Growth Hack #2 – Make Your Stories Go Viral With These 6 Emotional Combinations:
After examining six different psychological studies that analyzed content, 6 emotional combinations (formulas) were determined to generate a viral value that exceeded the normal threshold.
These combinations are made up of feelings that inspire a level of arousal and dominance vs. submission.
Arousal goes from excitement to relaxation: Enthusiasm is high-arousal, while boredom is a low-arousal emotion.
Dominance and submission refer to how ‘in control’ someone is over an emotion. For example, fear is a submissive emotion, while passion is a dominant one.
Here are the 6 combinations that make content go viral:
1. High-arousal positive dominant emotions: These include love, passion, enthusiasm, lyricism, curiosity, triumph, and the like. These emotions are often driven to the extreme.
2. High-arousal positive dominant emotions: These include the same reactions as above, with the inclusion of surprise and shock.
3. High-arousal negative submissive emotions: Emotions like terror, panic, fear, shock, envy, desperation, jumpiness, frustration, disgust, and sickness are included in this category.
4. High-arousal positive submissive emotions: this category echoes that of its dominant counterpart, but without a sense of control. It also includes shock and surprise.
5. Low-arousal negative submissive emotions: Including boredom, embarrassment, compassion, humility, melancholy, and apologetic feelings, it can also include shock and surprise.
6. Low-arousal positive submissive emotions: this reaction solicits feelings of relaxation, contentment, relief, gratefulness, and the like.
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Growth Hack #3 – +114% CTR By Getting into Google’s Snippet Box:
Google’s Featured Snippet is the box at the top of the results page that displays the direct instructions that have been pulled from your webpage.
Matthew Barby recently analyzed patterns of results appearing in the featured snippets. He saw an average increase in CTR of over 114%, and that’s even if they were already ranking #1 on page one.
Here are his findings:
1. The query should be either, “how to,” “what is,” “how do,” or “how does”.
2. It doesn’t matter whether your page takes 1st or 10th position (not further then 10th).
3. The search query should be in h1, h2, h3 or h4, etc.
4. The answer to the query should be placed in a tag directly below the header.
When you create a Facebook ad, you’re trying to succeed.
Duh.
Whether that’s driving sales, boosting web traffic, or attracting likes and comments, you want positive, measurable results from your Facebook marketing.
Duh.
So, wouldn’t you want to create the best Facebook ad ever?
Oh, yeah.
The dream of going down in history among the best Facebook ads ever is one shared by many digital advertisers.
Well, here’s the fact: having someone tell you what the best Facebook ad ever is not going to help you achieve that dream.
Instead, we’re going to look at some pretty darn great (some would say the best) Facebook ad examples.
We’ll explore why they’re considered the best so that you can integrate these practices into your own marketing plan.
Creating the best Facebook ad ever starts with taking a look at what’s working on the platform for others.
Here’s fair warning: this article isn’t going to choose just one Facebook ad and tell you it’s the best ever created in all of advertising history.
Instead, we’re going to help you get to the point that you can create your best Facebook ad ever.
What are the Metrics of Success for the Best Facebook Ad?
The first part of considering what makes a Facebook ad your best ever is determining how you measure “the best”.
Is it the creative/how it looks?
Is it how low it’s CPC is?
How many adds to cart it converted?
One of the reasons why claiming the best Facebook ad ever is so complicated is that the metrics for measuring success will vary based on the objective of your campaign.
Sweepstakes and other giveaways are among Facebook ads best practices for how effective they can be for brand awareness, lead generation, and engagement.
In addition to the contest, P.F. Chang’s used a combination of targeting methods.
These included geography (users located near a restaurant location) and those who expressed interested in a competitor.
They also mixed up their ad format so some users were shown carousel ads, while others were delivered a video ad.
The Results:
73% lower overall CPC
3X higher overall CTR
63% of entries came from the ads with conversion objectives, proving it more effective than the traffic objective
Best Practices:
Mix up your ad format.
Have an offer in your ad that entices viewers.
Target competitors’ customers and build value in your ad of why people should make the switch.
Additionally, 64% of consumers say they’re more likely to purchase a product after watching a video.
Adidas capitalized on both of these Facebook ads best practices by integrating video into their mobile collection ad.
Instead of advertising their entire array of products, the retailer opted to highlight their Z.N.E. Road Trip Hoodie collection.
Then, within the content they cross-sold complimentary items, like shoes and bags.
The Results:
5.3X ROAS
43% lower cost per conversion
Best Practices:
An innovative ad format and creative will engage and entice your audience.
Optimize for mobile.
Incorporate video content.
If you opt for the collection format, leverage it for cross-selling other products and services.
MoviePass
Taktical client, MoviePass, again exemplifies the Facebook ads best practice of using a video.
The ad ran across Facebook (desktop, mobile) and Instagram, so it was essential that the creative was mobile-friendly while translating well across platforms and formats.
Using a square crop and attention-grabbing clip, the advertisement is both eye-catching and engaging.
And it’s not just about the video with this Facebook ad example.
The text is also catchy, concise, and formatted with line breaks and a clear CTA to lead people to convert.
Much of the success of this campaign is also due to the effective targeting methods used.
With this strategy, MoviePass was able to capture a more motivated group of consumers from a broad Lookalike audience.
The exclusion methods used in this Facebook ad example removed current customers, high cost markets, and users with art/independent film interests.
By excluding these viewers, the MoviePass Facebook ad was delivered to those most likely to convert at low cost.
The Results:
$0.18 overall CPC
4.60% average CTR
Average CPA of $4.72
2,374 total purchases
Best Practices:
Use exclusion targeting to find high-value, low-cost consumers.
Combine video with short but catchy text to ensure ultimate engagement.
Run the ad across all of the platforms your target customer is using.
NYC & Company
Image source: https://www.facebook.com/
The goal of NYC & Company’s Facebook ads was to drive awareness of their True York City tourist campaign.
Using trip consideration as the Facebook ad objective, the brand reached an audience of people at the start of their vacation planning.
They set up a tiered approach that began with showing video ads enticing viewers to come to NYC.
Then, they delivered editorial content to further inform.
Finally, they remarketed to their audience with link ads that led to actual trip bookings.
As with many of the best Facebook ads, NYC & Company’s success came from a combination of good creative, smart objective choices, and leveraging Facebook’s unique tools.
The Results:
61% more video views
2.6X lower cost per conversion
1.4 million total video views
14,000 total conversions
Best Practices:
If you’re in the travel or hospitality industry, use trip consideration along with your current Facebook targeting methods.
Plan out your Facebook ads so that different ones are being served at different stages of the conversion funnel.
Use link ads to take people directly to booking and product pages.
Be Among the Best Facebook Ads Ever
Whether or not you think the examples above are the best Facebook ads ever, their results are undeniable.
Based on the objective they set out, these brands went above and beyond their goals.
In order to succeed on your own, follow some of the Facebook ads best practices exemplified by these guys.
Remember, it’s about your unique KPIs for success that determine your performance.
A little inspiration, a touch of creativity, and a lot of tracking and testing can put you well on the way to creating your best Facebook ad ever.
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Growth Hack #1 – How to Hack AdWords for Your Startup:
During Techstars, AdHawk validated two things from their time on the AdWords team at Google:
1. Paid advertising is a lucrative channel for achieving the hockey stick growth model we all crave
2. AdWords is just as mysterious to Bob’s Bait Shop as it is for the savviest of tech entrepreneurs
Many of the startups they encountered need help starting their VERY FIRST campaign on Twitter, Facebook, and Google. So, they created this guide that they then presented to hundreds of entrepreneurs at Techstars, Galvanize, and 500Startups.
Get ready to break down some barriers, skip the learning curve, and hack Google AdWords for your startup.
Growth Hack #2 – Use Insights to Make the Front Page of Reddit:
Datastories analyzed 4 million data points to see what makes it on the front page of Reddit:
#1. 5pm – 9pm PST is the hottest upvote time.
#2. Images get much more upvotes than text posts.
#3. Very Positive or Very Negative posts perform significantly better than Neutral ones.
#4. Text posts get more comments and stay on the front page longer.
#5. These 5 Sub-Reddits completely dominate the front page of Reddit: r/funny, r/pics, r/gifs, r/TodayILearned, r/gaming
#6. Putting a number in your headline increases chances of being among the top posts.
#7. Internal self-posts LIVE SIGNIFICANTLY LONGER than external posts.
Growth Hack #3 – +240% Conversions by Optimizing Old Blog Posts:
The team from Hubspot noticed that most of their old blog posts convert into email leads very poorly.
Here is what they did (you can do the same on Google Analytics):
1. Ordered their most popular blog posts (URLs) by the conversion rate (into emails).
2. For each URL they looked through specific keywords people were using to find a post.
3. Optimized CTAs to fit the most popular keyword.
For example, for their article “How to Write a Press Release” the most popular Google keyword was “press release template“. They created a CTA “Download press release templates”.
After the change, their conversions into emails increased by 240%.
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Growth Hacks:
Growth Hack #1 – Boost Readability 20X With Clear Headlines:
An eye tracking study conducted by the University of Trier found the following three things when studying mobile device use:
1. Only 5% of users pay careful attention when reading
2. 58% of the audience skimmed, but bold headings helped orient readers
3. 37% only paid attention to headings
Use BOLD, concise, and direct headings to increase readability.
Growth Hack #2 – Three Ways to Use Popups and Increase Conversions 91%:
1. When testing popups, Robbie Richards found that those displaying upon page load led to over a 91% higher conversion rate than when shown before a customer exited a page.
2. Viewers leave your page every second. Showing a form immediately when a page loads converts 13.11% better than one even 10 seconds later.
3. Many sites offer a free ebook in exchange for an email address. Simply by including an ebook image within the form, you can increase conversion rate by 110.72%.
Growth Hack #3 – Offer the Right Amount of Sharing Options:
Neil Patel is one of the masters of online marketing. However, when he increased Quick Sprout’s sharing options from 3 to 5, overall share rates DROPPED by 29%.
Overloading people with options will cause them to quit.
Watch out, travel agents: Facebook is the new destination for people planning their trips.
More and more users are turning to the platform to help inspire their travel plans.
Additionally, they’re booking it right through the social media giant thanks to Facebook dynamic ads for travel.
When Facebook first announced this feature in May, 2016, travel industry players rejoiced.
With Facebook dynamic ads for travel (DAT), hotels, airlines, and more could more effectively target their customers at each stage of the conversion funnel.
The objectives for travel organizations are more varied than traditional ecommerce institutions.
While online retailers sell physical products, travel and hospitality advertisers are trying to earn sales for getaway packages, hotel rooms, rental cars, etc.
Image source: https://www.tnooz.com
Thanks to Facebook dynamic ads for travel, these companies can create campaigns that reflect their unique conversion funnel.
But what about reaching people before they’ve even done the trip-related search?
This is where the travel consideration Facebook ad comes in.
We’re going to dive into what these ads are, why they’re effective, and how you can integrate them into your Facebook ads strategy.
What Are Travel Consideration Facebook Ads?
Similar to DAT, travel consideration ads are intended as a Facebook targeting tool for travel and hospitality marketers.
They’re actually a subset of Facebook dynamic ads, and are set up as an objective option.
Image source: https://www.facebook.com
Unlike DAT, however, travel consideration ads are intended to reach people in the earliest stages of trip planning.
Facebook flags behavior that indicates a user is thinking about taking a trip (e.g. visits Facebook pages of certain destinations).
Then, businesses can push travel ads to that user offering flight deals, hotel bookings, etc. that relate to the page they were visiting.
Even though the user hasn’t expressed any obvious intent, this Facebook targeting tool lets brands reach them at a crucial moment in their trip planning.
Why are Travel Ads Effective on Facebook?
The best place to start in answering this question is to take a look at where people begin their search for travel inspiration.
1. Select Conversions under the Objectives section of Ads Manager 2. Choose your Audience and Placements. Keep in mind that you can use Facebook targeting tools to filter this audience, and Facebook will automatically optimize to serve your ads only to those with travel intent. 3. In the Optimization for Ad Delivery section, toggle the “Prioritize delivery to people who plan to travel” button.
Image source: https://www.facebook.com/
4. Fill in the sections for identity, format, and links. Facebook suggests using images that serve a brand-building purpose, or showcase a top deal or destination. 5. Review and submit your trip consideration Facebook ad for approval!
Optimize Your Facebook Travel Ads
Just like with any other Facebook ad format, there are a few best practices to keep in mind for trip consideration ads.
Since this is the parent category for the trip consideration Facebook ad objective, it’s important to have a solid grasp of the DAT targeting tool.
Image source: https://www.facebook.com/
Then, consider the following for each part of a Facebook travel consideration ad:
Audience Size
Facebook suggests an audience size of at least 7 million. If you target too narrowly or serve to a small audience, it will likely lead to poor results.
Travel Ad Optimization
When using website conversion as a Facebook travel ad objective, optimize for search, initiate checkout, or purchase.
What to Bid
When first launching trip consideration Facebook ads, start with autobid. When CPC starts hitting or going above target, then you can start playing around with specific bid targets.
Facebook Travel Ad Campaign Duration
Set your Facebook travel consideration ads to “always-on”. This will allow you to reach new audiences from the moment they express an interest in travel.
Analyzing and Evaluating Results
Measure the success of your Facebook travel ads strategy by looking at the impact made on the targeted event. For example, if you’re targeting search events, evaluate based on total volume of searches and cost per search.
The Creative
Trip consideration Facebook ads can be displayed as carousel, static image, single video, or collection. The best way to optimize is to test different creative formats, and see which performs best for your travel ad objective.
If you’re in the travel or hospitality industry, trip consideration ads should be a part of your Facebook ads strategy.
They can be easily integrated into your existing Facebook dynamic ad campaign.
Or, they can be effective all on their own.
With trip consideration Facebook ads, you can boost conversions, enhance engagement, and drive sales.
Consult with an experienced Facebook advertising agency to discuss the best options for your business and how to optimize your travel ad strategy.
Growth Hack #2 – Optimize a Dedicated Landing Page to Boost Signups by 30%:
A PPC ad campaign run by Secret Escapes A/B/C tested landing pages for the same keyword.
Here’s what happened:
– Version A: Stayed as is.
– Version B: Included a spa-related image → 26% more sign-ups
– Version C: Added photo and put ‘spa’ in headline → 32% more sign-ups
By combining evocative imagery with text, your brand can boost sign-ups to a specific landing page by over 30%.
The fastest way to end up blacklisted is to send unwanted sales pitches to people who didn’t even sign up for them in the first place.
Incorporating these four strategies will deliver the results you want instead of landing you in spam boxes:
1. Welcome emails: this content explains to new clients what it is that you do/can provide.
2. Drip and newsletter campaigns: these messages should stay true to the welcome email, providing valuable and relevant information to your audience.
3. Sharing is NOT caring: Avoid sharing or farming your list to brands that have nothing to do with your services; this can alienate users.
4. Maintain quality: Monitor your email content with tools like http://mail-tester.com to avoid being sent to spam
