How to Create Instagram Lead Ads

Do you advertise on Instagram?

Want more leads?

Instagram lead ads let you collect valuable contact information from potential customers without pushing them off of the platform.

In this article, you'll discover how to set up lead ads on Instagram.

How to Create Instagram Lead Ads by Deirdre Kelly on Social Media Examiner.

To get started with lead ads, create a new ad campaign and select Lead Generation as the objective.

Choose the Lead Generation objective at the campaign level.

Next, continue to ad set level to define your audience targeting. If you have existing lead/customer data, always use a lookalike audience. Upload your customer list to use as the source audience to build your lookalike audience.

Define audience targeting for your Instagram lead ad.

Using your customer list as the source audience will give you better results than simply using existing leads from previous marketing efforts, which include people who have yet to drive any real value for your business. People who've actually spent money with your business (rather than just signaled interest) provide much stronger data for Facebook to work with.

It's even better if your customer base is large enough to segment out a portion of higher-value customers (e.g., repeat purchasers, high-spend purchasers, premium subscribers, etc.) to use as your lookalike source. Remember, though, Facebook recommends using a source audience of at least 1,000 users for best results.

Always exclude existing leads so you're not wasting impressions and ad dollars. By continuously retargeting the same users, you can stimulate negative feedback, which will deflate your relevance score and hurt your CPMs (cost per thousand impressions).

Facebook now lets you create an audience of users who successfully opened and submitted a lead form, so you can dynamically exclude incoming leads. With all other leads, you'll have to manually upload data to Facebook before excluding people.

Create a custom engagement audience in Facebook Audience Manager.

Under Placements, select the Automatic Placements option, because that only includes the Facebook news feed and Instagram anyway. Audience network and all other Facebook placements are ineligible.

Choose the placements where you'd like your lead ads to be served.

Although lead ads were originally rolled out just for mobile, Facebook realized that advertisers face all of the same obstacles on desktop too. Users are impatient, and making the process easier (by letting users submit their info in just a few taps) benefits both parties regardless of device. By selecting auto placement, your ads will be delivered on both desktop and mobile.

In your bidding, make sure you optimize for leads vs. link clicks. Link clicks may result in a higher click-through rate but you should always optimize for what your true goal is, which is simply leads in this case.

Optimize your Instagram ad for leads.

Now you're ready to move to the ad level. The front end of the ad unit is the standard format for regular ads, with the same creative options available.

A carousel ad that highlights the benefits of your service or product features/use cases can work nicely here. Incorporating testimonials and reviews is also a good idea. Although video works well, a slideshow can be an easier, cheaper alternative and Facebook provides simple tools for creating one.

Here's the carousel ad format used with Instagram lead ads.

It's finally time to create your lead form! You should be thinking quality over quantity here.

To make sure your leads are qualified, always use a context card. The context card appears after users click on the ad and before they submit their information. This is where you lay out the benefits of submitting the form to your prospects. You can choose a paragraph or bullet point format for this card.

The following example uses bullet points to relay the main selling points to potential leads.

Spell out the benefits of your product or service on the context card for your Instagram ad.

Keep questions to a minimum; less is more in this case. The user information fields, which consist of primary contact info along with some basic demographic and work information, will pre-fill with users' personal details as long as they've included them in their Facebook profile. This makes it easy for users to submit this information.

However, be careful not to include fields that aren't necessary, because users might be reluctant to hand over too much personal information this early in the relationship.

You can add up to three custom questions, but use these sparingly. If possible, ask multiple choice questions rather than open-ended questions. The more convenient the process, the more conversions you'll achieve.

Customize the fields and questions on your Instagram lead form.

If you're collecting customer information, you should already have a written privacy policy. Hopefully, it's posted on your website so you can provide a link to your privacy policy. This is a required field for creating the lead form.

Lastly, you can add a link to your website that users will see on the thank-you page along with a View Website call-to-action.

The thank-you page of your Instagram lead ad includes a link to your website.

Conclusion

As Facebook's mobile ad inventory skyrockets, the platform is determined to make it easier for advertisers to generate value from mobile users. Introducing Instagram placement for lead ads is the latest example of this.

To get the most out of the leads you generate, make sure you follow up with them in a timely fashion. If you have a customer relationship management (CRM) system in place, you can set up your leads to sync automatically, so you can follow up as quickly as possible when the leads are most valuable. Manually downloading leads can result in a long lag between receiving a lead and following up with a prospect.

Facebook already supports many of the most popular CRM systems like Salesforce, MailChimp, and Zapier. You can find more information on the available integrations here. If you don't see yours listed, it might take some work by your developer to set up lead syncing through the Facebook API. Alternatively, you could use a middleman integration like LeadsBridge.

What do you think? Will you try Instagram lead ads? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

How to Create Instagram Lead Ads by Deirdre Kelly on Social Media Examiner.

View the original article here

Original source: How to Create Instagram Lead Ads.
http://www.jretechnology.com

Facebook Advertising Benchmarks for 18 Industries [Infographic]

The average clickthrough rate (CTR) for Facebook ads across all industries is 0.90%, according to recent research from WordStream.

The report was based on November 2016 through January 2017 Facebook advertising data for 256 US-based WordStream clients in 18 industries: apparel, auto, B2B, beauty, consumer services, education, employment/job training, finance/insurance, fitness, home improvement, healthcare, industrial services, legal, real estate, retail, technology, and travel/hospitality.

Legal adver tisers have the highest average CTR on Facebook ads (1.61%); employment/job training advertisers have the lowest average CTR (0.47%).

The average conversion rate for Facebook ads across all industries is 9.21%.

Fitness brands have the highest average conversion rate for Facebook ads (14.29%); technology brands have the lowest average conversion rate (2.31%).

The average cost per click (CPC) across all industries is $1.72, and the average cost per action (CPA) is $18.68.

Check out the infographic to see Facebook advertising benchmarks for all 18 industries examined:

About the research: The report was based on November 2016 through January 2017 Facebook advertising data for 256 US-based WordStream client s in 18 industries.

Join over 600,000 marketing professionals, and gain access to thousands of marketing resources! Don't worry … it's FREE!

Ayaz Nanji is an independent digital strategist and a co-founder of ICW Content, a marketing agency specializing in content creation for brands and businesses. He is also a research writer for MarketingProfs. He has worked for Google/YouTube, the Travel Channel, AOL, and the New York Times.

LinkedIn: Ayaz Nanji

Twitter: @ayaznanji

View the original article here

Original source: Facebook Advertising Benchmarks for 18 Industries [Infographic].
http://www.jretechnology.com

5 Ways to Use Facebook Messenger Bots for Your Business

Do your customers message you with questions, comments, or complaints on Facebook?

Want to automate the most common customer interactions?

Customers expect lightning-fast responses from businesses on Facebook. Chatbots can help you deliver the right answer the moment a customer asks.

In this article, you'll discover five types of Facebook Messenger bots your business can integrat e for better customer service.

5 Ways to Use Facebook Messenger Bots for Your Business by Ana Gotter on Social Media Examiner.

Increasing numbers of consumers are turning to social media messaging, including Facebook Messenger, to contact businesses with questions, comments, and complaints. While there are tools that will help you manage the influx of customer messages, sometimes they're just not enough, particularly when social users are accustomed to a timely response from you.

Facebook Messenger chatbots will let you automatically provide consumers with immediate responses. They can answer basic questions like "What is your return policy?" (even though it's posted in three different places on your site), freeing up your customer service team to handle more serious customer concerns or issues.

Chatbots can provide information and basic customer service.

Suppose you're a customer service representative for a small jewelry business and you spend three hours every day sending customers tracking numbers that they've already received via email. A chatbot can take care of this task for you.

You can build c hatbots for a variety of purposes, including customer service and content marketing.

Certain chatbots can even provide automated services like wireless bank transactions or help customers book a ride on Lyft, simplifying the process. Remember, the easier you make it for consumers to work with you, the more money you'll make.

Chatbots are extremely valuable, and part of this value comes from their flexibility. When you create a chatbot, you can customize your chatbot to fit your business, your customers' needs, and a variety of purposes.

Here are five Facebook Messenger chatbots you can set up, all of which serve a unique purpose that can benefit your business.

Some businesses use chatbots to focus solely on content; the chatbots serve as an extension of their content marketing strategy. These bots nurture relationships with clients and provide immediate value without any work on the user's part.

For example, the Whole Foods chatbot is geared toward helping users find new recipes. They can enter requests like "soup recipes" to browse suggestions for different types of meals or cuisines, or move through a series of questions for personalized recipes.

The Whole Foods chatbot offers value through content rather than selling directly to users.

When users tap to view a recipe, the chatbot takes them to the recipe on the Whole Foods website. This is an ingenious way to generate more traffic from social media without it feeling forced or too much like spam. You'll help customers find relevant content and provide a ton of value.

Sending users to your website from a chatbot can get you more traffic and potentially more sales.

When you create a chatbot to provide customized content to your audience, keep these best practices in mind:

Treat your chatbot like content marketing. Selling shouldn't be your primary objective, but you can use content to send users to your site.Ensure your site is mobile-responsive.Inform customers how and where to contact you if they need additional help, including customer service issues.Include browsing menus if possible. This makes it easier for users to find content they're interested in, even if they don't know exactly what they're looking for yet. Including browsing menus in your chatbot makes it easier for users to find the information they're looking for.

One popular use of chatbots is to provide customer service. If your customer service team is asked the same questions over and over, a chatbot is a great way to field some of those questions. You just have to teach it what to say.

The Domino's Pizza chatbot is a good example of this. Customers can order directly from the bot and track their order. The "track order" option is a simple, effective customer service tool. Imagine how many calls Domino's gets from impatient customers wanting to know when their pizza will be delivered.

The Domino's chatbot makes it easy for customers to track their order. This can cut down on calls to the store.

When creating a customer service chatbot, follow these best practices:

Make sure customers can contact a customer service agent if necessary. Offer a "Did we answer your question?" option that can direct still-stumped users to an actual customer service agent. 1-800-Flowers gives customers the option to connect with a live agent, who can offer personalized help.

Let users know up front that they're working with an automated response system. You can't trick peop le into thinking they're talking to a real person, especially when it comes to customer service issues.If you need personal information to verify a user's identity, direct that person to customer service via your website or a phone number. Asking for this information via Facebook Messenger is normally not a good idea for security reasons.

While no artificial intelligence can be as effective as a talented salesperson (at least not yet), chatbots that are designed to sell can help you boost sales and increase your profit. Use the chatbot to show customers the products they're looking for and process simple sales right in the Messenger app.

The 1-800-Flowers chatbot is designed primarily for selling, making it easy for consumers to order flowers through Messenger. The bot asks for the recipient's name, phon e number, and delivery address. Then it prompts customers to choose what category of products they're looking for and displays relevant products.

Customers can easily browse and select products from the 1-800-Flowers chatbot.

Once users select an item, the chatbot asks them to schedule the delivery and provide billing information. The process is simple and likely easier than trying to navigate a mobile site and check out on a smartphone.

Not only can customers select prod ucts, but they can also schedule delivery and enter billing information through the 1-800-Flowers chatbot.

Here are some tips for creating a selling chatbot:

Make sure your chatbot can answer frequently asked product questions; this can help drive sales significantly.Use a chatbot builder that allows you to accept payments through services like Stripe or PayPal. This functionality can generate more sales than just sending people to your mobile site.Always ask "Did you want to look at anything else before you check out?" because users may be willing to look at and purchase add-on items.

If you want to build and nurture relationships with your customers, consider designing your chatbot simply to entertain them (assuming this approach fits with your brand). Users can opt to receive future messages from you, and you can send fun facts, games, and content meant purely to entertain them.

The T rivia Blast chatbot, for example, focuses only on entertainment. Once people send their first message, the chatbot will regularly send messages to them with game suggestions and calls to action to play them. Users can sort the trivia games by topic and some games even offer the option to "see how it works" or "challenge a friend," inviting more users to the chatbot.

Trivia Blast's chatbot focuses on trivia games users can play, but also maintains a high level of interaction with options like "challenge friends" and "watch how it works."

Keep these points in mind when building a chatbot to entertain users:

If you plan to reach out to users in the future, always ask users to o pt into receiving new content; otherwise, you may have unhappy users on your hands.Make sure all of your content is mobile-responsive.Use lots of non-text media like videos and images. Your messages should be as dynamic as possible.

Plenty of businesses have their own mobile apps that offer automated services, but you can take this a step further by creating chatbots that offer these services in the Messenger app itself.

RemitRadar's money transfer service is one of the best examples of this type of chatbot. Chatbot users can use automated services to send money, pay for international mobile while abroad, request exchange rates, and find other money transfer locations. All of these services are streamlined and easy to use.

Offering automated services through a chatbot can boost business.

Keep these best practices in mind when creating this type of chatbot:

Provide preset, clickable menus to navigate your automated services. This will simplify the process and make it clear what services you offer.For services your chatbot can't handle, refer people to the appropriate place on your site if possible.Test services thoroughly on different types of devices before the chatbot goes live.

Tools to Create Facebook Messenger Chatbots

When you're ready to create a Facebook Messenger chatbot for your business, there's a number of easy-to-use chatbot builders that can help you, many of which don't require coding knowledge. To see how to create and install chatbots in more detail, this tutorial gives you everything you need to know.

Here are recommended tools to consider:

Botsify lets you create one chatbot for free. You'll get free integrations, unlimited messages, and up to 100 bot users. Paid plans allow for more chatbots and bot users. Big-name brands like Apple and Universal Music group use Botsify's services. Once your chatbot is up and running, you'll get access to analytics.

Botsify has a user-friendly interface.

Converse comes with a ton of great features. You can create chatbots that sell, add images, and even take payments from third parties like PayPal, Stripe, and Clearbit.

This chatbot builder focuses on chat flow, and it's capable of question routing so users can get the answers, products, or content they're looking for. Converse is a little more difficult to learn how to use than the other two tools here. You can try it out for free.

Converse's chatbot builder is a little more difficult to navigate but the tool offers fantastic customer service and features.

Chatfuel boasts that it can help you launch a "full-featured chatbot" in just 7 minutes (after a 10-minute tutorial, if you need it), and it's free. Template cards make it easy to "teach" your chatbot what to say. Like the other two tools, it comes with full analytics. Chatfuel has a number of big-name clients like MTV, ABC News, BuzzFeed, and Adidas.

Chatfuel's bot builder is easy to use, and they offer a 10-minute tutorial to take you through the creation process.

Final Thoughts

Facebook Messenger chatbots have soared in popularity among businesses. They can deliver automated responses to users who contact you through Messenger and are now being used for a wide array of purposes, including customer service and selling.

What do you think? Do you use Facebook Messenger chatbots for your business? Which types of chatbots have been most beneficial to you? Share your thoughts and knowledge in the comments below!

5 Ways t o Use Facebook Messenger Bots for Your Business by Ana Gotter on Social Media Examiner.

View the original article here

Original source: 5 Ways to Use Facebook Messenger Bots for Your Business.
http://www.jretechnology.com

How to Refine Your Facebook Audience for Better Ad Targeting

Do you want to improve your Facebook ad targeting?

Interested in learning more about the audiences you're already reaching?

Refining your Facebook audience options will help you reach the right audience without wasting ad spend.

In this article, you'll discover how to build three valuable Facebook custom audience segments and analyze them with Audience Insights.

How to Refine Your Facebook Audience for Better Ad Targeting by Deirdre Kelly on Social Media Examiner.

If you advertise on Facebook, it's helpful to look at different customer segments in the context of the platform. Facebook lets you create custom audiences based on your customer list, website visitors, and engagement. You can then use Audience Insights to learn more about those audiences.

Note: To protect user data, Facebook doesn't offer insights for audiences of fewer than 1,000 users, so keep that minimum size in mind when creating audiences.

To create a Facebook custom audience, go to the Audiences section of your Facebook Ads Manager. Then click Create Audience and select Custom Audience from the drop-down menu.

Create a custom audience in Facebook Ads Manager.

Next you'll see a list of audiences you can create.

Choose how you want to create your Facebook custom audience.

Here's how to create three types of custom audiences and get detailed information about them with Facebook Audience Insights.

If you want to upload a list of customers or leads to create a custom audience, select Customer File. Facebook will match these contacts with Facebook users and create an audience based on those matches.

Create a Facebook custom audience using a customer list.

Facebook lets you upload a CSV file or copy and paste the data. If you don't have a lot of customer data (maybe you offer guest checkout options or are looking at cold leads or a mailing list), you can just provide email addresses. Alternatively, you can do a direct sync with MailChimp.

Choose how you want to upload customer information to create your Facebook custom audience.

When you upload your customer list, the more identifiers you can provide (name, zip code, phone number, etc.), the better your match rate will be.

When creating a Facebook custom audience from your email list, you can improve your match rate with additional identifiers.

While it's helpful to get a holistic view of your customer base, you may want to try segmenting out a higher lifetime value type of customer. Most ecommerce platforms (such as Shopify) let you filter customers by number of orders. Alternatively, if you work with an email marketing platform (like Klaviyo), use filters to create custom user lists based on purchase behavior.

If you've taken the steps to install the Facebook pixel on your site, Facebook lets you build audiences based on site traffic. You can set rules for Facebook to populate audiences based on how people behave on your site.

Select Website Traffic to set up this type of custom audience.

Create a Facebook custom audience based on website traffic.

In the Create Audience box, you can choose from a number of targeting options in the Website Traffic drop-down menu.

From the Website Traffic menu, choose whom you want to include in your Facebook custom audience.

Based on Time Spent on Your Website

One option is to target the users who spend the most time on your site (i.e., the top 5% to 25% of most active users). This audience segment is likely to be more interested in branded goods or new product launches, subscription products, or product bundle packages.

Create a Facebook custom audience of people who spend the most time on your website.

Of course, you don't want to ignore the other 75%+ of site visitors, so use this audience of super-active users along with some of the other retargeting methods discussed. Remember, the greater the traffic volume on your site, the greater the scale and returns will be.

People Who Visit Specific Web Pages

You can also set URL rules to target visitors of specific web pages. Either specify the exact URL or define specific keywords. By using browsing activity for retargeting, you can promote new products to people who have visited similar collections or products.

Additionally, if you have new features or variants launching for existing product offerings, you can retarget users who have viewed the product in the past. If you have a product- or collection-specific promo running, this is the perfect way to tell interested users about it (i.e., buy one get one free, 3 for 2, etc.).

Build a Facebook custom audience of people who visit specific pages of your site.

People Who Visit Specific Web Pages but Not Others

You can also build an audience of people who visit specific web pages but not others. However, this isn't recommended because you can exclude any custom audience at the ad set level and there's more room for customization that way.

Custom Combination

If you choose the Custom Combination option, you can do dynamic versions of your segmented customer lists. The audience will update almost instantaneously as it receives real-time data from the pixel, but the caveat is that the pixel operates on a rolling 6-month timeframe. This means that you'll have the most up-to-date data, but it only dates back 180 days.

This is the trade-off between using static customer lists and dynamic website custom audiences. With a static customer list upload, you reap the benefits of lifetime customer data, but it will saturate quickly without pulling and uploading frequently.

Even if you're using a large lookalike audience, it's better to have a dynamic custom audience as your source so the audience continues to refresh and doesn't grow stale. However, if your business doesn't collect significant customer data in a 6-month window, customer list uploads will be the better option here.

To capture repeat purchasers, simply choose your main conversion event ("Purchase," for example) and set it to a minimum occurrence of 2.

Set up a Facebook custom audience based on a defined purchase behavior.

Try to incentivize these customers to buy more often with limited-time promotions. This audience typically responds well to sales and is interested in new product offerings. It's also valuable if you're promoting subscription and product bundles.

To identify high average order value (AOV) purchasers, set the main conversion event to Purchase and add an extra parameter-defining value, setting this to a minimum dollar value. This is a great audience for promoting premium products and a strong source for a lookalike audience if you want to drive higher AOVs across the board.

In the example below, we chose a $70 minimum AOV, which was about 25% higher than the sitewide AOV for this business.

You can create a Facebook custom audience of customers with a higher AOV.

People Who Haven't Visited in a Certain Amount of Time

Another worthwhile test is to build audiences of users who haven't visited in x number of days. Target these users with an exclusive promotion and see if you can win them back.

Use a Facebook custom audience to create a winback campaign for dormant customers/visitors.

You can create a sweeping audience that includes anyone who has engaged with your Facebook page or its posts (including ads) in the last year. Click Engagement on Facebook.

Select Engagement on Facebook to set up your Facebook custom audience.

Then click Page.

Choose Page to create your Facebook custom audience.

Now you can refine your audience using the following interactions:

People who have visited your pagePeople who have engaged with page posts or adsPeople who clicked on any call-to-action buttonsPeople who messaged your pagePeople who saved your page or posts

Because these audiences are based on various engagement metrics, they're most useful for getting people to take action within Facebook, not necessarily onsite. If you want to improve reach and engagement for your page and its content, these are valuable targeting audiences.

Create a custom audience of people who have interacted with your business on Facebook.

If you're running an exciting promotion and only want to drive awareness, it can be worthwhile to target an audience of people who have engaged with your posts/ads in the past and just bid for impressions to reach as many people as possible within this audience.

Similarly, if you're trying to generate site traffic, target this previously engaged audience and use CPC bidding to maximize clicks to your website.

After you've created your custom audiences, head over to Audience Insights to find information about the users within those audiences. After all, the more you know about your customers, the better you can market to them.

Under Custom Audience in the left sidebar, select your custom audience from the drop-down menu. You'll then see a detailed breakdown of the users in that audience.

Analyze your chosen custom audience in Facebook Audience Insights.

Below the insights, you'll see six categories of data: Demographics, Page Likes, Location, Activity, Household, and Purchase.

Gain insights into your Facebook custom audience by looking at the different data graphs available.

For prospecting campaigns where you're trying to win over new customers, let lookalike audiences do the work of refining your target audience. However, if there's a clear skew for any of these data points, excluding a certain age group or gender can make your campaign more efficient.

Suppose that the graph above represents one of your custom audiences. You can see that only 6% of people in the audience are men, so you would just target women with this campaign. If you want to attract more male customers, you should work on more male-focused products and ad creative. You might also exclude the 55+ age group because few customers fall within this age range.

View a breakdown of Facebook custom audience demographics.

The demographic insights are particularly interesting. If you're using oCPM bidding to target, Facebook will seek out the users most likely to convert anyway, so don't worry too much about purchase activity or household data.

Conclusion

Use Facebook Audience Insights to educate yourself on the characteristics of your most valuable customer segments. By doing this, you can better cater to the needs of existing customers and scale your business by targeting new potential customers with similar characteristics.

What do you think? Have you created some of these custom audiences? What have you learned by analyzing these segments in Facebook Audience Insights? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

How to Refine Your Facebook Audience for Better Ad Targeting by Deirdre Kelly on Social Media Examiner.

View the original article here

Original source: How to Refine Your Facebook Audience for Better Ad Targeting.
http://www.jretechnology.com