THERE are a variety of ways you can drive traffic to your website. Among the most notable are organic search, direct traffic, paid advertising, solo ads, and social media.
And one of the hottest ways to drive heaps of traffic to your website is through social media.
I’m not talking about posting pics of cats or the latest meme which won’t necessarily drive visits from your target audience.
Instead, when used properly – social media can deliver your message at the right time to the right person.
But with so many different social media channels, how do you decide where to spend your time and money?
For me, it’s a no-brainer. Facebook.
And in this post, I’ll highlight how you can use Facebook to drive the right traffic to your business.
Your Audience is on Facebook, You Just Need To Find Them
As of the second quarter of 2016, Facebook has over 1.71 billion monthly active users. I’d say the odds are pretty high that your target audience is among those active users.
So how can you find your audience on Facebook?
Easy – through Facebook Ads.
Check this out:
Facebook Ads have the most advanced targeting options out of any paid channel platform.
- Want to target only local customers?
- Interested in advertising to customers in your CRM?
- Looking to reach people who like a competitor’s page?
- Need to advertise to users who are celebrating an anniversary soon and have a newborn child?
As you can see, with Facebook Ads you can get pretty granular with your requirements.
Don’t believe me?
Here’s proof you can target people celebrating an anniversary and have a newborn:
Pair that up with geolocation and you can fill up the calendar of your bed and breakfast, massage business, or fine dining establishment.
Once you have built out your ideal audience(s), it’s time to make your pitch.
Get The Most Out of Your Facebook Ads
Online just about everyone is being marketed to. And with so much competition for the click, how do you stand out among the noise?
The best way is to test out your ads.
This is rather easy with Facebook Ads in that you can create different versions of your ads to test.
The most common test is what is called split testing, or what is known as A/B testing. Here’s an example of two ads being split-tested:
You can see that the ad on the right outperformed the other by 143%. More information on this test as well as everything you ever wanted to know about split testing on Facebook can be found here.
The key item that was changed was the image as well as the text above it.
As you can see, when you properly test your ads the outcomes can significantly impact the effectiveness of the campaign.
As with just about anything digital, you should always be testing.
I don’t recommend only running a single version of an ad.
For example, what if it is not resonating with the audience (low CTR)? You could be throwing money away at something that is not working.
Instead, you will want a second ad to measure against. This will help you better gauge the effectiveness of each ad.
Another thing to note is that you will want to pay close attention to your relevance score. In short, having a higher relevance score will help reduce the cost you pay to advertise on Facebook.
And who doesn’t want to save some money?
Choose The Right Action for Your Facebook Ads
Unlike most other paid advertising platforms, Facebook allows you an assortment of actions for a user to take.
For example, most platforms simply allow for a “click” on your ad.
With Facebook, you can pick from actions (called objectives) like:
- Clicks to your website
- Website conversions
- Brand awareness
- Lead generation
- App installs
- Offer claims
- And more
Most people choose the objectives “clicks to website” or “website conversions”.
And they might be happy with their results.
However, the lead generation objective might be the most overlooked of the group that can bring the biggest impact to their business.
Let me tell you why…
Hidden Gem of Facebook Ads
The lead generation objective is what I consider the hidden gem within Facebook ads.
Here’s why:
When you use this approach, you are able to gather personal information from the user. For example, first name, last name, email, etc. in exchange for the deliverable they get from your call to action.
Your call to action can be a free guide, e-book, or even a consultation.
And once you have that information, you can reach out to them with the contact information they provided.
Some of you might be thinking, “Why don’t I just link the ad to a landing page on my website?”
You could do that, but you should always be cautious when linking within your ads – be sure you are familiar with the Facebook Advertising Policies before linking to outside offers.
That said, did you know that each click you require someone to take significantly reduces the likelihood of them completing the process? You are asking them to click the ad, go to your page, fill out the form, and click the submit button.
Plus it will require you to build out a landing page, write content, incorporate a form and more – all of which you will need to complete before you even launch your ads.
Aside from staying on Facebook, form fields will be auto-populated with the user information should it already be part of their profile. Things like names and email addresses.
However, if you start asking for additional detailed information the user may have to add this themselves which could hinder conversion rates.
Now there is one caveat to this approach. It’s that you have to manually download your lead data.
Getting Lead Data Out of Facebook
Once you have launched your lead generation ads and started accumulating leads, you will need to export them out of Facebook to load up into your CRM or autoresponder.
It’s important to note that Facebook will only keep your leads for 90 days. So it’s best to establish a recurring task to ensure your leads are downloaded frequently. I prefer doing this daily as the leads are hot and you don’t want them to sit too long before engaging with them.
You can export your leads from your page, ads manager, or power editor.
Once downloaded you can add these leads to your CRM or autoresponder in order to continue engaging with them through various marketing automation approaches.
While you can manually download these leads, you do have other options.
One option is to learn how to use the Facebook API to automatically send your leads to your CRM or autoresponder. If coding is not your thing, Facebook does offer a few integrations with some platforms like Infusionsoft, Marketo, or Maropost.
These are most likely platforms you don’t use or can’t afford.
Luckily there is an option to fill this gap.
It’s called LeadsTunnel – and it makes it drop-dead easy to automate the export of Facebook lead data to your favourite platform. It integrates with over 20 email marketing/webinar tools including Sendlane, Aweber, GetResponse and MailChimp.
Once setup, your Facebook leads will be automatically added to your connected platform instantly. No longer will you have to manually export leads or build out some custom API program to do this for you.
And best of all, using LeadsTunnel is fully compliant with Facebook as it is an approved app.
But no matter what route you decide to go when exporting your Facebook lead data, just be sure to do it often so you don’t lose the momentum you started in the first place.
King of Paid Social Media Traffic
While each platform may have its own unique set of benefits, I think that Facebook Ads rules them all. In part of their sheer size and targeting options, but also due to the ability to generate leads directly in their platform.
This is huge.
Sure, you can generate leads in Twitter or LinkedIn with a similar approach, but the granular targeting of Facebook is tough to match. Pair that with the size of Facebook and you can see why it comes out on top.
So, I would like to know:
Have you used Facebook lead generation ads before?
Do you find the export process to be clunky and time-consuming?
If so, grab an automation tool like LeadsTunnel and access your new Facebook leads almost immediately!
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