People often asked if Facebook ads are effective. It doesn’t seem to work for their business.
Facebook ads can be awesome and effective if you do it right.
In certain situations, Facebook ads may be counter-productive as far as your overall digital marketing campaigns go. Still, there are many ways Facebook ads can take your business regardless of its size to the next level.
There are 5 most effective ways Facebook can make an impact on your digital marketing campaigns. Seriously. Believe it or not, simply posting comments, blogs that use the Facebook comment plug-in can actually go a long way in boosting your brand.
Of course, you have to do it at the right time, on the right blogs and with the right content. It's not as straightforward or as black and white as a lot of people make it out to be. Just like anything else in life, just because it sounds simple, it doesn't necessarily mean that it is.
The fact is when you start on Facebook; chances are your initial campaigns will not be all that successful. This is called the Facebook advertising learning curve. Whether you are advertising a dropshipping business, a content base business or a purely local or brick and mortar business, you have to pay for the ‘test and learn’. As a digital marketing agency owner myself, I can tell you that we run successful Facebook campaigns because we have done so many that we know what works and what’s not. When we first started with a new niche or with a new client, it takes time for our team to work out the best target audience, the best landing page and the best ad copy. We run the split test, so we know which ad has a better chance of success. We have done so many different Facebook campaigns. Next time, when we have a client in a similar niche, at least, we have a benchmark to follow. Running a successful Facebook ad campaign, a lot of researches and tests are involved. It’s not difficult to run a Facebook campaign, but it is hard to run a successful campaign with a high conversion rate. So, definitely retargeting ad campaigns are going to help.
Ok, first of the five most effective ways Facebook can make an impact on your digital marketing campaigns is
BUILD A SOLID BRAND IN YOUR LOCAL AREA
The first benefit Facebook ads bring to the table is you are able to create a solid brand in your local area. As you are probably aware by now, I talk a lot about building up your brand.
Just a quick recap: why is having a brand important? When you build a brand, you don’t have to constantly promote your business. Once your business is recognised as a brand, people will seek you out. Your reputation will precede you-and open many doors of opportunity for you. Why? Well, people don’t like to take risks.
With everything else being equal, people would rather do business with someone that they know, they trust, and they have heard of. Best of all, people would pay extra for this sense of certainty.
You may think that you're already doing a good job of branding your business or your personal brand. You may have reached out to local business organisations and social groups to publicise your brand. Maybe you’ve sponsored lots of different local sporting teams or local community organisations.
All these may well be the case, but you shouldn't stop there. You should look for total local market branding saturation, and this includes the digital space. In the case of branding, there’s no such thing as too much of a good thing. You could always use more branding.
Please understand that its more and more of your local competitors find their way on Facebook and other social media platforms. It's only a matter of time until they'd leave you in the dust. I don't mean to scare you, but local advertising in the world now moves at the speed of light. This is one area you cannot afford to overlook or neglect. Simply assuming that it's not going to have much of an impact in your local business is simply burying your head in the sand. It's not an effective strategy. So if you want to leverage whatever brand you've managed to build in your local area, one of the best ways to do this is to run a Facebook marketing campaign.
CONDUCT CONSUMER INTELLIGENT ON THE CHEAP
Surveying your customers and getting crucial products and service development information from them is an effective way of figuring out what your market needs. The more accurate your take is on the pulse of your customers, the more likely you will roll out a successful product or service.
The problem is the traditional ways of getting this type of consumer intelligence can be very expensive. I am talking about phone surveys, paper surveys and focus groups. Traditional consumer intelligence can also take quite a bit of time. Oftentimes, companies would have to run several rounds of surveys to find the information that they are looking for. Also, some surveys need to be run several times to make sure they are reaching the right random sample of people.
Traditional offline or phone-based consumer intelligence gathering is pricey, eats up a lot of time, and needs a lot of costly fine-tuning to produce a solid value for businesses.
Thankfully with the internet, you can also make the whole process more effective and efficient. Using Facebook ads, you can conduct consumer intelligence in your local area very inexpensive. These are people who already have declared interest in whatever you are offering. Just join those Facebook groups that your ideal customers are going to hang out. Put up a survey there and ask for their votes or opinions on something that you want to sell or to teach. For example, if you want to run a healthy diet program for female entrepreneurs, then you would join female entrepreneur groups and healthy diet groups,weight loss groups or even some keto diet groups. Those are the women you want to connect.
TEST OUT NEW PRODUCTS OR SERVICE IDEAS
I'm sure you've seen this many times before. You've come up with the product that you think is very hot and then all of a sudden, nobody buys. The best way to do this is to run actual ads on Facebook to see whether your existing customer base are actually interested in the product or service offering that you are so excited about. That's how you really figure out whether your new offerings will add to your profitability.
BUILD A MAILING LIST
How many times have you heard the saying the money is in the list? It's absolutely true. The money is in the list. The problem is a lot of businesses go through the process in an obligatory way. They basically just go through the motions. They just run a glorified newsletter and not much else. It is no surprise that their mailing list doesn't really deliver the sales that they need to justify the continued existence of the mailing list.
There are no two ways about it-mailing lists deliver a lot of value. I’m not just talking about sales here. While lists are great for cashing in on whatever promo you are running, your list can also deliver consumer intelligence at dirt cheap rates. As you probably already know, consumer intelligence is crucial for sound business strategic decisions. Also, your list can do wonders for your business’ brand persona and goodwill building. If you are interested in start building your mailing list, you can go back and listen to my podcast episode#10 on 4 Crucial Things You Need To Do To Build Your List.
The bottom line? Mailing lists help your brand get ‘up close and personal’ to people looking to develop a relationship with your business. Treat your list with the seriousness and close attention to details it deserves. Otherwise, your list might quickly turn into yet another business liability. Remember, the bigger your list, the more expensive it is to run. Don’t just focus on growing your list. Monetize it as efficiently as possible.
This really is too bad because a lot of local businesses have become very successful and have expanded their operations precisely because they know how to build and work with the mailing list. Well, the good news is, a Facebook ad campaign can help you do the heavy lifting of the most important part of mailing list marketing, which is recruitment. You can get the right ads in front of the right eyeballs so people can click through and end up on your mailing list squeeze page. Best of all, you can do this for a fairly cheap rate.
RETARGET YOUR LOCAL PROSPECTS
I'm sure you don't need me to remind you that a certain percentage of people who end up at your website looking to buy something, but they didn’t end up taking any actions. They only go to your website once, and you can basically forget about them cause they're never coming back.
Well, thanks to Facebook's retargeting, when people go to a certain page on your website, and they go back to Facebook and Facebook's ad network, what do think you they'll see? That' s right. They'll see your ad. When they click on it, they go to the page they left or better yet a page that's closer to the conversion page on your website.
Whatever the case may be and regardless of how you set it up, Facebook's advertising system gives you a powerful tool to let your prospects remember that they looked at your website. In fact, Facebook retargeting increases conversions by 40%.
Please understand that those are sales that you could have lost for all practical purposes, these are lost sales, but here you are retargeting them, "bringing them back from the dead" through retargeting ads.
So, keep the 5 key advantages above in mind next time you consider your digital marketing budget.
Remember that whether your business is a brick and mortar, an online consultancy, a solar company or a winery, you have to have a digital marketing strategy. It's only a matter of time until your competitors eat your lunch. Don't let them do it. The good news is it doesn't have to burn a hole through your wallet. Just reach out to me on how to set up a working Facebook advertising campaign even if you are a complete beginner as I offer personal consultation service for female entrepreneurs. It's time you tap into Facebook advertising. You can email me at branding@makemarketingyours.com or visit my website at www.makemarketingyours.com.