Posts Tagged ‘Facebook ads’

I’ve launched a new course on creating Facebook ads. Here is the blurb:

Do you want to master Facebook Ads? Maybe you’re an entrepreneur or small business owner looking to reach new customers. A marketer looking for new audiences. Or maybe you’re new to digital marketing and want to find out what it can do for you.

This is a complete beginner to advanced course: we’ll cover the basics from setting up your account and creating your first campaign to advanced topics like split testing, retargeting and instant experiences.

It’s a big course: three and a half hours of full HD video showing you exactly how to create ads as you follow my screen.

If you’ve tried uploading an SRT file to a video on Facebook, you may encounter an error like this:

The captions file you selected is in a format that we don’t support.

What’s wrong? You cry, not that you’re using the standard format for SRT files. It could be that Facebook is throwing an unnecessary hissy fit because you’re using zero-indexing in the blocks, but more likely to be something even simpler: the filename.

Facebook insists that the files are named filename.en_GB.srt, or whatever language combination you are using (for example, filename.en_US.srt. If you don’t include the “.en_GB” bit, Facebook will reject the file, even though it’s a valid SRT file.

As soon as you add that the filename, it works!

Happy advertising.

Recently, I tried to set my targetting on a Facebook ad and the update failed. I didn’t notice and my ad went out to a much wider audience than intended. Luckily, this ended really well. But you’re not always that lucky.

Here are two examples of ads that (I presume) have missed their targeting.

Here is a company selling tights. You would imagine that you would want to target these ads at women. Sure, you might want to sell to men as a gift for their partners. But you would write totally different ad copy for that.

Here is another example. My guess is that it is a scam because of the username and 70% discount. But, even so, it’s advertising an Australian bike shop even though I’m in the UK.

Do take the time to set your targetting and to check that it is correct.

Here is someone selling a “Default Description” chain.

This one is an interesting one. You can see what they are getting out trying to pique your curiosity. But they don’t even hint at what it is. And it’s for both runners and people who go outdoors, so how specific or interesting can it be? I didn’t request their free download.

This company did include a description. But it’s mostly HTML tags.

This one isn’t an ad, but while we’re on the topic of including code, here is an Instant Article from The Independent.

This advert for Bar Soba looks fine. However, as soon as you click it you get a “page not found” error on their website.

This week’s lesson on crafting a good Facebook ad is to make sure that your image matches your sales copy. Take a look at this advert from Hunt Bike Wheels.

This ad is just confusing because it’s talking about disc wheels, but the wheels in the photo are clearly not disc wheels.

Compare it to this disc wheel from Planet X:

You’ll notice that this one looks like a disc.

Now, you could argue that I have misunderstood, and they’re actually talking about wheels with brake discs on them. Which, from the look of their website, which features a lot of wheels with brake discs on them, is probably the case.

But there aren’t even any brake discs on the image in the advert. All of this causes a lot of confusion for the user who struggles to work out what they are looking at. To avoid this, make sure your image makes sense with your sales copy.

This week, I’m looking at a classic mistake people make when targetting their ads: not targetting it at the correct level of customer. To do it, I’m using this ad that popped up in my newsfeed.

Here’s what I don’t like about it: I have no idea what a “mumbler” is.

At first, I thought it was some kind of speech impediment group. I’ve got a lot of friends who have come through the McGuire Programme, which helps with stammers, so I assumed it was something similar at first glance.

But then it mentions babies, so I’m wondering whether it’s a mum’s group.

None of what they are doing makes any sense.

First, why am I seeing this? They could set the targeting to be people who have interacted with their page or visited their website, in which case it makes sense to go straight into your sales copy without explaining what your group is.

Or, if it’s a general ad, they need to explain what it is. Think of Eugene Schwartz’s levels of awareness. They need to tell me what their group is.

If it is a mums group, why am I seeing it? I’m a dad. They can set gender targetting on the ad to just include mums, or they could have a separate version of the ad, targetted at men, which makes it clear that dads are welcome too.

Conclusion

I’ve written before about how community groups should not use Facebook ads. Do it if you know what you’re doing. But you probably don’t know how to write copy or set the targeting, so you’re probably wasting your money. This ad is a good example of that.

If you do want to use Facebook ads, then make sure you know how to target your ads appropriately and come up with relevant ads for each audience segment.