Grunt Test

After recognizing that competing insurance websites usually made the signup process difficult, Geico, an insurance company, offered a signup website that was so easy that, according to their unique selling proposition, even a caveman could use it. Their claim was that their website passed the 'grunt test'.

Performing the grunt test involves determining whether your target market can affirmatively answer 3 questions within seconds.

1. What do you offer?
2. How will your offering improve their life?
3. What must they do to buy it?

From the perspective of customer communication, whether through website design, campaigns, research & development surveys, product launchs, product labels or otherwise, passing the grunt test is critical for lead generation and conversion. After all, analytics show that if your communication does not pass this test within a few seconds, potential customers will lose interest.

Landing pages, product pages, campaign pages, any type of advertising should pass the grunt test to convince leads to follow the call to action.

To clarify, the test involves the following elements. # 1 involves clear and simple product identification, #2 involves unique value proposition and responding to customer problems (like pain points, desires or other key motivation factors). #3 involves the call to actions.

CONTENT RELATED TO THE GRUNT TEST

• Unique value proposition
• Branding 101
• All things 'Branding'
• Landing pages 101

Facebook Audience Insights

Facebook Audience Insights

Facebook audience insights is a tool designed to help marketers understand more about their target audience. Among other things, it provides aggregate information about geography, demographics, purchase behavior and so on. However, this post is primarily concerned with product advertising using psychographic interest-based marketing because psychographics are often more reliable in predicting potential customers (than the other demographic variables).
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To use Facebook Audience Insights

• Log in to your Facebook account
• Click 'Ads manager' in the left column (or use this URL: https://www.facebook.com/ads/manager/accounts/ )
• Click the 3 horizontal bars in the top left corner for menu options. Select 'all tools' and then 'audience insights'
• Select one of the 3 types of audience 
• custom audience. Example of use is for your mailing list, especially a large one
• people connected to your Facebook fan page
• everyone on Facebook. This is usually useful for general market research
• Name an interest in the 'interests' text box in the left column, example 'competitive swimming'. The named interest must be anything that Facebook users can 'like', whether activities, celebrities, companies (especially if they sell your type of product), highly relevant books, broadcast programs, teams, other forms of competition and so on. It should be a top thing your target market really appreciates. Additionally, it should somehow relate to your product and be as specific as possible. For instance, interests like 'animals' is too broad. 'Chihuahua' is a better alternative. If need be, type in interests and see whether any of Facebook's suggested interests seem better as your initial interest.

NB. Facebook audience insights entries in the left column defines your chosen target market characteristics. As you will see later, everything else in the main right section is where Facebook displays suggestions and results. 

Notice the 'new audience' section for the market size, pictured below. It explains the potential reach of your Facebook ad. Remember to continually review how your changes to variables, interest (and otherwise), impact on your target market size.

• Look at 'Page likes' in the top menu (as pictured below). This option displays a list of interests that the current 'competitive swimming' market has also liked. 

For instance, people who like 'competitive swimming' may also have liked a fictitious 'Mermaids team' (or a famous swimmer and so on). This is noteworthy because people who actually like both interests are more likely to be truly interested in your swimwear product than otherwise. Their interest in those related variables are unlikely to be purely by chance. BTW, if the 'Page likes' display is empty, this means the audience is too small to be displayed.

• Add any of the Facebook suggestions of interests (like the 'Mermaid team') to your target market by typing the name into the 'additional entries' text box in the 'interests' section in the left column.


• You may continue to select as many interest groups as you like to increase specificity in defining your target market. Some marketers are known to have established over 20 interests.
• While your focus may be on interests, you may also create the persona of your target market by subsequently reviewing secondary variables in the suggestions section. These variables include demographics, location and so on. As a beginner, you might find it easier to ignore these secondary variables in your earlier advertising campaigns, ie until you have more experience and insight.

You may even toggle interests (and other variables on and off) to see the impact on the characteristics of your target market.

When you use demographics, a distribution bar graph like this (below) will appear. The dark blue distribution bars represent the target market you have named in the left column. For the sake of comparison, the light blue represents all of Facebook users. For instance, this graph shows that your current market is more evenly distributed for both sexes. The highest level of interest exists among people in the 45-54 age range of both sexes. Your market is a bit different to the general Facebook population which is very noticeably skewed with most interest occurring among the younger groups 19-24 and especially 25-34 before gradually declining with age. 

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CONTENT RELATED TO FACEBOOK AUDIENCE INSIGHTS

• Use market research from Facebook Audience Insights when setting up Facebook ads
• Google Trends may provide some additional market research ideas
• Use Facebook for promotional strategies to build brand awareness
• Facebook audience insights may also help you to create a target market customer avatar.

Facebook Pixel Setup in Shopify store

Facebook tracking pixels are used by Facebook advertisers to track individuals who click their ad by installing 'cookies' on an individual's browser. 

Pixels collect data about the individual's actions after they clicked on your ad. The data include the pages visited on your website and whether they reached the checkout (a usual sign of a purchase conversion) or other type of conversion. On an aggregate level, pixels provide analytic details like your conversion rate. In short, pixels help marketers know about the efficiency of their ads and to decide on retargeting. In order to enjoy these benefits, you will need to set it up so you can apply the Facebook pixel to your Facebook ads and your website. 

Steps to set up a Facebook pixel

• Log in to Facebook
• Click the 3 horizontal bar menu in the top left corner
• Select 'all tools'
• Select 'pixels' in the 'assets' section
• Select the 'actions' dropdown menu
• Select 'view pixel code'
• Copy the contents inside the section labeled 'copy the entire pixel base code and .... website header' by clicking the plus sign (+) that appears over the code (as pictured below).

• Log in to Shopify admin
• Click 'Online store'
• 'preferences'
• In the 'Facebook pixel' section, paste the code. This code will automatically apply to all pages of your website (in a section called the page header). 
• Click 'save'. That's it!

The process of pasting the code is similar in different platforms (Click Funnels and WordPress / WooCommerce). Regardless of the platform, be sure to check that the text box into which you paste the code applies to the 'header' tag if your platform has different text boxes that make this process harder than this.

CONTENT RELATED TO FACEBOOK PIXELS

• Use Facebook Audience Insights to figure out your ideal target market before you start advertising
• Now that your pixel is set up, you can focus on publishing effective Facebook advertisements. See how.
• How to give others admin, advertising and other user permissions for your Facebook page.

Facebook Advertising Setup Tutorial

Facebook ad setup tutorial

A great advantage of using Facebook ads is that you can serve ads to narrow, highly specific target market segments ... if you wish. Market segmentation can considerably raise your advertising ROI. This post explains how to create a Facebook ad, with special focus on segmenting your advertising to a high degree.

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Once you have figured out the process, it may want to use a spreadsheet to keep track as you create different Facebook ads that together cover all of the suitable variable combinations.

Facebook advertising background

Before advertising, know about how Facebook advertising works. Regardless of your paid advertising platform (even Google product listing ads / PLAs) and it respective terminology, remember that the 3 elements below are always the required set up elements for an advertising campaign.

Step 1: Campaign 

This deals with determining your desired outcome. 

• Set out to target one sales funnel at a time
• Define outcomes. Example: sales, likes, etc
• Establish your objectives. Each objective type offers related options to meet that objective.
• Awareness - Brand awareness: getting Facebook page 'likes'. This is useful for new businesses and Facebook accounts. You may find this useful if your target market is at the top of the sales funnel. Example: you might want to run a campaign just to get likes and pay $3 daily for 10 days. 
• Awareness - Local awareness: The 'store visits' objective is arguably a more effective form of reaching local leads as someone can be immediately directed to your location if they are actively searching within the physical vicinity.
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• Awareness - Reach: advertising whose aim is simply to be seen and possibly nothing else. You may find this useful if you already well established and only want to remind your target market of your existence. You might find this useful for retention marketing for inactive mailing list customers.
• Consideration - Traffic: aims to get leads to click a link leading outside of Facebook to your website. You might find this useful for customers who need answers or more product information and can benefit from infomercial articles on your website.
• Consideration - Engagement: goes one step further than 'traffic' (above) in that, it not only aims to get leads to click through to your website but to engage further with activities like sharing your content with others outside your immediate reach.
• App installs: appeals to mostly gaming and other app-centric businesses
• Video views: is similar to awareness reach, except that the aim is to encourage your leads to view video content.
• Lead generation: 
• Conversions: works only after you have already installed a standard event Facebook pixel. Sales conversions are useful for most small businesses. This is highly recommended.
• Product catalog sales: tracks a prospect's behavior on your website for retargeting (aka remarketing). For instance, if a prospect sees a product but does not buy it, Facebook re-targets that customer by serving relevant advertisements like the particular product, alternative products, upsells and so on. This is particularly useful for ecommerce stores with product catalogs.
• Store visits: offers 'call now' or 'give directions' links when prospects are within your physical vicinity.

Step 2: Ad Set (ie your target market)

• Define your target market profile. Use psychographics. Example: women, aged 25-35 who like yoga,

Step 3: Ad Level

• Script the advertising message

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Set up a Facebook advertisement

• Log in to Facebook, preferably in the Google Chrome browser
• Click on 'Ads manager' in the left column
• Click the 3 horizontal lines menu icon in the top left corner of the screen
• Click 'All tools'
• Click 'Power editor' under the 'Create & Manage' options
• Click 'create a campaign'

Step 1: Campaign

• Click on the type of objective you want. Example 'conversion'
• Enter a 'campaign name'. This can be anything. Consider a name that helps you to keep organized, especially if you have multiple websites, products, ad versions and so on. Then click 'Continue'
• In the 'conversion' section, select 'website' and then a green colored 'purchase' option (as pictured below)

Step 2: Ad set (ie target market)

• Set target market profile information like 
• location. In the 'location' section, change the setting to 'people who live in this location' (to avoid showing advertisements to disinterested travelers who are not truly tied to a place) and then select only one location. Additionally, use one location per ad to receive highly specific analytics for each market segment. 
• age, gender and language. Like the 'location' field, consider making single selections like only English-speaking people for instance to better understand your best market segments.
• Detailed targeting (re interests and behaviors). When selecting Facebook groups, narrow your audience by creating intersections of multiple key groups like the 'dog lovers' and 'veganism' groups if you sell vegan dog food to reach those with more intrinsic interest in your product. After all, anyone can select only 'dog lovers', perhaps after liking a friend's funny home video of their dog but have no intrinsic interest in dogs and certainly your product. This raises the probability of finding truly interested people and getting a better ROI. You can learn the specific groups to target in the Facebook Audience Insights tool.
• Click 'narrow further' to add more groups
• Keep an eye on the 'audience size' and definition meter (in the right main section for guidance)

     

   

• Deselect the field 'Expand interests [...] conversion.' (as shown below) to encourage more targeted analytics about your highly specific market segment

                 

• NB. After having created and saved them beforehand, you will also be able to select a 'custom audience' group that you have already targeted. Beware, resending the same ad to the same people beyond 2 to 3 times can be perceived as annoying. This in mind, it is useful that not only can you retarget that group but you can also exclude it if you do not want to resend the same ad to that group. In fact, Facebook advertising even offers a tool that finds a 'lookalike audience' for your 'custom audience'. Lookalike audiences may be useful if you want to send the same ad to similar people but not those who have already been served (ie your custom audience). Many newby marketers spend roughly $5 to $10 daily per ad. Do not try to start with hundreds. Facebook advertising has been described as a money suckhole when you are still unsure. 
• Placements relate to where your Facebook ad will appear. To further narrow your reach, select 'Edit placements'. 
• Device type. Select a device (rather than 'all devices'). As before, this helps you to better understand your market.
• Platforms. Deselect options other than mobile 'feeds'. As at 2017, mobile feeds are currently the single highest converting form of placement for Facebook ads.

• You may save your custom audience and give it a name for future use.
• Budget. Enter your preferences. Here are a few noteworthy mentions. 
• Optimization for ad delivery. Many marketers often prefer 'link clicks' (over impressions and daily unique reach) when they want their leads to take action on a landing page. This choice ensures the audience not only sees the ad, but also the landing page.

• Bid amount. Facebook apparently displays ads based on which marketer's bid is 1) the highest and 2) next in line for a particular audience. Note however that marketers report positive results, albeit slower with bids below Facebook's suggested range. In short, you can bid as you like. Needless to say, your choice of interest-based audience is very important. For instance, if a highly relevant page has rock star status in your niche, it is likely to be more expensive. Consequently, your market research in the Facebook Audience insights tool must aim to get more affordable audiences based on a good mix of 'liked pages'. Some marketers aim for as many as 30. Strive for an audience with interests that no one else or very few marketers are targeting. Tread lightly at first. Additionally, do not make over zealous bid increments in response to good cost per sale results. (FYI cost per sale is usually a good measure of success). Increase conservatively, like roughly +10%.
• When you get charged. CPC means 'cost per click' and means that you will get charged only when someone actually clicks on your ad.
• Delivery type. Sometimes, you may find that your ad is not advancing as you would like, possibly when your bid is considerably lower than the suggested range. You may activate the 'accelerated' delivery type with the stated conditions (pictured below)  

Step 3: The Facebook Ad

You will need to have set up a Facebook fan page to host your ad. 

• Select the ad format. For instance, the 'single image' option is the most popular for single product ads. FYI carousal adds are generally considered ineffective. Upload the required media (whether images, video and so on). Make eye catching images. For instance, use catchy words that sell like guarantees, free shipping and so on with high contrasting colors when designing the image with text.
• Most fields to be completed are self explanatory and do not require special mention. However, the following is worthy of exception.
• Text fields - strategic text placements. Internet marketer, Miles Beckler suggests placing text with normal top-to-bottom scrolling behavior in mind. Specifically, state the question or problem in the top section (ie the field named 'text') and the answer or solution along with a call to action below the image (ie the field named 'headline') and then the newsfeed description in small print that appears below the headline.

     

• Make a selection in the 'call to action' dropdown menu field

To broadcast the ad; 

• Click 'place order'. Your ad will undergo a review period before going live.

CONTENT RELATED TO SETTING UP FACEBOOK ADVERTISING 

• How to set up live chat triggers that specifically target leads from Facebook advertising
• Google Product Listing Ads / PLAs. If you are new to online advertisting, Google PLAs may be easier to start with than Facebook advertising.
• Effective Craigslist advertising set up
• Winning SEO tutorial, including long tailed keywords for advertising
• Sales funnel marketing
• When your leads go the website, they should be guided appropriately with an effective landing page
• Learn how to target your market more specifically with Facebook Audience Insights
• Facebook page setup
• How to give others admin, advertising and other user permissions for your Facebook page.
• Learning how to do tentpole marketing can help you take Facebook advertising to another level. It's all about timing!
• After all this, you'd better have a effective landing page to ensure your leads really convert. After all, you want a return on investment / ROI from your Facebook ads
• Facebook ads can support promotional strategies to build brand awareness
• Split testing, aka A/B testing is aimed at testing the same ad in multiple versions with a key difference in the single most influential variable. The aim of split testing is to figure the best option. This is often done one variable at a time in that, after finding a winning variable attribute, all subsequent tests use only that winning attribute but on the basis of a different variable. The 'winner' attributes are determined based on the each ad's cost per sale.