Whenever one of these events is fired the pixel will report the action back to Facebook and use the data to improve upon your marketing campaigns. Additional custom events are able to created but rarely necessary, particularly for businesses with only a few types of transactions taking place.

Yabber fully automates all events and a simple select menu is used in our SEO panel to specifically force a type of event to be recorded on a page (such as a contact event on your Contact Form page, and we force some type of actions on certain type of pages, such as the ‘lead’ event on landing pages, thankyou pages, and the ‘schedule’ event after a user makes a booking via your integrated calendar).

Facebook Retargeting

Retargeting is a means that allows you to get extremely granular with your advert delivery. Retargeting permits you to target people in ads that previously visited your website and completed some sort of defined action, or visited a specific page. In the e-commerce space you might target somebody that put an item in their cart but abandoned it before purchase.

Retargeting allows you to target First Home Buyers with relevant advertisements and Investors with a completely different ad (often changing the style of ad at the same time by way of an escalated video or carousal advert). Retargeting is an extremely powerful tool.

Because Yabber operates as a Prospect Management System (rather than a CRM), once a user is escalated to Opportunity we’ll automatically remove them from a retarget list and move or keep them in a custom/lookalike style of list (doing so improves Facebook’s understanding of our ideal customer).

Creating a Facebook Pixel

There are some in the marketing digital industry that require coping and pasting of a Facebook pixel code into your website. This manual action is somewhat antiquated and a good signal of digital mediocrity. We’ve made management of pixels easy.

Once the pixel is created in the Platform (or synced if already created), a simple select menu is used to assign that pixel to a website. Your website immediately starts feeding Facebook with the necessary data to assess your website interactions.

  Pictured: Pixel creation in the Platform is easy, and certainly easier than using the Facebook Platform itself. Once the pixel is created, or once you’ve synced existing pixels to the system, your pixels are immediately available from select menus and can easily be sent to your website.

  Pictured: Pictured is the basic Facebook SEO panel. Once your Facebook credentials are created all those options become available in select menus. When sending the basic data to your website necessary for Facebook SEO and FB JavaScript code generation, we do so with the click of a button. This process is only truly appreciated when you understand the archaic competing methods provided to businesses (not to mention the difficulty in updating such data).

Facebook Custom Audiences

Introduction

Facebook custom audiences are groups of people that have previously had a relationship with your business by way of a sale, subscription or phone call (these audiences permit the tracking and targeting as described in the previous section). Once the audience is defined the list of people can be targeted directly in your advertising efforts. The lists can be used by Facebook to generate ‘lookalike’ audiences from a known high-value client list so you might find other people that would likely be interested in your business’ services.

The process of setting up custom audiences permits the retargeting of those people that interacted with your Facebook page or website assets in further advertising.

Platform Real-Time Audience Creation

Belief’s Platform automatically adds an individual to a relevant custom audience list based on various defined actions – such as a subscription to a newsletter, downloading a lead magnet, subscribing to an SMS list, watching a defined portion of a Wistia video, simply clicking on a link within your website, viewing a specific type of page on your website, receiving a phone call, or landing on your website by way of link-click in an email marketing campaign (the latter is a unique and extremely powerful feature that demonstrates the effectiveness of our integrated system).

  Pictured: An example of adding a subscriber to a custom audience as part of form creation. The addition of a user is made in the same way for SMS subscription forms, inbound telco logs, and the completion of any form (including Venus forms). We provide a platform to create highly customisable audiences through our connectivity with Facebook systems.

There are number of ways that custom audiences might be created and we make every effort to ensure that no data source is lost or ignored with any signal-based transaction. In fact, just the basic features we’ve just described are often made available via third-party products for a few hundred dollars per month.

One of the more powerful features of our telco and Facebook integration allows for a user to be sent to a custom audience based on inbound phone calls to your business (yet another powerful feature you won’t find elsewhere).

  Pictured: Jabber (Telco integration) includes a number of triggers, one of which is addition of an inbound caller to a custom list. If Facebook can match the origin number to a user they’ll be targeted with ads utilising that custom audience. This particular trigger is actioned on calls to a specific number (as opposed to any company number) – this makes it ideal for campaign types with a specific inbound or geographic prefix (the latter applies if not calling from a mobile). The system is fully automated and a uniquely powerful feature of BeliefMedia’s system. The Jabber platform is discussed in an upcoming chapter.

Uploading Custom Audiences

While the Platform creates audiences automatically by virtue of various interactions, such as email and SMS subscriptions, completion of Venus reports, and inbound telephone calls, you may upload an existing list of users to Facebook into a specific list. This action may be completed via Facebook or via the integrated tools on the Platform.

Creating a Custom List on Facebook

  Pictured: Creating an audience list in Facebook. Select ‘Create a Custom Audience’ and select ‘Customer list’.

The first time you create a list you’ll be prompted to advise Facebook if the list contains a ‘value’. A value contains the numeric value of that customer to your business.

  Pictured: Accepting terms for a value-based custom audience.

In the finance world this value-based upload might translate to a commission value. The numeric value assigns importance to your customers and enables Facebook to match higher-value customers ahead of lower-yield borrowing. This kind of ‘discriminatory’ targeting isn’t always able to be used by finance practitioners by way of the ‘Special Ad Category’ criteria but it is worth creating if we’re able to automate the process.

  Pictured: Facebook’s upload form to create a custom audience. A sample value-based and standard CSV file is available to ensure you adhere to correct formatting.

The more data you provide in your audience list the better Facebook is able to match a user. Our own system might record email subscribers into a list in real time but a secondary email is often used making matching somewhat problematic. Including a country or state (both fields are automatically created when a subscriber is added to the system) might narrow the options and make the submission higher value.

  Pictured: Example CSV file made available by Facebook to assist with the creation of customer audiences. You may download from Facebook or directly via the Platform.

Before any data is sent to Facebook for addition into any audience list, a form of cryptographic security method known as hashing is used which turns the identifiers (or field values in your CSV files) into randomised code and cannot be reversed. This means that custom audience creation is a one-way process – you may send audiences to Facebook but that’s where the love ends; you cannot download audiences.

Website Audiences

Audiences can also be created by way of website traffic or various types of engagement on Facebook (such as a direct message, engagement with a page post, clicking on a call-to-action, or saving a post). In fact, we’ve even automated the functionality to create audiences out of a simple website link click based on interest type (remembering that no signal should be ignored when it comes to creating an audience).

The audience creation process is one that will you apart from your competition… and it’s the reason we’ve gone to great lengths to ensure we provide the most advanced features in the marketing industry.

While custom website audiences might sound a little complicated and daunting, we’ve automated the process almost entirely to make the process a simple task. As discussed shortly, part of the reason we’ve included the website audience creation features – essentially reproducing some of Facebook’s own functionality – is so we can more effectively create turnkey audiences at the click of a button. We’re also positioned to apply machine learning algorithms to fully understand your audience and how your marketing efforts are performing (and how they might be optimised).

Audiences are created on the basis of certain rules applied to the interaction a user has on your website. For example, you might choose to include a user into a defined audience if they visit a page on your website with the slug of ‘first-home-buyer’ (or just “first”) in the URL. Another example might be the addition of a user to an audience by way of a webpage with ‘investor’, ‘investors’, or ‘investing’ in the URL. Additionally, and a unique feature to our integrated Platform, you might choose to include a user into a custom audience if they click on an internal website link that is labelled with an ‘interest type’ of, say, ‘investors’ (created via the same links used to assist with conditional content). You may use website events such as visiting a contact page, viewing the ‘thank you’ page after a lead magnet subscription, or subscribing to a list, to further build upon your audiences. In some cases you might simply apply a global rule for any user that lands on any page of your website. Of course, if you use the same pixel on a few of your websites you might include only specific domains to be assessed for new audience members.

By applying this myriad of rules (and child filters) we’re able to segregate our audiences into known hot ‘buy now’ groups for further retargeting and possible escalation into our marketing funnel.

  Pictured: Facebook’s audience creation tool. Outside of the ‘Special Ad Category’ (as shown shortly), you may create audiences based on URL part, page interaction, or website actions. Belief has replicated this panel for the manual and automatic creation of audiences via Yabber.

You’re limited to 500 audiences per ad account (you’ll never use that many), and Facebook place no limit the number of audience members.

Creating high-converting rules isn’t necessarily an easy task if you’re new to the world of Facebook. As introduced shortly, this is why we’ve introduced a turnkey option to create ‘kick-start’ Solis rules automatically.

As finance professionals it should be noted that you’re restricted to a ‘Special Ad Category’ (as detailed in an upcoming section) that limits the scope of website and offline audience creation.

Platform Creation of Facebook Audiences

We’ve created our own mechanism to create custom audiences. In fact, the Facebook API permits creation of audiences in a more refined manner than the Facebook platform itself. This additional functionality provided via the API, and the fact that having a one-click form permits one-second creation of ‘typical’ audiences, made the Platform’s integrated feature an absolute necessity.

  Pictured: The creation of Facebook audiences from the Platform. As discussed in the next section, having an integrated audience tool was essential in providing a turnkey marketing solution. Rules are added to a ‘stack’ and then sent to Facebook for creation.

One-Click Creation of Website Audiences

You want results without having to spend time learning the Facebook platform, and the complexity of audience creation isn’t something you want to trouble yourself with in the early stages of your Facebook endeavours. Since the marketing learning process - and learning the depth of available options available via the Facebook Advertising Platform - is one that takes significant time, we’ve created an option to completely automate your custom audiences based on common audience attributes. The simple click of a button will create your initial audiences and our website plugin takes care of the rest. As previously introduced, Yabber also boasts its own full-featured audience-creation tool which occasional negatess the need to visit Facebook directly.

At the time of writing we base lists on defined ‘interest types’ so Facebook targeting pairs with options universally assessed in the Platform. The basic interest types are also most common, such as ‘First Home Buyers’, ‘Investors’, and ‘Refinancing’. The mechanism adds absolute simplicity to audience creation.

  Pictured: Creating default (assigned) users. The single click of a button creates an array of default audiences based on URL criteria and Event types. We enhance audience creation based on website link click features.

The automatic creation of audiences is a defining characteristic of what digital media is meant to look like. In this day and age, the exclusion of this sort of tool in a paid product is somewhat negligent (albeit commonplace).

We want you to understand how website audiences are managed yourself but we also want you to launch highly effective campaigns in minutes – not days.

Creating Lookalike Audiences

When you have created a substantial custom audience list you may create a lookalike audience. Using an existing audience you may create a Facebook-generated list of users that look like your ideal customer, or look like users currently engaging with your business. Facebook will then seed your source list in order to generate their own highly effective list of people to target with advertising.

An Introduction to Facebook Advertising

Introduction

The creation of Facebook advertisements isn’t nearly as difficult as Facebook’s Ads/Business Manage might suggest. The difficulty or challenge with Facebook ads does not lie with advert creation but rather the effort required to constantly assess your audiences and optimise your advert delivery. Of course, if you’re using our system, you’ll have the statistical data necessary to make those decisions, and you won’t have to invest any effort into any of the technical aspects of the process.

We’ve talked about generic one-size-fits-all generic ads elsewhere in the past. While we do provide generic ads for template-based starting points, using the same ad as somebody else is never a good idea, and they’ll never deliver the best results for your business. Ads in Western Sydney won’t necessary work the same way as those in Eastern Suburbs, or even those in Wollongong or the Central Coast. A generic ad doesn’t represent your brand, your voice, or highlight your points of differentiation.

Remember, an advert at its core is a promise - a promise that delivers upon claims your ad copy makes… and the copy used must be consistent with regional vernacular or culture. If you’re sharing the ad with multiple other brokers the ad quickly loses its effectiveness… especially since Facebook’s algorithm will deliver ads with similar targeting and identified interests to the same people (we’ve seen the same ad three times in less than a minute) – how does this generic presence create a point of difference or highlight your unique positioning in the market?

Creating Facebook Ads

We decided not to include the specifics of creating a Facebook advert in this 'brief' article but we’ll likely include details over time. Instead, we’ll introduce just some of the basic and necessary concepts before you create your first ad.

The best learning platform for creating Facebook ads is Facebook itself via their own education portal at facebook.com/blueprint . The training our BeLearn system provides is more of a quick-start ‘do it now’ guide, while Facebook generally provides the education necessary to fully understand how to very quickly create an ad.

Even without any formal training, the Facebook system is very intuitive and enables you to get started with a very low barrier to entry. The Facebook advertising platform – like other similar social advertising platforms – was designed with small businesses in mind. It’s not complicated.

The Lead Cost

We routinely see marketing agencies promote ‘First Home Buyer’ leads for $1.50, or refinance leads for $1.30. We can deliver leads to you easily for under a dollar… but we won’t! The cost of a lead is absolutely no measure of its quality. Would you prefer 100 leads for $1.50 (and covert just a few) or 50 leads for $3 and convert 20 into much higher value products? Targeting higher quality sources (if you ad category actually permits targeting) might cost a little more but they’re well and truly worth the investment.

Do not focus on lead cost. Focus on ROI.

The Finance Special Ad Category

Credit, Employment or Housing campaigns have some limited or unavailable audience targeting options (under what Facebook refers to as a ‘Special Ad Category’).

As mortgage brokers your advertising falls into the Special Ad Category meaning that your ads and audiences must comply with Special Ad Category advertising policies. Failing to abide by these rules, or trying to circumvent them, will get your Facebook account banned (your ads might run initially but you will be caught out eventually). Once again, we've inherited triple-digit brokers from those programs we've listed in our Rescue Package - utterly and completely unacceptable.

As somebody running special ad category advertising certain targeting options are not available:

• Locations: You can target your ads to people by geographic location (such as country, region, state, province, city or congressional district), but not by ZIP code. Specific locations you select will include a 15-mile radius around that targeted city, address or pin-drop. For example, if you want to reach people in the city of Seattle, your audience will also include people within a 15-mile radius of Seattle’s city center.
• Age: You can’t edit this option. Audiences must include ages 18 through 65+.
• Gender: You can’t edit this option. Audiences must include all genders.
• Detailed Targeting: Some demographic, behaviour and interest options are unavailable. Excluding any detailed targeting selections is also unavailable.
• Audience Expansion: You can't use targeting expansion or lookalike expansion options if your campaign is part of a Special Ads Category.

To be clear: we never recommend trying to navigate any policy-based restrictions.

Under the special ad category your options are very limited when compared against the standard targeting and audience options. However, Facebook is good at learning what your audience looks like so will eventually start to show your ads to the right people at the right time. Retargeting, leveraging existing data sources, and good copy is more important now than ever before.

  Pictured: If creating a campaign via Facebook’s Ad Manager you’ll be promoted to tick a box indicating that your ad relates to a special ad category. Failing to do so may get your account banned. Creating an advert via Yabber (if you have access) asks the same question in a step-by-step form.

  Pictured: When creating an audience for a Special Ad Category Facebook will have you confirm your understanding that not all audience members will be used. Options for audience targeting are ‘Custom Audience’, ‘Create a Lookalike Audience’, ‘Create a Saved Audience’, and ‘Create a Special Ad Audience’.

As previously mentioned, Facebook’s Special Ad Category limits the scope of audience creation in a significant way. This limitation isn’t as debilitating as it might appear; Facebook’s algorithm does a satisfactory job or delivering your ads to the right people regardless of the limited targeting options made available to you.

  Pictured: The special Ad Category audience essentially limits your group to location and a percentage match against your existing source list of audience members. Website audiences – or those people identified by way of website or on-page activity – are not discriminated against in the same way.

  Pictured: Standard audience creation tool. Outside the scope of credit, housing, and employment your targeting options are greatly enhanced.

This ‘slight’ disadvantage by way of ‘Special Ad Category’ obligations is the reason we recommend strict compliance rather than opting for an advert that contains lesser information but circumvents the targeting restrictions. You absolutely you don’t want your ad account to be banned (and it will be if you’ve broken the rules). Don’t try and blindly navigate this restriction thinking you’ll avoid identification.

There are numerous considerations with relation to advertising compliance outside the scope of Facebook and they’re introduced in brief in a section on ‘Advertising Compliance’.

Conclusion

We appreciate this article was quite long. However, we'll break up the concepts into bite-sized chunks over coming weeks and introduce to you specific workable concepts you can apply in your business. Certainly, much of the information we've presented is largely redundant because Yabber automates almost everything, and we support your endeavours throughout the entire process.

We vigorously object to the typical tail-wagging-the-dog-approach - meaning that a 'marketer' will find a platform that they can milk for affiliate profits, and then try and make it fit the experience they're trying to sell. Instead, we analysed millions of pieces of data, looked back over our 24+ years servicing the finance industry, and built a system that wrapped itself around what brokers actually need, and what actually converts.

The difference between a bad Facebook product and a great Facebook product is extraordinary. We invite you to call us on 1300 235 433 (1300 BELIEF) and learn how we're able to return more volume than any competing agency in the business.