5 Facebook Marketing Hacks You Must Deploy in 2018

Patrick Dermak is the co-founder of Adbaker, a Facebook marketing agency based in Cologne. His bleeding-edge knowledge allowed his company to generate millions of dollars in direct performance marketing campaigns.

In his talk, he’ll reveal five hacks in the launch, scale optimisation phase of a Facebook marketing campaign. Apart from advanced Facebook marketing hacks, he’ll share with you low-hanging fruits like how to monetise your Facebook ad comments to double ROI and lower your ad cost. No fluff, just tips & tricks you can deploy instantly.

Speech by Patrick Dermak | Co-founder, Adbaker

Patrick Dermak Speech Transcript

Okay guys, really happy to be here.

The thing that we want to focus on in the next 20 minutes are five I think, really amazing marketing hacks that you can deploy today. Actually, even before you leave Bangkok.

And these are Facebook marketing hacks that you have to deploy in 2018.

Before we take a deep dive into the Facebook marketing hacks that I’ll be presenting in just a moment, I actually started out as an affiliate marketer a few years ago.

And as we started to build our team and as we started to get exposure because of the quite good job that we’re doing, we eventually start to work with big brands like Porsche, Kingston Technology, Boston Consulting.

We shifted our affiliate model more to an agency model where we work on a performance basis.

You might think that running in an agency is sometimes, maybe a little bit better. Actually quite the opposite might be the case for 3 reasons.

Number 1, as an affiliate, you get to focus on a certain vertical on 5 offers. Let’s say that, that will make you money. And you can abandon offers really quickly, that’s something we cannot do.

Once we onboard a client, once we believe in the product, we just have to make things work.

So we have to focus on a variety of different business models ranging from lead-gen to e-commerce to branding with a performance background, not always easy.

Second of all, the funnels that we send traffic to are very often not optimised.

So actually we have to do all the heavy lifting with Facebook to sell products and services and to generate high-quality leads.

And apart from that, you cannot afford policy violations on Facebook.

I think that would be probably the worst day of my life if we would kill the business manager of Porsche because we fucked up and because we were not careful.

So in other words, we actually, and that’s what I’m really happy about, we don’t only have the affiliate background but we in fact, at the moment, we manage ad spends in 37 different niches, 37 different verticals.

And the 5 Facebook marketing hacks that I’ll present to you right now work.

No matter what niche you’re in, these are literally the 5 Facebook marketing hacks that we always deploy to get things to the next level.

So let’s get started.

#1 Audience Building

When I’m looking at Ad accounts, and very often, other agencies that got hired they just completely fucked up. So we take over the ad accounts, we have to do a better job.

Thing is, that’s not a big secret. You convert the customers to lookalike audience.

However, only a very few marketers, very few marketers focus on the quality of the custom audience, the quality of the seed audience.

It’s not about quantity, it’s about segmentation and the quality of the seed audience that you’re working with.

And in case you attended our first Facebook Mastery Live in Berlin, we were lucky to have the head of performance marketing on Facebook on stage, Maria Claudio.

And she emphasised the importance of seed audiences, which is just true.

So this is not the beginners’ conference. I won’t tell you that you have to upload all your customer data into Facebook.

You have to be more granular. And you can do that in three ways.

Customer Segments

Number one, focus on customer segments.

If you have the CPA funnel, let’s say a free plus shipping funnel in the e-comm space and then you’ve got an up-sell.

Split test, upload the customer lists that you’ve got, meaning everyone who purchased the free plus shipping offer and split test it against those people who purchase the up-sell.

You also took the upsell. It’s a higher quality audience because the card value is higher.

Apart from that, if you have an e-commerce store, upload your list of all your customers with the really high card value of at least a 100 bucks, for example. And split test Add to Cart against buyers.

Especially in the early stage of the campaign, once you haven’t gathered enough buying data, Add to Cart tends to outperform seed audience that is composed of your buyers.

Premium Audience Segments

So really focus on premium audience segments and be really granular.

Apart from, that if you have the e-comm story, and let’s say, you’re selling different beauty products, and then there is one product in the anti-aging niche you want to scale.

Then take all the customer data from all the Facebook users who purchase the anti-aging cream. Be super granular.

Even if that audience is way smaller than your entire audience, still better because quality matters. It’s not the quantity.

And most importantly, that’s what only a handful of advertisers are really doing. Test different time frames. If you have your customer data, break it down.

Seed audience of all customers who purchase in the last 7 days, 30 and 60 or 90, split test that against each other.

Now big question is, how do you actually build a high-quality seed audience?

Well, there are 2 standard ways of doing. Start to warm up the pixel with the traffic campaign before you switch to a conversion campaign.

Or you use a feature that Facebook has introduced, I think like 6 months ago.

So start right away with the conversion campaign but the algorithm is optimising for link clicks first, until it gathered enough data. And then it’s switching automatically to conversions.

How to Build a High Quality Audience

But there are 2 other ways of building up a high-quality audience.

Number 1, take a video that’s relevant. That’s at least 2-3 minutes long Select the campaign objective “Video view”.

Go really broad if you’re in the mass market meaning don’t even specify the interest targeting. The only thing you can specify is the age and gender.

And if you’re in a more niche market, you can work with interest targeting to narrow the focus down a bit.

So once you go really broad, take and we actually covered that in the panel before in case you attended, 75% of all people who watched that video or at least 75% of this video, that’s your seed audience.

Really powerful because video views are super cheap. You’re not wasting money. So that’s the seed audience that you can translate and you lookalike audience.

Apart from that, Google Adwords. I know Google AdWords sucks.

If you want to bid on a keyword like loans, you can expect you can expect to pay up to $44 a click.

But it’s search traffic, meaning that the traffic is of high quality.

So here’s what you can do.

Facebook hates Google but you can take Google Adwords to create an initial seed audience. And then you take that seed audience over to Facebook and turn it into a lookalike audience.

So whenever you’re not operating in mass markets and you’re not really sure whether the interest targeting capabilities that Facebook is offering or the behavioral targeting that you have access to, if that will not do a good job, think about spending 500-1000 bucks in the Google AdWords campaign, actually pretty easy to set up.

Gather initial data, turn it into lookalike audience.

Really powerful.

And that’s a case study in the car supply niche.

So everything we’ve done to lower the acquisition costs to even think, yeah the repay just 1 year or 12 for a customer, the only thing we have done is split testing different target audiences, different audience segments, different seed audiences.

That was the big secret.

And by the way that’s called traffic. That wasn’t retargeting campaign and the car supply niche was a product that cost about €20, we got customers for a year or twelve. So it’s pretty cheap.

#2 Facebook Marketing Hack: Rockstar Creatives

Second hack, Rockstar Creatives

Now, I just want to point out the most important elements of a creative that performs well.

Number one, be aware of keyword penalties. There are certain keywords Facebook hates.

They will not necessarily disapprove your ad because you’re using certain keywords but your CPMs will go up and you might raise a flag.

For example, if you use the word weight loss or credit or loan either in your Ad copy or in the fan page, be really careful with the fan page names that you are selecting that might trigger keyword penalties.

Be extremely careful if you run aggressive offers with the Ad Text you select.

Facebook Ad Compliance

Even if the Ad is compliant but just the fact that you’re using certain words Facebook doesn’t like that.

Including Call to Action, I don’t know how many ads I’m seeing where there is no Call to Action. Really important, add an additional hyperlink. Like, a link to the ad.

You see an existing page post idea when you create new ad sets or you create new campaigns because the social proof will not get lost.

And please do not underestimate the value of the first comment. People don’t only read your Ad, they also read the comment.

And the first comment is really negative, then you will see a lower conversion rate than if the first or the first two comments are positive where someone says,  “hey great product, I got it on time, great, great purchase I would gladly buy again”

Three things that I wanted to show you, super easy to implement.

At the end of the video, a Call to Action which is sort of static, pointing at the Call to Action within the video increases your CTR by a lot.

That’s what we’re seeing over and over again but it’s also very, very easy to deploy.

If you have the video, have sort of a headline, above and underneath the video.

And the 3rd thing, I mentioned that you should have a Call to Action in the hyperlink.

What you can do is have 2, as you can see right here.

Or maybe even 3 Call to Actions that are identical. So don’t change the ad text, you don’t change the link underneath each other.

We tested it and increase the CTR.

Something I can only encourage you to do is not to use link shorteners for 2 reasons.

1. They increase your load times.
2. Facebook doesn’t like them.

So if you use link shorteners and they operate on the redirect basis, that can raise your CPMs.

Have 2-3 Call to Actions, huge CTR booster.

#3 Comment Monetization

Well, I think it’s not a big secret that we should monitor the comments we’re getting especially if you’re running aggressive offers on Facebook.

If you have 2 negative comments, the Ad stops converting. Once you remove them, you see the conversion rate going up again.

But apart from monitoring comments, monetisation is also really important.

So in case you start to branch out, you’re not an affiliate anymore or you are an affiliate and you want to build a lasting relationship with the advertiser because you’re not advertising through a CPM Network but you’re working with the advertiser directly, or you have your own e-commerce store and you really care about building up a brand,  really focus on providing amazing customer service.

Demonstrate that customer service in your ads. Answer comments.

I think the majority of you probably don’t have to do that. You can monetise more aggressively and you measured it.

The only thing we did is having 2-3 variations of the same Ad text with the link and a Call to Action to the offer, to the product we’re selling or to the lead-gen form.

And you will be surprised how many people buy from the links that are posted underneath the comments. And also you will be surprised how much higher the conversion rate is.

It’s incredible.

So if you’re if you run your offers more aggressively, like literally post the link to the offer underneath each and every comment.

And apart from that, since you’re talking about monetising the traffic you’re getting already, on your fan page especially if you’re running PPE campaigns, you can include a Call to Action button on your Timeline cover.

The cool thing about that is that people check out your fan page.

And what we do very often, on our fan pages, we have we have an arrow pointing at the Call to Action button is saying something like 60% discount.

And then we’re not sending people straight to the VSL because that might be a little bit shady. Facebook reviews the landing page or the fan page.

We have a link to an independent product review, where we also focus on some of the drawbacks.

And you also will not believe how many people are just buying because they see your Ad. Then they are “Okay, I never heard of these guys before,” they check out your fan page.

And then they see that arrow, they click on it. They’ll see “Oh great 60% discount, maybe I should get it.”

Then they see the product review, it focuses on some of the drawbacks and then they buy. Huge thing.

Talking about comment monetisation, comment management, don’t use the delete button.

If you want to get rid of a comment, then use the hide button unless a customer is saying something like, “I ordered your product and this was by far the worst purchase decision in my life, I’d rather die than buying from you ever again“, if that’s the case, hide the comment, okay.

If not, if it’s tolerable, respond to the comment. For a number of reasons.

Number one, this will prevent other users from making a similar remark.

There are people who are like, “Oh this ad is really fucked up, I hate this product.”

And then they see, “oh there was Steve, who already said what I wanted to say“. And they’ say like “okay fine, I don’t have to to make another comment on that.”

Number two, if your Ad goes through a review from Facebook and they see that you respond to comments, you don’t look like an affiliate, there’s a higher chance that you’re getting your Ad account back or that your ad account will not get shut down.

And you also appear to the Facebook user as your real company.

Number three, your relevant score will go up because as user interaction happens on your Ad, then that’s a positive signal. And that translates into a high relevance score and that leads to a lower CPM, lower CPCs, lower acquisition costs.

So please look over your comments every day. And get the VA to do that. That is super cheap. Nothing you should be doing something that’s super easy to outsource.

You can also use tools. We use Agorapulse. Not cheap, but it makes everything so much easier.

So please, monetise your comments. It’s super easy.

You’re already getting the exposure.

And number two, manage your comments the right way. Hide them and respond to the comments that we have to respond to.

#4 Increase Relevance Score

What’s relevant score?

Well, the algorithm uses the relevant score to determine how Facebook delivers your ads.

It’s calculated based on the positive and a negative feedback your ad is receiving.

So the more positive feedback you have, the higher relevant score is that leads to more, and to cheaper impressions, and to better impressions.

And it has a huge impact on your CPMs.

So the big question is, how do you get a high relevant score?

As I mentioned before, it’s not only about the CTR, it’s also about the user engagement, So do people like, comment and share your ad?

Here’s what you can do.

You can combine the conversion campaign with a page post engagement campaign.

So you’re actually setting up 2 separate campaigns at the same time. Both sending traffic to the same page post ID.

And the way we handled things is that we get started with the PPE on the ads set level, setting up a page post campaign with a conversion ad set level, with about $45 a day.

And then we monitor the relevant score.

So once we see the relevant score dropping, we even bump up the budget but we also monitor the PPE campaign.

Because as you might know, depending on the campaign objective, Facebook is reaching out to different users.

With the conversion campaign, Facebook is reaching out to the converters, where they know based on the user history, those are the people who convert.

And with the with a PPE campaign, Facebook is rather reaching out to the engagers, people who like, comment and share ads. But there are also buyers hidden within that audience segment,

So there’s a really good chance especially in the e-comm space when you launch ads that have the potential to go viral, that you will get cheaper conversions from your PPE campaign.

It’s not only a measure to keep your relevance score stable or to increase the relevance score, it’s also great to acquire customers to generate leads, to generate sales cheaper.

So don’t turn off your PPE campaign. Monitor it, watch it closely.

And if you see it converts, scale the PPE campaign with the audience, with the campaign scaling techniques that are probably familiar to you.

Really great hack.

And by the way, monitor your X-out rate.

So we’re checking our page posts every day.

In the launch phase, if you have an X-Out, meaning someone wants to hide your ad or someone reports the ad as spam, within the first 500-1000 impressions, that’s a really bad signal.

So if that’s the case, if you take your page post ID, it’s better to delete the page post ID to delete the ad and to re-upload it. So you have a fresh start.

And apart from that as you scale, always monitor your negative feedback.

Something that we know that a rep told us, if the negative to positive feedback ratio is out of balance, first of all, your CPMs will go out then you will raise the flag and then your ad account, your Ad, and your fan page through manual review.

At the end of the day, you might lose everything.

That’s one of the metrics why black hat, got for example, harder and harder because Facebook tightened the rules with regard to the ratio of negative to positive feedback.

You need less negative feedback nowadays than before to raise a flag .

So again Facebook doesn’t shut down your ad account automatically. First you CPMs go up and then at the end of the day, will go through a manual review and then you might lose your ad account.

So please you don’t want to lose your fan page, your ad account or your business manager because you didn’t have 5 minutes a day to check your page post ID.

Please do that.

If you’re getting too many, if you’re getting too much negative feedback, it’s better to pause the ad or to reduce the budget than to scale even further.

#5 Mobile GIF Overlay

That’s probably the easiest hack from all. That is something that will increase your revenue more or less instantly.

Here’s what we did.

We’re seeing a mobile landing page. And all we did is to add a GIF overlay. And that’s exactly what you’re seeing here right.

It’s super simple and increased our playrate by, on average, 20%.

We tested it on like, dozens on different landing pages. And it works always.

So really if you want to deploy something that’s super easy, and I assume you’re all working with Landers and advertorials, reach out to your developer, find someone on Upwork to do that.

You can even split test the different Call to Actions on your mobile lander. Huge thing.

Almost no one is doing that but I can only highly encourage you to take care of it.

So we had 5 Facebook marketing hacks, make sure to deploy them today. They really work.

In case you’ve got any questions and you think wasn’t clear, make sure to reach out. Other than that, thank you so much for your attention and I’ll see you later for drinks.