This past week I had the pleasure of attending Facebooks Agency Expo here in Los Angeles. The agency expo was an event put on by the Facebook Agency team in an effort to educate local agencies that are part of their somewhat newly formed Facebook marketing partners platform.
What is Facebook Marketing Partners?
Facebook Marketing Partners are vetted marketing agencies that have met a specific spending threshold who gain access to unique Facebook marketings tools to improve managing campaigns at scale, improving measurement, reaching new audiences or more. In addition there is on-going education and insights into tips on how to better optimize campaigns for clients moving forward. Learn more about Facebook Marketing Partners here.
The Event
I have to admit that I was rather excited to attend this event. I mean, come on, it:s Facebook, they have boat loads of money to shell out on these types of things, and I was interested to see what they had in store.
Let:s just say that they did not disappoint. Take a look at the vlog I made of my experience of the event.
My Take Away
The main objective for Facebook at this event was to educate it:s agency partners on the tools they have available. If you login to the Marketing Partners dashboard you will see that there is a lot of information. And marketers are already busy enough, so no one is really going through everything. But at the event, they basically broke out each section of their site into booths, and helped explain how each one helps. This was great.
Dymistifying The Auction Process
I think the first major take away I had at the event was learning more about how the Facebook ad auction process works. Because there are many types of ad auctions that you can participate in, this event helped validate for me that the lowest cost per click auction type is the one I need to stick with. Facebook has made their auction process very fair, not allowing one brand or business to outbid all of it's other competitors. They say this is because they don't want users to be overwhelmed.... Thanks guys... It also taught me that the auction process serves, kind of as second auction, where no matter what the highest bidder is at, the price paid will be more closely aligned with the market rate.
Also there are a variety of campaign types that you can gear your ads towards, and depending on your goals, these might vary. But, my assumptions were only validated when in fact I learned that the "lowest cost per click" is the way to go for most of my campaigns. Although as buyers need to be more sophisticated, so do the campaigns that are targeting them.
The Importance of Creative
My second take away was that of the importance for creativity. Because there are so many different ad formats available on the Facebook advertising network, it's important to utilize them all. Now some ads will perform better on certain formats, but Facebook made it clear that the key to success is having multiple touch points throughout the advertising process.
So when creating ad campaigns, it's very important to diversify your ads. Maybe the messaging stays pretty much the same, but the formatting changes. A stories ad will have to be taller, and an audience ad will have to focus more on the imagery. And so on and so on. Being able to spread your message around to multiple touch points will help your brand resonate with an audience, and build that report it needs to convert.
The Value of Video
Video, video, video! Time and time again I am seeing it all in my results. But no ads perform better than videos. Consumers are used to seeing them in their feeds, so why would they be compelled to engage with your image, when in the next scroll is a funny entertaining video? That's why recently I've really been advocating the video/ad hybrid. Quality short form videos that provide a message of value, with a simple "swipe up" now call to action. If you can get someone to swipe up, they are basically raising their hand, saying tell me more. Those are the types of leads you want entering your funnel on a constant basis. And the cheapest way to do that is through video.
Summary
Facebook's new emphasis on Agencies is great. They are accepting the fact that so many of their users don't know how, or don't even want to run the advertising portion of campaigns. And so they are relying on agencies. Which is great for Facebook, because that means agencies are spending more money. More money spent, means more profits. But it's more than just that. This new program is providing businesses, and users with a better overall experience, one thing that I believe Facebook really wants to emphasis. This was a great event, and I hope they do it again next year, because I'll be there!