Ah, Facebook. Always keeping us marketers on our toes. Over the summer, Facebook made a number of changes to how Pages work for companies and brands, and added additional capabilities for marketers to take advantage of.
Here’s the scoop on what’s changed over the past few months:
Ad Retargeting
In June, Facebook began testing the “Facebook Exchange,” which allows businesses to buy “retargeted” Facebook ads based on users’ recent browsing history. As a consumer, that means that the expensive handbag you almost bought now has the power to follow you around the Internet (and now, on to Facebook) until you cry uncle and put it back in your shopping cart.
As a marketer, the availability of retargeted Facebook ads means that you can now put even more relevant content in front of users on the world’s largest social network. Facebook Exchange came out of beta earlier this month.
For an in-depth breakdown of Facebook Exchange, check out this post by Hubspot:
Facebook Launches New Ad Retargeting Tool Following Impressive Beta Results
Facebook Offers
Facebook has been testing its “Offers” feature for the past year. In May, it was made available to local businesses in the US and Facebook began testing it for e-Commerce. Just last week they finally decided to make it available on all Facebook business pages, including pages outside the US.
Facebook Offers allows you to provide your fans with discounts and coupons that can be redeemed online, in the store or both. When your fans claim an offer, the action is visible on their Timeline, adding viral potential.
Facebook Offers is free to use the first time, but for subsequent offers you’ll need to set a minimum ad budget to promote it.
Get more information here:
Hubspot: New Facebook Coupon Feature Helps Local Businesses Determine Social ROI
SimplyZesty: Facebook Offers Available To All, But What’s It All About?
Promoted Posts
Promoted Posts have been available since May, though Facebook continues to make tweaks and test variations of this feature.
By promoting a post, you can push it into the news feeds of fans who otherwise wouldn’t have seen it. If they take the bait and interact with your content, even posts you don’t promote should eventually be seen by more people as your Edgerank improves.
Facebook recently added the capability for page managers to buy promoted posts from their mobile phones, and they are testing allowing promoted posts to appear in the news feeds of non-fans as well.
Looking for some pro tips on how to use Promoted Posts? Here you go:
Luna Metrics: 4 Things to Know About Facebook’s Promoted Posts
Social Media Examiner: 12 Tips When Using Facebook’s Promoted Posts
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