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Archives for August 2020

Running a Company Remotely: 25 Experts Tips to Set Your Business Up for Success

by Chris Herbert | Last Updated May 26, 2021

Running a Company Remotely_

Remote working arrangements had been growing in popularity for some time already. And then 2020 happened. For obvious reasons lots of businesses the world over have been thrown in at the deep end and forced to run their operations remotely. For some it’s a temporary measure, for others it has become part of the long term plan for their business. There have been lots of different experiences.

The point is that running a company remotely is now a concept that virtually every man and his dog is familiar with, whereas 20 years ago if you muttered “remote work” to most people they’d likely look back at you with a puzzled expression and reply “remote what?!”

There are a tremendous number of benefits to running a company remotely if it’s done correctly. And it’s that “if” that’s the key point. This kind of working arrangement brings with it a new set of challenges and pressures that can impact many aspects of your business, particularly your staff.

We wanted to help give company owners the best chance of succeeding by talking to some of the most knowledgeable folks around when it comes to remote workplaces. We spoke to 25 consultants and strategists that help companies with all things remote work and have years of experience to draw upon. We asked each of them to provide one tip for any company that is looking to create a successful remote working environment. This article is the result of those conversations.

The Most Common Mistakes Made By Remote Companies

We’ve put together this resource to provide you with tips to help your business excel with a remote setup, but it can also really help to be aware of the potential pitfalls and reasons why some remote workplaces fall flat on their faces.

As part of our research process, we asked each of the experts that we got in touch with to name the 3 most common mistakes that companies make when establishing a remote workplace. Any that were mentioned 3 times or more are shown on the chart below.

Over and over there were two remote work mistakes that kept cropping up. Simply thinking you can try to recreate your physical office in the virtual world, and run it in exactly the same way was the first one.

Not defining a clear communication strategy that your team should adhere to was the other. When you’re not physically in the same space, it’s obvious that the way in which you communicate with each other is going to change, so that needs to be something you take into account and plan for.

How to Run a Remote Company

 

How to Run a Company Remotely + Get It Right: 25 Experts Weigh In

“It won’t be much different. Our staff are just at home instead of in the office. No big deal.” – said every company director that implemented a remote work program that flopped bigger than Windows Vista.

Not having your team all in the same physical location IS a big change but with the right advice it’s a change that can be immensely beneficial to all involved. Below we’ve listed a quick rundown of all of the tips that we curated to help you figure out how to properly run a company remotely.

  1. Learn About Your Team and Embrace Its Work-Style Diversity
  2. Addressing Issues That Impact Your Ability to Meet Deadlines or Provide Quality Results
  3. Create Deliberate Connections
  4. Empower Engaged Leaders at all Levels
  5. Avoiding Burnout for Yourself and Your Team
  6. Design a Global People Ops (Remote) Strategy
  7. Writing Things Down is a Game Changer
  8. Focus on Outputs Over Inputs + Avoid Over-Tracking
  9. Break the Culture of Hyper-Responsiveness
  10. Build Remote Work Rituals to Elevate Your Culture
  11. Remember the Three I’s
  12. Cultural Underpinnings: Trust Based Ownership & Accountability Principles
  13. Create a Standard Remote Work Onboarding and Training Process for Both New and Existing Recruits
  14. Remote By Default
  15. Be Real, Be Caring and Work to Help Everyone Be a Superstar
  16. Communication as a Service
  17. Management Will Make or Break Your Company’s Remote Workforce Success
  18. Setting Clear Expectations
  19. Understand Your Legal Responsibilities as an Employer for Your Remote Employees
  20. Overcoming Distance Bias Through Emphasizing Location Diversity + Inclusion
  21. Building and Sustaining a Collaborative Culture
  22. Emotional Intelligence – The Key to Effective Remote Working
  23. Introduce Video By Default for All Virtual Meetings
  24. Learn to Listen with More Senses
  25. Be Proactive with Team Building Activities

If your company has implemented any of the tips shared in this article or you have any advice to add, we’d love to hear about your experiences in the comments section!

What the Experts Said: Remote Workplace Tips Explained

Now you know how most companies fail when setting up remotely and you’ve seen a top-level overview of the tips we curated, it’s time to deep-dive into the advice our remote work experts shared. These folks have walked the walk, and the information shared is based on years of practical experience figuring out how to fine-tune remote teams so they can work just as successfully as in a conventional office setup. In many cases, even more so.

If you want to jump to a specific tip, you can use the filters below.

{"filter_mode":"masonry"}
  • All
  • Addressing Issues
  • Remote By Default
  • Write Things Down
  • Collaborative Culture
  • Learn About Your Team
  • Avoiding Burnout
  • Empower Engaged Leaders
  • Onboarding Process
  • Mutual Success
  • Communication as a Service
  • The Three I's
  • Hyper-Responsiveness
  • Get Management Right
  • Listen with More Senses
  • Legal Responsibilities
  • Remote Work Rituals
  • Emotional Intelligence
  • Team Building Activities
  • Cultural Underpinnings
  • Distance Bias
  • Video for Meetings
  • Global People Ops Strategy
  • Clear Expectations
  • Focus on Outputs
  • Deliberate Connections

Rhys Black

Rhys is the Founder and CEO of Delocate, a remote work consulting firm helping companies become high-performance remote organisations
http://www.delocate.co

  • Break the Culture of Hyper-Responsiveness

    – “Perpetuating a company culture where employees are expected to respond to messages ASAP from senior leadership can have significant negative impacts on team productivity and morale.

    Firstly, this creates a chaotic work environment where employees are not able to get in a productive state of flow and do their best work. This leads to low output, poor quality of work and is deeply stressful and unfulfilling for employees.

    Not only does it create a distraction-infested work environment, but it can also lead to team members burning out.

    If your team members feel pressure to respond to messages at 3 pm, they probably feel the same way if they receive a message at 10 pm. This very quickly leads to work hours stretching, difficulties in shutting off from work and eventually burn-out.”

Chase Warrington

Head of Business Development at Doist Inc., a remote first company of 80 people in 30 countries, building products for remote teams.
http://doist.com

  • Focus on Outputs Over Inputs + Avoid Over-Tracking

    – “One of the first questions aspiring remote team leaders tend to ask me goes something like: “How can I best track remote employee performance?” My answer to this is: you have to start with trust.

    Don’t waste resources setting up systems to track employees’ every minute spent on the clock. Hours worked is a really bad measure of productivity – plus it’s been proven that while office employees “work” a standard 8-hour workday, they typically average about 3 hours of “real work” each day.

    Trying to track employee performance in this way or expecting people to respond to messages within 5 minutes to prove they’re “at work” is only going to get in the way of them actually doing their jobs. Instead, default to trusting that you’ve hired the right people who are capable of working at a high level, whether they are in an office or at home.

    New remote leaders have a tendency to focus on inputs — things like hours worked, emails sent, calls made, message response time. These metrics are easy to quantify, making us managers feel secure that we’re getting the most out of our team.

    However, focusing on inputs leads to frequent interruptions, busywork, and burnout, more often than results.

    Instead, start focusing on outputs — which actually create value for the team. For example, if it’s your employee’s job to sell, let them sell. Don’t pull them into multiple meetings a day or interrupt them with messages they need to reply to immediately. Help your people identify their highest impact tasks and then encourage them to block off uninterrupted time in their calendars to focus on getting that work done.

    Shifting this focus away from micro-managing the inputs, and instead focusing on outputs, will pay dividends for your remote team down the road. Happier employees, better results, less staff turnover, more goals achieved.”

Stephan Dohrn

Stephan is an entrepreneur, coach, facilitator, and remote work expert. In addition to coaching entrepreneurs and remote leaders, he is the co-founder of Radical Inclusion, where I help remote teams thrive by improving collaboration. He is German, married to a Brazilian for over 10 years. They have 2 kids and live in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
http://www.sdohrn.com

  • Learn to Listen with More Senses

    – “Online we cannot see much of each other’s body language, posture, and gestures. To compensate, many remote leaders tend to fall back on things like chat messages and being more purposeful and clearer in the questions they ask.

    That is a great strategy, but it can become too much and can be perceived as distracting by your team members.

    So, how can we listen more deeply? We all have the ability to sense others through our hearts – to listen from our hearts. We do not use this ability much in in-person settings, especially in a business context, so it takes training.

    Experiment with the Following:

    When you listen to a co-worker, focus on your mind and listen from that place, then feel into your heartspace (feel your physical heart) and see what happens when you listen from that place.

    Why should you train this ability? Over time it will not only slow down and deepen your way of communicating, but it will also have a similar effect on how others communicate with you.

    How to Learn More:

    Search for 4 Levels of Listening by Otto Scharmer on YouTube, and check out the tool ‘Mirroring‘”

Arturo Schwartzberg

Lifetime caring leader. CoFounder & Chairman SweetRush Inc. since 2001. Led the company to top of learning and development industry and built a 100% remote high-performing team located in 14 countries.
http://www.sweetrush.com

  • Be Real, Be Caring and Work to Help Everyone Be a Superstar

    – “It’s not about you, but about them. Your job is to help each individual truly maximize their potential. Look inward, and ask yourself if you really and truly care about their wellbeing and if not, change. Your remote team is held together by your gravitational force and you need to focus on connection and authentic caring.

    All of this is true remote or otherwise, but remote accelerates the need. You need their trust – they must trust you – and then you will be able to trust them. And so, it starts with you.

    If you do this right, you can create a team based on mutual success and each member of the team caring about each other, about you, you for them and all in all a beautiful high performance and caring environment.

    We have created this environment at SweetRush and have built a high performing team of 200 superstars based in 14 countries.

    All this is as it should be; a principle of all religions is mutual success (do unto others….) and none of this is a new concept born on the new normal of remote, but rather a basic human-centric value that we should all adopt on the path to world peace…and building an awesome remote team :)”

Shauna Moran

Shauna is an accredited and award-winning executive coach who empowers leaders of remote teams to create and build more effective distributed workforces- so they can scale and grow with confidence.
http://www.operateremote.com

  • Emotional Intelligence – The Key to Effective Remote Working

    – “There’s a difference between being able to work remotely and being truly effective at remote working.

    As an accredited leadership coach, emotional intelligence practitioner and remote team researcher- the key to being effective at remote working lies in emotional intelligence.

    When we think of remote working, we shouldn’t limit ourselves to believe someone will succeed as long as they can effectively do their jobs. There’s a deeper level to being successful as a remote employee, manager and organisation.

    In order to manage ourselves and each other in an online or multi-office environment, individuals need to have a high level of self-perception, how we see ourselves, understand ourselves and how well we identify our own emotions.

    The autonomy that comes with working remote, and primarily alone, means that we should be tapped into ourselves as individuals in order to better make decisions that promote our overall well-being. Working without in-person interactions on a daily basis, means we need to adjust how we express ourselves online.

    Our communication skills and awareness should be developed when we’re working in multi-cultural virtual environments. We need to understand how we can communicate, listen and express ourselves effectively online. If our team are based all over the world, we’ll need to develop our independence in order to be resourceful and self-sufficient.

    Our assertiveness in setting clear and healthy boundaries and expectations are vital when working across multiple time zones and primarily online when we’re so connected through technology. Our interpersonal skills need to be developed and explored when we work online with colleagues, employees and customers. In order to build mutually satisfying trusting relationships, we need to develop our empathy towards other people.

    This is where emotional intelligence comes in.

    Emotional intelligence is a set of emotional and social skills that collectively establish how well we perceive and express ourselves, develop and maintain social relationships, cope with challenges, and use emotional information in an effective and meaningful way.

    Emotional intelligence accounts for 25-45% of workplace performance, and unlike IQ, EI is something that you can improve with training.

    When We Think of EI When Working Remotely, It Helps Us:

    • Better manage our time, energy and emotions in order to sustain ourselves, be productive and prevent burnout.
    • It helps us understand how to express emotions online, how to tap into the emotions of others in order to build strong interpersonal team relationships.
    • It empowers us to cope with stress, make decisions and problem solve when emotions are involved
    • It helps us show up with empathy, and balance that with assertiveness to ensure we’re finding balance in how we show up remotely.

    If we want to improve these skills, we can. Aside from working with a professional coach, a great place to start on your own is to tap into self-awareness. Ask yourself the following questions, start getting into the habit of reflection and experience how you can be the best problem-solver and manager of your life when working remotely.

    Reflection Questions to Build Self-Awareness

    • Based on how I’m currently managing my time and my energy, what’s working? What makes that work well and how can I bring those same processes forward into more of my tasks?
    • What’s not working well with the way that I work right now? What’s taking my energy and what doesn’t make sense for me/my team? Where might I be able to improve or what might I be able to change?
    • What are my non-negotiables in both my personal and professional life (what gives me energy and drives me closer to my definition of success?)
    • How have I carved out time for my non-negotiables? What healthy boundaries do I need to put in place for myself?
    • When and where do I work at my best? What are the routines and habits that serve me? What do I need to shed that no longer serves me?

    We should bear in mind that working remotely throughout a pandemic isn’t normal circumstances for remote working. Work environments and priorities in most companies are changing quickly, which makes it even more important to practise reflection on a regular basis. I do this exercise at least once a week and encourage you to do the same.”

Nicole Le Maire

Modern People Ops For Virtual Teams
https://thepeopleengine.me

  • Design a Global People Ops (Remote) Strategy

    – “When it comes to virtual (remote) organisations, there are a lot of moving pieces that must come together in order to form a successful business. It boils down to more than just pushing employees to perform their tasks and turn it into cash flow. As a business owner, you must have smart working (distributed) teams in place, connected so that each knows not only just their expectations, but the needs and goings-on of other teams, as well.

    Your global People Ops strategy needs to be flexible to integrate the differences comfortably to satisfy everyone. You will find the stakeholders will be aligned to either a global or local focus, depending on the nature of their position. Ideally, all these viewpoints should be incorporated.

    (Countless businesses have implemented a global model, where the corporate department centralises and establishes policies, procedures and tools to ensure business interests are accomplished across the organisation. However, success in a remote company depends on addressing local cultures and business needs!)

    There is a tendency to build large chunks or phases while designing a People Ops strategy. Management wants the huge initiatives that fire teams up and get them excited; however, individual components usually don’t align, causing challenges to their innovation!

    When you descale work, you reduce the impact of these challenges by empowering a bold vision with a clear small, first step. When you pair this with outcome-based measures of success, the benefits grow 10X.

    As different groups of participants will have divergent views and needs, your goal is to bring out the collective knowledge and skills, to achieve the best alignment. Encouraging stakeholders to voice their views, listen, give feedback and incorporate what makes sense for local and global people practices.

    Make your global people vision become a reality, resist working with a large team to achieve a revolution in one go. Perfect the slices of value you create before you scale up to other areas. Ensure you give the people team support to make mistakes and achieve changes to push the innovation forward.

    The experience to create is about positivity and collaboration. This is the best way to build a healthy organisation culture of openness, trust and transparency, which benefits the business. Take a collaborative approach with communication where it is visible and proactive.

    Open communication is crucial, by involving all the stakeholders in your Global People Ops Strategy, you are more likely to find success in achieving the organisation’s goals. Utilise your digital communication systems to enhance collaboration and conversation with one another.

    These are all steps you can take today to help build trust with your remote employees. The more they trust you, the more value your people team can bring to the table, the glue that holds it all together. You have such an important job, and it’s crucial to make the most of it!”

Sacha Connor

Sacha Connor is the CEO of Virtual Work Insider, a remote work and virtual leadership skills training consultancy. VWI specializes in coaching remote, hybrid, and geographically distributed teams to work together seamlessly across any distance. VWI has worked clients such as Toyota, Beam Suntory, Clorox, Cigna, Gilead, and FIFCO.
http://www.virtualworkinsider.com/

  • Overcoming Distance Bias Through Emphasizing Location Diversity + Inclusion

    – “Unprecedented location inclusion is one of COVID’s positive unintended consequences. The office shut-downs have forced so many of us into FROGs* – fully remote organizations. This meant that for the first time, in many companies, all team members were are on an equal, location-agnostic, playing field.

    For many, the frequent faux pas of only inviting people to participate in a meeting, a brainstorm, or social gathering that live or work nearby has vanished. Those invisible fences have fallen in favor of location inclusion – people are being included based on merit, not proximity.

    Before COVID, so many of us were being called upon to lead teams that were distributed across the country and the globe. The COVID office shutdowns took that one step further, jumping all the way into fully remote teams. Now that some offices are slowly reopening, new hybrid teams are emerging.

    These team dynamics require us to lead in a way that ensures inclusion, regardless of location, to get the best ideas, best collaboration, and best business results. And leading and working within these hybrid teams is actually harder than working as part of a FROG due to an unconscious bias called Distance Bias.

    I experienced Distance Bias first-hand, working fully remotely for eight years while leading large teams that were responsible for more than $250 million in business and were mostly located three time zones away.

    Spectrum of remoteness July 2020 (c)

    The NeuroLeadership Institute identified five unconscious biases that impact decision making. They call it the SEEDS model. The “D” in SEEDS stands for: Distance Bias—our brain’s natural tendency to put more importance on things and people that are closer to us than farther away. This Distance Bias can become a key factor in holding back hybrid teams.

    While you have been working in your fully remote teams you might not have been feeling the Distance Bias as strongly, but you might have fallen victim to its close sister, Recency Bias – our brain’s natural tendency to put more importance on the people and things that are closer in time to us. The people that are more top of mind for you are likely those that you’ve seen via video chat or heard from via email or text more recently.

    Once your team is aware of Distance and Recency bias, here are some steps to mitigate them. The tactics may vary depending on where your team is in the spectrum of remoteness during COVID and after.

    If you are a manager:

    1. Be deliberate about forming relationships equally with your co-located and remote direct reports. For example, hold virtual coffee chats with your remote people to create a personal connection.

    2. Consider all your direct reports when assigning projects, rotations, or promotions. Pick the best person for the job, not just the closest in proximity.

  • 3. If you have questions about a project or a business issue, go to the “right” person to get the answer instead of going to the closest person.

    If you are a team leader or team member:

    4. Enable virtual attendees to participate equally in team meetings.

    • Insist on using video conferencing software so everyone has a virtual seat at the table.
    • Proactively invite remote people into the discussion.
    • Leverage virtual whiteboarding software so everyone can contribute to a brainstorming session.

    5. Build team culture and relationships virtually.

    • Be overly communicative about your team’s roles, goals, and values.
    • All social activities should involve all sites and team members. I went as far as having virtual happy hours, virtual baby showers, and virtual holiday parties.

    As offices and cities start to slowly reopen, let’s not slip back into our old ways of proximity as paramount.”

* the FROG reference is attributed to Greg Caplan, co-founder of Remote Year.

Gregory Sherrow

Remote executive with more than 15 years of experience managing remote teams and advising on remote work best practices at the individual and organizational levels for the private, public and nonprofit sectors.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregsherrow/

  • Management Will Make or Break Your Company’s Remote Workforce Success

    – “Remote work: many love it, a few are suspicious of it and company executives have traditionally been split on it. Suddenly, it’s a critical tool for nearly all professional workforces. How quickly the world changes.

    However, strategic change often lags environmental change. Companies around the globe are suddenly struggling with traditional office-based workforces going 100% remote. Some were already moving that way and could apply what they had already learned. Others have struggled to reach previous productivity levels and create a functional remote work culture.

    Homebound executives point fingers for perceived failure in many directions, but it turns out that a major gotcha for many companies successfully going fully remote is the management itself.

    Executives, corporate captains and business owners of the world focus their energies on finance and strategy, relying on a very traditional corporate animal, the middle manager, to make everything run smoothly. Without them, chaos would take over the office parks and towers of the corporate world. So what’s the big problem? Just send the middle manager to work from home like everyone else.

    Let’s quickly run through that scenario. We’ll pretend that I’m an executive at an insurance firm that just realized it can’t rely on an old fashioned office-based work environment. The part-time and temporary remote work assignments we instituted as a result of forces outside of our control are beginning to require something more permanent.

    I have been told by the CEO to turn the company on its head: make working from home the norm and meeting in the office the exception. I am a realist and expect some hiccups. After all, not everyone can or wants to work remotely. I’m afraid that up to 20% to 30% of my workforce will stagnate at home and I’ll need to make tough decisions about them before it’s too late. The difficult choice of replacing or doing without will be easier for some than others. When it comes to replacing experienced managers, however… I get a headache just thinking about it.

    The skills needed to manage a full-time remote team aren’t the same as the traditional office-based management skills that rely heavily on constant personal interactions, strategically dropping in on meetings or standing behind someone as they work. If I apply that 20% to 30% figure to the middle managers right off the top, I can see through the smoke and carnage that the company’s normal operations will be disrupted in a big way.

    So What’s the Solution?

    Startups and established office-based companies that want to move the focus of their workforce away from the office need to take a few pages out of the playbook of successful remote companies.

    1. Flatter is Better

    Forget the traditional reporting structure your parents and grandparents imagined when they told you inspirational bedtime stories about climbing the corporate ladder. In most companies with a distributed workforce, the distance between the c-suite and the talent is minimal.

    But make no mistake, successful distributed workforces still need talented leaders between c-suite planners up on deck and the crew below. Those who have assembled remote companies that operate like well-oiled, long-distance communication machines have found that full-time remote workforces just doesn’t require as many stratifications in order to reach the same goals. Begin combining and spreading out responsibilities from the beginning and don’t be afraid to redefine roles to meet adapted goals.

    There are multiple reasons for remote companies ending up flatter. Some have to do with the mentality of the type of person who works well from home, others have to do with efficiencies. Your company may discover reasons for a flatter structure that are unique to your own corporate culture.

    One common reason is that remote structures naturally feel flatter, allowing communication channels to naturally grow wider and become full-duplex. With previously unnoticed physical barriers gone (floors in a building, office doors, layers of admin assistants), suddenly everyone, everywhere is one video conference call away. This allows well-structured, remote companies to adapt quickly to rapidly changing marketplaces and work environments even when their teams are literally spread between Alaska and Zimbabwe.

    2. Hire Smart

    In this case, “smart” means seeking out independently-minded, resourceful individuals at all levels who are organized and driven. These people don’t need the moral support of their co-workers in nearby cubicles or the direct pressure of an immediate supervisor peering over their shoulder. Self-motivated individuals understand that a team works best when everyone is contributing to the group’s direction and meeting personal and team goals, not just passively lining up behind the team leader waiting to be told what they should be doing.

    3. Train Well

    At this moment in history, experienced and talented remote workers, especially with remote management experience aren’t very common. Until they are, we need rule three.

    Hiring or contracting a remote management trainer who can not only provide newly-remote managers with a plan for success, but also help establish a positive remote work culture, will save both time and money. Working it out as you go along is never a good business plan and leaving an entire company to flounder while talented employees attempt to find their remote footing on their own will result in a death spiral.

    There are companies that have learned to adapt and survive great changes in technology. And there are many who failed. The driving force behind this change may be different, but with the right preparation and training, your employees can roll up their sleeves, go home and get to work.”

Deborah Simmons

Deborah’s role as an insight specialist is dedicated to working with organisations who put humans first in their thinking. Her experience of, and research into digital nomadism and remote work, positions her as a thought leader in the transition of teams from traditional to distributed workplaces. The majority of her time is now dedicated to making this transition as smooth and as future-focused as possible, through her tailored workshop ‘Location Independent’.
http://caminoinsight.com

  • Remote By Default

    – “Hear me out. Let’s just take stock of where we are at the moment…

    Going remote overnight – as has been the harsh reality for many organisations during the pandemic – is not a recipe for long-term success.

    Telephone box

    Why is this? Well, there are numerous reasons, but here are the main ones:

    1. Tech changes more rapidly than humans do. We are responding to new challenges with old, industrial organisational solutions which are out-dated and ineffective.
    2. We may have the remote tools, but we don’t have the remote culture.
    3. Many organisations simply aren’t ready for such a drastic change and they are effectively paralysed with fear.
    4. Remote working environments have not yet been adapted to our needs. So many people have struggled because they are juggling work, partners, home and children all in the same environment, and without clear boundaries.

    Does this mean that we can’t implement remote working successfully? Absolutely not!

    We are now at the point where organisations are starting to take stock; to think about the future of their workplace and how they wish to pick up the pieces and move forward. And, with the best of intentions, many will likely opt for the Hybrid workplace, where some workers return to work in the main office and others work remotely (whether from home, a co-work space or a satellite office).

    The Hybrid office, however, is not solving our problems; it’s actually perpetuating them. Why is this?

    Proximity bias. Work and culture (including social) are very much still centred around the office, and this means remote workers are overlooked which can be very harmful to your team. When proximity bias exists, remote workers become marginalised – they miss out on important communications, aren’t involved in developmental opportunities and social events and can feel isolated and excluded. This is the stuff that can ruin morale and career progression, so it’s not something that should be glossed over as collateral damage.

    So what’s the solution? Remote by default.

    This doesn’t mean closing down the office permanently on Friday and everyone working remotely 100% of the time. It means setting up the workplace as ‘remote first’ and, where realistic, giving people the choice. This way, we enable the seamless flow from office to remote and back again, in a way that actual physical location becomes inconsequential and more of a ‘nice to have’.

    If you think about the organisations that were set up in this way before the pandemic, the likelihood is that lockdown would have had a very minimal impact on their business practices.

    Remote work experts worldwide are advocating the move to a total virtual workspace. Just to reiterate: this doesn’t mean people can’t or shouldn’t work in the office (people shouldn’t be forced to work remotely – it’s not the optimal choice for everyone), it just means that remote working is facilitated first. It’s altogether more inclusive and equal – something that we are striving towards as we attempt to move away from the privilege and exclusivity within our society.

    Think of it as a virtual workplace – effective, human-centred and flexible. Some believe that this is not possible in a remote environment but it absolutely is.

    zoom call

    And this is where having a clearly defined and embedded remote work culture is going to pay huge dividends. Whether co-workers are in your main office hub, at home, in a coworking space or café, you’ll all be communicating, collaborating and working towards your goals, using the same tools, speaking the same ‘language’ and with the same expectations, plus potentially a new respect for your work and each other.”

Maryellen Stockton

Maryellen Stockton is the founder of Work Well Wherever. She works with small businesses and start-ups to help them create human connections in remote teams. Her 7+ years of experience in the field allows her to know the best practices for working well remotely and how it can be a platform for organizations to build a great company culture and become more productive.
https://www.workwellwherever.com/

  • Build Remote Work Rituals to Elevate Your Culture

    – “According to the author, Mollie West Duffy, “Rituals are powerful drivers of culture, so they should be thoughtfully designed and nurtured to reinforce the organization’s values”.

    Workplace rituals are important, but they become even more important when you aren’t working together in the same location. Getting started with rituals? Here are 4 ways to use rituals to enhance your remote culture.

    1. Strengthen Your Onboarding Process

    Review your new hire plan and think about what rituals you could include to reinforce your company’s core values. Think about how you welcome new employees and how you can cultivate relationships from the start.

    2. Celebrate Employees

    Honor your employees on their birthday or work anniversary by having a virtual team party to make sure your employee gets lots of love on their special day. You can also send digital cards or create a celebration channel in your team chat. Continue to find ways to celebrate together.

    3. Foster Relationships

    • Weekly stand-ups via video call to discuss what everyone is working and discuss any challenges and or help needed.
    • Check-ins via chat asking a different question to the team each week.
    • One-on-ones with your leader to connect, discuss goals, development, and support.

    4. Show Gratitude

    • Celebrate the completion of a big project or crushing your company goals by hosting a virtual lunch or happy hour.
    • Host an annual employee award ceremony to acknowledge team members who model your core values.

    Rituals are a powerful tool you can start today to create an amazing remote culture.”

Ali Greene

Ali is the founder of cohana.io whose mission is to educate, inspire and engage teams to create efficient, effective, and innovative frameworks for the future of work, regardless of where (or what) their "office" looks like.
http://www.cohana.io

  • Setting Clear Expectations

    – “How many times have you lost patience when waiting for an important response from someone who said they would get back to you “soon”? Have you ever experienced that feeling, when a deliverable from a team member leaves you irked, even though technically the task has been completed?

    All of those moments boil down to unclear expectations. Remote work can exasperate communication issues, and cause mistrust between managers and employees, simply due to misunderstandings in expectations. Simply, if people are not on the same page, if they do not know what to anticipate, it will be impossible to build trust, a core foundation for strong remote teams.

    Ideas on How to Solve It

    As a leader in a remote organization you should set the following expectations:

    1. Availability & Working Hours – There are a couple of decisions to make when it comes to availability and working hours. Some questions to have clear answers on include:

    • When are people expected to be online and working? Are you keeping a 9-5 or can workers choose when to be productive?
    • Are there core hours of overlap you expect your team to have for spontaneous questions and real-time collaboration? Example: You may decide to have 2-4 hours of overlap a day for team members to check in with each other.
    • Which meetings are mandatory? How far in advance should meetings be scheduled? Are there core hours for meetings?

    2. Communication tools – The tools you use are only as good as how you implement them into your company culture. Write down all the major ways your company communicates, what the goal of that communication is, and then choose a tool to suit your needs. Further, define a cadence for acceptable response times based on communication tool (for example: 24 hours in email, 4 hours over Slack).

    My favorite tools are Asana for project management, Zoom for video calls, and Slack for asynchronous updates and collaboration!

    Tools and Communication

    3. Project deliverables and success metrics – Before delegating a project or assignment, managers should make sure there are clear expectations set on the work that needs to be accomplished. This will reduce the tendency for frequent check-ins, and virtual micro-management that can be frustrating for remote teams. Areas that managers should define are:

    • What is the goal of the project?
    • What is in or out of scope?
    • What is the project plan and milestones timeline to adhere to?
    • How should stakeholders be included?
    • What is the cadence for updates and what content should those updates include?
    • What are the final deliverables, how and when should they be received?
    • What does done look like?
    • How will success be measured?

    Making sure you and your employees are on the same page as it relates to those three topics will help reduce confusion and frustration when collaborating virtually and set you up for remote work success. Good luck!”

Sarah Aviram

I've worked in Human Resources and as a Talent Development leader for Fortune 500 companies and smaller high-growth technology companies. I've also worked remotely from twelve countries and just published the book
http://www.sarahaviram.com

  • Create Deliberate Connections

    – “It’s critical for managers in remote organizations to create opportunities for deliberate connections since colleagues are missing those water-cooler conversations that build relationships.

    The most challenging aspect of working remotely is feeling isolated. Help your team feel a sense of connection by deliberately creating more face-time opportunities. Here are some examples:

    • Build in small-talk-time in first few minutes of meetings by posing a question like “what’s the last thing you got delivered to your home?” or “what’s your best travel memory?”
    • Start the day with a standup and end with a wrap up. Share goals, accomplishments, small wins, or even just something small you learned. Ask these three questions to each person at the meeting:
      • What did you complete yesterday?
      • What are you working on today?
      • What is a challenge you’re facing?
    • Suggest peer 1-on-1s with coworkers.
    • Create optional co-working times with cameras on or chat on. Folks can work in silence or shout out if they have a question.
    • Schedule demo days where different team members share what they’ve created and what they learned from this project.
    • Rotate meeting facilitators for optimal visibility and conversational turn-taking.
    • Hold virtual events for the team to join like workshops and even fitness sessions.
    • Encourage random virtual coffees by pairing up team members for a weekly “virtual coffee” to drive a sense of connection, moral support, and accountability.
    • Focus on a good day’s work by asking team members to finish this sentence at the beginning of each day: “It will be a good day’s work if I’ve accomplished ______”. Then follow up at the end of the day to see how they did and if they need support.”

Kevin Eikenberry

Kevin has spent 30 years helping organizations and leaders from over 40 countries become more effective. Inc.com has twice named him in the top 100 Leadership and Management Experts in the World. His books include, Remarkable Leadership, From Bud to Boss, and The Long-Distance Leader. His next book is The Long-Distance Teammate.
https://RemoteLeadershipInstitute.com

  • Remember the Three I’s

    – “You won’t go far wrong if you keep the following in mind.

    Intention. Everything leaders must do when leading a remote team must be more intentional. Old habits might not work, and intention is a habit over-ride. Think about how you need to do things, rather than relying on past approaches. Be more intentional about everything from informal communication to coaching to team building – and everything else in your leadership role.

    Interaction. When people work away from each other, conversations will become more transactional. The focus will be on the work and the task. Make sure that you (and all team members) create space for interaction and avoid everything being a transaction.

    Isolation. When people work alone there is the risk that people will feel isolated and alone. Don’t allow the social currency of the workplace to be lost as distance between people increases. Help people maintain and build relationships. They will be healthier, happier, and far more productive.”

Fadila Ahmad Abdulrazaq

Fadila A Ahmad, is a Remote Work Advisor, business strategist and entrepreneur who has worked across 8 countries and 4 industries while travelling to over 30 countries around the world. She is the founder and lead strategist at Africans Living Fully, a media and community platform that empowers and inspires Young Africans and POC to be limitless in their pursuit of a meaningful career, business and life path that is true to them.
http://africanslivingfully.com

  • Create a Standard Remote Work Onboarding and Training Process for Both New and Existing Recruits

    – “An integral part of effectively running an organization remotely is the people and the culture you built and instil in them. When new people are hired, it is your responsibility as the hiring manager to ensure that they have everything they need to be successful in their role. Similarly, existing employees who are going remote for the first time or transitioning into fully remote roles temporarily or permanently need to be acquainted and upskilled to enable them to work effectively.

    New recruits come in with insecurities centred around the fear of rejection leading them to be alone; Remote employees naturally suffer even worse since location bias is very common, especially in hybrid organizations. It is important to note that Onboarding, unlike Orientation, is not a one-time event.

    Onboarding is a series of activities happening over an extended period of time that seeks to empower and enable staff to understand their new working environment, the team, the organizational culture, method of work and tools.

    How Long Should Onboarding Take?

    The duration is determined by the complexity of the new hires’ roles, the tools needed to be learned, the type of company and how long the engagement period is for. Darren of BambooHR wrote about 10 things you should consider in determining how long the onboarding process should take, for more insight read here. Although many companies adopt a 2-3 week duration, the Boston Consulting Group recommends a 1 year intentional onboarding period as being more effective in retaining employees and enabling productivity among them.

    Creating a standardized onboarding process will help you share all of the essential aspects that will help new team members become successful in their new role, saving you time and effort by not having to make constant corrections. This standard onboarding process can be formal or informal. Formal onboarding processes include training, workshops, seminars, intensive coaching and mock exercises. Informal onboarding activities can include job shadowing, intentional observation of a company’s process, approach to creating solutions and dealings with varying stakeholders.

    The Onboarding process begins with Pre-onboarding, then an Orientation, First Assignments & provision of ongoing support.

    Here are 7 Tips to Help You Onboard Remote Employees

    1. Create an Onboarding Plan (Ideally 1 year long with a 2 week intensive) – Develop a standard onboarding plan where all necessary meetings and training are scheduled in advance. Create a full agenda, gather all the relevant resources be it video, audio or links that can enable new recruits to get fully acquainted with key areas of the organization. Introduce them to all people, processes and projects that will be relevant to their work. The onboarding plan should include both formal and informal activities to enable them to feel comfortable in their new working environment.
    2. Communicate Clearly the Role, Responsibility and Vision of the Organization – What is the value the employee will be bringing to the organization? Who are they going to work with? Who will they report to? How often should they report and communicate with that person? What is the organizational structure and dispute resolution procedure? Where is the company vision? How will they help you achieve it? What is the result you want them to achieve for your business and how will it be measured?
    3. Communicate Expectations and How Results Will Be Measured – If there is anything that makes or breaks a Remote company it is communication at all stages of hiring and during the actual teamwork process. At the onboarding stage, it is crucial for both parties to communicate expectations, share the company’s vision, how the employee’s performance will be measured and what constitutes success and productivity at the workplace. This will allow both parties to understand and set the right mood for work.
    4. Establish a Communication and Collaboration Plan – And then share it with them.
    5. Get Them to Start with a Small Project – It is important to have a clear work plan for new hires with short-term intervals of under 90 days to introduce new recruits to company information, other team members and rituals within your remote culture. In doing so assign them work that requires information discovery, culture fit test and cross-departmental team collaboration.
    6. Ask and Act on Feedback – If you have not had much relevant experience managing a remote team, it’s important to know that you will experience challenges; my best advice to you is to invite new recruits to pay attention to your process and provide you with constructive feedback that can help you improve the experience for future recruits.
    7. Create Opportunities for Personal Connections – Remote work means there is an absence of those water cooler and chit chat moments employees experience when they are in an office space. It is your responsibility as the HR or Team lead to create opportunities that can foster virtual team blonding and personal connections. For new recruits this means inviting them to introduce themselves in the first week of work, inviting them to hang out at the HQ, encouraging team members who live in the same city or region to have regular meetups or even virtual non-work related experiences.

    Expected Results

    A study that was carried out by the Boston Consulting Group found that of 22 different HR practices, onboarding has the 2nd biggest impact in terms of employee experience. Added to that, the research showed that companies with a well-designed onboarding process typically achieve over double the revenue growth and also close to double the profit margin when compared with companies with either no boarding process or poorly planned procedures in place. And if that weren’t enough reason to focus on onboarding, employee retention rates are also much higher with proper onboarding.

    Your ability to attract, hire and retain the best talent will highly depend on the robustness of your onboarding process and more importantly your continued commitment to ensuring the people you hire continue to have the adequate capacity, expertise and understanding required to function effectively in their jobs. Therefore training and professional development resources need to be inclusive and made accessible to all employees irrespective of geographical, physical, mental or demographic differences.

    Here are 3 Tips to Help You Do That

    • Actively Involve Your Team in a Periodic Exercise to Determine Their Learning Needs and Style – Some people learn best visually, others love to read extensively, while the rest learn best on the job or simply by doing it themselves. From time to time is important to create an exercise for your remote team that helps you identify the different learning and upskilling needs that are essential to help them thrive at their jobs.
    • Provide Access to Learning Tools and Platforms that Cater to the Needs of Different Groups – Employers must not forget that remote teams can include people with visual, hearing or other forms of disabilities, and it is essential to provide learning resources that cater to the needs of these groups too. Provide access to relevant resources for specific job roles, technical briefs or simply the culture you want them to adopt. Here are some examples.
      • Encourage skill sharing and group learning programs, events and hangouts.
      • Present information in diverse formats: have a good combination of video, audio and text format for the same materials.
      • Translate learning materials into different languages.
    • Ask for and Use Feedback from Diverse Population – Ultimately the training program you create is for employees – so make a conscious effort to seek different perspectives on what you can do to help them thrive. Be aware of location bias, especially in hybrid organizations; seek the perspective of your remote teams in the development process of the training program.

    Hope this helps you and your team run a more effective remote work environment!”

Mika J. Cross

Mika is a widely acclaimed workplace expert, speaker, strategist and innovator specializing in global workplace initiatives, remote and distributed work, culture change, strategic communications, knowledge management, next generation workplace and future of work. Her career includes 20+ years of public service and she is a proud veteran of the Unites States Army.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/worklifechampionoftheuniverse/

  • Empower Engaged Leaders at all Levels

    – “Here’s a little secret about how to set up a remote working environment for success>>> EMPOWER your people leaders!

    In order to leverage all the benefits of a successful remote working environment, you have to invest in and support the people who lead the people.

    First, managers and supervisors REALLY need to understand the rules and regulations that guide the remote and flexible work policies in your organization. They also must feel comfortable enough in the work environment to make the right decisions for their people. Consider creating a regular open forum Q&A with HR leads and first-line managers. Set up a way to field direct questions from them (polling, email, chat or text polls) and provide them with as many tools, tips and resources as you can to make their jobs easier so they can help support the people who work with and for them.

    Create a peer-to-peer manager mentorship program to help share ideas, stories and examples on creative ways they’ve overcome challenges and realized success in implementing remote and flexible work for their teams.

    Secondly, support the workforce. Why not create a virtual space for employees to recognize exceptional leaders who are going the extra mile to ensure their teams are supported, communicated with and engaged. An informal monthly recognition forum, newsletter or Virtual Town Hall can go a long way. Make sure your organization is being deliberate with the formats, forums and frequency of top-down, bottom-up and cross-organizational communication, especially in the remote work environment. If you think you are over-communicating, think again and do more!

    Simply implementing new remote and flexible work policies will not guarantee their success or implementation. Different people have different circumstances, and if your workplace culture does not support and empower the leaders of people throughout all levels of the organization, the policies will not work as intended.”

Diane Stegmeier

Diane Stegmeier is a globally-recognized leader in workplace change management. She works with top employers to design, implement, and refine remote work programs that boost employee satisfaction and productivity while maintaining a company’s unique corporate culture.
https://stegmeierconsulting.com/

  • Addressing Issues That Impact Your Ability to Meet Deadlines or Provide Quality Results

    – “Many employers have had structured flexible work arrangements, remote work programs, work-from-home policies, or flex-work guidelines for ad hoc requests for quite some time. Employees working remotely is certainly not a new concept. So, what’s different today, and how can companies successfully ensure both managers and individual contributors thrive in a remote work environment?

    The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many companies to completely close down their physical offices and send their employees home to work remotely. The individuals sent home include the managers who have long resisted having their staff members participate in a remote work program. The old reasoning such as “How will I know my people are working?” and “I need to be able to see my direct reports throughout the day!” can still be voiced by managers, but it will not change the enterprise’s edict for remote work environments based on pandemic-related health and safety concerns.

    ⚠️Here’s How to Ensure Your Remote Work Program Will Fail

    A sure-fire way to fail as an organization is to adopt a one-size-fits-all remote work program, and to refuse to allow for any compromises. A company whose flexible work policies are cast in stone is bound to struggle. One common problem is leaders who treat all employees equally as if all members of your workforce are identical, each having the same requirements. Just because an issue arises that creates a problem for one individual, it does not mean all employees will eventually be touched by the same problem.

    ✅How Can Leaders Help Their Employees with the Inconveniences & Adjustments of Working Remotely?

    Employees operating in a remote work environment will indeed experience occasional inconveniences and require minor adjustments from time to time. Of course, the same is true for working in the corporate office. How can leaders ensure that their direct reports will meet their deadlines and produce quality results? Your flexible work approach must be flexible. Think “flexible flexibility.” Do not expect a one-size-fits-all program to be the best solution to achieve your desired results. Make sure your work from home policies and procedures allow for the flexibility in addressing unique circumstances in order to support employees’ requested needs and accommodate specific physical requirements.

    Differentiate Between Cultural, Environmental, and Operational issues

    As a leader responsible for guiding your direct reports through change, it’s often beneficial to recognize the difference between cultural, environmental, and operational issues that may arise in a remote work environment. Accept the fact that leaders cannot—and should not—fix every minor inconvenience your staff members experience while working remotely. Empower your employees to seek solutions where appropriate. You should get involved to resolve issues that impact the employee’s ability to meet his or her deadlines or provide quality results.

    • Culture is the social control system of an organization. Your organization has an overall corporate culture, and every business unit or team has its own culture that informs employees of what the acceptable behaviors are in the workplace—and in a remote work environment.
      • A common example of culture is how virtual meetings are conducted. As a leader, pay close attention to how employees treat each other in a video conference call. Does your culture allow certain individuals to talk nonstop, interrupt, and harshly criticize others’ ideas? Bullying behavior can also be conducted covertly. If a certain individual seems a bit unprepared in a meeting or confused about a topic being discussed, take the time to look at who distributes materials to the team. It’s not uncommon for a bully to “forget” to include that individual when emailing the team—over and over again. Intentionally withholding information to make a peer look stupid is a tactic that bullies often use to undermine their targets.
    • Environment has to do with our physical surroundings as well as the way we work within our spaces. Within the walls of our corporate offices, we often adjust furniture components to create spaces for concentrated quiet work, as well as spaces for lively interactions. In a typical office, workplace protocols are developed based on how the space should be used and acceptable adjustments that can be made. In the case of working remotely, the environment is likely the employee’s house or apartment. Remote work environments don’t come with a laminated poster displaying the proper etiquette to guide your family’s behavior.
      • An example of an environmental issue is when an employee comes to you complaining about how her teenagers barge into the room where she’s working and start a conversation before checking if she’s on a call. What do you do as her manager?
        • Listen and do not make assumptions
        • Share an example, if you have one, of how you handle those kinds of situations in your home
        • Encourage her to be creative…talk to her peers who are also parents working remotely…suggest that the entire team brainstorms solutions to typical problems at an upcoming staff meeting
        • Remind yourself that you are not responsible for developing solutions involving employees’ residences or their families
    • Operational elements are often tied to processes, policies, and procedures. They are about how the work gets done through technology or other methods.
      • An example is that one of your employees is responsible for delivering a weekly report in a hard-copy format to another business group. When everyone was in the office, he would simply take a 2-minute walk to the adjacent work area to drop the report off. Everyone is working remotely, but that business group insists that they receive a hard copy of the report. Your direct report would have to shift priorities to finish the report earlier, then use snail mail to get it to the right person on time. In situations such as a pandemic, we should all take a second look at “the way we’ve always done it” and suggest alternatives. If your employee approached you with this scenario, you would speak with the manager of the other business group regarding the outdated policy, and suggest that now is the time to update the rules and allow electronic reports to be submitted. It’s unlikely that your direct report would be successful in changing an established policy. Operational issues often require a manager’s involvement.

    Bottom Line: Invite your direct reports to bring issues to you that impact their ability to meet their deadlines or provide quality results. This will, in turn, help your employees to focus on what is necessary to support their work, and hopefully, ignore the minor adjustments and inconveniences of working in a new, remote work environment.”

    These insights have been drawn from Diane Stegmeier’s book, Innovations in Office Design: The Critical Influence Approach to Effective Work Environments, which has been adopted by universities on six continents and ranked the #1 Workplace Strategy Book by Amazon readers.

Laurent Parenteau

I've worked fully remotely since 2009, for large and small companies, some that were non remote-friendly. Interested in discussing anything related to remote work? Hit me up!
http://laurentparenteau.com

  • Be Proactive with Team Building Activities

    – “One of the biggest differences between remote and in-office work environments is the casual discussion and random human connections that happen. People chat at the coffee machine, over lunch, in the parking lot, etc. This happens whether you want it to or not, without having to do anything special.

    When you have a remote work environment, this is no longer the case. You have to take explicit actions if you want those random human connections to happen. And you do want them to happen, as it is tremendously valuable for team bonding and helps reduce miscommunication problems.

    There are many ways this can be done, and the more methods you use, and the more diverse they are, the better the result will be. Here are a few activities I’ve successfully used.

    1. Weekly Icebreaker Questions

    In your chat tool (Slack, Twist, whatever), have a dedicated channel for icebreaker questions. Every week, in that channel, ask a simple question that everyone is required to answer. Questions like “What’s your favorite taco?”, “Best book you’ve read / movie you’ve seen lately?”, “Do you prefer Pepsi or Coke?”, or any other icebreaker style questions are perfect for this. They can be silly, or could require more thoughtful answers, so vary between those styles over time.

    Over time, without much effort, you end up knowing a lot more about your coworkers. Also, when someone new joins your team, they can see the previous answers and jumpstart their knowledge of their teammates. They can also go back to those older questions and answer a bunch, allowing the rest of the team to quickly learn more about this new team member.

    This is one of the easiest asynchronous team building activities you could run.

    2. Social Time

    Social Time is a weekly meeting about anything except work. The goal is to have the team get together and discuss. Since this is synchronous, you have to be careful if your team spans across multiple time zones, but this can be adjusted to work in those situations as well.

    One approach I really like for Social Time is to use the Weekly Icebreaker Question to kick start the discussion. The discussion usually ends up with the team talking about random stuff, and that’s perfect. But the initial already answered icebreaker provide a nice and simple way to get the discussion moving.

    Other times, instead of having a discussion, we’ll play a game. There’s a whole lot of free (or paid) online games available, so you can find whatever suits your team. One game that always results in a lot of laughs is any of the online Pictionary clones.

    A variation here would be to use smaller groups (10-15 people) instead of the whole organization, depending on size.

    3. Random 1:1

    Another great synchronous discussion activity and one that is a good complement to Social Time, is to hold 1:1 meetups with 2 random people. That could happen anytime, but I’ve had great success with it happening right after Social Time. It makes scheduling easy and also people can just keep the same discussion going if they want to (so there’s no awkward silence wondering what to talk about). This is a great opportunity to create a personal connection with everyone, even if you don’t interact with that person on a day to day basis.

    A variation here would be to use smaller groups (3-4 people) instead of one-on-one, depending on team size.

    4. PowerPoint Karaoke

    This one is great for celebration events. Everyone gets a random deck of random slides and needs to do a 5-minute presentation based on that, without having seen those slides beforehand. One nice thing with this activity is that it’s well suited for remote teams, doesn’t require any particular skills, and isn’t competitive.

    That said, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it to a really fresh team, where people might not yet feel comfortable looking like a fool and doing improvisation in front of the team. You’d need to do some more ice-breaking stuff first. But after that, it really helps to get the team to jell and break down any barriers that could remain.

    One Final Tip: Be considerate with your team. Any team-building activity you want to hold should take your team’s diversity into consideration. What do they enjoy? How spread across the globe are they? What is their idea of fun?

    With that in mind, go ahead and experiment!”

Radina Nedyalkova

Remote talent advisor, virtual lecturer and LinkedIn coach. After 10 years in the corporate world, working in the global recruitment teams of LinkedIn and Airbnb, I set up Vox Advisory in 2019. My mission is to repair the bridge between the organisations and the talent through the right human-oriented practices.
http://www.vox-advisory.com

  • Building and Sustaining a Collaborative Culture

    – “What really is collaboration? I always advise my clients to drop buzzwords like “team player” and “people-person”- both in their CVs and job descriptions. True collaborators PROACTIVELY look for partnerships internally and externally. They involve others and are not afraid to ask for feedback. They encourage knowledge sharing and tolerate different points of view. These traits are a lot more valuable than being likeable and able to cope in a team environment. Why? Because experts who embody the essence of collaboration bring people together, act as informal leaders and ultimately, can exert significant influence over your culture. Especially if you are building it in a remote setup.

    Change the Narrative

    Change the narrative

    Attitude is what matters in 2020. Yes, we all have a specific need, a skill for success, a position we have to fill. But what I have seen is that companies tend to make two significant mistakes: promoting the wrong person to become a team manager (in order to retain them) or hiring a toxic individual because they tick all the other boxes. Experience can be taught, behaviour though consists of beliefs, values and upbringing. We have all heard that diversity brings better results over time, so let’s consider what a culture ADD can bring: inclusion, creativity, innovation, ideation and, a sense of belonging.

    The Ultimate Challenge: Me vs We

    me vs we

    Not many organisations have figured this one out. Humans have been social creatures since the dawn of time. However, with big changes such as the 4th industrial revolution (Iot), the Gig economy, having 5 generations working together and the rise of the remote options, professionals have a plethora of choice for their career development. Cultivating loyalty and hiring the right people whilst increasing retention, have become more complex than 10-15 years ago.

    Being a remote employee is appealing, but is it sustainable for everyone? What gels people together and helps them establish relationships when they are not having any physical interaction? Perhaps, one of the important things to consider is creating a space where people feel that they are nurtured on an individual and community level. That they are appreciated for the potential they have, as well as their interpersonal competencies and skills for success.

    Adopting innovation in all of your people-related processes (from screening and selection to managing the day to day requests) is more affordable than ever. Slack bots that help you drive internal engagement, peer2peer live interview platforms, apps that boost your video interactions. Avail of the technology around you and empower your teams to demonstrate your culture on a daily basis.

    Some key action points for every startup owner, manager, HR director or C-level executive (yes, not just for HR):

    1. Clarify Your Values and Belief System – This is not the “nice to have” PR approved statements. Is collaboration truly embedded in your ethos and goals? Is it introduced in how you build your strategy and measure success?
    2. What is Your Employer DNA & the Skills for Success in Your Specific Environment – Don’t go for the standard form of a job description, CV screening and interview selection (years of experience, type of education and being a “team player”). What unites your people and make them feel like they belong? Why should they stay in your company?
    3. Drive Radical Transparency – Sustaining the culture is a team sport. And when you are working in a remote setup, you need to overcommunicate and be 100% more alert about how you come across, how others prefer to interact, what the challenges are with written communication and potential language barriers. Embrace vulnerability and work on your cultural awareness.
    4. Cultivate Internal Champions – Teamwork makes the dream work – and you will need allies to maintain the commitment and ensure people hold each other accountable in your remote space. Look for these proactive, self-driven and socially-engaged current or future employees who can be your legacy and your voice.

    Best of luck!”

Egor Borushko

"Work wherever you want, whenever you want" is my motto, and Running Remote's mission statement. Working remotely for over 10 years I recognise that remote founders need support in managing their remote organisation. That's where Running Remote comes in.
https://runningremote.com/

  • Introduce Video By Default for All Virtual Meetings

    – “It’s easy to fall into misinterpretation during virtual meetings due to the lack of body language and typically more distractions. By implementing a company-wide video-by-default policy, the participants can feel more connected to each other. Audio-only calls tend to create an even further distance between your remote workforce.”

Video for All Meetings

Jo Palmer

Jo Is the Founder and Managing Director of Pointer Remote, an Australian based company that works with communities, business and individuals to leverage remote work through online training, workshops and recruitment services.
http://www.pointerremoteroles.com.au

  • Understand Your Legal Responsibilities as an Employer for Your Remote Employees

    – “It is extremely important to have an understanding of your legal responsibilities as an employer when employees work remotely. In many countries, it is the employer’s responsibility to ensure that their employees have a safe workspace from which to work at home. If their employee is injured during work hours, the employer may be liable. Regulations and laws differ from state to state and country to country so it is vital to research your particular obligations.”

Yanislava Hristova

Founder of Remoteit.world and HR Leader with over a decade of experience in remote tech talent acquisition and company growth strategies.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/yannyhr/

  • Writing Things Down is a Game Changer

    – “The nature of remote work is that it heavily relies on processes, prioritizes output over time and emphasizes efficiency. Its proven top benefits are a significant boost in productivity, better decisions and higher employee engagement. The question is how do you accomplish the promised outstanding results in a distributed environment? Well, it’s simple but not easy. One of the true superpowers of remote work lies in writing things down. Let’s dive deeper into why writing things down is a game changer.

    There are several practical reasons why you shall keep things documented and how, by doing it, you uphold sustainability, save time and empower inclusivity.

    The Handbook-First Approach

    As a newbie in the remote workplace, your instinct is likely to try and figure things out yourself before you ask for help or information. Which prompts the question, “Where can I find information that is for internal-only use and not bother my colleagues?” Every remote company must create and maintain one centralized information space. It’s like a folder on your computer but it’s in a sharable format which allows other people to access it too. Gitlab calls this the handbook-first approach. Simply put, it’s a GDrive folder or a Notion/Confluence page etc that is your go-to place when you have frequent questions on why, what and how. It consists of all possible resources and references on a strategic, operational or day to day level. You must include literally everything there such as the company purpose, values, team, strategy, marketing to all processes, how to guides, rules, procedures, OKRs, meeting notes, vacation requests, new ideas, everything. This is an essential space because you need something that serves as a single source of truth. One extra practical use is the onboarding of new employees.

    Make Meetings More Efficient

    High productivity and exceptional results don’t just happen because we work remotely. They happen because of the focus on efficiency. The majority of remote workers are hyper-time-protective because they realize spending time wisely matters. Meetings are one particularly debatable instrument of teamwork, and writing things down will help you save precious time and prevent endless meetings.

    Prior to every meeting, explain the context in written form in a new document and share it with your teammates. Give them time to read it at their own convenience, activate critical or creative thinking and come up with comments and notes directly on the collaborative tool. Jeff Bezos incorporated a similar practice at Amazon and so far it has been a standard to bring everyone on the same page respecting one’s own speed to absorb and process new information. You may be surprised that sometimes you may not even need a meeting to get people’s input. If a meeting is needed, send the agenda in advance. What if someone can not attend? Of course, you do not want to repeat everything word by word and triple the time investment. You will just record this meeting and upload it in the documentation space. Send them the link to watch it and then start a conversation. This is pragmatic when you want to incorporate a high level of flexibility, asynchronous communication and various time zones.

    Everyone’s Voice is Heard

    Last but not least, let’s touch on inclusivity. It is probably among the most wanted features of a modern workplace nowadays. An environment where everyone’s voice, ideas and feedback is at its heart. Implementing a writing-first approach motivates all employees to share their ideas openly, to give input and their voice to last beyond the duration of a virtual meeting. This is particularly helpful for more introverted individuals who are shy or nervous to speak up in front of many people, but whom may demonstrate genuine care and commitment to company success.

    Writing things down may seem not easy at first, however, once you master it, it’s a real game changer to building lasting successful remote operations.”

Lance Robbins

Director of Workforce Development at Distribute Consulting. Lance is a career people and operations professional with a focus on helping distributed teams scale and perform. Lance has served as a talent acquisition advisor to reputable remote-friendly organizations. He believes building strong distributed teams is the first and most crucial catalyst for realizing the greater power of virtual work.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/lance-robbins/

  • Avoiding Burnout for Yourself and Your Team

    – “We’ve all heard or even felt the doubts. “Will my employees stream Netflix all day or will they actually work?” One of the most commonly cited fears of managers is that remote employees won’t work as hard or as much when they’re not in an office environment.

    Contrary to popular belief, there is a far greater risk that remote employees and managers will spend more time working than their in-office counterparts.

    With the progressive globalization of workforces and marketplaces the days of having a predictable “close of business” time are long gone. Employees and contractors are receiving inbound requests and assignments around the clock, and more often than not, the steady stream of demand gets the best of remote workers.

    While work-from-homers can’t just leave the office altogether, since it’s literally in their house, it’s critical that remote workers CAN leave the workplace behind. Here are 3 tips to make it easier to make the break between work and over-worked.

    1. Your Calendar is the Boss

    Your calendar is the boss

    Make no apologies for blocking off times that meetings cannot be scheduled. If you find yourself chronically eating microwaveable noodles alone with your computer, you might want to block off a 30-60 minute lunch window. If it’s been far too long since you made any memories with your loved ones, go ahead and block off some evening hours for that purpose. Keeping your calendar up to date communicates the times you ARE available to your teammates and clients and keeps you from having to say “no”.

    2. Notifications Off

    Great job! You’ve carved out some time to leave your desk and enjoy a meal with your family. What could possibly ruin this accomplishment? 17 Slack notifications, 4 emails, and 6 LinkedIn comments, that’s what. It’s not really a break from work if you’re still working on your mobile device. Do yourself a favor and turn off the notifications from the settings on your phone. There’s nothing so urgent that it needs your attention right this very moment.

    3. Create Some Physical Space

    When the day is done, lock the beast in its cage. Nothing tells your brain to work a little longer than carrying your laptop out of the office and into your living area. So, unless you need it for a personal project, leave your work computer where it belongs… at work. It will be there in the morning, and you can check your emails then.

    Just because managers can’t see their employees overworking, doesn’t mean they aren’t doing it. If you’re a leader of remote workers, lead by example. Follow the tips above to avoid burnout for yourself and your team.”

Dorota Piotrowska

Dorota is a seasoned People Experience, Org Development and DE&I Professional as well as a Remote-smart Advocate. Until recently she was the first Head of People at Netguru, a rapidly scaling, remote first software consultancy (nearly 700 people). Now moving to fintech where she'll continue to develop a remote smart and digitalised workplace.
http://www.netguru.com

  • Cultural Underpinnings: Trust Based Ownership & Accountability Principles

    – “A remote smart organisation is first and foremost about strong, cohesive and pervasive cultural underpinnings. For people to thrive and be effective in it a high degree of ownership, empowerment and accountability is needed. They’re all built on trust.

    Trust has many layers of course. Here is my remote org experience based top 10 take on this:

    1. Respect above all and embrace perspectives of others determined by their individual set of cultural lenses (check here) to avoid the so-called vicious circle of Four Mis’s -: Misperception ➡️ Misinterpretation ➡️ Misevaluation ➡️ Mistrust.
    2. Psychological safety – it’s ok to make mistakes, it’s critical to not judge a book by its cover or to judge the book by the chapter you walked in on.
    3. Integrity – walk the talk.
    4. Sincerity and radical candor (i.e. Caring Personally while Challenging Directly).
    5. Reliability – deliver as promised, and do not overpromise because you’re bound to underdeliver.
    6. Commitment to what you’re building as a team.
    7. Consistency and clarity, even if things evolve, explain the rationale of the modification.
    8. Competence & life long learning – be a subject matter expert in your role, but don’t forget about…
    9. Intellectual humility- adopt a ‘learn it all’ NOT ‘know it all’ mindset, be in listening mode, listen to learn not to find quick fixes/to win. Especially crucial in the context of the remote workplace.
    10. The mutually reinforcing ‘trust triangle’ attributes: logic, authenticity, empathy, as depicted here.”

Kaylie Boogaerts

People & Culture Manager at LaterPay, a remote-first company. I head the international team's recruitment, culture and all other HR efforts. I enjoy focusing on creative problem-solving and am proud of cultivating a reputation as a leader through collaboration and communication.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaylie-boogaerts-72167040/

  • Communication as a Service

    – “A remote setup allows you to give your team more flexibility, which often goes hand in hand with more asynchronous communication (http://asyncmanifesto.org/). If you don’t set any guidelines and expectations on how to handle that, things can easily go wrong.

    For example, when you need something from a colleague, it’s easy to quickly drop them an email or a Slack message with your question or request. If you don’t think about what information the other person needs to be able to help you, they’re going to have to come back with questions to pull that information from you. This back-and-forth exchange goes quite quickly when you can have it in person. However, when you’re writing each other, and especially when you’re doing it asynchronously, this becomes a long process.

    Instead, view your communication as a service to one another and push the information the other person needs. Don’t make them pull the information from you.

    What Does this Look Like in Practice?

    1. Consider how much context the other person already has and what information they may require to be able to answer you. Can you provide them with a link to documentation, a ticket, screenshots? What follow-up questions can you expect them to ask and can you already answer those in your first message?
    2. Be clear about whether you’re looking for approval, feedback or a decision.
    3. Give the other person context on the urgency of your request. When do you need a reply?
    4. If you pull someone into a conversation, provide a summary of the conversation for them and be clear about what you need from them. Don’t force them to read through the whole conversation and to find out why exactly you pulled them into the conversation.
    5. Be aware of language and cultural differences and avoid role-specific jargon and country- or culture-specific language.

    It’s better to over-communicate in order to keep things moving in a remote environment.

    How to Make Your Team View Their Communication as a Service?

    1. Lead by example.
    2. Explain the concept to your team. You can do this by just sharing what I wrote above, or you can be a bit more creative and set up a little training or workshop.
    3. Reward or praise people when you see team members communicating more effectively by viewing their communication as a service to each other. Just a simple “Thanks Marie for providing context and your expectations when you requested this from me. It made it super easy for me to get back to you and unblock the team” does wonders!

    Good luck!”

Anja Simic

Anja lives and breathes remote work. She is the Head of Marketing at Deel, the payments and compliance platform for remote teams. Anja is passionate about amplifying the message that talent is everywhere and the opportunities should be as well.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/anja-simic-86120859/

  • Learn About Your Team and Embrace Its Work-Style Diversity

    – “When building a remote company, every founder strives to gather the best, most talented team. But what happens when you hire remotely and cannot quite assess their soft skills? You need to make the most of your hiring process. Since many are now working from home, the interview process becomes more intimate. The applicants do their interviews from their homes, bedrooms, desks. This is the first touchpoint to learn more about who your candidate is.

    Bonus: Commenting on something you see (book, poster, pet) is a great conversation ice-breaker.

    It’s About the Output, Not the Input

    People are different, and their work-styles might be different from yours or someone else’s. Many remote companies have moved past the 9-5 schedule, because of many things, the main ones being time difference and flexibility. Productivity cannot be forced, so it’s important to understand in which way your team functions the best. Some might be productive early in the morning, some prefer to work at night, and that’s ok. If you have clear responsibilities and communicate well within the team, this shouldn’t be a bottleneck.

    Remote Policy is Key

    Every company should have a remote policy or a playbook, to outline the processes that happen within the company. The policy should include the knowledge base, department guidelines, roles and responsibilities, etc. It should also serve as the “source of truth” for anyone from a recent hire to the oldest employee.

    Learning About a Person (& Their Work-Style) is an Ongoing Process

    Dedicating time to learn and understand your team is important. It’s not a task, but rather an ongoing effort. Set up 1:1 calls, check-ins, or allocate time during team calls to hear how your team is doing, learn about what is happening outside of their work, etc. Identifying the work-style and embracing it within the team will go a long way when it comes to productivity, employer experience and will create a great team culture.”

Filed Under: Remote Work

Facebook Ad Mistakes: Insights from 45 Experts

by Chris Herbert | Last Updated May 26, 2021

Facebook Ads Mistakes

In 2021, when a lot of business owners think of paid advertising, they think of Facebook Ads. There’s no doubt about it, it’s a juggernaut of an advertising platform and offers businesses the opportunity to get their products, services and brand in front of millions of potential customers. But it isn’t just a case of you putting your money into the Facebook marketing machine, and it throwing leads and paying customers out the other side. Think like that and you’ll probably blow your whole advertising budget and have very little to show for it.

It definitely helps to know what you’re doing. But perhaps even more important is knowing what not to do when setting up your Facebook Ad campaigns, which is the reason we created this post. And who better to walk you through this particular minefield than a group of experts that work with the Facebook advertising platform day-in, day-out, and between them have managed a mind-boggling amount of advertising dollars.

In total, we spoke with over 40 Facebook Ad consultants, strategists and specialists, and asked them each the following question: “Can you name one mistake you commonly see made with Facebook Advertising, and provide some ideas on how it can be avoided or fixed?” The result? A boatload of insights and actionable advice that should help steer your campaign from frustratingly mediocre (or certain doom…I was being optimistic) to the joyful feeling of “it’s working!!!”

The Most Common Facebook Ad Mistakes

Before we run through the entire list that we curated for this article, we want to take a moment to highlight the main ones to watch out for. Part of our research process involved asking each expert to name the three most common Facebook Ad mistakes that they encounter. Any that were mentioned more than 5 times made it onto the chart below.

As you can quickly see, in our survey we found that not getting the pixel set up properly, not putting the time in to test the various elements of your ads and not putting your Facebook ad in front of the right people are the three most common ways that people slip up when advertising on Facebook.

Facebook Ad Errors

 

45 Facebook Advertising Mistakes to Avoid

Below you’ll find a pretty comprehensive list of Facebook Ad mistakes, with some more common than others, and a spread of mistakes that range from “rookie” to slightly more complex. However, they do all share one thing in common…they’ll all harm your ad campaigns in one way or another.

  1. Not Using Persuasive Ad Copy
  2. Not Creating Segmented Retargeting Audiences
  3. Using the Wrong Campaign Objective
  4. Not Utilizing Captions in Video Ads
  5. Not Excluding Past Purchasers
  6. Landing Page Issues
  7. Poor or Unclear Ad Messaging
  8. Forgetting About Other Marketing Methods and Organic Social Media to Support Facebook Advertising
  9. Not Excluding BOF from TOF and Confusing Your Messaging TOF/MOF/BOF
  10. Not Testing Enough – Creatives, Copy and Audiences
  11. Ignoring the Impact of Relevance on Facebook Ad Costs
  12. Boosting Facebook Posts
  13. Touching Ad Campaigns Too Soon and Too Often
  14. Not Understanding the Power of DPAs in eCommerce Retargeting
  15. Too Narrow/Specific Targeting
  16. Showing the Same Facebook Ad to a Person More Than Once
  17. Not Taking Advantage of Custom Placement Aspect Ratios
  18. Not Using Video View Ads to Build Warm Audiences
  19. Not Using One Ad ID Across Multiple Ad Sets
  20. Using Facebook’s ‘Lowest Cost’ Bid Strategy Like Everyone Else
  21. Abandoning Your Ads after Setting Up
  22. Not Using the Correct Custom Conversion or Event
  23. Not Hooking Your Clients’ Attention in the First 3 Seconds
  24. Forgetting to Leverage Existing Customer Data
  25. Not Making Sure The Fundamentals Are In Place Before Campaign Launch
  26. Not Doing the Hard Work First in Understanding Your Customer Avatar
  27. Not Understanding Facebook Fraud
  28. Not Using User (or Influencer) Generated Content in Ads
  29. Failing to Test Ad Copy Hooks
  30. Not Installing the Facebook Pixel
  31. Huge Expectations from Low Budgets
  32. Failing to Hone in on the Benefits of Your Offering
  33. Sending Traffic to Slow Loading Website
  34. The Content Facebook Doesn’t Like in Ads – What to Watch Out For
  35. Neglecting the Importance of the Headline
  36. Not Leveraging Lookalike Audiences
  37. Not Giving the Facebook Algorithm Enough Control
  38. A New Pixel Needs to Be “Seasoned”
  39. Running One Facebook Ad in Isolation and Not Thinking About the Follow-Up
  40. Expecting to Win with Your First Campaign
  41. Poor Ad Account Organization
  42. Not Building Trust First 
  43. Changing the Budget to Scale a Campaign
  44. Not Having a Big Enough Budget
  45. Not Re-Targeting Your Website Visitors

Have you made any of these Facebook Ad mistakes before? Or perhaps you’ve committed a Facebook Advertising sin that we haven’t covered? If so, we’d love to hear from you in the comments section at the end of the article!

Other Articles You May Find Useful:

  • Best Landing Page Builder: 63 Paid Traffic Experts Vote
  • All Social Media Marketing Resources

What the Experts Said: Facebook Ad Mistakes Examined

In this section, you can read in more depth what our Facebook advertising experts had to say. Each will outline a mistake they commonly see people make when using the Facebook advertising platform, and will then run through some ideas to help you avoid falling foul of the same issues.

There’s a lot of invaluable advice included and tips that will help you move the needle and improve your results with Facebook Ads. So grab a coffee and get learning!

Use the handy filter below if you want to jump straight to something specific.

{"filter_mode":"masonry"}
  • All
  • Already Seen It
  • Wrong Campaign Objective
  • First 3 Seconds
  • Not Using One Ad ID
  • Not Trusting Algorithm
  • Relevance Score
  • Forgetting Other Marketing Methods
  • Custom Placement Aspect Ratios
  • Customer Avatar
  • Content No-No's
  • Facebook Fraud
  • Dynamic Product Ads
  • Unclear Ad Messaging
  • Not Excluding BOF from TOF
  • Lowest Cost Bids
  • Changing Budget
  • Slow Website
  • Not Using Video Ads
  • Unseasoned Pixel
  • Neglect Headline
  • Past Purchasers
  • Not Testing Enough
  • Segmented Retargeting
  • Lookalike Audiences
  • User Generated Content
  • Ad Copy
  • Editing Too Soon
  • Incorrect Custom Conversion/Event
  • Unrealistic Expectations
  • Forget Fundamentals
  • Abandoning Ads
  • Video Captions
  • Win with First Campaign
  • Narrow/Specific Targeting
  • Forgetting Existing Customer Data
  • Landing Page Issues
  • Missing Benefits
  • Boosting Posts
  • Ad Copy Hooks
  • No Facebook Pixel
  • Not Thinking About Follow-Up
  • Poor Organization
  • Building Trust
  • Budget Too Low
  • Not Re-Targeting
Laura Faragher
Hi! I'm Laura, a freelance Facebook Ads Specialist. I specialise in helping small businesses grow using the power of Facebook Advertising. I'm passionate about making a real impact on a business's bottom line.
http://www.thepracticalmarketingacademy.com

  • Not Re-Targeting Your Website Visitors

    – “Without a doubt, the BIGGEST mistake I see business page owners making is NOT re-targeting their website visitors in their ads audiences. They’re really missing a trick!

    By re-targeting people that have already been on your website, you are sending your marketing messages and getting your brand in front of people that already know about you, and potentially (as they have been browsing your website), are interested in your products and services.

    An added bonus of re-targeting website visitors is that they’re what we call a “warm audience”. So conversion rates are likely to be higher, just as the cost per conversion is likely to be lower!”

Logan R Mayville
Logan Mayville helps entrepreneurs and small business owners double their leads in 30 days so they can serve more people without wasting their marketing budget.
https://loganmayville.com/

  • Poor Ad Account Organization

    – “The biggest mistake Facebook advertisers make is poor Ad Account organization, and the effects can be drastic.

    The key to increasing long-term, sustainable performance is the act of organizing your Facebook ad account (and subsequent targeting and creatives) into two steps — Prospecting and retargeting.

    In prospecting campaigns, you’ll target large groups of cold audiences, so it’s critical that your ad creative catches attention and stops the scroll — if you’re targeting 1 million people, a difference of .5% CTR will have a massive effect on your results down the line. If I had to pick one creative option, I would choose a 15-second video with 1) a hook in the first 3 seconds, 2) a text overlay, and 3) a clear and compelling CTA.

    In retargeting campaigns, you’ll target small groups of people with an established interest in your product or service, so the primary objective of your ad creative is to persuade; not catch attention like in the prospecting campaigns. To do this, follow your buyer’s journey from attention to consideration to decision and provide material for each phase — product reviews, testimonials, comparisons, and limited availability notices can all be effective.”

Samantha Pilling
Sam is a highly sought-after Lead Generation & Facebook Advertising Expert with 24+ years of Media Experience. She specialises in helping coaches, consultants and expert-led businesses attract new clients and amplify their impact.
http://www.bitememarketing.co.uk

  • Running One Facebook Ad in Isolation and Not Thinking About the Follow-Up

    – “Imagine this…

    You’re single. You’re looking for love. So, you decide to go to a bar in the hope of meeting someone special.

    As you order your drink someone catches your eye across the room. In a heartbeat, you dash across the room, drop to your knees and propose marriage… without even asking their name!

    None of us would dream of doing this in real life, would we?

    So why are we doing this with our Facebook Advertising? Why do we expect a total stranger (who has never heard of us before) to make a big commitment on having only seen one Ad?

    What we need to do is consider our marketing efforts (including Facebook) as a long-term-relationship, and not a one-night-stand.

    How do we go about having a long-term relationship with potential customers?

    1. Firstly You Need to Get on Their Radar

    One of the fantastic things about Facebook Advertising is just how targeted you can get with your adverts. If you want to target 50+ year old women within a 20-mile radius of your business who love Knitting and Horror Movies – you can do it on Facebook!

    So, the first step is to research your ideal clients – what do they love? How old are they? Where do they live? Are they a specific gender? And so on.

    Create ‘Interest Targeting’ lists on Facebook and run ads to them using content they’ll love. Is there a video you can share that will entertain or educate them?

    Consider running ‘Engagement’* or ‘Video View’* campaigns with the simple objective of getting on their radar (and at the same time building warm audiences of people who have expressed an interest in what you do).

    * At the time of writing this tip, there has never been a better time to do this. Not being a vulture and picking over anyone’s misfortune, but many people are still in lockdown and have turned to Social Media to stay connected. This means that the cost of running Video View and Engagement campaigns has dropped.

    2. You Need to Woo Them!

    Depending on what you do or what you sell, one piece of great content may be enough to warm your audience to you. For ‘higher ticket’ companies (where more awareness and consideration is needed) then you may need to woo them for longer!

    Always bear in mind that they are not on Facebook to be sold to.

    They’re here for social connection, to catch up with friends, to have a gossip, and to be entertained.

    Add value to their day with content that really resonates with them.

    3. Don’t Forget to Propose

    Now, we don’t want to stay in the ‘friend zone’ forever, so there comes a time when you need to get down on one knee and ask them to commit to being your customer!

    We do that through retargeting your warm audiences.

    These warm audiences might include…

    • People who have viewed one of your videos
    • People who have engaged with your content on Facebook
    • People who have visited your website
    • People who have put something in their Shopping Cart on your website but didn’t complete the purchase
    • People who have expressed an interest in your event
    • People on your email list
    • People on your Chatbot list

    4. Just Because They’re in a Relationship with you, It Doesn’t Mean the Work Stops There!

    Once they’ve become your customer, don’t neglect them! If they’ve had one great experience with your business they are likely to come back for more.

    Upload your Customer List to Facebook and create a Custom Audience of existing customers. Send them great content, add value to their day, give them offers, and tempt them back to buy again.

    And here’s one final Pro Tip for you… Create Lookalike Audiences on Facebook based on your Customer List! That’s saying to Facebook “These are my customers, go and find other people just like them!”

    And Facebook will go off and do the hard work for you!”

Alyssa Ege
Alyssa Ege is the President at Sail Away Media, a social media marketing firm. She guides the team in crafting strategies that have delivered up to 42X return on their investment. She's been featured on WPBF News, Fit Small Business, and Voyage Miami, and lectures to business owners across the country.
https://sailawaymedia.com/

  • Not Installing the Facebook Pixel

    – “I’ve audited hundreds of Facebook advertising accounts, and one of the most common mistakes I see is forgetting to set up the Facebook pixel. The Facebook pixel is a small piece of code that is installed on your website (or any landing page you are driving traffic to).

    The purpose of the Facebook pixel is to track how many people landed on your site from your Facebook ad campaigns. Without it installed, it’s nearly impossible to determine the success of your campaign (unless you are only interested in engagement on the platform itself).

    Another main benefit of having the Facebook pixel installed on your website is the ability to retarget visitors. In case you’re not sure what retargeting means… Think about the last time you were shopping online but didn’t complete your purchase. And for the next week, that pair of shoes followed you all across the internet. Powerful stuff, right?

    Facebook advertisers are able to retarget users by tracking their browsing history with the pixel. Retargeting campaigns typically result in the greatest ROI – so make sure you don’t miss out on this!

    Installing the Facebook pixel is a simple process. All you need to do is copy the small piece of code Facebook provides and paste it into your website header. If code like this makes your head spin – it’s a simple task to pass off to your web developer.

    Good luck!”

Stirling Gardner
Former Hollywood writer turned digital marketer and agency owner. Creator of Launch Perfect™ where we have gotten 43x ROI for our clients. We partner with businesses who are ready to scale fast. Consider us rocket fuel for your business revenue..
http://www.StacktDigital.com

  • Failing to Test Ad Copy Hooks

    – “The #1 thing, even the biggest agencies get wrong with their Facebook advertising, is how to write and test their ads so they are set up for maximum profitability. And it’s a Facebook ad mistake that can end up being very costly.

    More often than not, I have found that most Facebook Ad agencies don’t even write the ad copy for their clients. Say what? That’s like buying a brand new car but it doesn’t come with seats or a steering wheel.

    Even the agencies that do write ad copy for their clients do 1 or 2 versions and call it a day. They tell their clients they are “split testing” and when the ads don’t perform, they’ll rattle off 100 excuses why. The client knows in their heart something is amiss, but out of convenience, they stick with the agency till several months have gone by and they’ve lost a ton of money (on advertising spend and agency fees).

    You do not have to suffer through this anymore!

    BACKSTORY:

    The prevailing wisdom taught by every Facebook ads “guru” is that the success of the ads comes down to the creative (the image or video that goes with the ad copy).

    Why? Because adding a bunch of stock photos (or client photos) as a “test” is a lot less effort than testing your ad copy.

    But when you test multiple variations of copy “hooks,” (what I call the first 2-3 sentences before a reader has to click “read more”), the extra effort will pay off in spades.

    We have seen CPAs (Cost per Acquisition) drop by as much as 6x. Yes, across multiple client accounts in a wide variety of niches.

    The Facebook Ad “Fix” that will get you 6x the results

    When we set out to launch a new Facebook ad campaign, the first thing we test are the hooks. We have found that if you leave every other piece of the ad constant (audiences, creative, placements, and even body copy – the copy that comes after the hook) that the hook is the #1 biggest needle mover to profitability.

    And here’s the real kicker… the hooks we test aren’t crazy different! The difference in saying “How We Multiplied Our Client’s Revenue 6x Using ‘The Hook Method’” could yield widely different results than “‘The Hook Method’: How We 6x-ed Our Client Results!” Of course, not all of our hooks are that similar, but you get the point.

    Here are the steps we use to achieve these types of results:

    1. We write the entire copy of the ad first… we specialize in longer form ad copy but this method works with short copy, too.
    2. We then brainstorm 15-20 hooks to test.
    3. We put each of those ads with different hooks (keeping everything else the same: creative, audiences, etc) in one campaign with one only one ad per audience (or ad set as Facebook likes to call it). To simplify… if we want to test 20 hooks, we create one campaign with 20 ad sets and one ad with a unique hook per ad set.
    4. We leave everything else the same, run it for 3 days and voila! You are going to see something incredible… 1-3 of those hooks will stand head and shoulders above the others when it comes to performance.
    5. We shut down the other 17 ads and scale the winners.
    6. From there, we will start to test creative and then finally audiences.

    We have seen winning ads run for literally years. So, no agency can ever use the “your ads fatigued” excuse again.

    Good luck testing and experiencing truly high-performance Facebook advertising!”

Ashley Boston
Ashley is a #1 best selling amazon author and Facebook Ad strategist. Ash has been in the Digital Marketing space for 12 years supporting business owners and educating them through her online courses and membership Traffic Ads Mastery on how to create profitable Facebook ads on autopilot. 
http://www.unleashedmultimedia.com.au

  • Boosting Facebook Posts

    – “Boosting posts is one of the biggest no-no’s when it comes to Facebook advertising. Most people aren’t aware that when we “boost” a post we are asking Facebook to optimise for engagement on that post. Boosting posts won’t increase website traffic or increase your sales and this is why it is key to make sure you have a strategy in place and that you are using the Facebook ad account to create your ads.

    You want to ensure you are seeing a ROAS on your Facebook ad campaigns, so if you are wanting to generate more traffic to your website, use the Traffic Objective for a cold audience and then you want to ensure you have a follow-up campaign to remarket to your website audience using the Conversion Objective and optimise for Purchasers.

    Say goodbye to boosting posts and hello to profitable and scalable Facebook ad campaigns.”

Paula Gilbert
I’m a Facebook ads strategist and producer, marketing consultant and Associate of the Chartered Institute of Marketing. I’m also a trademarked member of Surrey Hills Enterprises. We’re a great fit if your business has a social or ethical purpose. ✔️
http://www.gardenshedmarketing.co.uk

  • Failing to Hone in on the Benefits of Your Offering

    – “If you’re going to get one key thing right with Facebook ads do this: work out the BENEFITS OF YOUR OFFERING to your target audience.

    DON’T SKIP THIS STEP!

    Think about what all good posts do on Facebook – they offer VALUE to the user. They entertain, inform or educate.

    So many businesses struggle with this step. They are stuck thinking about why they want to sell their product.

    And when a Facebook ad is created solely from a business’s point of view, the offering can seem spammy or promotional, and people disengage.

    So forget about why YOU want to sell your product and why you think it’s the bee’s knees. You need to think about it from an outside-in perspective.

    Map out your audience and then work out the main reasons why they’d want your product. What are the benefits?

    working out the user benefits

    Here’s how to do it:

    1. Build out a profile of your ideal customer. Here are some ways to do this:

    Look at your users on social media, think of buyers you know, look at reviews on Amazon for similar products (this is a great one), if you can – look at Audience Insights in Business Manager (it should show if you have over 1k followers on your page). Map out your target user with demographics and their interests.

    2. Now focus on this person, their hopes, dreams, their stage of life. You want to get inside their heads.

    Then ask yourself – how does your product or service fit into this…What are the benefits to the user? And what problem does it solve? FRAMING YOUR CUSTOMER’S PROBLEM AROUND YOUR PRODUCT HELPS YOU FIND THE ‘FIT’.

    3. Now work this into your copy, your creative, your call to action.

    Remember, when a great ad really ‘speaks’ to you, it’s because the business has honed its marketing and shows empathy.

    Get this stage right and your Facebook ad won’t just talk, but will sing to your audience.”

Claire White
I help businesses utilise the power of Facebook advertising by offering a 'done for you' service or by guiding you through the steps to enable you to run your own.
http://www.alphabet-street.com

  • Landing Page Issues

    – “You’ve decided to run a Facebook ad, you’ve picked your objective, targeted like a laser, got your offer nailed and the creatives are looking super good and you’re feeling pretty pleased with yourself. How’s your landing page looking though?

    First off, is your landing page relevant to the message you are sending out in your ad? If you’re a Pilates studio targeting beginners in your ad, don’t send them to the advanced class booking page. Consistency is the key. It needs to match up with your ad.

    So, you know the rules about before and after shots – you can’t use them in your Facebook advertising. Ok, that’s fine but surely it doesn’t matter if they’re on the landing page? I’m afraid it does my friend. Your landing page will be looked at too during the Facebook ad approval process and your ad may, as a consequence, not be given the chance to get out of the gates. The same goes for wild promises that can’t be proven (make £10k a day guaranteed – that sort of thing).

    Does your landing page load in a timely manner? We are not a patient species in general and you may be losing leads/sales. Your sales page needs to be loading in under 5 seconds in an ideal world.

    So, if you skipped straight to the end, make sure your landing pages match up with your Facebook ads, load quickly and you’re not promising anything you shouldn’t be.

    Good Luck!”

Stefan Wesley
Stefan Wesley "The Digital Commando", is a former Armed Forces Communications Specialist turned Tech Mogul. As CEO of Sigma Digital and Founder of The Digital Commando Academy, he empowers freelancers and agencies with the skills, knowledge, and expertise to create highly-effective Facebook Ads Campaigns that turn Startups into 7-figures Businesses.
https://www.digitalcommando.io/

  • Not Building Trust First

    – “Having a great funnel or website is all well and good, but in order to generate a lead and/or sale, we first need to drive the customer from our Facebook Ad.

    There is a common misconception that the offline sales process is completely different from the online sales process? Let’s take a minute to think about this, when we go into a high-street store we are usually greeted by a member of staff who will introduce themself and direct us to what we are looking for. After this, they will usually take time to listen and then educate us about the product they feel is right for our needs. If they have done this correctly we will make a purchase, right?

    Think about the last 3 purchases you have made from a Facebook Ad… Were the brands totally new to you? Did you make a purchase the first time the Ad appeared on your newsfeed?…. or had you seen content from them over a period of time and then taken advantage of a great offer that they put in front of you?

    If a shop assistant approaches you as soon as you enter the store and puts a random product in your face, closely followed by the words “BUY THIS NOW!”, I’m betting the chances that any of us actually purchase the product is slim to none. We don’t “Know, Like or Trust” the seller yet!

    This is one of the most common Facebook Ad Mistakes I see from advertisers. A brand that creates a Sales Ad and Targets a fresh audience of 1.2 million people that they think fits their target demographic without first taking the time to introduce themself or build rapport.

    How to Fix it

    Make sure to segment your Facebook Ads into 3 key content pillars:

    1. Entertaining and Motivational
    2. Educational and Value Adding
    3. Lead Gen and Sales.

    Firstly, use Entertaining and Motivational Facebook Ad Campaigns targeting a wide audience to generate an initial round of engagement from potentially interested Facebook Users. But remember, DO NOT TRY AND SELL THEM ANYTHING…YET!

    Engaged Audience

    Secondly, show ONLY Facebook users that have engaged with your Entertaining and Motivational Ads, longer-form content such as videos about your brand. A great way to do this is to tell a story. I don’t care about the lovely chair your company is selling, but I can relate to Bob who has been building them by hand for 18 years. Tell me about Bob, why he loves what he does, his family, and not only will I buy your chair, I’ll tell all my friends about Bob and how he built it when they come round for dinner. Another way to do this for the service industry is to offer free training sessions, literally showing people you can help them by actually helping them, But once again remember, DO NOT TRY AND SELL THEM ANYTHING…YET!

    This is Bob

    Last but not least it’s time to close the sale, but now you’re negotiating from a position of strength. Humans are reciprocal creatures and because you have already given them something for free or “at your expense”, they will feel a natural desire to reciprocate. This means they now know who you are, understand your brand, and what you have to offer that suits their needs and trust you to deliver on it. YES… NOW YOU CAN SELL THEM SOMETHING!

    Close the sale with a selection of great offer ads BUT only show them to Facebook Users that have watched at least 50% of your video content and watch the sales start flying in!

    Good luck and go and show people you can help them, by actually helping them!”

Ashley Monk
Ashley is the owner of It Media, a boutique social media agency that helps service-based business owners feel less overwhelmed about growing their business, and no longer worried about where their next client will come from. Ashley helps business owners simplify their online marketing and generate leads through Facebook ads, social media, amazing content, and email marketing.
http://byitmedia.com

  • Forgetting to Leverage Existing Customer Data

    – “Facebook advertising is simplified and lumped together with organic content by nonmarketers. But unfortunately, the platform couldn’t be more robust.

    One of the greatest Facebook Ad mistakes I see is failing to leverage existing data.

    Even if you’ve never run or optimized a campaign, your existing customer data may be your greatest asset.

    So often, companies make assumptions about the target demographic they aspire to reach. But those assumptions are guesswork until tested & proven.

    One of the most essential components of our onboarding process to ensure this area is addressed is by creating personas.

    Before we draft a campaign, we see market research as a critical component. Through surveying & gathering existing data, we design every element of the campaign based on the customer journey & avatar up until this point.

    Perhaps the most effective sample to build the best audiences that is SIGNIFICANTLY undervalued is building custom audiences.

    Create Custom Audience

    One of the most powerful aspects of Facebook is its ability to track offline events – which comes from leveraging contact information from past customers.

    By uploading this information to Facebook, the data is slashed for confidentiality, but the datapoints are mapped perfectly to create Lookalike samples.

    But more importantly, uploading such information makes retargeting actual purchasing customers seamless. It also allows for even more information to track past purchase behavior.

    Use Customer List for Custom Audience

    The process is simple: simply create a custom audience directly within the Facebook ad set level. Then, download the sample CSV file provided by Facebook to accurately map your existing data to upload.

    Example Customer List

    Though the step may seem tedious, it’s far greater of a cost to omit it than take the extra time to incorporate this into your campaign.”

Paulina Poliszewska
Paulina is a Digital Marketer who specializes in Performance Facebook Advertising. She has managed approximately £2M in Facebook ad spend for small to medium size e-commerce businesses and helped them to scale quickly. She also runs her own successful e-commerce store.
https://uk.linkedin.com/in/paulina-poliszewska-b6810391

  • Too Narrow/Specific Targeting

    – “Many inexperienced advertisers try to reach their customers by narrowing the targeting to a very specific group of people. E.g. advertising a beauty product only to people who live in particular cities, who are between 25-40, who like similar cosmetic brands and ALSO like Kim Kardashian.

    Although it looks like you have defined your perfect audience, typically your highly-targeted Facebook ads will reach a very small number of people. This way, you will not only quickly saturate your audience, but miss out on many sales opportunities, which will likely increase your CPA, lower the sales volume and effectively sabotage your campaign results.

    The Solution:

    1. Avoid applying multiple restrictions – choose interests that are relevant to your product, you might even group them if they are similar, but avoid narrowing your audience further.
    2. If you can, keep the age and gender targeting open and geotargeting – countrywide.
    3. Keep an eye on the audience size – if it’s less than 200k, try to broaden it.
    4. Test completely broad targeting (no targeting settings).

    Most of all, learn to trust the Facebook ad algorithm. Facebook’s algorithm looks for the cheapest way to reach your goals within your audience. Depending on your campaign objective, it allows you to find the lowest cost conversions/clicks/engagement within the audience you are targeting – so the bigger the audience, the more chances you get to reach customers and the faster you can scale.

    The algorithm is smarter than the most experienced advertisers so let it work its magic :-)”

Jonathan Howkins
As a Facebook Advertising specialist, I train and coach business owners and in-house marketing teams to generate more leads and sales from Facebook. With over 20 years of experience as a creative director within a marketing agency and training direct from Facebook, I can help you create campaigns that convert.
https://jonathanhowkins.com

  • Expecting to Win with Your First Campaign

    – “Are you expecting to win with your first Facebook campaign? If so, you’re in for a disappointment.

    Unfortunately many business and brands are under the illusion that Facebook Advertising is the solution to all their problems.

    It’s often perceived as a no-lose marketing option where you simply pay the money to Facebook and you instantly get more leads and sales.

    Well, the bad news is that it just doesn’t work like that.

    In fact, almost all Facebook ad campaigns lose money initially, because to start with you need to invest some time and money learning more about your audience, as well as refining your targeting and messaging.

    The process of converting a loss-making campaign into a profitable one, is all about testing, measurement and optimisation.

    Facebook has the technology and data to help you win, but only if you’re prepared to take your time and logically work through a structured process of refinement and testing to discover what really works.

    This is an investment you need to be prepared to make. But it needn’t be expensive, or take much of your time.

    The beauty of Facebook is that you can easily create simple ad campaigns, spend very small sums of money, and get some great data to help you refine your targeting and messaging, so you can reach the right people, with the right message, at the right time.

    This is when you can really start winning and scaling your ad campaigns – and start getting some great results!

    So, start with some simple Video Views campaigns or Post Engagement campaigns to identify your audience and learn what messages they engage with. You can run these campaigns for just 3-4 days, spending no more than £2 per day and get some useful data to help shape your next campaign.

    You can then experiment with Traffic and Conversion campaigns when you’re ready to start testing your messaging and creative.

    The journey to profitable ad campaigns does take a little time and investment (together with some knowledge, experience and expertise), but the long term opportunities and return on investment can be huge.”

Akvile DeFazio
Akvile DeFazio is the President of AKvertise, a social media advertising agency. She specializes in Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Twitter Ads for ecommerce brands, events, mobile apps, musicians, and non-profits. Akvile is a California-based published author, international speaker, and has been published in USAToday, AdAge, and more.
https://www.akvertise.com/

  • Not Utilizing Captions in Video Ads

    – “Did you know, according to DigiDay, 85% of videos are watched without sound on Facebook. To overcome this, make sure you are sharing your story and conveying your message textually, visually, and acoustically when it comes to your Facebook video ads.

    If you aren’t, add captions to have all of your bases covered and improve the chances of your new video ads performing well. Plus, we don’t want to disregard anyone that may be hearing impaired.

    To add captions to your Facebook video ads, you can easily do so in the ad level under your video creative by clicking the “Edit Video” button.

    Next, head over to captions and allow Facebook to quickly scan your video and generate captions for your video or if you have an SRT file, upload it to accomplish this.

    If you have Facebook generate your captions for you, be sure to review them before launching as oftentimes, if the words aren’t clearly spoken, if the person speaking has an accent, or your brand name is uniquely spelt, they may be miscaptioned.

    Once you are pleased with the transcription and it is grammatically correct, save and publish your new video ad.”

Rome Nicolas
Rome Nicolas is a founder of Bisaya Digital who specialise in managing Facebook and Instagram ads to get new, loyal customers for e-commerce businesses. He enjoys helping small-to-medium-sized companies boost their monthly recurring revenue faster.
https://romenicolas.com/

  • Abandoning Your Ads after Setting Up

    – “It’s an original sin to create a Facebook ad and abandon it for more than two weeks or so, then realize that you should have been checking the ads daily to see if there are any drastic changes.

    In optimizing a newly created Facebook ad, allow the ad to fully utilize the algorithm for three days. But, after that, the real job of optimizing an ad begins.

    If you don’t check your ads on a daily basis, you won’t know if people are seeing the same ads for several times already. You also wouldn’t know if the campaign is achieving the objectives you’ve set it up for.

    Monitoring it would certainly help you make the necessary changes to avoid wasting your money for nothing.

    *Ideas on How to Solve It: After the initial three days of letting the Facebook algorithm do its magic, it’s time to monitor your ads on a daily basis and consider making changes, if needed.

    In checking the quality of your Facebook advertising, keep in mind the following metrics:

    • Ad frequency
    • Click-though-rate vs conversion rate
    • Clicks by interest
    • Number of leads
    • Ad performance by placement
    • Relevance Score

    When making changes, make sure it is data-driven and not based on a random gut-feeling.

    The data you see in your Facebook Ads Manager will help you improve your productivity and ensure that you have a successful campaign.”

Sally McInerney
Facebook and Instagram Ad Agency Owner
https://rockit-social.com/

  • Not Making Sure The Fundamentals Are In Place Before Campaign Launch

    – “Facebook ads are too often seen as a panacea for growth and profits.

    “Experts” make wild claims about their “secrets” to making money via Facebook ads. It’s all too easy and tempting to fall for this over-simplified solution to successfully running ads.

    Whilst it can be pretty lucrative for many businesses – there are a number of other REALLY important factors which you must consider before attempting to invest in Facebook advertising…

    Here are a few of them.

    1) Website/Landing Page Conversion Rate – If you have an ecommerce store you need to look at an average site conversion rate of 2%. If you are trying to convert traffic that lands on a landing page – it will need to be converting at 20%. These are really important metrics as even if you have the best quality traffic landing on your site – if it’s not converting that traffic – you are wasting a ton of your investment. This metric is the biggest influencing factor in driving a good ROAS for your Facebook advertising campaigns.

    2) Abandon Cart Rate – Ideally, you shouldn’t have any more than 68% abandoned carts. If you do – there is an issue at cart level (shipping, payment options, lengthy checkout). This is a very common bottleneck to experience and is usually down to high shipping costs.

    3) A Good Offer/ Hook – You HAVE to give people a reason to give your service or product a go. Don’t under-estimate the power of a great discount for new customers, a really generous free gift or some incredible reviews that give instant trust to your brand. Although you may be reluctant to give large discounts – if you want to grow your brand’s sales online – its something you must have worked into your strategy. Remember – the important metric here is to look at Lifetime Value of a customer – it may mean you break even on their first purchase, but then you need to focus on building that lifetime value and suddenly that initial CPA looks pretty good!

    4) Promote Tested, Winning Product – You might have a whole range of product/services and it’s easy to think the best plan would be to promote EVERYTHING so that you cover all bases. WRONG! Pick that product that you know flies off the shelf and is an easy consideration for the consumer. Once you focus on that winning product, you can focus your targeting, copy and messaging on exactly who that product serves and what their pain points and desires might be. Once you’ve converted customers with the no brainer product – you can up-sell all your other items!”

Rachel Lewis
Rachel is a social media obsessive, Facebook and Instagram Ads specialist and lover of bees. With a background in media and education, Rachel supports small businesses and organisations in the education sector to get the best results from their Facebook advertising campaigns.
http://www.abellasocial.co.uk

  • Huge Expectations from Low Budgets

    – “Warning – Your budget is too low for your high expectations. Reality check needed.

    We're gonna need a bigger budget

    Facebook is not a magic money tree. Too many people have hugely unrealistic expectations of what is possible when it comes to the Return on Ad Spend (ROAS). Or they simply don’t realise that you need to invest in your Facebook ad spend in order to get results.

    Yes, it’s possible to get some really great results but your budget needs to be in line with both your objective and your expectations.

    Here’s How to Set an Initial Realistic Budget

    As a business, you may already know how much you will be willing to pay for a person to take an action from your ads, whether it’s the cost per lead or the cost per purchase but a few simple calculations can help you to decide on a realistic budget for your Facebook advertising campaign.

    Here’s an example:

    Think about the following for your business and campaign.

    Sample Facebook Ads Budget

    And use the following simple baseline target stats to make your calculation.

    Facebook Ads Baseline Stats

    So, to get 50 people over the line on the website, at a rate of 5% conversion, we’d need to drive 1000 people to the sign-up page.

    To get 1000 people to the sign-up page at a CTR of 1% we’d need to gain 100,000 impressions.

    If every 1000 impressions costs £10 (CPM) then we’d need a budget or £1000.

    Which is a little bit higher than £50!

    Obviously, this is a rough estimate to the budget needed and any fluctuation in the baseline metrics or the conversion rate of your website will have an impact on the cost per result.

    For example, if your website converts at a rate of 2% then your cost per result would rise to £50 and your campaign budget would be a suggested £2500.

    The only way to more accurately assess the true cost of your campaign is to begin testing ads so that you can input your own realistic figures into the calculation.

    The process of testing is so important as it allows you to find out what elements of your ads can drive the best results with the lowest CPMs and CPCs and which ads result in the best CTRs and ultimately the best cost per result.

    Just remember, if you are aiming for a high revenue result, you’ll need to be realistic about your budget expectations. You’ve got to spend money to make money with Facebook Ads.”

Jayne Day
I am an online marketing strategist and business coach. I help coaches, consultants, online experts and service-based business owners build thriving, profitable businesses and grow their reach online.
https://webonize.com.au

  • Not Using the Correct Custom Conversion or Event

    – “When business owners start using Facebook Advertising they often set up their custom conversion incorrectly or use the wrong one when setting up their conversion event in their ad sets, which greatly impact the results that they have.

    For example, you may be using Facebook Ads for lead generation and to build your email database. To do this you may be offering a lead magnet such as an eBook. You need to have the campaign set up with the conversion objective and then have the custom conversion created to track the URL that people land on after they submit their email address and not the landing page before they submit their details.

    If you don’t have this set up correctly Facebook just assumes you want people to land on that page and not take the desired action of submitting their details.

    This then affects the people that Facebook shows your ads to and won’t necessarily show it to people that are more likely to take the entire action we want them to.

    Another example is if you have an ecommerce store and you want to drive sales – you want to ensure you have the custom conversion or event set for completed checkout and not just add to cart. It is the final sale that you want and this is what you want Facebook to optimise your ads for.”

Miles Bonanno
Miles is a seasoned advertising veteran with over 15 years of award-winning work history helping global consumer brands grow. She is the owner of Miles Digital, an ecommerce-focused consultancy that proudly assists brands scale from earning $10K per month to six-figure stores.
https://www.milesdigital.com/

  • Touching Ad Campaigns Too Soon and Too Often

    – “A common mistake that I see when running FB ads is touching / editing / revising new Facebook ad campaigns too soon and too often.

    You will need to give the algorithm some time and a reasonable amount of data (1,500 impressions per ad at a minimum) before deciding if it’s a winning ad or if you need to make edits to the audience, creative or offer to see better performance.

    Facebook is a data machine and you need to give it enough time to look for the perfect audience, especially for newer ad accounts. If you’ve done your homework on your audience and thoroughly thought of your creative/messaging and offer, you need to trust that FB is doing its part in searching for the right audience and placements.

    Keep calm. Sit on your hands if you have to. Better yet, walk away from your laptop soon after you launch a new campaign. Whatever you do, don’t touch a fresh campaign too soon without giving it the proper time to provide you with data for your next point of action!”

Sarah Sal
Sarah Sal is a Facebook Ads Specialist. She’s written on Facebook ad testing, strategy, and execution for AdEspresso, Agorapulse, Blitzmetrics, Copyhackers, ActiveCampaign, AdWeek, Jon Loomer’s Power Hitters Club and others. She’s even presented inside Perry Marshall’s iconic 80/20 Facebook ads course
http://sarah-sal.com/

  • Not Using Persuasive Ad Copy

    – “30% of all Internet users rely on ad blockers, which are overwhelmingly popular as people get tired of ads. Even if our technology doesn’t block ads out automatically, our brains are trained to ignore anything that looks like one. Rather than screaming louder to grab scrollers’ attention, we should write great ads that don’t look like an ad. We’re talking about content that educates, entertains and provides value.

    Without education, you are writing an ad and asking the user to take your words at face value.

    Many advertisers assume they’re facing trouble with their audience when what they really have is a problem with content & copy.

    I once had a call with a SharkTank company. The founder told me: “The problem with our Facebook ad might be targeting optimization.”

    I replied: “You think your ads are not targeting the correct audience. Maybe you’re reaching the right audience, but the ad copy isn’t convincing enough”.

    Their Facebook ads weren’t profitable. By working on the ad copy, their ad campaigns became profitable, and they also got the most sales in a single day from Facebook.

    Below is a screenshot of one of those ads:

    BetterBack AdEspresso Case study ad copy
    Source

    Imagine you found the diary of a client that got help from your product or service. Does your ad feel like you’re reading a page from that diary?

    What does 46X better Facebook ad performance and a free slice of pizza have in common (not pineapple pizza)?

    Strategyzer’s a company I helped get 1866% ROI on their ads. On prior ads, they spent $4,433.53 in around 3 weeks and only got 1 sale in return. That was equal to $0.40 for every $1 spent on Facebook advertising.

    The problem was the ad copy just stated that they had an event coming up.

    And here’s the screenshot of that ad:

    Source

    How did I move them from $0.40 for every $1 spent to make $18.66 for each $1 they spent? ($212,000 in sales for a Facebook ad spend of only $11,357.26, to be exact)

    I knew supermarkets like Mash and Costco got up to 2000% in extra sales by giving away samples. So I used ads to give people a pre-taste of what to expect at Strategyzer’s €2000 upcoming event, instead.

    Here is an example of the first Facebook ad we ran for them:

    Strategyzer new Ad
    Source

    Educational content also helps you fight Facebook ad fatigue.

    Many marketers wonder why their cost per conversion tripled in the last 3 weeks. And that’s because Facebook equals interruption marketing.

    You’re not a coffee shop at an airport with 500k new people passing by every day. Those businesses know that brownies are better than waffles at getting passengers to stop and enter their cafe. And you’re not fulfilling the demand, you’re creating the demand.

    Think about users as a tourist that goes to London, for example. If ads that promoted London’s hippest night scene suddenly stopped converting, I might switch to a copy that talks about London’s wide gastronomical offer or museums, instead. Not everyone would want to visit London for the same reason. Sometimes changing the ad copy to talk about something different while still promoting the same can significantly help fight Facebook ad fatigue.

    So, how can you write ads that stand out amidst all the noise on the Internet?

    Here are a few ideas:

    1. Don’t Just Make Claims. Be Persuasive and Educational:

    To be more persuasive, make your ads educational and don’t just make claims. Most people just state what they’re selling. Facebook Ad copy works when it’s persuasive, and it teaches something at the same time. A great ad makes the user think: “Even if I did not click on the ad, just by reading the ad text, I’ve learned something new.”

    When scrollers stop to read something out of which they’re actually learning something new, ads convert much better. And how do you achieve that?

    2. Use the Power of Analogies

    Take “37 grams of saturated fat” as an example. Those can teach us a lot about writing better ads. When health warnings to popcorn and coconut oil first came out, popcorn buyers had absolutely no clue what those meant! So advertisers relied on analogies…

    In a 1992 press conference, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) announced:

    “A medium-sized ‘butter’ popcorn at a typical neighborhood movie theater contains more artery-clogging fat than a bacon-and-eggs breakfast, a Big Mac and fries for lunch, and a steak dinner with all the trimmings—combined!”

    That made the front pages of the Los Angeles Times and USA Today. The Washington Post wrote about it. And it was featured on CBS, NBC, ABC, and CNN.

    Sarah Sal

    The public response was such a strong one that movie theaters were forced to stop using coconut oil.

    In fact, I’m currently reusing this popcorn analogy from an ad on which I paid £0.27 per click with 95 clicks as a result. People spend way more on Marketing per click than these figures, I’m sure you’ll know.

    Popcorn Analogy

    3. Answer Questions You’re Asked All the Time

    To write good copy, imagine a question people in your niche keep asking non-stop. Turn what you’re tired of answering into compelling Facebook ad copy.

    Excellent copy takes what you know your target audiences think, and it puts it on the page. When your prospects read your copy, they feel like you’re inside their head. That’s NOT because you’re a genius, but because you’ve been listening to them for a long time.

    Ad copy is not about you. It’s not about your product, even. It’ll ALWAYS be about your customers.

    Below is a screenshot of such an ad:

    Answer Questions in Ad Copy

    4. Turn Misconceptions into a Facebook Ad

    All industries are plagued by misconceptions! They affect their image, on top of it all; it’s the reality out there!

    If you address a misconception in your Facebook ad copy, that can clear up a customer’s conscious or subconscious objection. Explain your stance and back it up with evidence.”

Kirsty Saint
Kirsty is a Facebook Ad Specialist and Marketing Consultant who helps mission-driven businesses connect with their ideal clients.
https://www.kirstysaint.com

  • Using the Wrong Campaign Objective

    – “Be careful what you wish for with Facebook, because you just might get it!

    Facebook’s advertising platform is incredibly sophisticated in finding the people you tell it you’re looking for. What most advertisers don’t realise, however, is that not all campaign objectives are created equally.

    In Business Manager, there is an array of objectives to choose from when creating a campaign, shown below in ‘guided creation’, and ‘quick creation’ mode.

    Guided Creation
    Guided Creation

    Quick Creation
    Quick Creation

    Facebook knows the usage and activity-based behaviours of people on its platform. It will show your ads to people who are likely to take the action you choose, based on their past behaviour.

    One of the more common Facebook ad mistakes that inexperienced advertisers make is to choose the wrong campaign objective for what they hope to achieve. Let’s say you’d like people to click through to your website and fill out an enquiry form. I often see this set up with a ‘Traffic’ objective, because the thinking is ‘we’re sending people to the website’.

    Interestingly, the people who click through to your website from your Facebook ad posts are not always those who will actually purchase your services. Facebook knows who is more likely to simply browse your website, and who is more likely to make a purchase or fill out the enquiry form (a conversion).

    if you want web traffic, ask for traffic. if you want conversions, ask for conversions.

    Ideas on How to Solve It:

    The most important step in creating any Facebook ad campaign is to define the objective you seek to achieve.

    Is it:

    • For awareness, so people know you exist, or to reaffirm your existence in the marketplace? (Brand awareness objective)
    • For engagement, where you want as many people as possible to comment, like or share your social media post? (Engagement objective)
    • To drive visits to your website so people read more about your services or a blog article? (Traffic objective)
    • To encourage visits to a physical store? (Store visits objective)
    • To encourage people to subscribe to your email list through a free download? (Conversion objective)
    • To prompt prospective customers to book a call with you? (Conversion or lead generation campaign)
    • To achieve online sales of your products or services? (Conversion or catalogue sales campaign)

    Without first getting clear on what is important to you, your Facebook ad campaigns might not deliver the results you’re after if you choose the wrong campaign objective.

    Secondly, if a ‘conversion’ objective is right for your campaign, make sure you have the other components in place to make it work.

    You’ll need to have the Facebook Pixel installed on your website, with a conversion event set up (e.g. ‘complete registration’ or ‘lead’) on the Thank You page, for example. This is how Facebook knows a conversion has occurred, and continues to try to find more people in your target audience who are likely to take that action. When you create your ad in the Ad Set level, you will then need to select the conversion event that matches your Thank You page.

    Also, be aware that it might not be the best option to optimise for conversions in your ad set. This is because the Facebook algorithm prefers to have at least 50 conversion events in the past week to know what these events look like.

    If you’re working with a low budget, or just starting tracking conversions, Facebook might struggle to find the right people if you optimise for conversions, and you could end up with a very high cost per click (CPC). Optimising for landing page views or link clicks might give you a better result, at least to start. You can then switch your optimisation to conversions later.

    Advertisers who set up the correct campaign objective and optimisation will have a greater chance of success with Facebook Ads, by attracting the right visitors for the right action.”

Sandy Sidhu
Sandy Sidhu is an accomplished ads specialist dedicated to problem-solving, analyzing results + making suggestions to the client based on their results. She loves all things technology + geeking out over Facebook ads & marketing strategies. She left the corporate world to pursue her own digital marketing business 12 years ago.
http://www.sandysidhumedia.com

  • Not Leveraging Lookalike Audiences

    – “When it comes to Facebook ads, one of the areas that leaves a lot of business owners scratching their heads is: targeting.

    While many know they can target based on interests, location, demographics and behavior, Lookalike Audiences are often overlooked.

    What Exactly are Lookalike Audiences?

    Lookalike audiences are audiences that are similar to a source audience that you provide Facebook.

    For example:

    • Email List
    • Customer List
    • Page Engagement
    • Website Visitors
    • Video Views

    With a Lookalike Audience, you choose a source audience and Facebook will do the rest of the heavy lifting and find more people like them, within the selected location and audience size.

    Facebook will then deliver your ad to the audience of people who look like your source audience.

    Things to Consider

    When creating your Lookalike Audience, you can choose the size of your audience.

    The smaller the size the closer it will be in terms of similarity to your source audience.

    Facebook recommends the source audience be at least 1000 people.

    A source audience must also contain at least 100 people for the country you would like to target in order to use it as a Lookalike Audience.

    Create a Lookalike Audience

    Here are some examples of Lookalike audiences that you can create:

    Email list

    Upload an existing email list and then create a lookalike audience off of that.

    Page Engagement

    You can create a custom audience of people who have engaged with your page and then create a lookalike audience.

    Page Engagement Lookalike Audience

    Value Based

    Upload your customer list and assign a value and let Facebook find people like your most valuable customers.

    Value Based Lookalike Audience

    Once you set-up your lookalike audiences, you can then use them in your ad-sets.

    Lookalike Audiences

    Ultimately, with Facebook ads, it all boils down to testing and looking at the data to determine your next move.

    While Lookalike audiences are still “cold” audiences, they take a lot of the guesswork out of targeting since Facebook is doing the work for you.”

Becky Hopkin
Becky is MD of Digital Gearbox, a specialist PPC agency. Our mission is to ensure the goals of our customers are being met, if not exceeded, through the implementation of our kick-ass PPC strategies. We exist to deliver results that our customers don’t have the time or knowledge to achieve.
https://digitalgearbox.co.uk/

  • Not Creating Segmented Retargeting Audiences

    – “Getting the Facebook Pixel installed on your website is a must-do before you run any Facebook Advertising campaigns. The pixel is a powerful piece of code that lets you measure, optimise and build audiences for your advertising campaigns.

    Many marketers, having installed the pixel, plan to run a retargeting campaign to push Facebook Ads in front of people that previously visited their website. This is a solid strategy; after all, where the average website conversion rate is just 2.35%, this means 97.65% of your website visitors are leaving without doing anything.

    When you’re investing time and money to drive traffic to your website, you really want to do everything you can to nurture those visitors to a point where they’re ready to convert. Retargeting ads to those visitors is one way you can do this.

    The problem is too many marketers simply set up a single retargeting campaign to target all of their past website visitors with a generic message, and they then expect this to draw people back.

    Whilst the mere reminder of who you are and what you’re offering might bring some people back to the site, for many this approach will be ineffective.

    Retargeting becomes much more powerful when you spend some time building segmented custom audiences based on things such as the type of product or service they viewed on the website and how far down the purchase funnel they got.

    This way you can better tailor Facebook ad messaging based on the type of potential customer you are speaking to, making it much more likely they will engage with the ad and ultimately convert off the back of it.

    You can build your own custom audiences in the audiences section of your Business Tools, and you can create audiences using criteria such as specifying certain pages the audiences should have viewed, the time spent on the site, the event actions they have taken, and how recently they have been on your website.”

Rebecca Perkins
Rebecca has extensive experience working with many different types of organisations - big and small - on their Google, Facebook and Instagram Ads campaigns. She loves using her analytical background and in-depth knowledge of the platforms to help businesses and charities get great results.
http://www.rebeccaperkins.co.uk

  • Not Testing Enough (Creatives, Copy and Audiences)

    – “When Facebook ads don’t deliver stellar results quickly, businesses often conclude the platform isn’t for them. But this is rarely the case. Sadly, securing tangible results from Facebook Advertising isn’t as straightforward as choosing an image, drafting an ad, picking a few interests, and watching the money roll in.

    You might get lucky, but usually it takes weeks, if not months, of testing to really optimise Facebook ad campaigns and to get the results you’re looking for, whether that’s sales, leads, donations, or something else.

    Solution:

    It’s a good idea to treat the first couple of months of any campaign as a data-gathering exercise: you’re getting valuable insights into what works and what doesn’t, and these can set you up for consistent returns in the future. As long as you have the Pixel correctly installed, the data you gather can also be used to build audiences that you can retarget in the future.

    There are lots of different variables to test: copy, creatives, audiences, campaign objective, placements, the inclusion of call to action buttons, different headlines. Don’t do it all at once! It’s important to have a strategy so that you can disentangle how each variable affects the results.

    How many audiences you can test comes down to your budget. With less budget, it will take you longer to get results. That’s fine, but I would advise not spreading the budget you do have too thinly across lots of different ad sets. It’s a better bet to test audiences concurrently and to draw conclusions that way.

    So what might a sensible testing strategy look like? Supposing you had a budget of £50 a day, you might want to test five audiences in five different ad sets. Within each of these, you could have three or four different ads. The crucial thing is to just change one variable at a time. So perhaps start by focusing on the creative – maybe testing a video, single image, and carousel – and keeping the copy, headline, and everything else exactly the same across all the ads.

    Once you’ve gathered enough data, you can then optimise where you need to, switch off the ads and audiences that aren’t getting good results, field in more creatives, switch up the copy, or whatever else you decide to test next.

    Sometimes there’s a clear winner that gets great results across all ad sets, but often the results are surprising. Different creatives appeal to different audiences and sometimes what’s been a surefire success for one account, won’t necessarily translate well to a different sector or product. It’s only by trying things out and analysing the results in a strategic way that you can really optimise your digital advertising campaigns.”

Amy Bliefnick
Amy is a digital marketer, technology enthusiast, and lover of all things personal development. After working for a marketing automation platform brand, she built her agency 511 West to help coaches and online course creators expand their reach and get more clients through Facebook advertising and funnel optimization.
http://www.511west.com

  • Not Using Video View Ads to Build Warm Audiences

    – “One of the biggest Facebook ad mistakes I see is advertisers driving new, cold audiences straight to a purchase page expecting people to buy right away. While this can work, it is VERY rare. There are many different components that go into making a campaign successful, and it just takes some testing to get it dialed in. It helps to think of it as buying data and information so you can make informed decisions.”

    In order for someone to want to buy from you, there must be some trust there – trust in you (the offer) and trust in themselves. To help them trust you faster, I recommend utilizing video. Video helps people to connect with you or your product faster than any other form of content.

    In Facebook Ads Manager, you can target your new, cold audiences (people who have never heard of you before), with a Video Views campaign objective.

    Video Views Campaign

    If you already have video content or you are doing Facebook Lives, you can easily repurpose them to run as ads.

    Once you have built up some views on your videos, you can create Custom Audiences of people who have viewed your videos for 25%, 50%, 75%, and 95%. You can also retarget ThruPlays, but those are either 15-second views or viewed to completion.

    The more people you have in the 50%, 75%, 95% views audience, the better as they tend to be “warmer” or more engaged with the content you are sharing. Especially if your videos are on the longer side, but provide a ton of value.

    To build these warm audiences, click on the menu icon in the top left, and then click on “Audiences”

    Build Audiences

    Click “Create Audience” and then click on “Custom Audience”

    Create Custom Audience

    Select “Video”

    Video Facebook Source

    Then pick which Video View percentage you would like to retarget. Again, the longer the warmer.

    Video Engagement Custom Audience

    Then click “Choose videos…” to pick the video ads that have the views that you would like to retarget.

    Choose Videos Create a Video Engagement Custom Audience

    Enter the number of days you would like to go back and retarget. The closer the warmer, the longer the colder. I recommend doing one for last 30 days and then another for 60,90, and/or 180.

    Name your audience, and click “Create Audience” – and you’re done!

    Now when you are setting up your ad set, you can select this custom audience to target as a warm audience who hopefully knows, likes, and trusts you better after watching your videos!”

Natasha Leonards
Facebook & Instagram ads strategist and social media manager. I love to work with small businesses to help them grow and build their customer base.
http://www.awesocial.co.uk

  • A New Pixel Needs to Be “Seasoned”

    – “The pixel is the piece of data generated by your Facebook ad account to place on your website. This tracks all of your website visitors and their actions on your website. When you have a new pixel installed on your website, it is worth spending the time and budget running a traffic campaign to “season” it. This then gives Facebook data to work with and saves money, as it means Facebook then does not need to work so hard finding the right people to serve your ads. 10k pixel fires is the optimum amount of fires to season a pixel.”

Jacob Malherbe
Jacob Malherbe is a Facebook marketing expert, helping law firms get the most from the social network. His company X Social Media LLC are working with 350 law firms doing direct response advertising for most Mass Torts Cases. X Social Media LLC has grown by more then 2,500 % over the last 3 years and spent 51 million on Facebook advertising in 2019.
https://www.xsocialmedia.com/

  • Changing the Budget to Scale a Campaign

    – “Scaling Facebook Ad Campaigns has always been difficult for most Facebook managers so here are some suggestions to do it right.

    The first rule of thumb is to never, ever just change the budget on a live Facebook campaign as a way of scaling the campaign. When you just do that, the algorithm that is trying to find the right people to show your ad to will get shocked and your campaign performance will go downhill fast — it will not be a good outcome.

    Instead, here are two ways of scaling Facebook ad campaigns that work:

    1) The first way to scale a campaign is to duplicate the campaign into a new campaign that would start up with whatever budget you want to run. Now don’t shut down the old campaign – just increase the budget on the new duplicated campaign to whatever you want to scale to cumulatively. The only risk with this strategy is again the Facebook algorithm, as the first conversions you get on the new campaign will determine that campaign’s outcome and if it becomes as successful as the original campaign. If you have started with good targeting then this should be an easy way to scale.

    2) The second way to scale is by using Facebook rules. Here you would set up your rules on which conditions need to be met for Facebook to automatically scale the campaign. You can set a target per objective (leads, Sales, etc.) and when the conditions are met FB will automatically scale the budget by your set % each day at 12.00AM. The timing is very important as that is when Facebook starts the new budget. So make sure that has been selected. The maximum suggested scaling with FB Rules is 10% every 24-48 hours at 12.00 AM (midnight).

    These are two time-tested ways of scaling your Facebook ad campaigns.”

Casey Willow
We are Casey Willow and Harry Boulton. The Willow-Boulton Group is an extension of ourselves, an ever-changing, ever-evolving structure of integrity that is representative of our passion and our ideal. Our goal is simple. We help people and their businesses reach their desired financial situation using Facebook Advertising, the best advertising platform to date.
https://www.willowboulton.co.uk/

  • Not Having a Big Enough Budget

    – “We’ve spoken with multiple brand owners who’ve been misled about the reality of creating an ROI Positive advertising campaign using Facebook Ads.

    We discovered that the best budget for building a reliable campaign is £5,000 or over. We reached this conclusion during the early days of our Agency when we were working with people who didn’t have an adequate budget.

    Luckily there is a formula you can use that can give you an idea of how your budget will perform against your industry-standard conversion rate and CPC/CPA.

    To structure your formula, you must first find out what your CPC/CPA average based on your industry is. You can find this information online or use previous Facebook ad campaigns you’ve run (I would recommend using the industry standards found online).

    The next bit of data you’ll need is your conversion rate and you can either use the industry-standard or use your website conversion, which you’ll be able to find on your google analytics or website hosting analytics page.

    Depending on the type of campaign you’re running, you may want to pick your conversion from either your website or your Facebook channel.

    The next piece of data you’re going to need is the revenue you’ll be making per conversion, for example, if you’re selling T-Shirts at £25 per shirt your revenue per conversion will be equal to £25. You can take this a step further, by incorporating your margin to get a figure on your profit per conversion, let’s say you’re selling the same T-shirts which cost you £9.80 to make and ship so your pre-tax profit would be £15.20.

    Now we have all of our data lets build a scenario and work through this together.

    First, to get this going you’ll have to decide on your budget, like most hopeful online brand owners you pick a budget of around £1,500 per month, not too low, but also not too high ‘just right’.

    CPC: As you are in the apparel niche, your CPC is around 70p before optimising.

    CPC means your Cost Per Click, so basically how much it costs you every time someone goes from your Facebook Ad to your website.

    Monthly Clicks:

    Your monthly clicks are the first part of this formula we calculate.

    This is the number of people who go from your Facebook Ad to your website/product page.

    To figure out our monthly clicks, we take our budget of £1,500 and divide it by our cost per click of 70p(0.70).

    £1,500/0.70 = 2,143

    Now that we have our monthly clicks we need to figure out how many of those clicks will turn into actual conversions on our site, as I said before you can either use an industry conversion rate or use one from your past data. For this example, we’ll use the industry standard of 4.11% for Apparel.

    Monthly Conversions:

    To figure out your monthly conversions, you take your monthly clicks and multiply them by your conversion rate.

    2,143 X 4.11% (0.0411) = 88

    That’s 88 purchases. Now let’s figure out how much that would be in terms of ROAS (Return on Ad Spend)

    ROAS:

    To figure out the Return On Advertising Spend we must take your total number of sales and multiply them by your product price of £25 and then take your original budget away from that figure.

    ROAS = 88 X £25 – £1,500

    = £700

    £700 is the amount you’ve made in ROAS on this Campaign. However, we can take a step further by looking at your actual profit by factoring in the loss you make per shirt which is around 40%.

    So by taking 40% of £700 (£280) away from your ROAS we’re left with a pre-tax profit of £420.

    You spent £1,500 to make £420 😐

    But as I said we found a sweet spot. Let’s run through the same scenario with a budget of £5,000 and see what happens.

    We’ll be using the same CPC, Conversion and Product Price along with the same margin of 40%.

    Let’s start with our Monthly Clicks.

    £5,000 / 0.70 = 7,143.

    7,143 Monthly clicks. Let’s see how many conversion we’ll get with that.

    7,143 X 4.11% (0.0411) = 294

    294 Sales on your store. Now let’s calculate the ROAS.

    294 X £25 = £7,350

    £7,350 In ROAS. Nw let’s factor our margin of 40% to see what our pre-tax profit will be.

    £7,350 X 40% (0.40) = £2,940

    A Loss of £2,940.

    £7,350 – £2,940 = £4,410

    Let’s look at the noticeable difference between both budget models.

    The first budget of £1,500 produced a ROAS of £700, almost 50% of the original spend which turned into a profit of £420, 28% of the original budget.

    The second budget of £5,000 produced a ROAS of £7,350, 147% of the original spend which turned into a profit of £4,410, 88% of the original budget.

    This formula is in no way a sure way to predict your results, as for that we would need to factor in things like CTR, CPA, website bounce rate along with finding a way to quantify the success of your creatives.

    The reason I believe that everyone who is planning to use Facebook as an actual marketing channel needs to understand this formula is because people right now are walking around saying they’ll produce ‘X’ ROI on a £2,000 budget which genuinely negatively impacts our industry. This causes business owners to reject the idea of Facebook becoming an integral part of their online marketing strategy.

    Problems with This Formula

    1. This formula does not take into how good your creatives and copy are. Without testing, you cannot accurately quantify how making the banner, ‘Red’ or ‘Blue’ will affect your campaign.
    2. This formula cannot predict how the campaign will evolve.
    3. This formula is limited by not incorporating CTR and other Facebook metrics.
    4. This formula does not take into account how accurate your base targeting options are.
    5. This point ties into the evolution of your campaign, but you’ll also be unable to predict how well a retargeting campaign will do using the basic version of this formula.

    The main reason we recommend using a budget of £5,000 or higher is that you’ll have a lot more room to play with in terms of testing and changing the campaign variables to better suit your audiences online behaviour.”

Debbie Friend
Trained in Social Media Management and Facebook Ad Strategy, Debbie worked with award winning tech start-up Personalyze and at Mediacom London before moving to New Zealand. Debbie now runs Indie Advertising, working with SMEs in multiple global locations wanting to increase their exposure online with Facebook advertising campaigns.
https://indieadvertising.co/

  • Sending Traffic to Slow Loading Website

    – “One thing many smaller businesses should ensure before running any ads on Facebook and Instagram is that they have a fast loading website. There’s thought to be at least a 40% drop off from people clicking on ads and not waiting for a website to load. This is a massive waste of Facebook ad spend.

    If you optimise for landing page views rather than link clicks when driving traffic, any issues with website loading speed will usually become apparent. When looking at results, if link clicks massively outweigh landing page views it’s often a problem with the website.

    Often too many pop-ups or larger images than necessary can hinder loading speed and result in a loss of many potential customers. A healthy, speedy website is definitely a prerequisite for running Facebook advertising campaigns.”

Robin Brooks
Facebook Advertising Expert | Speaker | Driven Over £5M In Sales Via Facebook Ads | Messenger Bot, Product Sales and Lead Generation Campaign Specialist | Helping clients create strategy and structure across Facebook’s many products.
http://www.linkedin.com/in/robin-brooks-b416a779

  • Using Facebook’s ‘Lowest Cost’ Bid Strategy Like Everyone Else

    – “Using Facebook’s ‘Lowest Cost’ bid strategy like everyone else – Having worked in Facebook Advertising for almost a decade, I see this mistake happen all the time.

    What is the Lowest Cost Bid Strategy? – It’s essentially Facebook’s default setting and the ‘auto bid’ setting where you search for all lowest-cost opportunities while spending your budget. Sounds good right? The only problem is everyone else is doing the same. Facebook is an auction after all.

    One of the greatest advantages of being a Facebook Ads Freelancer is that I get to see thousands of different ad campaigns and how advertisers manage them. One very common misconception that I come across is the use of cost controls. To my surprise, a growing number of large-scale advertisers use automated bids and refrain from using bid caps. Instead of setting bid caps, they limit campaign or ad budgets to “control” their cost per result.

    How to Solve This – Change your bid strategy from ‘Lowest Cost’ to ‘Bid Cap’. Start off by setting your stakes high, set your bid cap to twice the price of the conversion. As long as your targeting is on point and your creative is average or above, your Facebook ad will feature in front of the right people ahead of everyone else who is using lowest cost bidding. You’ve done it, you’ve broken free of the rest of the ‘auto advertisers’ out there and put your Facebook ad in front of someone who wouldn’t have seen it originally.

    Naturally, you aren’t out of the woods yet. You still need to monitor and optimise as you usually would, check frequency, competition and saturation, but you have given your adset the edge.

    Parting thoughts: Stay competitive, don’t follow everyone else and test, test, test.”

Mel Eilers
Mel is a super, switched-on Facebook Ads specialist and owner of Socially Sound. Specialising in sport, lifestyle and event brands, Mel uses data-driven decisions to get clients the most value from their FB budget.
http://www.sociallysound.co.uk

  • Not Excluding BOF from TOF and Confusing Your Messaging TOF/MOF/BOF

    – “Just a load of acronyms right? Yep.. but important ones, and ones you need to understand when running Facebook Ads. What do they stand for? Top of Funnel, Middle of Funnel and Bottom of Funnel.

    TOF is your cold audience, people who have never heard of you and know nothing about what you do or sell. MOF is your warm audience, those who have heard from you, but possibly not bought/worked with you – yet. BOF is your hottest audience. They know who you are, have bought from you or worked with you before.

    The funnel works by pouring large numbers of cold audiences in at the top, taking them on a journey of your product/service via ads with the appropriate messaging. As they move through the funnel, they get warmer, creating your ‘hot’ audience at the BOF.

    Sales funnel

    Depending on your product or service, your sales funnel may be shorter, or longer. If you were running low-ticket e-commerce ads (products under £50) you may not use MOF. If, however you were running ads for a high-ticket coaching programme that cost £5,000 there would be more stages in your funnel to ‘warm-up’ your audience.

    Understanding your different audiences ensures they receive the right message relevant to where they are in their customer journey with you. If you don’t craft your message to where the recipient is in the customer journey, it can be confusing… and annoying!

    TOF_BOF

    Let’s say you are a loyal subscriber to a product. Purely for explanation purposes, let’s say it’s coffee. As a subscriber you receive 5 different coffee flavours/products to try each month. You pay a certain price upfront each month and it’s delivered to your door. This would make you part of that brand’s BOF audience – ie. you know the brand, you buy from them.

    Then say you’re browsing Facebook and you’re served an ad for one of those subscription boxes. It contains the same products as the box you’ve already received. It talks about all the great coffee flavours, talks about home delivery and provides brand credibility and – what’s this – they get their second month for free?!

    So, what’s the problem?

    1. Firstly, the brand is spending money on ads that are reaching existing subscribers. The imagery and the messaging is suitable for a TOF audience, but it’s being seen by a BOF audience – an audience that already knows you and buys from you. An audience that doesn’t need to know about brand credibility and/or home delivery – because they already buy from you. How do you stop this happening? If you want to attract new customers – and spend your budget wisely on Facebook advertising – you need to exclude your BOF audiences from your TOF ads. This will ensure your ads are only being served to potential new customers.

    2. The existing subscriber is seeing products it has already received. They don’t need to see these ads – it’s pointless and a waste of money. It’s also annoying – they are likely to just scroll on and totally ignore your ad, because it’s not relevant. They may also be seeing an offer that they were not privy to themselves – which could be annoying. As a brand, you need to nurture your BOF audience. Maybe serve them ads that showcase your brand’s other products – DPAs are good for this. Try to upsell them other products that they might be interested in – with a hook (discount code, one-time/limited-time offer). The messaging here, for example, could read: “As a loyal customer, why not try our exclusive range of coffee syrups? Currently only available to subscribers. Save 10% on your first order.”

    Build BOF loyalty

    Regardless of discounts/offers/hooks (which have their place at all points of the funnel), my point here is that the messaging you use throughout your funnel needs to be appropriate to the audience it is being served to.

    TOF of funnel (potential new customers) need to know why/how your products/services will help them, what pain points they answer. You need to make them curious about your brand, wanting to know more about what you offer and – importantly – your brand credibility.

    One of the keys to successful Facebook advertising is being able to serve your audience with the right ad at the right time. Once they have bought from you, they need to feel nurtured and valued as a customer. Here, the messaging needs to change. Add value, upsell, maybe create offers purely for existing customers. Serving the wrong message to the wrong audience or – as I also commonly see – using one message to serve all stages of the funnel, won’t do you any favours.

    Another of the keys to successful FB ads is planning. Plan your messaging, plan your images. Know your client avatars and write accordingly – and do all this ahead of time, so you can really hone your tone and attract the right people to your brand.”

Leah Mazur
Leah worked for Canada's #1 Facebook advertiser before starting her consulting business in 2017. She manages advertising campaigns for clients in a variety of industries including startups, mobile app companies, and online learning.
https://loopdigital.ca

  • Poor or Unclear Ad Messaging

    – “An engaging message and a clear offer are the most important things for effective Facebook ads.

    No one is going to stop to read a Facebook ad that’s not interesting, and if it’s not clear, they won’t take the time to try to figure out what you are offering.

    Spend time on your Facebook ad copy and visuals to make them communicate your message simply and clearly, and in a way that focuses on what’s in it for THEM.

    Your ad copy should include:

    1. An Engaging Way to Capture Attention in the Newsfeed

    The first sentence of your ad copy is crucial for catching interest from your ideal prospect. Don’t use this to talk about yourself. Find an attractive hook to pique interest.

    2. Messaging that Qualifies the Audience

    Keep your exact audience in mind when writing your copy so that they know it’s for them. If the right people don’t find it relatable, you could be attracting the wrong people. For example, if your Facebook ad copy mentions feeling broke but you’re selling a high-ticket item, you’re probably not going to attract people who want to invest the price of your product.

    3. A Clear Description of the Offer

    What exactly are you offering, and what are the benefits for the audience? Why should they care? I often use bullets in my copy to convey what’s included in an easy to read format.

    4. A Call to Action to the Next Step

    Finish with instructions for what you want them to do next. You should make it as easy as possible for them to take you up on your offer. For example:

    • Click to download the free guide
    • Start shopping today
    • Install the app to learn more

    This tip isn’t as straight-forward to implement as something more technical like a change to targeting or the pixel. But I truly believe that the messaging is where most advertisers mess up with their ads and where I’ve seen the biggest improvements to campaign effectiveness.

    You can be targeting the perfect audience, and have all your configurations set up properly, but without copy that attracts the right people and encourages them to take the next step, it’s likely your campaign will flop.

    If you want to really move the needle on your campaign results, focus on your messaging!”

Rose Taylor-Brown
Rose is the founder of Juno Six, a small boutique agency specialising in paid social media ads for e-commerce, experience and travel businesses. She also mentors on Emma Van Heusen’s Facebook Adcelerator training course and loves nothing better than getting stuck into Facebook's analytics, tracking and attribution!
http://linkedin.com/in/brownrosemary

  • Not Understanding the Power of DPAs in eCommerce Retargeting

    – “Personalisation and relevance are key to customer-centric marketing and, as consumers, we’re all looking for a great experience. So if your Facebook ads eCommerce retargeting strategy doesn’t include Dynamic Product Ads, you’re simply leaving money on the table.

    Dynamic Product Ads, or DPAs, are a very powerful tool to tailor your retargeting ads to each potential customer, and the best thing about them is that businesses both big and small are boosting their sales thanks to their potential for personalising at scale.

    How Do They Work?

    To be able to show the exact products back to people who have viewed them on your site, you first need to be set up correctly.

    1. You need a Business Manager account to run DPAs.

    2.You need to have the Facebook Base Pixel installed sitewide and need to make sure Facebook can track the key actions your customers are taking. As a minimum, you need to be tracking:

    • View Content – this will fire every time someone clicks onto a product page and will share information so Facebook knows which product has been viewed.
    • Add To Cart – these people are showing a higher purchase intent than just viewing products
    • Purchase – this is the action that, ultimately, you want your customers to take so it’s a valuable action to track. In the case of DPAs, Facebook needs to know who has already purchased so they don’t waste your money retargeting someone who has already completed their purchase within your desired retargeting timeframe.

    Tracking Key Actions

    3. You need to create a catalog which allows Facebook to connect to your website. A catalog is simply a container that holds all the product information from your eCommerce site, such as product IDs, price, descriptions, colours, etc. How to create the catalog feed will depend on the platform your store is built on and Facebook lists some integrations and information on creating the catalog for these. You can also upload products manually but it’s worth noting that you’ll have to manually update it when products go out of stock, and if your store has hundreds of products, this just doesn’t make sense.

    Create a Catalog

    Once you have created your catalog and connected it to your pixel tracking in Catalog Manager (under Events along the left side of the screen), then you should be good to go with your retargeting DPAs.

    Harnessing the Power

    Now you are set up, you create a Catalog Sales campaign and can go through your Facebook ad set up as normal, making sure to pull in the correct catalog at the campaign level. However, ideally, you do need to make sure you have a minimum of 750-1000 unique people in your retargeting audience to make DPAs work.

    Retargeting Audience

    Retargeting people with relevant products not only helps to remove barriers to purchasing – Did they just forget to check out? Did they need to consider the purchase for longer? – but it also helps increase the FOMO/desire for the product by putting it back in front of them and, combined with the right messaging, can help shoppers to get over the line to a purchase. Simply put, breaking down barriers to purchase is what DPAs do smartly and effectively.

    And with big enough audiences you can even take your personalisation further by creating DPA retargeting stacks to show potential customers the products they have looked at, at the right time, and with different messaging depending on when they viewed or added to cart. You could consider splitting your DPA audiences down and retarget them with a reminder message for days 1-3 post-viewing, trust copy on days 4-6 and an offer on days 7-10, for example, making the overall customer journey much more personalised to your potential customers.”

Sufian Asghar
I am a Facebook ads agency owner, and have been running ads on the platform for the past two years working exclusively with eCommerce brands spending between 10k-60k p/m on Facebook
http://szn-media.co
  • Not Giving the Facebook Algorithm Enough Control – “Many advertisers and brands make the mistake of not taking advantage of giving Facebook more control, this means using what is known as the Facebook Power 5 which are the following:

    • Dynamic Ads
    • Account Simplification
    • CBO
    • Automatic Placements
    • Auto Advanced Matching

    1. Dynamic Ads – The first step in allowing Facebook more control in order to get the best results for you (by using the millions of datapoints and years of learning that the algorithm now has which allow it to optimize ads better than humans can) is using dynamic ads. This allows Facebook to deliver the right ads featuring the right products to the right people based on their specific engagement with products or services in that specific niche.

    2. Account Simplification – Account simplification is one of the most powerful tools when running Facebook Ads, as fewer ads and fewer ad sets equal quicker learning phases and better optimization. Gone are the days where you need 20 or 30 campaigns in your Facebook ad account – simplifying the ad account will simplify your optimizations and make your life a whole lot easier.

    3. CBO – CBO refers to campaign budget optimization whereby instead of budgets being set at the ad set level, you can now set them at the campaign level. This means that in real-time Facebook will determine which ad sets in your campaign have the best chance of generating conversions and allocate spend that way throughout the day, allowing you to spend less time in your ads manager constantly tweaking things.

    4. Automatic Placements – Many advertisers and brands still use manual placements and the truth is, Facebook knows a whole lot better than you do – where to show your ads in order to get you results. By isolating placements and restricting Facebook you end up with a significantly higher cost per result than you would if you had chosen automatic placements.

    5. Auto Advanced Matching – Auto advanced matching allows for better data exchange between Facebook and your site in order to assign conversions to the correct source and allow you to make better data-driven decisions for your future Facebook ad spend.”

Sam Weber
Performance Marketing Consultant based in Melbourne, Australia that has helped grow over 2,000 small to enterprise scale businesses through Facebook and Instagram Ads.
http://weberdigital.com.au

  • Not Using User (or Influencer) Generated Content in Ads

    – “One of the biggest Facebook Ad mistakes I see advertisers making is not using user (or influencer) generated content in their ads.

    Especially at the bottom of the marketing funnel, UGC/IGC is pivotal in building trust with the audience.

    We often forget that people are on social media, primarily, to connect with their friends in an authentic manner.

    So why break up their consumption of content with a salesy, emotionless ad?

    Time and time again, across the thousands of Facebook Ads I’ve run, the organic-styled, iPhone shot creative of someone using the product or service significantly outperforms the more polished and production-heavy one.

    And not just for clicks.

    But quality leads and purchases.

    Don’t forget that it’s significantly cheaper (most times even free) to generate this content than the typical polished photo/video. So as well as reducing your marketing expenses it’s simultaneously lifting your revenue.

    Social media users today see through bulls**t – so show them reality.”

Terry Foster
Terry Foster is the founder of Terry Foster Consulting Services, which specializes in creating profitable digital media channels for small and minority-owned businesses. Terry has managed over $15 million dollars of ad spend on 10 different paid traffic channels, resulting in over $75 million dollars of sales for his clients.
http://www.terryfosterconsulting.com

  • Not Using One Ad ID Across Multiple Ad Sets

    – “This is one of those Facebook ad mistakes that is definitely overlooked by many – and it can be costly.

    When you duplicate an ad set in Ads Manager you will create duplicate ads BUT the Ad ID will be different. The problem with this is that it negatively impacts your social proof.

    You can verify your Facebook Ad ID’s by clicking on “Page Posts’ in Ads Manager. You then want to view ‘ad posts’. Take a look at an example I was able to dig up on a client’s account.

    Facebook Ad ID

    This is the exact same Facebook ad but it has two different ID’s.

    This means that each one will separately track its reach and engagement.

    It also means that you are losing out on an opportunity to garner more social proof by having all of the engagement tied to one ad.

    It is much better to have 1 Facebook ad with 100 likes than to have 10 ads with 10 likes. When people engage with your ad that is a positive sign to Facebook.

    As a result, your ads will be delivered cheaper. It is also easier to manage the comments on an ad if there is only one Ad ID.

    How to Win

    1. Create your “BASE” ad.
    2. Locate the post id of your “BASE” ad.
    3. Duplicate your ad sets, but afterwards, you will need to update the ad to ‘Use Existing Post’ and supply the Facebook Ad ID that you just created.

    Now all of the ads will be tied to the same Ad ID and your social proof will be amplified!

    If you would like to see me demonstrate this via a video then just click here”

Hunter Durham
Hunter Durham consulted with 100+ e-commerce businesses during his time at Facebook and many more since he left. He knows the ins and outs of the algorithms that power today's paid media platforms. Impact Industry manages budgets of over $2M+ annually.
http://impactindustry.marketing

  • Not Excluding Past Purchasers

    – “I’ve seen a lot of ad accounts consulting with 100+ businesses during my time at Facebook. My role was to coach my clients on how to spend most efficiently on the platform. One of the most common Facebook Ad mistakes I saw is people not excluding past purchasers from their customer acquisition campaigns.

    This Presents Two Problems:

    1. Facebook is optimizing acquisition campaigns off past customers, not new customers who are buying for the first time.
    2. It is hard to understand true acquisition costs because repeat purchasers are being included in your ad campaigns. And Facebook is really good at finding and attributing past customers.

    When I am conducting audits, it is always a difficult conversation with the client (or even agencies) when I tell them that their performance most likely is not as good as Facebook is reporting. I recently reviewed an account where customer acquisition costs were about 3X higher than they thought because proper exclusions weren’t being applied.

    How to Identify and Solve It:

    When reviewing performance, one of the very first things I do is break out Facebook’s reporting window into 1-day view, 1-day, 7-day, 28-click.

    Attribution Window

    What this does is allow me to see the breakdown of how Facebook is reporting the purchase event. If there is a large amount of view-through conversions, it may mean that too many past purchasers are being attributed to ad campaigns. View-through conversions are still important but too many likely means the results are skewed.

    From a campaign level, I generally set up 3 types: Prospecting (Top of Funnel/Cold Audiences), Retargeting (Middle of the Funnel), Loyalty (Bottom of Funnel/Retention). For my prospecting and retargeting, I exclude all past purchasers 3 different ways: CSV list from E-commerce platform, Custom Website Audience, and Email Service Provider.

    The reason I do it multiple ways is each type might have a separate match rate. Additionally, the pixel only collects data for 180 days. So if you have only excluded it with a 180 Past-purchaser audience with the pixel, past purchasers will be included after 6 months.

    Past purchasers are still a really important targeting audience in your Facebook strategy especially during sales and key times of the year. When I do want to target past purchasers, I put them into a separate loyalty campaign, that way I can break them out from my standard reporting.”

Paula O'Sullivan
Social Media Strategist, Facebook Ad Specialist, Founder of Possum Digital
http://www.possumdigital.com.au

  • Neglecting the Importance of the Headline

    – “The best Facebook Ad campaigns pay attention to ALL the elements of the creative, especially the headline text. This is the large, bold text directly under the image or video, and when written well, can help increase engagement with your ads.

    While this text is not the part of the ad seen first (especially on mobile), the headline copy is what can make someone ‘stop the scroll’ and really take a look at your offering. It’s a way of reinforcing your key message before the Facebook user moves through the rest of their feed.

    My top 3 tips for creating an eye capturing headline:

    1) Be Clear and Concise – This is not the place for long, flowing sentences. Get to the point, and fast.

    2) Inspire Curiosity – While I never recommend ‘clickbait’ type copy, you have around 5 words to grab their attention, so use them well.

    3) Tell People What You Want Them to Do – Give them a clear call to action.”

Annette Clubley
Annette has worked with literally hundreds of businesses on their web development projects, search engine optimising their sites or advertising their business on social media. She specialises in bringing her organic and paid search strategy experience together to reduce advertising costs and help your business grow.
https://www.marketingorganised.co.uk/

  • Ignoring the Impact of Relevance on Facebook Ad Costs

    – “Facebook introduced ad relevance scores in 2015 but I still find businesses that don’t know what it is or what to do about it when they find their Fcaebook ad has a low quality, engagement, or conversion relevance score. As a keen analyst, I find it extraordinary that a business will not take advantage of data that could help them improve adverts.

    relevance score

    So, what is an ad relevance score? It is a score between 1-10 that Facebook applies to an advert based on positive feedback (people liking, clicking through from or converting from an advert) and negative feedback (people hiding or reporting an advert).

    Facebook reports on your advert’s relevance score in Ads Manager, showing results for Quality ranking, Engagement rate ranking, and Conversion rate ranking. Note: Facebook ad relevance diagnostics are not shown for ads that have been served less than 500 times.

    Below average scores are split into the bottom 35% of adverts, bottom 20% of adverts, and bottom 10% of adverts. Average represents the 35th to 55th percentile and above average is above 55% of adverts.

    ad_relevance_scores

    Why Does this Matter to You and Your Business?

    “Put simply, the higher an ad’s relevance score is, the less it will cost to be delivered.” – Facebook

    You can see in the example above that a lower quality ranking has increased the cost per result by 2 pence. Across a larger campaign, this can make a significant difference. Making sure that your advert is relevant will reduce your advertising costs.

    Ideas on How to Solve It

    Thankfully Facebook provides a handy guide on how to fix it if your advertisements have a below-average score. Their advice is to focus on improving low rankings and move them up to average or better than average, as this has more impact than improving an already average ranking.

    ad relevance diagnostics

    If Your Quality Ranking is Low – Look at your creative assets to see how they might be improved, change formats and ensure no low-quality images are used. Fine-tune your audience to make sure they are your target market.

    If Your Engagement Rate Ranking is Low – Use eye-catching creative ideas to make people stop and look, and think about targeting an audience that you know will be interested in your product or service and engage with the advert.

    If Your Conversion Rate Ranking is Low – Make sure that you have a clear call to action for the advert and check your landing page to make sure that it is inviting and quick to load. Target a high intent audience like those who are engaged shoppers.

    “If your conversions meet your expectations, you may not need to adjust your ad.” – Facebook

    Finally, do not get hung up on it! If you have set an objective or goal for your advertising campaign (you have, right?!) and your advert is meeting that objective then in the words of Facebook ‘you may not need to adjust your ad’.”

Ali Wheeler
Ali founded her business, Society State in 2017 after working as a Marketing Specialist for 12 years across a range of industries. Today, Ali offers a ‘no fuss’ approach, delivering paid social management & training plus strategic social media, helping brands build engaged communities and drive business growth.
https://www.societystate.com.au/

  • Forgetting About Other Marketing Methods and Organic Social Media to Support Facebook Advertising

    – “If you’re relying solely on Facebook & Instagram advertising to sell your products or services – you’re in for a rude awakening.

    Plenty of clients come to me and hope that Facebook Advertising can make them millions of dollars, but one of the first questions I ask them is “What other marketing and advertising are you currently doing for your business – or planning on doing”?

    Many of them say “Oh I know I need to be posting on Instagram more” or “I don’t have an email list”, or “Other than posting on Instagram, nothing”…

    It’s then I hear alarm bells ring in my ears. You see, my most successful clients are those that have an engaged social media following, an engaged email list or have quality leads ready to target.

    In order to have successful social advertising campaigns, it is imperative that business owners don’t put all their eggs in the one basket. Facebook Advertising is a way to amplifying your other marketing efforts.

    Here are six other marketing ideas you can implement to support your Facebook & Instagram Advertising:

    1. Set up automatic abandon cart and system emails for your ecommerce store: this will automatically decrease your abandon cart rate, increase customer life-time-value and loyalty (hello birthday vouchers!)
    2. Develop a realistic cadence of marketing emails: regular marketing emails – providing opportunities for your audience to engage, interact and buy from you via your email marketing provides another touchpoint for your business.
    3. Regularly post on your social media channels: creating an engaged community online will support your Facebook Advertising efforts by creating custom audiences of engaged users to retarget with Facebook and Instagram Ads.
    4. Check your engagement rate on your social media: A great way to check your Instagram engagement is using Phlanx – it’s quick and easy, and gives you a good sense of if you need to improve. A good benchmark is around 1.6% (source)
    5. Set up Google Advertising: Google advertising can be an effective way of driving relevant, qualified traffic to your website exactly when people are searching for the types of products or services your business offers.
    6. Get a solid SEO strategy: This can improve your search ranking and website visibility – which has a flow on effect in driving more traffic to your website.

    The benefit of having an omni-channel marketing strategy, is all about optimising your audience size. If you are using Facebook & Instagram advertising with ‘warm’ audiences, and relying on your website pixel data alone – you’re limiting the number of custom audiences you can target. The time it takes to generate sales and conversions can take a lot longer – and you’ll also be missing out on creating killer lookalike audiences also!

    Here are three examples of custom audiences created from other marketing efforts – to get the most out of your paid social activity:

    1. Customer List: You can upload a list of customers who’ve interacted with your business. The most common is an email list, but it also could be an event list, or a list of leads from a market or exhibition (hello – real-world events). The benefit here is you can retarget them based on their prior interaction with your business and move them to the next stage of the sales funnel.

    customer list

    2. Video Views (from IGTV video): If you’re a regular video content creator, and uploading video to your social media accounts – creating a Video Views audience is a must! One of my favourites is creating an audience based on IGTV video views – some of the businesses I work with have thousands of people watching their IGTV video content, and being able to retarget them with conversion campaigns or website traffic campaigns is absolutely priceless!

    igtv video views

    3. Facebook Page: Creating an audience based on interactions with your Facebook page (or Instagram account) is one of the first audiences I set up for new clients. If they’ve got an engaged following on their social media – that is people interacting with organic posts, or previous Facebook ads – why not create a custom audience to retarget to. The options here are extensive, and based on varying levels of engagement including targeting people who’ve visited your page, right through to people who’ve saved your page or any post.

    facebook page audience

    Before jumping headfirst into Facebook Advertising, take a step back and look at your other marketing efforts and see what can be improved or turned on first.”

Aashay Shah
Aashay Shah is the Director of Kick Marketing, a boutique agency that focuses on helping businesses generate higher quality leads and sales through Facebook advertising.
https://www.kickmarketing.com.au/

  • Not Taking Advantage of Custom Placement Aspect Ratios

    – “No doubt, in today’s digital age, we are constantly bombarded with information and advertising with every swipe, click and scroll.

    That’s why it’s never been more important for your ads to stand out from the crowd and avoid blending in with the competition.

    The versatility Facebook provides throughout its vast network: Instagram, Messenger, Audience Network and so on, is truly powerful to reach a wide audience; however, this also presents challenges for business owners to have creatives that suit every placement that sits within each platform.

    Have a quick look below at some of the options available:

    Aspect Ratios

    Generally what happens is somebody may upload a single square image or video and then let Facebook determine the best placement for it.

    This is very easy to set up but sometimes your ad may look like this:

    Bad Example

    I completely understand that it can become costly to get custom aspect ratio’s for every placement and potentially inefficient if creative bulk campaigns.

    Where possible, these are the 3 custom placements I recommend to have different size creatives for:

    • Square (most placements)
    • IG Feed (1000px x 1350px)
    • Stories (1080px x 1920px)

    Have a look at an example from HBF Health below.

    HBF example

    The IG Story creative takes up maximum screen ‘real estate’ yet is simple and effective.

    Not many advertisers are taking advantage of the Stories placements which is why there is a massive potential to stand out in this placement currently.

    Since incorporating custom IG Feed and Stories graphics, we’ve found a significantly lower cost per lead or sale for those placements.

    Work with your creative team in getting a basic structure for these placements and you may be pleasantly surprised with the results they yield.”

Jamie Forrest
I help turn 'OK' Facebook ads results into Great results by identifying the SPECIFIC mistakes you've made and show you how to fix them.
https://www.healthyleads.co.uk/facebook-ads-audit/
  • Not Doing the Hard Work First in Understanding Your Customer Avatar – “When it comes to defining their customer clearly (if you don’t know who you’re selling to, it’s hard to speak to them in an appealing way) there are two related/intertwined ways that people get this wrong – and it can be lethal to the results of their Facebook ad campaigns.

    1. They don’t define their target customer at all in the first place, and just use generic language that (sort of) appeals to everyone.
    2. If they have defined an avatar, they’ve lumped everyone in together, to some amalgamation of all their customers.

    Generic Language Speaks to (and Disqualifies) Nobody

    Buying is first and foremost an emotional decision, and if we don’t trust the person selling to us, we’re not going to buy, so you need to show that you UNDERSTAND THEM, and UNDERSTAND THEIR PROBLEMS.

    How to Avoid Making the Same Mistake

    First, define all the different groups of people that buy from you. There should be at least 3, but if you’ve got loads, then just identify the biggest few.

    i.e. a massage therapy client had 3 main groups of clients – 30-45 year old mums, 40-60 year old business executives, and those recovering from injury.

    Each of these personas will have different opinions/goals/pains etc, so once you’ve done that, ask yourself the following questions for each one:

    1. For each one we want to know the basic demographics that define them:

    1. Age
    2. Gender
    3. Location
    4. Income

    2. Then the psychographics that relate to what you’re selling:

    1. What do they want?
    2. What do they care about?
    3. Who are their enemies?
    4. What are their dreams?
    5. What do they believe?
    6. What are their suspicions?
    7. How have they failed before?
    8. What are they afraid of?

    Then when you create a Facebook ad campaign, create it for just one persona at a time, and craft your message and your offer to match them.

    The same treatment might solve the problem for multiple groups, but saying “a back and shoulder massage can help alleviate pain and aid recovery from injury for anyone” isn’t half as powerful as saying “if you’ve been sat at a desk for 8 hours a day for the past 20 years, you’re likely feeling pain across your lower back and aches when you get out of bed in the morning…” because it talks to a specific person.”

Dorothy Illson
Dorothy Illson is the founder of Needle’s Eye Media, a full-service digital advertising agency. With an innate talent for data-wrangling and a holistic understanding of digital marketing, Dorothy leverages a scientific approach to help her clients grow. This allows her to profitably spend several millions of dollars each year on behalf of her clients.
https://www.needleseyemedia.com/

  • Not Understanding Facebook Fraud

    – “Have you been a victim of Facebook fraud?

    No, I’m not talking about fake clicks, duplicate traffic, or illegal data sharing…

    … I’m talking about CREDIT.

    Specifically, Facebook taking credit for conversions they aren’t responsible for.

    Here’s why this happens:

    Facebook’s default attribution window is 28-day click and 1-day view.

    It’s the 1-day view that matters here.

    Because when you allow Facebook to take credit for view-through conversions…

    It’s almost guaranteed to over-report.

    Remember: Your Facebook pixel is going to fire on every purchase – whether or not that person saw an ad.

    But when Facebook sees that purchase…

    They’re going to ask themselves “did we show this person an ad?”

    If yes, then they’ll take credit for the sale.

    Even if that person never stopped to read the ad or click on it.

    What You Can Do About It

    So, here’s a way to get a better idea of what Facebook is really responsible for.

    Go into Ads Manager > Customize Columns.

    In the bottom right corner, under Attribution Window, click on Comparing Windows.

    Then create presets to show you the 1-Day, 7-Day, and 28-Day Click.

    This will give you a much clearer picture of what Facebook has really contributed to.

    It will make your numbers look worse…

    But it will also give you better ammunition to scale the ads that are actually working for you.”

Suzanne Potter
Suzanne is an experienced Marketer, Social Media Manager and Facebook Ad Strategist based on the South Coast of England. Founder of Spring Marketing & Social, Suzanne works closely with clients to deliver strategy, implementation and training to help them connect with their audiences and grow their brand.
http://www.springmarketingandsocial.com

  • The Content Facebook Doesn’t Like in Ads – What to Watch Out For

    – “Bill Bernbach said “Nobody counts the number of ads you run; they just remember the impression you make”

    So, the question is, how do you make a good impression? A lot of advertisers will consider this question and think of the end-user, forgetting there’s somebody else crashing the party – the bots and moderators who will approve your Facebook ad before it even gets in front of your audience.

    So how do you write and design your Facebook ad so that it flies through the approvals process and starts delivering?

    One of the first things to remember is that Facebook ultimately aims to put the user experience at the heart of the platform. So that means it’s looking for ads that fit nicely into the users feed, attract attention in a positive way and don’t make the reader feel bad in any way.

    Where Do I Start?

    The first thing to do is to make sure you aren’t using any of the red flags that Facebook looks for when your ad goes to review. Some of them really are common sense – don’t swear, discriminate or use any type of sexual imagery or innuendo, but others are a little less obvious.

    Let’s take a look at some of the things to avoid in your ads and how to create some workarounds that will get your Facebook ad through the all-important approvals process.

    It’s Not What You Say, It’s How You Say It

    Misleading or false claims are a big no-no when it comes to Facebook Ads copy, and rightly so. So that means no exaggerated claims, miracle cures, or talking about unrealistic outcomes within a certain time frame.

    This can make ads in the healthcare or weight loss space tricky, no more “7 Quick and easy ways to lose your middle-age spread!” headlines. Instead, tone it down and talk about “Tips to tone up”. It makes it far less accusing and isn’t going to make somebody feel bad about themself.

    It’s All About You

    Facebook doesn’t say you can’t put “you” in your ad copy. But you do need be careful about how it’s used.

    The problem comes when you write the Facebook ad copy in a way that makes it feel like the ad is directly targeting somebody and calling them out in a way that is against their advertising principles (and polite conversation).

    So, for example, you can’t write “Have you been declared bankrupt?” or “Are you single and looking for romance?”, it’s way too direct and has the potential to make the reader feel bad about themselves.

    Instead, try and craft your copy to call out your audience so that they relate to what you’re saying, but in a more general way; “Our financial products have everything you need”, or “Meet like-minded people online”.

    Don’t Make Promises You Can’t Keep

    Not many people realise that when you send your ad for review, Facebook also looks at a host of other elements, including the landing page you’re sending your traffic to. So if you’re advertising 67% off everything, but your landing page makes no mention of this discount, they will see it as an inconsistency and a sneaky way to drive traffic to your website. Not cool.

    That also goes for the imagery you use on the ad – advertising beautiful jewellery which actually turns out to be cheap, cheerful plastic rubbish once you hit the website will get you a red mark too.

    So, the upshot is that ads need to be as clear and transparent as possible, with landing pages to match.

    Strike a Pose

    How do your images look? It should go without saying that they should be clear, and in line with all the usual content restrictions. But the one that commonly catches people out is the 20% rule. This essentially guides the advertiser not to have more than 20% of the image as text as Facebook really likes an image to be an image.

    Although it’s not enforced as strictly as it used to be, it’s still worth knowing because it could be a reason why your Facebook ad is being held back or rejected.

    Mind Your P’s and Q’s

    It may seem trivial, but you’ll also be held back if your spelling, grammar or punctuation aren’t up to scratch. In fact, poor grammar falls under Facebook’s list of prohibited content.

    And don’t try and sneak in a swear word by replacing letters for symb*ls, as it’s a red flag to the bots and is highly likely to be rejected. Instead, make sure you check your spelling and grammar before the ad goes out to give yourself the biggest chance of success.

    And Finally

    This is by no means an exhaustive list of all the “don’ts” when it comes to Facebook ad copy, but it should give you a good start point. If you want to know more, a good place to look is the Facebook Business Help Centre pages where you can find the full list of guidelines and rules.

    And if you’ve done all this and your Facebook ad is still stuck in review, remember that it can take up to 2 days to get through the process. If you haven’t had any luck, there is a form here (https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/186912391909649?hc_location=ufi) you can fill in for help, or try duplicating the campaign and sending to review again – sometimes it speeds things up.

    So when you’re crafting your ads remember the golden rule that Facebook puts the user experience at the heart of the whole platform and make sure you avoid the red flags to help you run a successful campaign. Good luck!”

Yesim Saydan
Yesim Saydan is a Social Media Strategist and Growth Hacker, helping Business Owners multiply their Sales and Brand Reach - by using social media strategically and creatively. She is a Social Media Mentor at Google’s Accelerator, while running her own Social Media Consultancy. In addition, she has been invited to speak at various conferences worldwide.
http://www.facebook.com/YourSocialMediaExpert

  • Not Hooking Your Clients’ Attention in the First 3 Seconds

    – “We live in a world where the attention span of a human is less than the one of a goldfish! If you don’t grab your ideal clients’ attention the first 3 seconds, they won’t even watch the rest of your Facebook Ad and all your effort will go to waste.

    To make sure that we put this into context, let me emphasize that I am talking about the 2nd step here: How to optimize our Ads so they will be watched and engaged with as much as possible. The 1st step before that is to ensure that your Ads get in front of your ideal clients.

    To ensure that your ideal clients will see your Ads, you need pay attention to 3 key elements:

    • RIGHT TARGETING – Do NOT start a campaign based on Interests! (This should be your last resort after you have exhausted your Custom audiences and lookalike audiences)
    • RIGHT OBJECTIVE – Determine in advance what you want to achieve with your campaign. Facebook’s AI is incredibly smart. It will help you reach your goals if you tell it what to do.
    • RIGHT MEDIUM – This changes all the time. Right now Short video ads get the best results.

    Now that you have the first step taken care of, and we know that your Ad is being shown to your ideal clients, let’s talk about which Facebook Ad mistakes most Business Owners are making that waste their whole Ad budget:

    1. Starting the video with an introduction that is all about themselves or the company.
    2. Being very salesy, starting with a pitch.
    3. Talking with little energy.
    4. Making small talk.
    5. Being boring and monotone.

    WHAT YOU NEED TO DO INSTEAD

    Remember that you are not only competing with your competitor’s Ads and other FB Ads in general, but also the baby pictures of the friends of your audience!

    Your audience is NOT on Facebook to watch Ads. Actually most people hate them.

    It’s YOUR job to give them a reason to watch your Ad. And that’s why the hook – what you do in the first 3 seconds – plays a huge role. You need to have something at the very beginning of your Video Ad (in the case of a photo, then use something striking in the photo) that grabs their attention right away!

    How you ask?

    1. Start your video with a relatable question that talks about the pain of your ideal clients and hooks their attention right away. A great example of this is Dean Graziosi’s Ad, where he paid Larry King a HUGE sum of money to introduce him at the beginning of his Ad. Dean thought that he would grab tons of eyeballs, since Larry King had a huge following but the Ad flopped. Why? Because Dean was not famous then. Although he had created a great video, very few people watched the part after the introduction. The beginning of the video was this: ‘I am live here with Dean Graziosi. He is the Author of X, does XYZ.’ Why do you think that the Ad performed so bad, even when Dean used a big Influencer to market him? There was nothing that stopped the audience from the distractions in their lives, so they didn’t pay attention to the rest. But when Dean changed the hook – the beginning of his video – the Ad became a huge success. A tiny little thing that turned it from a Facebook Ad that almost no one watched fully to a viral one. What was that little thing? Instead of Larry King introducing Dean, Larry started off the video by saying: ‘Have you ever thought in your adult life that you would be further ahead by now?’ Do you realize how much more impactful that first sentence is? How it would make you stop what you’re doing and want to pay attention to what else he says in the video? We can all relate to that question.
    2. Talk about the RESULT you can help visitors achieve in one sentence. Don’t go into a sales pitch or your lengthy story yet. People don’t want to buy a pill. They want their headache to go away. Give the audience a one-liner, where they can see that you have the solution to their pain.
    3. Provide social proof. This may be a result you helped many people get or even just one person in particular that makes a strong case: ‘John lived his entire life with claustrophobia, not even leaving his apartment. And yet after 1 month of trying our X Formula, he is skydiving’

    After grabbing their attention with a burning question that occupies the minds of your ideal clients and a sentence that ‘indirectly’ says shortly and sweetly how you are an expert in this topic, introduce yourself and tell them your personal story of transformation.”

Brian Meert
Brian Meert is the CEO of AdvertiseMint, a Hollywood based digital advertising agency that specializes in helping successful companies advertise on Facebook. Advertisemint has managed millions of dollars in digital ad spends in entertainment, fashion, finance, and software industries.
http://www.advertisemint.com/

  • Showing the Same Facebook Ad to a Person More Than Once

    – “If users see the same Facebook ad more than once, they scroll past it because they’ve already seen it and know what it’s about. This hurts your Facebook ad quality score. To solve this, you need to build segments around four areas: top funnel, middle funnel, bottom-funnel, and customers.

    The top of the funnel is the first introduction to a customer. Once they interact, they are moved out of this segment. For this stage of the funnel, create an ad that is mysterious, that leaves them wanting for more information. Apple and Tesla are amazing at this.

    The middle of the funnel is for users who have been to your website or engaged with your posts in the last 10 to 180 days. These are users who know about your business. Use tools such as Dynamic Creatives to create ad variants that answer questions about your business, such as the way the business works and the benefits to users. Feature testimonials, reviews, blog posts, holiday sales, and more.

    Next up is the bottom of the funnel. Here are users who have been to your website in the last 10 days. Focus on running Dynamic Product ads if you’re running an e-commerce store and focus on creating ads that answer one of the five P’s (product, price, placement, promotion, people) for why people should purchase. If you run a larger e-commerce store, you can use Amazon’s approach and set up multiple ad accounts and business pages for each category of your store. Set your bid caps to 5 to 10 times your target CPA — this will allow your customers to see multiple carousel ads of your products per day. You’re now bringing your shopping experience to the customers.

    Last up is your customers. Make sure not to forget about them. Leverage your data on lifetime value and create ads that offer customers first dibs on a sale, share exciting news or feature customer reviews. Everyone likes being on the winning team. There is no such thing as a perfect Facebook ad. Focus on creating a variety of ads that appear at the right time and help build a stronger relationship with your customers.”

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