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Online marketing campaigns have revolutionized the way the world conducts business and advertising. Streaming services, social media platforms, and search engines can offer ostensibly free content while implementing advertisements through a variety of mediums to generate revenue and support their products. This brave new digital reality requires a well-rounded understanding of the various mediums available to the digital marketer. Today, we’ll learn about some exciting new features added into the Facebook Ads software, information that will be useful for the beginner and salted marketing veteran alike.
“A” is for Facebook Analytics
Optimizing interactions between clients and their customers is the name of the marketing game. Quickly illustrating to clients, the multi-faceted nature of their customized campaigns is crucial for maintaining rapport and retaining valuable clientele. So, when Facebook Ads launched the Facebook Analytics tool with the slogan “people-first analytics for an omni-channel world” we were excited to say the least. With Facebook Analytics the ability to tune-up and optimize ad campaigns in real-time is a breeze. Importantly, the new interface is effectively a new suit for the same tools and data points Facebook provided previously though with a few important functions to note.
Automated Insights
When you hop onto Facebook Analytics the first thing that you will notice are automated insights. These insights illuminate your data aggregated from users including their medium of use, location, time, or money spent on your site or with your products. For example, an automated insight might provide information about users that access your page via the Facebook app that live in Houston, Texas spend 50% more time and 3 times as much money compared to the average digital interloper.
Automated insights will be further broken down into demographic information such as age, gender, country, or channel (iOS, Android, App, Website). Facebook analytics provides useful insight from enormous data sets with the use of machine learning and statistical analysis. The bottom line of automated insights is rapidly disseminated information packaged concisely and clearly for the purpose of users enhancing their strategies to reach target audiences. The benefit of Facebook Analytics is the ability to glean novel information that is not as accessible or readily available in other platforms while tapping into a network of over 2 billion people.
Real-Time Performance Tracking
The Facebook Ad revamp also includes a new mobile application offering on-the-go analysis of your business data. The app hosts information from the overview tab and your customized dashboards. Couple the mobile app with auto-detected funnels, a component of machine learning technologies’ ability to determine recurring paths taken by would-be buyers with a site or app into full-blown patrons, and you have some potent data to mull over in your downtime and at work.
Custom Insights
Of course, the human element was not forgotten by the folks at Facebook; so, Facebook Ads also ships fresh with the ability for custom insights to be keyed in by marketer or business owner alike. These insights provide information for a business’s specific goals as opposed to the worldwide dragnet that is cast by their standard data crunching methods. In this way, we get the benefit of having AI and the human touch both crafted and working side by side to produce stellar outcomes, sending fledgling businesses and industry juggernauts alike zooming into the fiscal stratosphere.
New Privacy Features
After and in the fallout of the Cambridge Analytica spectacle, the people at Facebook began to join intellectual forces and forge some new strategies and programs to deal with user privacy. Part and parcel of the Facebook Ads rehash is optimizing anonymous and aggregate data to protect the identity of its users. In an effort to enhance the anonymity factor of individuals, the social networking site has implemented a new “Clear History” feature which prevents long term storage of data and can affect an advertiser’s ability to tease apart individual demographic data.
So, the users of Facebook will now have the ability to wipe clean their cyber plate of residual pathways and habits that are the foodstuff and life source of Facebook Ads machine learning tech, shutting the lights on incredibly useful data when it comes to crafting and individualized “feedback inspired” Facebook experience. In this way, advertisers will lose a valuable tool for developing conversion funnels that potential customers help craft with their own actions. While this is a win for personal privacy, the loss of information can jam up the works on some finely tuned marketing campaigns, though the effects will likely be minimal as it requires users to take the burden of actually clearing their history themselves.
The Group Tab: Coming to Crowds Near You
A hot new feature that has sent the marketing world abuzz is the Groups tab, available to Facebook app users. This tab is backed by an apparent push from Facebook to thrust this feature into the limelight of the app based browsing experience, potentially revolutionizing how to market to members of online communities. This reality is an exciting one, gone may be the days of pure and aimless scrolling with the ushering in of a simple, effective, and easy way for people to interact with people that they love, respect, admire, and are interested in.
By fundamentally shifting how people peruse the groups which hold their allegiance, Facebook shoots for producing distinct online communities for each individual, providing excellent information and networks for advertisers to tap into and enhance with curated content. While the new Groups tab is a rehash of the now defunct “Groups app” it comes loaded with some fun new features for users to be occupied and hooked on (like a watch party where thousands watch the same video at once). The most important feature may be an embeddable join group button which can be keyed into your websites’ interface. This button is a gateway for both the advertiser and the potential patron. Once an individual jumps on board with your website, the teeming network of their groups and groups’ interactions becomes more readily discernible to the advertiser and their ad campaigns.
Instagram and Messenger Bolstered by New Features
In tandem with Facebook Ads come new updates that provide sources for inward channels to your business, Instagram, and Messenger. On the ‘gram side of things, community curation is the focus, which sounds awfully familiar to the Groups tab mission objective. Advertisers and businesses alike can create channels on the Explore tab of Instagram, streamlining happy customers who are now not-so-pointlessly scrolling in their downtime. These channels will be displayed at the top of the explore tab and are activated by the proper production of an effective hashtag game. Additionally, Messenger is booted up with fresh new augmented reality features. Think Snapchat filters, except transform goofy faces and flower laurels into a tool that business owners can unleash on prospects that might need the final nudge over that threshold into satisfied customers.
Recap and the Need to Know
Many important new changes are coming to advertising companies manifesting as: dashboard changes and upgrades to Facebook Analytics, streamlined community chatter and purchasing with the Groups tab, privacy policy revisions, as well as Instagram and Messenger tune-ups in favor of product providers everywhere. Our key takeaway is the raw potential of Facebook Analytics. Its automated and custom insights are crucial for any advertiser to hit the ground with grace, step up to bat, and crush it skyward over the big blue wall that is Facebook and 21st century marketing.
