I got to go to Facebook! As in, the actual Facebook offices!
I was one of 50 Facebook advertisers hand-selected to go to an all day workshop about direct response Facebook ads (selling on Facebook) at Facebook’s Texas offices.
If you’ve been following me for a bit, you know that I truly love Facebook on so many levels, especially Facebook ads. So when I got the invite, I completely dorked out – picture lots of jumping around and giddy dance moves with no music – and immediately scheduled my flight and hotel.
Thankfully, I was able to reign in my dorking out a little bit while I was there. On second thought, my face gives everything away.
I’m sitting on my flight home right now and while I haven’t fully had time to process everything, these last few days have been a whirlwind of adventure, learning, and new possibilities. I’m overwhelmed and super excited about all the new ideas to implement and test.
And if you’ve been following me for a bit, you probably also know that I love to share what I know and give as much value as possible.
So, today, and over the next few blogs, I want to share what I have learned from going to Facebook. Most of what I learned were more advanced advertising strategies, but today, I want to start with some of the basics.
1. Real people work there. In fact lots and lots of them.
So, truthfully, I knew this already. But I didn’t fully understand the scale of this until I went there. In the Texas office (one of multiple offices around the country), they have about 600 employees there. Crazy, right?
Of those, about 40 of them are ad reps for direct response, which is what my ad rep is and what the workshop was focused on.
2. The people who work there care about making a difference and creating Facebook as something awesome – for consumers and advertisers.
This was apparent in many ways. From the posters all around the offices, saying things like:
Build Social Value
Focus on Impact
Solutions not Slogans
Give More Than You Take
to meeting one-on-one with my ad rep to being able to ask the ad reps who facilitated the workshop any and every thing.
During the networking happy hour after the workshop, I asked about a million questions to one of the ad reps who was incredibly patient while answering all of them.
I left feeling incredibly grateful and completely impressed.
3. Facebook is all about user experience.
Facebook is a place to see stories and to share stories. (I mean, how often of you hear about engagements, babies, and other joyous occasions on Facebook? For me, all the time.)
It’s also a space to share business stories.
Their goal is to give value to everyone. And since there’s 1 billion users on Facebook and Instagram, that’s certainly not an easy feat.
And ultimately, they want to keep consumers happy, because that is how they will continue to grow and how Facebook users will continue to share stories.
If a consumer has a bad experience, they aren’t coming back. So, as an advertiser, if your ad is giving a consumer a bad experience, your ads will suffer. As a Business Page Owner, if your posts are giving the consumer a bad experience, this can affect your reach. On the other hand, when you give users a good experience, you’re rewarded with better costs on your ads and more reach on your posts.
So for us, as advertisers, and Business Page owners, I see it as our job to create the best ads and the best posts possible – ones that people want to engage with. This helps us and them.
FUN FACT: If someone is a fan of your page, they can see up to 4 ads a day from you. If they are not a fan, they can see up to 2 ads a day from you.
So, there you go, part 1 of who knows how many parts of what I learned from going to Facebook.
As always, I want to hear from you!
What questions do you have about Facebook and Facebook ads? Let me know in the comments or in my Facebook Group HERE.
