Cozy Up to the Facebook Power Editor

February 8, 2014 by Christine

If you thought Facebook ads with their ability to target specific users were powerful, just wait until you learn about Facebook’s Power Editor. Many Facebook advertisers are familiar with Facebook’s Ads Manager which is a useful tool for managing your Facebook ad campaigns; however, the more advanced Power Editor is not as well known. Cozy up to the Power Editor and gain access to deeper insights and advanced tools that your competitors may not even know exist.

What is the Power Editor?

The Facebook Power Editor is a free browser add-on for the Chrome Web browser that you can download here:

facebook.com/ads/manage/powereditor/

It is designed specifically for use with Chrome, so if you don’t already have Chrome installed, you’ll need to do so. Download Chrome here:

google.com/intl/en/chrome/browser/

With the Power Editor, you can edit your ads in bulk as well as access even more advanced tools than those found in the traditional Create Ad dialog box. You can use the Power Editor to perform even more precise audience targeting thanks to the inclusion of external data from a partnership Facebook has with various data-mining companies. For example, you could target users based on criteria such as household size, whether they are baby food purchasers, whether they are dog owners, whether they make a lot of online purchases, whether they buy luxury brands, whether they subscribe to satellite TV, and much more. This third-party data is provided by Acxiom, Datalogix, and Epsilon. Because this data comes from actual purchasing histories rather than self-reported interests, it can help you more precisely target your audience.

If you have an existing audience you’d like to base targeting on, you can upload that list to Facebook using the Power Editor’s Custom Audience tool. With this tool, you will upload a text or CSV file containing your customer information. For example, if you have a list of names and phone numbers of your store’s customers and want to target them on Facebook, you could do so using the Custom Audience tool – even if you don’t know their Facebook names. The specific details such as phone numbers and addresses are “hashed” which is a means of protecting that information from being revealed while at the same time allowing for comparison. Meanwhile, that information can be compared to Facebook’s active users or third-party databases so that a Facebook audience can be built. Hashing allows Facebook to create matches without seeing either your customer data or the actual data of its third-party partners.

Not only are these advanced targeting options useful when creating an ad, you can save them for use in future ads. This means you do not need to build your audience from scratch each time. This saves time and ensures that once you have created an ideal audience, it will be just a click away.

Powerful Power Editor Features

Power Editor’s targeting is extremely powerful, but that’s not the end of the story. Power Editor comes with some other powerful tools:

• Conversion Tracking: You can create a “conversion pixel” which you can then place on your website. This pixel sends information back to Facebook when a user views your ad and then goes to your website. It lets you know that your ad worked by directing the user to your site.

• Ad Placement: With the basic Ads Manager, you have just a few choices as to where your ad will be displayed such as the right column and in the news feed. With Power Editor, you have much greater control over ad placement. Not only can you specify placement, you can specify placement at the device level. For example, if you’re in the iPhone accessories or iPhone mobile app business, wouldn’t it make sense to send your ad to iPhone users and not to Android users? With Power Editor, you can send your adds to all mobile devices, feature phones only, Android phones only, or IOS devices only. With IOS devices, you can drill down and specify which devices including iPad, iPhone, and iPod. You can even specify a minimum OS version.

• Domain Sponsored Stories: We all know how much more credible word-of-mouth advertising is. What if whenever one of your fans shared a link to your website, you could turn that share into a Facebook ad? You can with Domain Sponsored Ads. With these ads, it’s not you publicizing your website, it’s a Facebook user sharing it with friends.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Facebook’s Power Editor is loaded with powerful ad creation and ad management tools. Cozy on up to it and get even better results with your Facebook ad campaigns.

Thomas von Ahn – Chief Elephant Slayer – Viral Solutions LLC

Watch out elephants! This slayer of business challenges comes with 30 years of record breaking sales, marketing, operations, training and leadership experience . He has worked face-to-face with 100’s of small business owners as well as large firms. His love of creating, communicating, developing and executing results for clients shines with each project, publication and training event. His entrepreneurial spirit, passion, industry experience, education, problem-solving prowess, charismatic personality and been-there-done that attitude leads his client focused approach.

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