threads, Meta’s micro-social networking app. Today, we’ll delve into the implications of Meta’s test and the potential impact it may have on content sharing and user engagement.

Understanding Meta’s Cross-Posting Initiative

Meta’s initiative aims to simplify the process of sharing updates between Facebook and Threads, offering users a seamless way to expand the reach of their content. The test, currently in limited rollout on iOS devices, allows users to toggle on Threads cross-posting for text and link posts. While this aligns with Meta’s strategy of maximizing content distribution across its platforms, it raises pertinent questions about user preferences and platform differentiation.

Challenges and Concerns: Platform Identity and User Experience

Critics express concerns about the integration between Threads and Facebook potentially diluting Threads’ identity as a micro-social networking platform. Threads, positioned as a counterpart to Twitter, caters to a specific user base seeking concise, real-time updates. 

Integrating its functions with Facebook may blur the lines between the two platforms, leading to a homogenization of content and user experiences. Additionally, the proliferation of cross-posted content raises concerns about redundancy and diminished quality within the Threads platform.

Meta’s Vision: Building a Billion-User Platform

Despite challenges, Meta remains committed to positioning Threads as a billion-user platform, leveraging positivity, AI-driven recommendations, and content engagement. The company’s data-driven approach underscores its confidence in the efficacy of cross-platform integrations to drive user retention and satisfaction. However, uncertainties persist regarding whether Threads users align with Meta’s vision or seek a differentiated social media experience.

Navigating Integration and Differentiation

The tension between integration and differentiation underscores the complexity of Meta’s strategy in managing its suite of platforms. As Meta continues to refine its approach, digital marketers and social media professionals must remain agile, adapting their strategies to evolving user preferences and platform dynamics. By closely monitoring developments and consumer behavior, stakeholders can help ensure that their efforts align with the evolving social media landscape.

Adapting to a Dynamic Social Media Landscape

Meta’s trial of cross-posting between Facebook and Threads is a big move to make sharing content easier across its platforms. But worries about keeping each platform unique, pleasing users, and maintaining good content quality show that combining different social media sites isn’t easy. As Meta works through these challenges, it’s important for everyone involved to stay alert and adjust their plans to match the changing desires of users in the fast-moving world of social media.

As businesses strive to navigate the complexities of the ever-changing social media landscape, staying ahead of trends becomes paramount. Onimod Global understands the challenges presented by innovations like Meta’s cross-posting test and offers tailored solutions to help businesses thrive. With our expertise in digital marketing strategies and commitment to staying abreast of industry developments, we empower businesses to adapt and succeed in the dynamic world of social media. Contact us today at onimodglobal.com to learn how we can elevate your digital presence.

Maximizing Facebook Ad Performance

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Mastering Facebook advertising is crucial for businesses aiming to stand out online, especially amidst evolving privacy changes and platform updates.

At Onimod Global, we understand the challenges and complexities that come with running successful Facebook ad campaigns. Here, we offer insights and best practices to help you elevate your Facebook advertising game and drive tangible results.

To optimize your campaigns effectively, consider the following strategies:

Allow Sufficient Time for Analysis

In today’s digital advertising landscape, patience is key. We advise waiting at least 72 hours, or the entire optimization window duration, before concluding campaign performance. While it’s essential to monitor daily metrics, refraining from premature analysis allows for a more accurate assessment of how your campaigns are truly performing over time. This extended observation period helps ensure that you’re not making decisions based on incomplete or misleading data.

Analyze at the Campaign Level

While it’s tempting to delve into the details of individual ads and creatives, focusing your analysis at the campaign level offers a broader perspective on performance trends. Remember that some conversions may be aggregated and reported with a delay, which can skew ad-level assessments. Analyzing campaigns holistically enables better pattern recognition and resource allocation for optimized performance.

Enable Aggregated Event Measurement

Ensure your campaign objectives are closely tied to web events that directly impact your business goals. For example, if you run an athletic apparel e-commerce store, your main goal may be to increase online sales. In such a scenario, it’s essential to give priority to events like “Add to Cart” and “Purchase” within the Events Manager. This prioritization aligns campaigns with key metrics and minimizes optimization for less relevant ones. As a result, your advertising endeavors are optimized for maximum effectiveness, driving better outcomes for your business.

Implement the Conversions API

The Conversions API serves as a crucial link between your marketing data and the Facebook platform, offering enhanced measurement accuracy and optimization capabilities. By integrating the Conversions API into your setup, you can track and attribute conversions more reliably, ultimately leading to improved campaign performance and reduced cost per action. Using this tool also reinforces your commitment to user privacy, building trust with your audience and regulators.

Leverage the Learning Phase

During the initial learning phase of your campaigns, give Facebook the necessary time to gather data and optimize ad delivery algorithms. Minimize manual edits and avoid frequent changes to allow the platform to learn and adapt to audience behavior effectively. Consider consolidating ad sets or selecting more frequent optimization events to expedite learning and achieve optimal results faster.

Explore All Available Tools

In a dynamic and evolving advertising landscape, it’s essential to explore a variety of measurement solutions beyond the Facebook Ads platform. By diversifying your toolkit, you can uncover potential discrepancies in reporting and help ensure data accuracy across multiple channels. Whether it’s utilizing third-party analytics platforms or implementing custom tracking solutions, leveraging all available tools empowers you to make informed decisions and maximize the effectiveness of your advertising investments.

Embrace Testing and Learning

Continuous experimentation is the cornerstone of successful advertising campaigns. Test different bidding strategies, ad formats, and audience targeting parameters to identify what resonates best with your target audience. By embracing a culture of testing and learning, you can uncover valuable insights, refine your approach, and stay ahead of competitors in an ever-evolving digital landscape. Remember that optimization is an ongoing process, and each test brings you one step closer to achieving your advertising objectives.

Final Thoughts

By adopting these strategies, you can confidently navigate the digital landscape and drive meaningful business results.

At Onimod Global, we’re dedicated to helping you leverage the full potential of Facebook advertising and drive sustainable growth. Contact us today to learn more about how our expertise and tailored solutions can elevate your digital marketing strategy.

Why Your Small Business Ads Are Getting Blocked By Facebook

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Facebook, one of the largest social and advertising platforms in the world, is increasingly relying on artificial intelligence to monitor the platform. If your small business ads are continuously getting blocked on Facebook, there may be another reason besides errors in your ads.

Bloomberg stated in a report that errors made by AI algorithms looking to remove offensive ads from Facebook’s platform have caused already struggling small businesses to miss out on online sales opportunities.

As helpful as Facebook ads have been for all business in general, there are several drawbacks to the platform that have made it increasingly difficult to find success in some situations. Drawbacks include problems with the company’s content-moderation software, limited options for customer support and lack of transparency about how to fix problems.

Interviewed by Fortune, New York-based businesswoman Ruth Harrigan selling honey in souvenir shops has had to rely heavily on Facebook ads  for sales during the coronavirus period. Her business was abruptly stopped due to Facebook blocking her ads account due to policy violations. Harrigan is one of millions of small business advertisers who have come to rely on Facebook Inc. because the coronavirus has shut down many traditional retail channels.

Facebook’s human moderators have been focusing on the US election and Covid-19 misinformation this year, so the company has leaned more on artificial intelligence algorithms to monitor other areas of the platform. That’s left many small businesses caught in Facebook’s automated filters, unable to advertise through the service and frustrated because they don’t know why and can’t reach adequate support to fix the issue.

A Facebook rep interviewed by the Post says, “We know it can be frustrating to experience any type of business disruption, especially at such a critical time of the year. While we offer free support for all businesses, we regularly work to improve our tools and systems, and to make the support we offer easier to use and access. We apologize for any inconvenience recent disruptions may have caused.”

Appealing these often-automated decisions has also become a lot harder. “Due to a temporary reduction in our review capacity as a result of Covid-19, we could not always offer our users the option to appeal,” Facebook wrote in its third-quarter report.

More from Onimod Global

Looking for an agency to help your small business with your paid social media, specifically running Facebook ads? Reach out to us here!

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

Lookalike Audiences: Essential To Converting Customers

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Say hello to your new favorite social media paid campaigns weapon: lookalike audiences. These types of audiences are the best way to target a brand new set of people who may not have any experience with your service or product and still be very likely to convert. Talk about a digital advertising dream!

What exactly is a lookalike audience?

These are a way to reach new people who are likely to be interested in your business because they’re similar to your best existing customers. Lookalike audiences are a Facebook segmentation tool that finds users whose demographics and interests are similar to those of your existing followers.

Basically, an audience or group of people that looks like another audience or group of people. So simple, yet so effective!

For example, let’s say you have an email list of about 1,000 customers. You upload this list to Facebook, and they will create a list of people that look exactly like or similar to the email list you uploaded.

These are quite simple to create and implement, and consistently deliver high results. This makes them an extremely powerful marketing tool for efficiently finding high-converting users.

Why are these audiences important?

While you might have a good idea of your target audience, lookalike audiences will dig deep into your existing followers and user base to find their commonalities. Facebook leverages its massive database of customer data to make connections from your existing customers to your target audience. This will help you find highly-qualified users you previously wouldn’t have been able to reach.

Most importantly, this informed targeting optimizes your ad spend and lowers the cost per lead or acquisition in the process.

Extra Onimod Global tips

Lookalike audiences can be simple and straightforward, or more complex. Here’s a list of some additional information to keep in mind while creating your lookalike audience:

  • Your audience will only include people from the country/countries you select during the creation process.
  • Your source audience must contain at least 100 people from a single country in order to use it as the base for a Lookalike Audience.
  • People in your source audience will be excluded from your Lookalike Audience unless you use a pixel as your source audience.
  • You can create up to 500 Lookalike Audiences from a single source audience.

Contact Onimod Global

For more on the latest digital marketing news and information, follow Onimod Global! Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday. To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

How To Improve Your Facebook Relevance Score

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Improving your Facebook relevance score can help you save money and reach more consumers. However, what can you do to boost your relevance score without taking away time from your already busy schedule?

Experts at Onimod Global are here to share everything you need to know about Facebook’s relevance score and how to improve yours!

What is Facebook Relevance Score?

The Facebook Relevance Score is all about the relevance of your ad to your targeted audience. A number from 1-10 (10 is highest and one is lowest) will tell you how relevant your ad will be to your target audience. To improve your ad’s relevance score, you can work on your targeting and the ad creative.

How Does Facebook Calculate Relevance?

There are a number of factors to be considered here. However, before your ad will calculate a relevance score, your ad has to be shown 500 times. After you exceed 500, you can check your relevance score in Ad Manager or any other campaign managing software.

How to see your score in the Ad manager:

  1. Go to Facebook Ad Manager
  2. Click “Campaigns”
  3. Click “Ads”
  4. Click “Relevance Score”

Ads with high relevance scores (8+) often deliver great CPA (cost per action).  Ads with low relevance scores (4 or less) rarely generate great results, at least not for very long.

Why It Matters

The goal is actually to help all parties involved. Facebook grades ads with their relevance score system to provide advertisers with useful feedback, and more importantly, to ensure their platform isn’t cluttered with annoying irrelevant advertising. Ads with low relevance scores result in higher costs, while ads with high relevance scores are rewarded with lower costs.

So, if your ads receive a low relevance score, you need to improve it. This will not only save you money, but will also make sure your ads reach the right audience. The more attention you pay to the relevance score of your ads, the more likely your campaigns will succeed.

How You Can Improve

The good news is improving a Facebook relevance score is quite simple. Here are a few easy fixes to make sure your score is consistently high:

Be specific with targeting: Before you can target the right people, you need to figure out who, exactly, you want to see your ads. While you may think every 18-65 year old in the United States may potentially be interested in your product, Facebook won’t be interested in showing it to everyone. If you’ve never done audience research or created buyer personas before, now is the time to start.

The perfect combination of visual and copy: This may sound logical, but that doesn’t always mean it’s obvious.  Focus on improving the visual to improve your relevance score. Also, keep your copy simple and related to what you’re promoting.

Steer clear of offensive and misleading content: This may seem obvious yet again, however it is something to always keep in mind. Always follow the Facebook advertising guidelines and community standards. Besides, social media is a network of millions of people sharing stories. Remember, you want a build a brand and not a bad reputation.

Refresh your ad: This one is crucial, and probably the most common problem you will have with your relevance score. Prevent the target audience getting tired of your ad and try creating another ad creative with new content. If you keep refreshing your ad, your relevance score will continue to rise.

Contact Onimod Global

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

Choosing The Right Social Media Platform For Advertising

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Social media advertising is a powerful tool that can really take your online presence to the next level. Now is the time, as so many companies have taken to digital to promote and sell their brand. However, it is not necessary to advertise on every single social media platform. In fact, advertising on certain platforms may drive your profit margin in the opposite direction. So how do you go about choosing which social media advertising platform is the right choice for you? Learn from the experts at Onimod Global to discover the first steps your company should take.

Identify Your Audience

The first mistake lots of companies make is looking at the amount of advertisers on each platform and choosing in this way. For example, 3 million people are advertising on Facebook, so you automatically choose this platform doing no further research. While the amount of people is very telling as to what can be successful, it is better to identify your audience and which platforms they are the most active on.

Write down the following questions:

  • Who is your typical customer?
  • How old are they?
  • Are they male or female?
  • What is their income and education level?
  • What are they interested in outside of your product and service?

Use the answers to these questions in order to build out your audience profile.

Define Your Goals

This is an important step, because each campaign can be better optimized on certain platforms than others depending on how you want customers to convert. There are also several different types of campaigns on these platforms. For example, say your headhunting company wants IT students to fill out a form on your website applying for interviews. Your goal and your audience must match up with the specific social platform. If you aren’t sure where to start with setting an action goal for your target audience, try starting with a brand awareness campaign. Brand recognition always proves to be an important topic for online shoppers.

Find The Audience

Now that you have your audience and goals defined, it’s time to see which social media platform your potential customers are the most active on. To do this, you’re going to determine which platform your audience uses by looking at the demographics of the users on each platform. For example, the younger age demographic is on both Facebook and Instagram, but they are more active on Instagram. Besides demographics and engagement, you’ll also want to look at how individuals use the platform.

Contact Onimod Global

Onimod Global can help take your social media advertising to the next level. Digital Marketing across multiple social platforms allows us to create visibility for your company in the places your customers are searching, interacting and engaging on social media properties.

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

How To Design Facebook & Instagram Ads That Convert

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There are over 7 million active advertisers on Facebook, according to Statista. With this impressive number, you may be thinking that increasing your Facebook and Instagram ads budget is the only way to outperform your competition. The experts at Onimod Global are here to tell you that is not always true. It is possible to achieve a great ROI when advertising on a budget.

Are you considering Facebook and Instagram as advertising platforms, but you’re not sure where to start? Our Onimod Global team is sharing our best practices for creating Facebook and Instagram ads that convert.

Facebook Desktop

Use square format. On the Facebook and Instagram platforms, square videos fill the screen more and will be more engaging for viewers on both desktop and mobile devices.

Create a visual hook. The more you can get your ad to look like it blends into your customer’s feed, the better. However, you also want to make sure that your content stands out. Use bright, cool colors.

Don’t overuse branding. Advertising is typically a major turnoff for all customers. The less they feel someone is trying to sell them something, the more likely they are to interact with your ad.

Facebook App

Avoid too much detail in images. In this case, less is definitely more. Make your graphics straight and to the point. Too much detail will either confuse or bore your audience.

Write short copy to fill the space. Do your best to avoid the “read more” button on any of your ads. The ad copy should also be very straightforward, with just enough detail to entice your customer but not information overload.

Choose graphics to blend in with news feeds. Similar to how you would choose an image for an ad optimized for Facebook desktop, you want to ensure your ad doesn’t stand out as an advertisement. The more it blends in, the better interaction you will have.

Instagram App

Don’t use landscape images. A bothersome feature about Instagram is their vertical layout of the app. Always use portrait style images and videos for the best look on your audience’s feed.

Describe how people can use your product. For example, let’s say you’re selling LED signs that can be used for all types of home decor. Show the product in action by taking a video showing the light in different areas of the house. Low production costs and the video will blend perfectly into the audience feed, which translates into better interaction on your ad.

Avoid using too many words on your visual. Instagram gives you so many ways to be artsy and creative in your ad. Make sure you’re not overdoing it on the text and emojis, and really let the media visual that you chose speak for itself.

More From Onimod Global

Following these best practices for Facebook and Instagram ads will help you reach success on a budget. Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

The Right Social Media Image Sizes In 2020

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With the world searching more and more online during the COVID-19 crisis, it’s important your brand and social image is professional and polished. Using images which aren’t the correct size for each platform’s requirements can impact your brand perception. Low quality and pixelated visuals make you look unprofessional or not up to date. Are you not sure if you’re using the correct image sizes? Use our image size guide to see the key image requirements for all the major social platforms.

Facebook

  • Your profile photo is representative of your brand. We recommend that is a consistent logo among all of your social media accounts. This image must be 180 x 180 pixels.
  • Cover photos are the banner behind your profile picture, and this should also be consistent across social platforms that allow for an image in this location. Cover photos should be 820 x 312 pixels, if it’s anything smaller than this your image will be stretched and distorted.
  • Images that are shared in a post, for example a blog post news update, have a recommended size of 1,200 x 630 pixels.

Twitter

  • Twitter profile pictures have a recommended size of a 400 x 400 pixel square. Keep in mind that the actual Twitter profile picture appears as a circle, so we advise you to have the proper spacing around your logo so nothing is cut off.
  • Twitter also has a cover photo, which should be about 1500 x 1500 pixels for an image size. Pick an image that compliments your profile picture and make sure it is consistent across all platforms as well.
  • Photos in tweets, when expanded, appear at a maximum of 1024 x 512 pixels and a minimum of 440 x 220 pixels. Keep in mind that on mobile, the app collapses photos which could make for an awkward crop situation. Make sure your content is always centered horizontally to avoid odd cropping.

Instagram

  • Instagram profile pictures are small but powerful. These show any time you have a new story, in direct messages, and of course at the top of your profile page. The image size is recommended to be 110 x 110 pixels.
  • Your thumbnails for photos, or often referred to as your photo grid, will appear as 161 x 161 pixels. If you’re going for a certain aesthetic, the thumbnail size is an important one to keep in mind. Individual image uploads can be square or rectangular. Square photos image size is 1080 x 1080 pixels and rectangular images should use a 4:5 ratio.
  • Instagram stories are a must for your brand to remain relevant on the platform and also where you will have the most visibility. The recommended resolution for stories is 1080 x 1920 pixels or an aspect ratio of 9:16.

YouTube

  • Your profile image for YouTube should be the same consistent branding as your other social channels as mentioned above. The image size for YouTube profile picture is 800 x 800 pixels.
  • Attractive and engaging thumbnail images are crucial to success of your videos. For YouTube, make sure your thumbnail image size is 1,2080 x 720 pixels.
  • YouTube also allows for a cover image photo in addition to your profile image. The recommended image size here is 2,560 x 1,440 pixels.

Pinterest

  • On the Pinterest homepage, profile picture image sizes are 165 x 165 pixels.
  • It is recommended to use an image aspect ratio of 2:3 for pins.
  • Pins that are on the homepage or in a board will appear at 236 pixels wide. Once a pin is expanded, it has a minimum width of 600 pixels and the height of the image will scale proportionally.

LinkedIn

  • Your company logo is very important when it comes to the identification of your brand, of course. Make sure it’s visible with the image size of 300 x 300 pixels.
  • The company background image is similar to the cover photos on other platforms, where it takes up the entire top portion of your page. The recommended image size for your LinkedIn background image is 1,536 x 768 pixels.
  • Images in your content posts have a recommended size of 1,200 x 630 pixels. Keep in mind that LinkedIn is a professional social network platform with a large focus on building relationships with industry leaders. Make sure your posts are appropriate for this kind of audience and focus less on driving sales or website traffic.

*Data from Social Media Today

More From Onimod Global

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

Common Facebook Ads Mistakes and How to Fix Them

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The benefits of advertising your business on Facebook are endless. With over a billion active users, cutting edge features, and detailed targeting ability, why wouldn’t you market yourself there? Despite all its advantages, many businesses still struggle to gain qualified leads from Facebook Ads. 

Advertising on Facebook isn’t as easy as everyone believes it to be, but it can be worth it. If you don’t put in proper time and effort into your ads, it could result in the waste of a lot of budget. Here are the most common Facebook Ads mistakes made by marketers and how to fix them. 

Audience Selection is too Narrow or too Broad 

Facebook provides extremely detailed targeting capabilities. Most people believe that the more specific you get with your targeting, the more effective it will be. This, however, could actually be your downfall. When your audience selection is too narrow you risk exhausting the segment too quickly, driving up your cost per click. The other issue that can result from overly-specific targeting is lack of responses. No matter how pin-pointed your audience is, only a small percentage will respond. When it comes to upper funnel advertising, numbers are the most important, and if your audience is too niche, the numbers are not on your side. 

On the other hand if your audience is too broad, you risk serving your ad to people who aren’t interested in your offer. Again, you could drive up the cost per click because of a poor audience-message match, or you risk paying for clicks that won’t convert to leads or customers.

Wrong Bid Strategy 

Oftentimes marketers just go with the default option when it comes to bid strategy. This is fine in some cases, but if the automatic option for lowest cost isn’t delivering results, it might be time to rethink. Here are the the other available bid strategies and what they’re best used for:

  • Bid Cap: Best for when you want to set a max bid across auctions to control cost and reach as many users as possible at that bid. 
  • Cost Cap: Best for when you want to maximize cost-efficiency or you need to keep cost within a specific threshold. 
  • Target Cost: Best for maintaining a consistent cost. 
  • Value Optimization within Min ROAS: Best if ROAS is the primary measure of success and you’re able to pass back transaction values to our platform. 
  • Highest Value: Best for getting the highest ROAS, want to spend full budget and when unsure of min ROAS/bid amount.

Too Large of an Ask 

Facebook users don’t have the same intent as those on search engines. If you’re asking for a large commitment from someone that has just been exposed to your brand for the first time, you’ll likely get poor results. When you’re still at the top of the funnel, you should be focusing on smaller asks, such as newsletter sign-ups, likes, comments, shares, etc. Once they have had more engagement, you can begin pushing larger asks, such as purchases, event sign-ups, etc.

Failing to Test Your Campaigns 

Launching ads on Facebook is easy. Finding a successful strategy, however, is not. The only real way to know what works and what doesn’t is by testing it. This sounds like more work, but Facebook actually makes A/B testing simple. A/B testing lets you change variables, such as your ad creative, audience or placement, to determine which strategy performs best and improve future campaigns. An A/B test lets you quickly compare both strategies to see which one performs best. After choosing which variable you want to test, Facebook divides your budget to equally and randomly split exposure between each version of your creative, audience, or placement. A/B testing can then measure the performance of each strategy on a cost per result basis or cost per conversion lift basis with a holdout. If you don’t test your way to success from the beginning, you may never figure out how to make Facebook Ads work for your business.

Final Thoughts 

The Facebook Ads platform is simple, but getting quality conversions can be difficult, which is why many businesses struggle with it. Luckily, these common issues are easy to resolve. Remember, there’s no one-size-fits-all answer to campaign optimization. The best strategy for you ultimately depends on your products, website, customer lifecycle, objectives, and intended user experience. 

At Onimod Global we are experts in SEM and social media marketing. We know which platforms are best for brands, and create visibility for brands where customers are searching, interacting, and ultimately converting. Find out more about we do, or contact us today!

Updates To Social Media Advertising With COVID-19

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Social media platforms were quick to ban people from creating advertisements in reference to COVID-19. Several industries eager to educate the public about and promote their efforts to fight the coronavirus and the COVID-19 disease it causes were blocked by Twitter and Google. The decision to ban ads that mention the virus came after executives decided that they did not want to appear to be profiting from the crisis. Twitter has now officially revised their stance in order to allow advertisers to mention the virus in select promotions.

Twitter’s official stance:

“In response to the shifting advertising landscape, and in order to support helpful causes during this time, we’re now allowing managed clients and partners to advertise content containing implicit or explicit reference to COVID-19 in certain use cases, with restrictions.”

Those specific use cases will be:

  • Adjustments to business practices and/or models in response to COVID-19
  • Support for customers and employees related to COVID-19

This enables brands that are approved to advertise changes to their business operations and their assistance measures. However, Twitter will still be enforcing restrictions on using content with mention of the virus that goes against the public good.

For example, Twitter states specifically that it will not allow ads that include:

  • Distasteful references to COVID-19 (or variations)
  • Content that may be sensational or likely to incite panic
  • Inflated prices on products related to COVID-19

This is great news for business to be able to communicate to their customers via social media any changes as a result of the COVID-19 lockdown. Other social media platforms are joining in on enabling their platforms to be more useful for business advertising. Facebook has also recently launched a new set of Page tools to help businesses update their operating hours and service delivery options to help them stay connected, and operational, amid the global lockdowns.

One of the newest measures to assist businesses dealing with the impacts of the COVID-19 shutdowns is rolling out grants for small businesses.

Facebook official statement:

“In the US, we are committing $40 million to support 10,000 small businesses in 34 locations where our employees live and work. Those local businesses can go to facebook.com/grantsforbusiness to see the eligibility for applications, which will start in the US next week.”

In addition to grants, Facebook is adding a gift card listing tool so customers can order digital gift cards for their favorite restaurants and businesses. This is currently being rolled out in the US and will soon be available internationally.  Facebook is also adding some new Page options which will enable impacted businesses to list temporary changes to their operations as a result of COVID-19.

Final Thoughts

These are logical moves from both social media platforms, and moves which will provide benefit to many. To catch up on the latest digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.