Get More Prospects and Sales with Facebook Ads
Facebook has more than 1.8 billion monthly active users. Thankfully, you don’t have to search through all of these users one-by-one to connect with your target market. Facebook provides amazing tools that essentially find your target market for you. But, don’t stop there. You can get more prospects and sales with Facebook Ads.
One of the big advantages of using these tools together is that you have more time to engage with your followers and prospects. This is very important because no one and nothing can take your place, when it comes to building trusting relationships, as you interact with each person. To help you make and maintain solid connections, engage with your audience as much as possible. Here are a few ways to make engagement, your audience members, and their needs top priority.
Engage with your audience
One of the most important factors in success using Facebook is engagement. The more you find ways to engage with your audience the more likely people are to respond to your ads when you run them.
-
Post Polls
A great way to get engagement is to post a poll. Ask a question about what you should call your next product. Ask a question about which graphics they like better for your next eBook cover. This serves the purpose of encouraging engagement, but also it creates buzz about what you’re working on next.
-
Go Live
Even outside of running ads, try to “go live” a few times a week. This gets your audience use to seeing your face and interacting with you. Remember, the recording can always be used for an advertisement later.
Focus on sharing good information with your audience, for example, ‘The Anatomy of an Effective Backlink: What Makes The Best Links To Acquire Traffic and Ranking“, asking for a comment, a ‘like’, and a ‘share’. Then when people comment, respond, don’t just “like” their comment, tell them thank you, and add to the discussion.
Post product pictures and updates
Try to make it a habit to post pictures and updates about your products and services on your Facebook Pages. Even if these posts aren’t ads they will help contribute to the overall look of your Facebook Page and your business activity.
Post Ideas
- Day in the Life
- Unboxing
- New Packaging
- Branding Images
- Events
- Community Involvement
When someone clicks through your ad and sees more activity on the page, they’re more apt to like your page and follow through on your call to action.
Increase Likes
The first thing you should do is cross-promote your Facebook Page to your email list, and current customers. This is going to help spread your page to their friends and give you a bigger audience. One way to increase likes is to boost a post that has helpful information without a direct advertisement.
Ideas for getting more likes:
- Invite Your Friends
- Invite Your Email List
- Invite Customers
- Boost Your Announcement Posts
- Boost Your Blog Post Blurbs
- Ask People to Share
Boost a freebie or a coupon code so that your audience can grab a checklist or coupon and get on your email list. Encourage sharing, and you’ll end up with more likes on your page. Fill out all the information you can on the profile of your page to ensure that people searching for a page like yours can find it.
Host a Contest
Everyone likes to win a valuable prize. Host a contest and market the contest using Facebook Ads. A contest will help you get more likes (prospects) as well as help you make more sales, if the prize you choose is related to a need, as well as a product solution.
Contest Ideas:
- Post Picture of You with Our Product
- Write 500 Words about How You Will / Did Use Our Product
- Win a Free Ticket to Event
- Promote a Coupon for Shares
- Promote a Content Upgrade for Use of Hashtag
Facebook has an app for contests that you can find here. Use Facebook’s internal tools as much as possible to help keep your audience’s positive experiences consistent.
Convert prospects to subscribers
When you run a Facebook Advertisement, focus on list building rather than direct selling. This gives them time to get to know and trust you. There are many ways to accomplish this from offering a free checklist or other content upgrade and then turning the post into an advertisement via the ad manager.
List Conversion Ideas:
- Give an exclusive permanent coupon off for list members
- Provide exclusive content within your email
- Give an eCourse via your autoresponder
- Offer a Checklist or Cheat Sheet
- Create a Free Lead Magnet That is Valuable to Your Audience
Make your prospects feel special and valued by giving them an “exclusive offer” when they join your mailing list. Also, make it a “limited offer” that they just can’t refuse.
Make Contacting You Easy
Before running ads on your Facebook Page, make sure your contact info is correct and found in multiple places on your Page and profile. Also, link to your website, in case they need to use the contact form there. When you make it easy for people to contact you, it gives them the impression that you really do care about them.
Use Video in Your Ads
Video is a very important tool for advertising. Facebook Ads with video perform a lot better than Facebook Ads without video. Plus, you can say so much more in a video than you can with a static image and text.
Video Ideas:
- Day in the Life
- Unboxing
- Short Lesson
- Expert from a Live Event
- Testimonials from Others
Include text with the video but create a short 90-second or less video that you can use for marketing purposes. Think outside the box and don’t make it all about selling. Make it about showing the benefits.
Go Live
Did you know that you can turn a presentation on Facebook Live into an advertisement too? This is a great way to use the Facebook Live feature. People see your promotion when it’s live, which is great. But, once the video is recorded, edit it. Add text to the description box, including any landing page links. Choose a good image for the thumbnail. Next, go into your ad manager and choose that video as your advertisement. These video ads tend to have a more authentic feel and they are a great way to use “look-a-like” audiences.
Focus on Providing Value
People don’t go to Facebook specifically to shop. However, Facebook Ads that focus on a valuable free solution or information tend to get more interaction. This frequently leads to more mailing list subscribers because the viewer sees your ad offer as being helpful, rather than as a sales ploy.
When you focus on being a resource to your audience, you build trust much faster than if everything is always about selling. Think about how and why you tell friends about a good deal you saw at a store. You share good information with people you care about. Since you want to build a caring relationship with your readers and members, take this same approach with them.
Build a Solid Brand Identity
Make your Facebook Page stand out by branding it with your colors, fonts, voice, style, logo, and more. The images you use help to create an overall impression of who you are and what your business stands for or values.
-
Facebook Cover
You can create a cover in Canva using their templates. The important thing is to ensure it matches and supports your existing branding. This is very important. If your audience doesn’t instantly recognize your brand, you run the risk of confusing and losing them. Keep your brand as consistent as possible across all of your accounts and your website.
-
Profile Picture
Consider using a picture of yourself, as well as your logo. If you have people that work for you, posting a group picture may be an option. Your audience is more likely to trust you on a personal level, rather than as the head of a company. The more you can humanize your business the better your relationships will be.
Carefully choose images that represent concepts that you want your audience to associate with your business. Make sure to use images that are legal for commercial usage. When in doubt, take your own photos or have a graphic designer or digital marketing agency create images specifically for your business.
Study Your Audience Insights
Facebook has amazing analytics available. On your page, click “insights” and drill down to find out more about your Facebook audience. This is very useful because the more you know about your audience, the better you can meet their needs, as well as adjust your marketing plan as needed.
You can learn:
- Demographics
- Likes, interests, and hobbies
- Lifestyle such as where they shop
- Place of residence
- Educational level
- Job Titles
- Relationship Status
If your targeting is off track, you may not have the right audience. This will give you the information you need to tweak your Facebook Ads so that you can choose the right audience.
Develop Ads for Different Audiences
Most businesses, while having an ideal target audience, have segmented audiences too. These sub-sections make it possible to create different ads for different segments. This is useful when using look-a-like audiences and retargeting. You can also run ads that only target people who have liked your page, ensuring that they see the information you post.
Use Look-a-Like Audiences for Ads
If you already have an email list, one great way to get more likes for your Facebook is to target the members of your list. Facebook allows you to upload your audience email addresses so that you can target just them, or you can match them with a look-a-like audience. Facebook uses an algorithm to compare your list with others, so they can deliver your advertisement to a wider audience.
Image supplied by maxpixel.freegreatpicture.com/
Image supplied by maxpixel.freegreatpicture.com/
Use Retargeting with the Facebook Pixel
Don’t forget to install the Facebook Pixel on your website. The pixel will make it possible for you to run ads that target only people who have previously visited your website. Install the standard code on every page, but put the event code on specific pages that you want to target. You can find direction for doing this here. How and where you install the Pixel will depend on the platforms you use, such as WordPress, Clickfunnels, and so forth.
Create Effective and Specialized Landing Pages for Each Ad
Don’t forget to make great landing pages. A landing page is designed to reduce distractions, and allow viewers to focus on the main call to action.
Each advertisement should have its own landing page. This helps your viewers understand what you want them to do. There is software to help you create amazing landing pages, such as Clickfunnels.com, Leadpages.net, Mailerlite.com, and Convertkit.com.
Ensure Your Images are Amazing
Facebook is all about the visuals and sharing. A plain text post doesn’t get as much engagement as a post with an image. What’s great is you don’t have to use product images. Instead, you can use images that prompt feelings related to your product or message.
For example, if you sell services you can show a picture of someone sitting on the beach, with a post about how you can have more time for the beach if you outsource. Conversely, you could post a picture of someone who is frustrated and needs help. Then offer the solution via the text portion of the post. Either way, the images should look sharp, be the right size, and not have too much text on them.
Stop Selling So Hard
The best way to use Facebook Ads is to use them to promote your brand more often than you use the ads to sell a product. Building your email list should be the main goal of most Facebook Advertising. It’s easier to make sales to people who sign up for your list before you start suggesting paid products. However, don’t let that stop you from including links to landing pages that sell, especially on the recorded Live events.
Facebook is a very powerful platform that enables you to narrow your target audience even down to the zip code. Don’t be afraid of Facebook Ads. Go check out your Ad Manager now to find out how simple it is to use. If you’re unsure, outsource a Facebook Advertising campaign to an expert and find out if it’ll work for you. You can learn a lot just by running inexpensive, five and $10.00 ads. Facebook makes it simple by giving you tips along the way.
Search Domination is a premium digital marketing and social media management company.
#SearchEngineOptimisationSunshineCoast
