Another day another update from Facebook.
Today it’s another minor ad type.
Having rolled out the call to action options from your home page a few weeks ago, brands are now being given the ability to promote the CTA with an ad.
Open up Facebook and you’ll likely see this:
Click on your CTA and you’ll get the option to Promote:
Be aware that if your normal cover image contains more than 20% text you’ll need to upload something within the Ad Policy limits.
It’s also worth re-writing the copy that will auto surface.
Here’s what I’ve done on the Musicademy Page:
I’ve uploaded a decent sized thumbnail from the video that the CTA links to (it’s always good practice to make the thumbnail image representative of wherever the click leads). I’ve also crafted a headline and tweaked the default targeting:
You get to see a preview of how it looks on mobile and desktop newsfeed. Click “Promote” and you’ll then get a Review notice. Mine took considerably longer than the estimated 15 minutes.
Refine your targeting
Once you’ve got your ad posted you can then further refine your targeting by going into the Ads Manager or Power Editor. For instance, you might want to target a custom audience or exclude a certain audience.
Test your bidding
You can also change the bidding selection once the ad is created.
I’d strongly suggest testing CPC against the default option which is Optimised CPM:
Add in a conversion pixel
The other recommendation is to go into Power Editor and add in whatever conversion pixel you want to track actions other than clicks.
Sneaky Power Editor trick to increase the amount of copy
You will also find that once in Power Editor you can adjust the length of copy in the headline and link text and squeeze in quite a few more words. You can even add in some text underneath the headline!
Is it worth it?
Who knows? I’ve not seen great traction from the Call to Action feature to data (a handful of video views each week) so this may well give a little more oompf to the Page. At the very least it’s a novelty factor for now and at the most it’s another way of surfacing a video ad (or whatever else your CTA is trying to get people to do).
My initial results are good. I’ve had far more traction with the promotion in place than without and have paid on average 18 cents per click:
Want more help with Facebook ads?
Check out my brand new course ‘Zero to Hero with Facebook Ads‘ in the Digiterati Academy. You’ll fast track all my knowledge of what’s working to create great Facebook ads right now and feel confident in your ability to run an effective campaign.
