Do you want to discover how to find customers online?
Facebook advertisements provide a great opportunity for businesses of all sizes to capitalise on the powers of the retargeting tools available on the social media platform.
Here is a quick and simple framework for a basic Facebook campaign designed to help generate leads for your business.
Step 1 -
Select Video Views as the campaign marketing objective.
Choose a marketing video that is anywhere between 1-10 minutes in duration – something related to your brand or product that would likely grab the attention of your ideal customer.
Here we are at the top of the 'sales funnel', reaching out to a cold audience. At this stage, advertisements should be value-based with no call-to-action because we are building brand awareness, authority and, ultimately, trust.
The video (or whichever content you choose) should either be entertaining or informative, but it has to give value to your audience, without asking for anything in return.
Why video? Facebook’s algorithm (the technology that determines the order of what you see on your newsfeed) greatly favours video.
Split testing (or A/B testing) is also important at this level.
It is best to split test as much as possible so when you check your performance results you can determine the best performing elements of the advertisement. You can then use this data to scale future campaigns to likely result in a lower cost-per-acquisition (CTA).
Things to split test include: Ad copy, placements, audience targeting and, of course, the video itself. It is best to split test as many variables as you can, but the more you test the more you will have to allow for in the budget.
However, many, many businesses have run highly profitable campaigns with just the one ad-set, so don’t be discouraged if your budget is a concern. This is the audience building phase so spending as little as $5 per day on each advertisement should still see desirable results.
For most fixed-location businesses, the audience targeting for this placement can be left broad, however you want to ensure that you set your geo-targeting to within 15km of your business location. Check out the Detailed Targeting section to experiment with phrases to determine best how to target your ideal customer.
Step 2 -
Select Lead Generation* as the campaign marketing objective.
Lead Generation ads let people show their interest in a product or service by filling in a form in the ad with their details allowing a business to follow up with them.
Create a valuable, low-end offer at a free or drastically reduced price for people to claim. E.G. Two-week free trial (Gym), $21 teeth cleaning (Dentist), etc.
* You can also use the Conversions campaign marketing objective.
This is the retargeting phase.
Advertising to a warm audience gives you a far higher chance of achieving return on ad spend (ROAS). There are plenty of potential warm audiences for businesses to use.
In this example, we are going to use the people who engaged with our previous video advertisement.
In Ads Manager, we are going to create a Custom Audience.
Click Engagement --> Video, then you can choose from the following engagement metrics: People who viewed at least 3 seconds of your video, at least 10 seconds of your video, watched at least 25% of the video, watched at least 50% of the video, watched at least 75% of your video and watched at least 95% of your video.
Obviously, the more time spent watching the video, the more likely that person is engaged and interested. However, choosing the 95% option would drastically lower your potential audience, resulting in a smaller reach and a higher CPA.
There are many other retargeting options on the Facebook ad platform, such as an e-mail or phone number list, website visitors (using the Facebook Pixel) and people that engaged with your brand on Facebook or Instagram. Ultimately, the effectiveness of a campaign such as this boils down to how good the offer is. Those interested in that offer will fill out a lead form and you will be sent their details.
Most businesses are apprehensive about creating a good offer because they feel that it is devaluing their product or services. This is a valid concern, however, it is important to account for the lifetime value (LTV) of a customer. If a lead is satisfied with your product or service and becomes a regular, long-term customer, is it worth losing out at the beginning of the sales funnel? Most definitely.
From here it will be up to your business to provide a quality service and move them up the value ladder.
This is a simple Facebook advertising campaign. To maximise return on ad-spend, you need to constantly be split-testing. Variables to test include: ad placements, audiences, copy, creative and many more.
The more steps there are in an online sales funnel, the more qualified your leads will be and the better chance you will have into turning those leads into paying customers. You can also structure different campaigns for other objectives, such as increasing event attendees or general brand awareness.