Yee haw! You kind of know how to get some kind of results from Facebook ads…

…or…

…you have no idea what you are doing!

If you fall somewhere in that gap, I’m going to show you a not-so-secret trick to becoming better at ads AND seeing more results.

I know this sounds hypey because it is.

Here is what you need to know: Dynamic Creative is a self-optimizing ad. If that didn’t blow your mind, imagine an ad that learns what kind of headline, and image, and text (and so on) is best for your chosen target(s).

So yeah, let me continue to hype this up before I explain how simple it is to use.

You see, this idea of figuring out which combination of content works best is known as multivariate testing. It sounds fancy because it is complex data and statistics work. And it used to be very expensive to set up and learn from. Website technology that can do this has been around for a while. But ads, those still require great skill to perform a multivariate test- until now.

The average person can pick a few images, write a few headlines, and come up with a few texts, and away they go!

Facebook will take all those things and figure out which of those different elements are effective and in what combination.

This is a multivariate test on an ad; a self-optimizing ad.

The best part- even if you are bad at writing, you’ll be able to see what is landing with your audience quickly.

Now that I’ve thoroughly hyped this up with big words and such, let’s get down to business and show you exactly how to do this.

One thing to note is that I’ll only be talking about the Dynamic Creative feature itself. There won’t be any strategy or targeting training. Assume you have a website page and you want to drive traffic from some Facebook audience.

How To Create Facebook Dynamic Creative Ads

Pre-requisites:

1. A webpage to drive traffic
2. Facebook Page
3. Facebook Ad Account

• Go to the Ads Manager and create a new Traffic campaign
• In the Ad Set for the campaign, near the top of the page, toggle Dynamic Creative. You may be asked if you are sure you want to use this feature, confirm.
• Proceed with your Targeting
• In the Ad for the campaign, you’ll notice that most ad objects have a + sign. This allows you to load multiple versions of that object.
• Load your various assets:
  • Up to 10 images; remember to optimize the crop on each one!
  • Up to five post texts
  • Up to five headlines
  • You can choose multiple CTA
• Publish the campaign
• Duplicate ad set and adjust targeting (if you want to run against multiple targets)

How To Report On Facebook Dynamic Creative Ads

Reporting on Dynamic Creative results can be a bit tricky if you don’t know where to look. The secret is in the Breakdown dropdown. It holds a treasure trove of insight.

Pre-requisites:

1. An active (or inactive) campaign with Dynamic Creative

• Go to the Ads Manager and navigate to the campaign with Dynamic Creative
• Go down to the Ad level for the campaign; you may also want to stay at the Ad Set level if there was multiple targeting efforts.
• Near the top right of the data, use the Breakdown Dropdown and choose which Dynamic Creative asset you want to compare
• There is also the Combination which will show the winning overall combination of assets; this will only work if enough impressions were made.

I made a mistake…

The good news is that you can benefit from my mistake by not doing what I did.
We have hundreds of saved audiences that we use for boosting posts at Blitz. This saves us a ton of time when we run promotions since we can select our audiences from a list, but you must be careful.

Here’s what happened.

[Read more…]

Preach What You Have Practiced

Imagine you’ve just turned 16 and are ready to get your license. You get your learner’s permit and are ready to get out on the road. You believe that because you passed the written test that you know all there is to know about driving.

But do you really?

In short, no, not until you put in the driving time and get a feel for the car and the rules of the road. That’s where your parents (Mentor) can come into play, by sitting shotgun and giving you clear directions — while also gripping onto the grab handle for dear life.

However, mentoring is becoming a lost art and it’s because people don’t properly appreciate the value of learning from a practitioner. You’ve learned the concepts, but a mentor teaches you how to execute them.

We’re constantly learning new things and it’s not always by reading a book  (which there’s no harm in doing whatsoever), but by watching other people do whatever “it” is.

Remember shifting gears without stalling the car for the first time? It gave you a feeling of a accomplishment. You got successful results by learning from your parents (Mentor) and going through the motions. That’s what you get from an apprenticeship, knowledge, experience, and results — proof that you know how to drive a car.

Hundreds of years ago, people would line up to be da Vinci’s apprentice or an apprentice to a tailor or a blacksmith. They put in the work while simultaneously learning their trade. Apprentices understood the concept of Learn-Do-Teach (LDT). They LEARNED their trade, then got an apprenticeship to DO what they had learned so later on in life — when they become the mentor — they could TEACH it.

They say, “practice what you preach,” and to an extent, that’s sound advice, but you should have already practiced.

You should practice and practice and practice before you think about teaching.

Again, anyone can learn something. You can have all of the recipes memorized and ingredients gathered, but they won’t be useful until you go into the kitchen and do something with them.

The Two Sides to Mentoring

A good mentor is committed to their craft and invested in their apprentice. They spend time day-in and day-out practicing and learning about their craft to keep their skills sharp, so they can break their knowledge down and simplify it so others can understand.

A mentor is more than a teacher.

A mentor is wholly invested in guiding an apprentice through the steps, making sure they don’t just understand what to do, but how to do it.

A good apprentice is invested in learning everything there is to know about the “art” or trade. This means learning the lessons that only experience can teach as well. The best blacksmith can teach you how to properly swing the hammer and where to strike the iron, but you won’t learn the weight of the hammer or how the iron feels without doing it yourself.

No amount of books or lessons can substitute for a raw, hard-earned experience.

A mentor is an opportunity for both the apprentice and them, but unless both parties come together and carry out their respective parts it won’t work.

Making Things Simple and Effective

So, you’ve put your hours in and mastered the forge and you’ve got the scars to prove it. You’re hands are calloused, your fingers are burned, and your arms are scraped. You’ve learned from your mentor and your own mistakes and are — at long last — ready to teach your own apprentice. But as you’ll soon discover, teaching has its own challenges, especially if you want to do it at scale.

So, can you do it?

Well, there’s a number of ways it can be said: “Dumb it down,” “Explain like I’m 5,” “Put it in English.”

Basically… systemize it.

Break your tasks down into easy-to-understand parts. A simple and effective way of systemizing is to put everything in a checklist format.

Let’s say you have one ultimate goal for your apprentice to complete: Clean the House.

Where do you start?

Your House (H) is the main goal. The first step is to create a checklist of everything that must happen in order for your apprentice to complete the goal.

In order to complete H, they need to:

• Vacuum the front room
• Make the beds
• Clean the kitchen

Oh no, the kitchen.

How do you clean it, where do you start?

Well to make it easier… you can make a checklist for it. What does your apprentice need to do in order to get the kitchen clean?

• Put dishes in the dishwasher
• Clean up spilt milk
• Mop the floor

And that’s it — that’s all you have to do. Create a checklist and if necessary make a checklist for an item on that checklist and a checklist for an item on that.

It’s simple and effective.

Wax On, Wax Off

It’s easy to spot seasoned professionals and amateurs in the marketing world. The amateurs will usually throw out big promises and use big words. “Your emolument will be exponential with what you’ll learn at our clandestine workshops!” They offer things that they don’t fully understand.

A pro won’t provide false promises and will only use big words if necessary.

As, Albert Einstein said, “The definition of genius is taking the complex and making it simple.”

In order to make a complex concept simple, you need to master and teach the basic fundamentals of that concept.

Take, Mr. Miyagi (Mentor) for example, a karate master who has agreed to train Daniel LaRusso (Apprentice). The first lesson is to Wax On, Wax Off. While at first glance it seems Mr. Miyagi has tricked Daniel into cleaning his car, later on we find out that Daniel has been developing muscle memory for defensive moves. Because Daniel practiced the motions and did the training, he learned to stop the attacks of a karate master. He mastered the basics — the fundamentals that built the foundation for his defense.

So don’t tell people what your concept will do for them… show them, and start with basics because once a trainee has picked up all the parts and put them together, you have a well oiled, complex system that will turn amateurs into pros.