How to advertise on Facebook: Call-To-Action

What is the first thing you see when you visit a Facebook page? Usually it’s the cover image and the buttons featured at the top of the page. You should take advantage of this viewpoint by changing your cover image to a promo image to ensure your campaign gets the most online impressions possible. Another promotional tool you can use is Facebook’s new call-to-action (CTA) buttons.

Here is an example of the visible buttons on your Facebook page, notice the CTA “Shop Now” next to the “like” button.

Why use a call-to-action?
CTAs are used in marketing to provoke an immediate response or action; they can be an effective tool for increasing conversions (in our case, conversions would be selling campaign items) because they clearly indicate to your audience what you want them to do. Using a CTA button like “shop now” tells your audience exactly what you want them to do…go shopping!

There are a variety of different call-to-actions available for Facebook pages including:

• Shop Now
• Book Now
• Contact Us
• Use App
• Play Game
• Sign Up
• Watch Video

For Fabrily campaign purposes “shop now” will be the CTA of choice; by selecting this CTA you can encourage Facebook followers to purchase an item from your campaign.

How to create a Call-to-Action on Facebook
Creating a CTA on Facebook is very easy can be done in just a few minutes.

Step 1: Select the “Create Call-to-Action” on your Facebook Page

Step 2: Select what type of CTA button you want to use. We will select the “shop now” button because we want people to purchase an item from our Fabrily campaign

Step 3: Enter your campaign URL (or campaign store URL) for the “Website” link

Step 4: Select “website” as the destination for iOS and Android mobile users (so they are taken to your campaign page when they click the “shop now” link). Make sure “website” is selected for iOS devices and click the “next” button on the bottom of the page. Do the same for Android devices and select the “create” button on the bottom of the page.

That’s it! You’ve now got a visible “shop now” CTA on your Facebook page. You should test the CTA  to make sure it works by clicking on the “Shop Now” button and selecting “Go to link”; this action should bring you to your Fabrily campaign page. You can monitor how many people are clicking on your CTA using the display menu on the right side of the screen where it reads “THIS WEEK”:

Visit our Free Promotional Tips page for more info on sale-boosting campaign descriptions, post-campaign promotion and more! We’ll be exploring more Facebook store options so check the free promo tips page for more content!

Click here to launch your own Fabrily campaign today!

Questions? Email campaigns@fabrily.com

How to advertise on Facebook: Boosted Post Facebook Ad

This is what a “boosted post” will look like on your target audience’s News Feed.

There are a lot of different ways you can advertise a campaign on Facebook. In this post we’ll discuss one particular type of Facebook ad; the Boosted Post. This type of ad is a real eye-catcher as it appears in people’s News Feeds front and centre (as shown above).

We know many of you are cringing at the thought of trying to set up a Facebook ad, but we promise it’s not that hard, in fact the Boosted Post is one of the easiest ads to set up in our opinion. There are a few simple steps involved that we’ll cover below, you can refer to our infographic shown on the bottom of the page for a visual guide on the set-up process.

Keep in mind this type of Facebook ad is ideal for use on Facebook pages; so for example this ad could be used by a charity with a FB page, an artist or band with a fan page, or an online community (example Bikepsyche’s Facebook page is an online community for sports bike enthusiasts). You can’t boost a post from your personal Facebook profile so you’ll need to create a Facebook page if you don’t already have one.

How to create a Boosted Post

1. Choose a post to promote
In our case, choosing a post won’t be difficult. We want to promote our Fabrily campaign, so the first thing you need to do is post on your Facebook page about the campaign. Here’s an example of an ideal post to promote:

Why is this post ideal? First of all, it includes a link to our campaign page (when you paste a campaign URL in a post it should generate a preview of the campaign page on Fabrily.com). Here we’ve uploaded a custom promo image for the campaign page preview. Also, notice the call to action we’ve included in the post, “reserve your item now” is a simple and direct CTA.

2. Choose your target audience 
Be sure to use your ad to target people who you think would be interested in purchasing an item from your campaign; it may be best to target people who are already following your Facebook page because you know they’re interested in your content. If you don’t want to waste ad money targeting your followers’ friends (so that the post will only target your current followers) you can go to your Ads Manager and turn off the segment of the ad that targets friends of followers. You can also use a boosted post to attract new followers to your Facebook page – just select the “people you choose through targeting” option and create your target audience based on age, location, interests, etc.

3. Set your budget 
Spending more money on your Facebook advertisement can ensure that more people will see your post…however, keep in mind more impressions does not always equal more conversions (purchases). Be smart about setting your total budget and decide the maximum amount of funds you want to spend on the ad. If you target your audience correctly you can increase your campaign sales substantially!

 Click to the image and zoom to enlarge this step-by-step guide on creating a Boosted Post:

 

Ready to launch a campaign? Click here!

Got questions? Contact campaigns@fabrily.com

Using Pinterest to promote your crowd-funding campaign

What is Pinterest?
So, what is Pinterest exactly? It’s a highly visual pinboard site that lets you “pin” or collect images from the Web. You can create different boards to help categorize/organize your images and add descriptions for each image too. As one of the world’s most popular social networking sites, Pinterest should be a top choice as a free, useful tool for promoting your crowd-funding or fundraising campaign. Below you will find useful information on Pinterest’s smart feed, promoted pins and plugins that can boost sales and traffic to your campaign page.

Why use Pinterest?

• It’s a great platform for increasing your brand’s awareness and encouraging the online community to engage with you.
• Information can be processed very quickly when it’s seen as an image or picture.
• Pinterest makes it possible to drive more traffic to your campaign and leverage shareable images
• It’s a convenient and free way to promote products featured in your crowd-funding campaign

How to use Pinterest to promote your crowd-funding campaign
1. After you’ve created a Pinterest account, set up a special board promoting your campaign – you need to create a board in order to organize and collect items you want to feature. Go to your Pinterest profile page and select the option to “Create a Board”. A box will pop up asking you to name your board, add a description, and categorize it. Once you create a board you can start “pinning” items from your campaign.

Note – When you first start using Pinterest make sure to create other pinboards (ex. favorite quotes, great causes, etc.) within your profile; “like” other people’s pins and re-pin other pins to your boards. This will help you attract new followers who can potentially purchase items from your campaign and/or share your pins to boost exposure.

2. To upload a pin directly from your campaign page select the small circular “plus sign” symbol on the bottom right corner of the page. A menu will appear once you click the button, select “Pin from a website”. A small pop-up message will appear where you can paste your campaign URL, select “next”. The page will reload with multiple images from your campaign page to choose from; select the image you want to use for your pin, click on the red “Pin it” button on the left hand corner of the image.

Click the “plus sign” icon to upload a new pin as shown above

Select the red “Pin it” button in the top left-hand corner.

3. After you’ve selected your pin image, add a description for the pin; you can include a call to action within the description (e.g “Amazing Campaign – Buy now and help our cause!”), explain what you’re raising funds for or how the design was created; include information you think customers will be interested in and add hashtags related to your pin.

Additional tips for your pin description:

• Start with a compelling headline
• Include additional information about the campaign
• Use a call-to-action and link to the campaign
• By adding hashtags your pin will become more search-friendly. Add 3-5 hashtags related to your campaign – Pinterest works in the same way as Facebook or Twitter; by adding hashtags and keywords, people will be able to find yours pins more easily.
• Before adding the description of the pin, you might want to try typing in the “Search” box at the top of the screen to see if any keywords/hashtags are actively used by the Pinterest community. For example if you are a shark organization, we recommend including the related terms #shark, #charity #marine #ocean in your pin description; make your pins easy to find!

Note – Make sure the redirect source URL of a pin is to your campaign page; when users click on your pin you want them to be taken to your campaign page where they can place an order.

4. Pin & share photos of your supporters and like their pins– encourage Pinterest users to post their own images of the items they’ve purchased from your campaign. This is a great way to get people excited about your crowd-funding campaign and any other campaigns you plan to run in the future. Click here for more info on post-campaign promotion.

You are now ready to start using this powerful tool to attract more supporters/buyers and grow your brand. Good luck!

Create FREE promotional images for your crowdfunding campaigns

Promotion is key to the success of your crowdfunding campaigns. Having eye-catching and informative promo images can help boost your campaign sales…the problem is, many of us aren’t too savvy when it comes to programs like Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator. Not to worry though! The Fabrily Team has discovered a useful graphic design site that makes creating promotional images easy. The best part about Canva is that it’s free to use and you don’t need to be a graphic designer to create great promo images!

Canva enables you to create flyers and cover images for Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest, as well as Facebook ad images, business cards, and much more!, There are tons of pre-designed layouts and you’re able to create completely custom images too.

The importance of using promo images:

• Updating your Facebook or Twitter cover image enables you to make an impression as soon as someone visits your page.
• Promo images provide the opportunity to showcase the various items available within your campaign
• They’re an easy way to give supporters all the info they need, like what’s available and where to get it
• Promo images are easily shareable; your supporters can also help you promote your crowdfunding campaign by sharing the promo images you have created; more shares can equal more purchases!

What to include in your promo images:

  

There are 3 things you should aim to include in all of your promo images:

1. Call to action: “Reserve your limited edition item today!”, “Reserve today!”, “Get yours today!”, “Support our cause!”
2. Campaign URL: Include the campaign URL so people know where to purchase your item
3. Showcase items available in your campaign: feature mockups of the products available within your campaign so that people can see there is a variety of item types to choose from

How to use Canva to create promo images
Below is a short video in which Fabrily Campaign Manager Anna explains how to use Canva to create promotional images yourself.

Now that you’ve learned how to create free promotional images for your crowdfunding campaign…you’re ready to to get started!

Optimize item mockups for promo images – how to create transparent background for mockups!

In the video you might have noticed that the garments featured in our promo images and the video tutorial have transparent backgrounds; as most of us aren’t familiar with photoshop or adobe, we’ll explain how to make the background transparent using a free website called Lunapic.

1. Go to your Fabrily campaign page
2. Right click on the garment image you want to feature in your promo image and “save as” a PNG to your computer.
3. To remove the white background go to 166.lunapic.com
4. Select “BROWSE” where it reads “edit a photo” on the homepage and select the garment image you saved from your campaign page
5. Once the image is uploaded, click on the ‘scissors’ icon ()
6. In the center of the screen where it reads, “Tool:”, click the dropdown menu and select ‘Magic Wand’ . Make sure to reduce the “Threshhold %” to 8.
7. Trace/Click the outline of the garment with the magic wand, until the entire outline of the garment is highlighted in red
8. Once it’s highlighted, click ‘Cutout’, which is located towards the top center of the screen. The image will then reappear with a transparent background.
9. Save the new image to your computer by selecting “Save To: Your Computer” which is located in the lower, center part of the screen. Now you’re ready to add it to your promo image!

There are other websites  you can use to create eye-catching images for your campaigns. If Canva’s templates do not include the colours/designs/images you have been searching for, check out PiktoChart instead.

Don’t forget to visit our free promotional tips page and the Fabrily YouTube Channel for more helpful information on campaign set up, promotion guides, crowdfunding tools, etc.

How to use Bitly: Free Promotional Tips for Fundraisers & Crowd-funding Campaigns

When promoting a campaign, fundraiser, online content or website what is your main objective? Clearly it’s to get people to engage with your content by donating to your cause, purchasing an item from your campaign, or for them to help you spread the message right? But before any of this can happen the first step is to get them to click on the content you share!

Most of us have heard of Bitly…but you might not have realized just how useful this tool can be for optimizing promotional efforts for your crowd-funding campaign or fundraiser. Bitly is a URL shortening service that also provides free data on your URL clicks. It’s a very intuitive and convenient site to use (not to mention it’s FREE) and is a great tool for individuals who want to know which channels are the best for promoting their campaign.

Why use Bitly.com?
There are several benefits to using Bitly to monitor your promotional efforts:

• It’s a free service that provides you with insightful info
• Using Bitly will help you save time – once you know which channels are the most effective you for getting clicks on your campaign you can focus your promotional efforts on that channel
• You can use Bitly to see what kinds of tweets are helping you generate the most clicks – it tells you what type of content gets you the most clicks!
• You can also use Bitly to specifically compare different channels like Facebook vs. Twitter vs. Email/Newsletters
• It also provides geographical info on where your clicks are coming from – it tells you who’s interested in your content

How to use Bitly
Below you’ll find a short video featuring Kate, a Campaign Manager at Fabrily, wherein she explains how to use Bitly to monitor your promotional efforts and how to create a Bitly link yourself. 

Please visit our Free Promotional Tips page and the Fabrily YouTube Channel for more helpful information on campaign set up, promotion, and product options.