In my blog post on SocialMediaPulse: 5 Tests to Optimize Your Paid Social, I walk you through five of the most important tests you can run with your paid social. Read it now.

The common thread with all of these tests is that as the one running the tests, you need variety. Facebook would have you believe short video is always best, but because every audience is unique, that might not be the case for your ad. In fact, if you test a wide variety of options, the results might surprise you. Next time you’re testing ad creative, instead of just testing two images, try testing all of these against each other:

• Single static image 
• Carousel 
• 15-second video
• 30-second video
• Simple video, like scrolling test against a static background

By expanding your A/B testing to be A/B/C/D/E testing, you’re able to get more accurate data on what your audience responds to. You might even be surprised at what you find—every audience is unique, so something that’s worked in the past might not necessarily be the best choice now.
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When you do this, it’s very important that you have a clear view of controls vs. variables. You’re testing a variety of ad creative, but you need to have a control ad you test it against—ideally, one that’s performed well. So for example, if you’ve already run a great ad and you want a preview of how your audience would respond to similar ads with different creative, test versions of that ad, rather than creating a whole new one to test. Ads Manager makes this super easy, since you can test multiple variables at once. 

With ads, testing is never a “one and done” process. You’re looking for trends over time so you can zero in on them and This is the mindset you need to have anytime you’re testing your paid social efforts. More options give you more data, and more data gives you a fuller, more nuanced picture. 

It might sound like a lot to test, but you can follow the same template for each test you run. In fact, you should follow the same template each time you test your paid social, because that eliminates any variables that might interfere with your data. I also share this template in the blog post. (Hint: it’s something you probably learned in high school 😉)

So read the full blog post now to learn more about five tests you should be running to optimize your paid social media strategy, how to determine which ideas to test, and how to effectively test those ideas to get valuable data you can use to build better paid social campaigns.

The key to cutting through isn’t being the loudest, it’s having the messaging that connects immediately with your audience. Your (concise! snappy! on-brand!) messaging needs to show them you deeply understand the problems they’re facing right now. 

You might know the problems’ root and the big-picture solution, but your clients don’t care about that. If the sun’s shining too bright in their eyes, they want a hat. That’s the phrasing they’ll use, and that’s the phrasing you need to use to show them you understand them. 

You’ve also got to know how to interpret your ads’ data. The data shows you everything you need to know about people’s experience in your marketing funnel…including the spots where they get stuck or turned off. 

It isn’t a question of “am I nurturing them enough to convert them into clients?” It’s “am I meeting their needs at every step?” Your data shows you where you are and aren’t meeting these needs. 

So how do you change up your strategy and ensure that you’re meeting those needs? Messaging is part of it. So is your message’s framing. Frequency is a big one too…remember what we said about the internet being a noisy place? If you think you aren’t communicating enough, you’re right. You likely need to communicate more. And definitely in a human way. 

Click here to watch the interview.

Generating conversions from Instagram ads isn’t rocket science, but it’s not a no-brainer, either. The key to running Instagram ads that get leads and sales is knowing how to test your ads (and how to refine them based on your test results). 

Before you unleash your next Instagram ad, familiarize yourself with these best practices for testing Instagram ads. 
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Understand the four factors behind Instagram success

Every Instagram ad has four main components:

• Objective
• Messaging
• Offer
• Audience

Each of these components plays a role in your ad’s success, and each can impact the others’ effectiveness. Each can also be isolated and tested. We’re going to walk through each factor and how to effectively test it to maximize your final ad’s reach and impact with your intended audience. Remember, testing an Instagram ad is like testing anything else—to understand each piece’s role in determining the final result, you need to isolate each piece and test it individually. 

Objective

The first component of your Instagram ad to test is your objective. It’s the most critical factor in determining who, when, and where people see your ad. That’s because it’s the factor that tells Ads Manager what kind of conversions you want your ad to generate. 

On Instagram, you can choose from the following campaign objectives:
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Awareness

• Brand awareness        
• Reach    

Consideration

• Traffic    
• Engagement        
• App installs        
• Video views        
• Lead generation            
• Messages

Conversion    

• Conversions    
• Catalog sales    
• Store traffic

It’s important that you choose the one that best aligns with the action you want viewers to take because Ads Manager knows when people are most likely to take certain actions—and serves them ads accordingly. For example, if you choose “catalog sales,” people will see your ad during the hours they’re most likely to make purchases. In other words, they won’t see your ad when they’re getting ready for work at 7 am. 

Messaging

Once you’ve chosen your objective, it’s time to start testing different options. Your ad’s messaging is the content you use to grab viewers’ attention and express why taking advantage of your offer is something they need to do. 

And you have to do it all within three seconds. That’s how long it takes to establish relevance, another term for “getting people to stop scrolling and engage with your ad.”

When you’re testing different messaging options, you’re testing three sections of your ad:

• Image
• Primary text
• Call to action (CTA)

So how do you establish relevance? 

By using words that will connect with the audience you’re trying to reach. Geographical words, occupation words, words associated with the pain points you’re telling them you can fix—use these words in any text overlays in your image as well as in the primary text. Then, test variations of the image and text against each other to see which one results in the most conversions. 

A/B testing is built right into Ads Manager, so you can easily run two versions and compare their conversion rates. Consider testing variations like still image vs. video, single image vs. carousel, and text overlay vs. no text overlay. 
Choosing a CTA button is just like choosing an objective—just pick the one that aligns with your goal from the available options. Take a cue from this text and use it in your primary text, too—this guides viewers through your ad to your CTA.

Offer 

Up next, we’ve got the offer. This is the actual offer you’re advertising—and testing it often means getting pretty granular. 

Here’s what I mean by that: 

You might be testing a BOGO deal against a 50 percent discount. Sure, they’re the same for the buyer cost-wise, but one might catch more eyes and generate more clicks than the other.

You might find one product, even if it’s not your best deal, generates more sales than ads for other products. Maybe it’s a more photogenic offer, maybe it’s just more popular, maybe it’s the perfect gateway to your website and more sales on other products. Test different offers and find out. 

Your offer might be a lead magnet, rather than a tangible product. The same rules apply—try out different lead magnets with different messaging to find the one that results in the most clicks.

Audience

The last factor, audience, is deliberately listed last because before you can accurately test it, you need to have your ad’s objective, offer, and messaging just right. Once you know which offer and messaging work best for your objective, you need to determine who the ad works best with. 

Just like you can A/B test in Ads Manager, you can test different audiences. Try testing:

• Cold vs. warm audiences
• Individual interests and categories of interests
• Lookalike audiences. These are audiences that have common characteristics, like real estate agents and loan officers. They aren’t the same audience, but they have similar interests and goals. Ad Manager’s Audience Overlap tool is very helpful when you need to build lookalike audiences. 

Once you dial in your ideal audience, you can use that data to scale your ads. You know which version of your ad converts best, you know who it converts best, and now you’re ready to unleash it on Instagram as the conversion-generating machine it is. For a more in-depth explanation of how to test and scale Instagram ads and get real results, check out my article on Social Media Examiner. In it, you’ll learn: 

• What makes Instagram ads different from Facebook ads (and how to alter your ad strategy accordingly)
• The four core components of an Instagram ad and how they work together to make (or break!) your ad’s success
• Specific factors to test when you’re testing your Instagram ad
• How to build and test lookalike audiences
• Using the Campaign Budget Optimization tool

To truly get the most out of your Instagram ad budget, read this comprehensive article now.

*see article at https://backlinko.com/instagram-users

Check out my article “YouTube Analytics: How to Use Data to Inform Your Future Videos,” published by our friends at Social Media Examiner. From this article, you’ll learn how to:

• Identify your goals and how to measure them
• Access your YouTube analytics 
• Understand which metrics you need to pay attention to
• Pinpoint which videos generate the most views
• Find the videos that generate channel subscriptions

It may not feel like it now, but all that data is your friend. Learn just how YouTube Analytics can help you identify what works so you can optimize performance and achieve your objectives.

Click here to read the article.

Lucky for us jailbirds, we can get our accounts back up and running. On my minicast with marketing guru Lynn Gregorski of Rapunzel Creative, we go over the basics of what to do when your accounts get blocked and how to prevent them from being blocked in the future. Watch the video and read the highlights below.

What to do when your account is disabled.

1. Give Facebook what it wants. When Facebook disables your Facebook and/or Instagram accounts, they’ll ask you to verify your account. You may need to send in a copy of your business license. They may ask you to take a photo of yourself holding a hand-written copy of a numerical code, like they did Lynn. (Seriously!)
2. Know how Facebook provides support. If you’re ever concerned about whether or not a communication from Facebook is legit, remember that their support staff always emails or uses their Business Manager chat. Don’t trust a message from a page claiming to be support. If you’re worried about a specific email address, check out their published list of domains. If the email is coming from one of those verified domains, it’s the real deal. 
3. Don’t be afraid to send in multiple tickets. Persistence is key. If you don’t check in consistently with Facebook on your issue, they may just brush it aside.
4. If you’re stuck, get help. When Lynn hit a wall with support, she reached out to me. By granting me admin access to her accounts, I was able to contact support on her behalf. And through my experience managing multiple accounts, I was able to get a higher level of support that, in Lynn’s words, “saved [their] account.” You really don’t have to go at it alone!

How to prevent your account from being disabled.
Now that you’re on parole, you’re probably eager to stay out of jail. One straightforward way to avoid Facebook banning your accounts: play by their rules. These include:

• Don’t promote unacceptable business practices
• Never make misleading claims
• Don’t send people to a non-functional landing page
• Don’t use adult content in your ads
• Don’t repeatedly violate the rules

​In addition, there is something you can do to make it easier when your account is compromised: Get everything set up in Business Manager. By associating all your accounts with Facebook Business Manager, you gain more access to Facebook support, who has the power to restore your account. (Likely after multiple help tickets, long support chats, and weeks of waiting. But still a win.)

Lastly, stay away from unauthorized publishing and other tools, like third-party follow/unfollow tools. While these tools may be convenient in the short-run, they have a tendency to disable accounts. (Very inconvenient in the long run.) Make sure the tool is an official Facebook Marketing Partner or Instagram Partner, like AgoraPulse. 

So there you have it! You now have the tools to dig your way out of Facebook prison! (And they’re way better than a spork!) Stay tuned for future marketing minicasts with Lynn!

In my guest appearance on the podcast Digital Freelancers, I talk all things social media marketing. Brush up on what you know and learn what you don’t by listening to my 30-minute dive into effective social media marketing.

​Click here to listen now.

​Check out my rundown on Facebook Conversions API, published by the wonderful Social Media Examiner just before iOS 14.5 began to wreak havoc on marketer’s conversion numbers. In the post, you’ll learn:

• What Facebook Conversions API is
• How it works
• ​​How to set it up (step by step!)

Learn how to stop losing your hard-earned conversion data to software updates today by clicking here.

A good way to get your ducks in a row: Read my chef d’oeuvre on GDPR, published by our friends at The Social Media Hat just a few days before the regulation went into effect. In the 17-minute read, you’ll learn:

• Where GDPR came from
• Who GDPR protects
• What companies GDPR affects
• The privacy protection GDPR demands
• Who enforces GDPR
• What you can do to make your business GDPR-compliant
• Guesses at how GDPR will impact social media marketing

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So sit back, grab your blue light-blocking glasses, and click the link below. You’re on your way to becoming a GDPR genius. (Or, more likely, working-level proficient.)

Click here to read the article.

​What’s more, your business doesn't need to be Google for data to be your most valuable asset. And if you lose your data, you may risk losing your clients, too.

The good news: There’s a safe way to give your marketing consultants and in-house staff access to your marketing accounts. (And no, it does NOT involve sharing your passwords!!!)

Companies like Facebook and Google are well aware that companies hire other companies to run ads. So aware, in fact, that they’ve built in ways to securely share your accounts with your trusted consultants.

To learn how to safely share access to your Facebook ads and Google Analytics data, check out my article on Social Media Examiner. Originally published in 2018, but still relevant as ever, it gives you step-by-step instructions and screenshots that will bring you from “I’m just going to write my passwords in an email and hope for the best” to “Wow, I can actually delegate #LikeABoss.”

You’re welcome.

Click here to get your data sharing on.

Effective lead magnets are rich in value but easily digestible.  They help prospective clients get to know you, your expertise and most importantly, how you can be a solution to their problem.  

And now that I’ve just said that, I want you completely flip your thinking.  Your lead magnet isn’t about you. It’s about your future clients.

What are their problems, their challenges, their burning questions?  Whether you’ve been in business a few months or a few years, if you’ve worked with clients, you already have enough information to build an effective lead magnet.

If you could give away so much information in a 250-500 word article that someone would no longer have need for your services, then there would be no reason for your business to exist.  If you’re like me and every business owner I’ve ever met, you can talk for days about what you do. (Watch. Ask me a question about analytics. Any question. Then clear your calendar because I won’t shut up).

Answer their questions.  Show them the path. The key is to keep the content digestible.  Focus on the what and the why, not the how. The how is what they pay for.  This is for their sake. If they could read an article and master the how, they wouldn’t need you.  But they do need you. By sharing your knowledge (in digestible bites), you build trust—you show them that you are the expert solution provider who will help them achieve their goals.

That’s great.  Gate the good stuff.  Make the most valuable information a lead magnet and offer it in exchange for an email address.  This, ladies and gentlemen, is how you grow your mailing list with people who really want to hear what you have to say.

Lead magnets help you grow your mailing list with highly relevant leads. The more specific your lead magnet, the more specific your audience. This is a good thing.

Want to learn more? Download the 7 Tips to Creating Lead Magnets that Convert. See what I did there? 😉