Facebook’s Boost Your Business events is a full day packed Facebook training event filled with resources, tools and latest insights from Facebook Experts -all in person! Happening across North America.

Last week, Boost with Facebook Event came to Toronto bringing a full-day packed agenda that provided access to in person solution lounge with Facebook Staff, training from Facebook Experts, panel discussion, and resources to help businesses grow leveraging Facebook Marketing. The event lasted two days, but the agenda was the same! Probably to give attendees the choice to come on either days. Most people took advantage of both days to take overlapping sessions.

Nana Boateng Osei, founder of Bohten prescription eyewear; Jennifer Koss, co-founder of Brika, and Yanal, founder of Peace collection.

The first day kicked off with a small business panel including Nana Boateng Osei, founder of Bohten prescription eyewear; Jennifer Koss, co-founder of Brika, and Yanal, founder of Peace collection.

Takeaways from the panel discussion:

– There has never been a better time to have good ideas than now

– Leverage Your Brand on Facebook and Instagram

– Use Pixel to track your Advertising Efforts

– Experiment and Try New Things Out!

During the Speed Round, the panels were asked to give quick answers to variety of questions;

Question 1. Instagram or Facebook? : All panelist unanimously answered Instagram!

Keep in mind that, all three of the businesses were selling retail products. In case of Brika, it is a marketplace but at the end of the day -they are also a B2C product business as much as B2B with the businesses on their marketplace.

Question 2. Stories or IGTV: 2 for Stories, 1 for IGTV

Watch the full speed round HERE

Shortly after the panel discussion, three workshops followed at the same time for the three levels, I will be sharing summaries from the sessions that I attended (Advanced & Instagram School) :

Boost with Facebook Toronto (Part 1):

Bonus: Small Business Panel Discussion

1) Ads Manager -The Ultimate Time and Money Saver

2) Understanding FB Advertising Results

Share Three Tools to Generate Engaging Visual Content

Boost with Facebook Toronto (Part 2):

3) Building Your Audience using FB Pixel

4) Drive Results using FB Messenger

5) Planning Your Content

6) Instagram School!

Ads Manager -The Ultimate Time and Money Saver:

While the session was assigned Advanced level designation, the break down of the session was extremely easy to follow even for someone who had no idea. Just like the ad manager platform, the Facebook Instructor walked the audience through step by step of setting up an ad. This portion of the learning is widely available online and now, on Facebook Blueprint so I am going to share what I think would benefit you the most: Recommended best practices from Facebook Expert on Facebook Advertising

Recommended Best Practices for advertising on Facebook:

1) As you increase your budget, ROI can go down -so properly evaluate your bid strategy, it’s not just about increasing budget

2) Match your optimization goal as close as possible to your business goal

3) It takes about 50 conversions per ad set per week for Facebook system to better predict conversions

4) If you can’t get to 50 conversion, think about moving your optimizations goal up the funnel.

Tip #4 tip is referring to the funnel: Awareness -> Consideration -> Conversion. In majority of cases, we all want conversion but, in the process we end up ignoring the process and considering the reality of customer journey. We don’t see and buy! It takes some warming up.

If we aren’t getting any conversion then moving up the funnel to increase the awareness for instant with a video can help us target “aware” audience who have seen our brand and show interest.

For those of you who are not familiar with facebook ad manager , here is what the step by step looks like:

1) Set Objective at Campaign Level: Awareness| Consideration| Conversion 2) Define your audience: Core Audience| Custom Audience | Lookalike Audience 3) Choosing Placement, Ad budget (Bid Strategy: Automated options are available) and Timeline for your ads

During the Discussion on Placement of the ad: She pointed out that the automated placement can be a great option when you are running multiple ad set under one campaign since each creative (the visual of the ad) may do better in different placement. I am not going to write further about the walk through because I do find that it’s best to learn by actually going through those step by step in practice on the ad manager. I would encourage you to try setting up an ad today using ad manager.

Try Ad Manager if you have access to a business page: facebook.com/ads/create (Note: You cannot set up an ad without a business page or access to another person’s business page )

Next Session: Understand Your Facebook Advertising results

Again, the instructor highlighted on the importance of matching your business goals with the campaign objective. Define success metrics for yourself before running the ad and keep track of these metrics using ad manager, and optimize your ads based on the automatic report that is generated.

After running the campaign, reflect on who was my audience for the advertising -easily visible on the generated report that reads “Demographic”

Here is an example of an ad from my ad manager, if you take a look at where the arrow is pointing, it reads “View Charts”, its a simple way to access “Demographic Info” for the ads running under the campaign.

When you click on the “View Chart” then Click on “Demographics” You instantly access a visualization of the audience your ad is reaching, gender, and costs associated with lead generation.

Here are the key takeaways from understanding your Facebook Advertising Results:

– Keep in mind your objectives and success metrics while evaluating your results

– Monitor results and refine your campaigns based on their performance

– Customize your data to reflect your business

– Add the Facebook Pixel for Advanced Functionality and Insights

And finally for the first part of Boost with Facebook Toronto, I want to leave you with these three tools/apps that you can use to create visual content today!

Apps/Visual Tools

Here are three Apps/Tools that you can use to create Visual Content using templates and drag + drop:

1) Ripl : Available as an app or browser, Ripl allows you to create eye-catching videos & slideshows.

2) Layout App: Instagram’s newest app is a better way to make collages. Layout lets you create one-of-a-kind layouts by remixing your own photos and sharing them with your friends.

3) Mojo: Stories Editor with customizable template for Instagram Story (24 hour “Snap Chat”) or Facebook Stories.

4) Unfold: This app also allows you to edit and create stories using templates. The main difference is in the styles that it offers: Minimal/Elegant

Thank you for taking the time to read this article! I personally really enjoyed the full day packed agenda with so many passionate marketers, and business owners. If you missed the event! Don’t worry, the classes are covered online. Plus, you are half way caught up with the event with this blog! I am super excited to share messenger marketing, building audience using pixel, content planning and Instagram school experience with you all!

If you enjoyed this and found it helpful, feel free to comment or share!