In a digital world bombarded by advertisements, one thing can make the difference between a successful ad campaign and one that falls flat – social proof. This little media buying hack will make your ads stand out and build that social proof.
Picture this, your customer lands on your website, navigates around but ends up not purchasing. Next thing they know they are seeing ads on Meta (Facebook & Instagram) with thousands of happy customers commenting how much they love the product and how they don’t regret purchasing it. This is the modern-day referral program. Let your customers do the marketing for you!
This also works at the top of the funnel (not just retargeting). 500+ comments on a post is a scroll-stopper in and of itself.
Below is a step-by-step guide on how you can use this little hack to level up any campaign for a few bucks per day.
First, let’s create an Engagement Campaign
In your ads manager, create a new campaign
Select Engagement
Select manual engagement campaign (because you’re badass and don’t need an AI to hold your hand)
Name your campaign whatever you deem fit for my example I’ll use: “00. Customers | Engagement | CBO”
For this example, I’ll be using Advantage campaign budget but that is optional based on your goals. My goal is the cheapest engagement possible. You may want to do ABO if you want more control over which audience gets more budget.
Ad Set Level
There are a few different audiences you can test here. Feel free to experiment with different audiences but for this example, I’ll go with people who have purchased from me in the last 30 days. That way, I get in front of customers who freshly purchased and are excited about the product/service.
Name your ad set
Change Conversion Location to On your ad
Change your Engagement type to Post Engagement
Build out your audience targeting as you wish.
I’ll go with a custom audience of Purchasers in the last 30 days
Now that the Ad Set is ready to go, delete the draft ad and click Publish
Grab Existing Post ID
Next, locate an existing ad you would like to boost engagement on. For this example, we’ll be using a retargeting ad as described in the intro part of this blog post.
To get your existing post ID head over to your ad
Click View Charts
Click the ➡️ Share button
Select Facebook Post with Comments
This will open a new tab. Your post ID will be in the URL of this page
Copy this Post ID to your clipboard
Creating the Ad
Now that you have the Post ID, we’ll head back over to the Engagement Campaign and publish an ad there.
Go to the Ad Level of your Engagement campaign
Create a new ad
(optional) Name it your Post ID (for easy reference)
Click Continue
Under Ad Setup select Use Existing Post
In the Ad Creative section click Select Post
Paste your Post ID here. This will bring up the Retargeting Ad we chose in step 5 of the Grab Existing Post ID section
Click Continue
You will now see your Ad, click Publish, and watch the comments come in! 🎉
Note: You can not edit any portion of your ad — any changes to an ad will wipe the comments and creates a new post ID.
