Unfortunately, many people approach it in a way that loses rather than makes them money. They then reject Facebook advertising as a source of new leads and customers. This also means they lose out on revenue that’s otherwise sitting there waiting for them to take advantage of.
But with a slight shift in approach, they could run ads with a positive ROI (Return on Investment). By doing so, they can claim a new and often very profitable revenue stream for their business.
Here’s How To Make Advertising On Facebook Work …
It all starts with your Facebook Page, or fan page.
Your fan page needs to be updated regularly with new content. This keeps it fresh and alive, enhances your business’s credibility, and connects with your audience.
In terms of advertising, truth is, it’s difficult to advertise on Facebook effectively for the long term without ensuring your fan page is regularly updated.
It’s been designed to work like that.
Facebook doesn’t just want a bunch of advertisers. They need those advertisers to be posting other content too. Otherwise they lose their user base and their whole business model starts to fall apart. Facebook users will simply go elsewhere to find content that interests them.
You start by running ads for the fan page itself.
(You’ll see how this ties in with running external ads soon. In other words, ads that link to your own web site for example.)
Here’s how it works …
Start A ‘Like’ Campaign For Your Page
Start by running a campaign for people on Facebook to Like your fan page.
Why do you need people to Like your page?
It means:
- You start building a profile of people on Facebook who are interested in your business and what you offer. When you do start running ads direct to your website for example, you can show them to people who have already Liked your page. As a result the ads are far better targeted and more cost effective.
- Your Likes are effectively leads for your business. They are an audience of people who you can continue to communicate with. Those who Like your page will continue to see your posts and updates to that page. This helps keep your business front-of-mind, and is key to increasing sales.
- Social proof is a vital part of the sales process. Your Likes help establish your credibility as a business.
In terms of social proof, think about this.
Which one of the following types of business would you be more likely to purchase from or want to connect with?
- A business with a handful of Likes, and the odd sporadic update every now and again if at all. The last post may have been some weeks or months ago, in fact; or
- A business with a few thousand Likes to their page, and regular timely updates. It also has obvious signs of engagement and interaction with their audience.
Obviously, most would pick the latter. All that social proof gives it far more credibility and trustworthiness.
Likes can also have a direct impact on sales and thereby your levels of profitability. Like it or not (excuse the pun), the Likes on your page have a direct impact on your sales conversion rates.
Furthermore, Likes positively impact your ad click-through rates. This makes advertising on Facebook more cost effective and profitable over time. Here’s how:
Facebook users can hover over the profile pic on your ad. In doing so, they see the number of Likes your page has had. This helps them determine whether clicking through is worth their while.- In your ads, users are not just able to click on the ad itself. They can also click through to your Facebook Page to find out more about you. The number of fans you have, and how regularly you post, form a key part of the overall impression they make about your business. This can again impact on whether they click on the ad itself or not.
- Once you have run a campaign, you can ask Facebook to create a ‘lookalike audience’ of people similar to those who have Liked your page. You can then run your ads to this new audience. This gives you better targeting, higher click-through and cheaper ads.
Email leads
To get even more bang for your buck, consider combining Likes with adding leads to your email list:
- Set up a tab on your fan page as an opt-in page. This means a simple form where someone can leave their email address in exchange for something of value to them. This could be a free video, training information, and so on.
- When you set up your Like campaign, you can select to send new fans to this opt-in page, rather than the main fan page itself.
Even if you do the above, you’ll still need to ensure your Facebook page is regularly updated with new posts:
- Many people will have a click around first to find out more about you before opting in. A lack of activity on your fan page will reduce your opt-in conversion rates …
- You’ll want to keep in touch with your new fans through regular updates. As stated earlier, this helps ensure your business stays front of mind and can help boost sales …
Start Advertising Your Business Directly
So you have your Like campaign up and running. This rewards you with a growing community of fans. These are all prospects who have raised their hand and said they’re interested in what you do.
You now have a couple of key advantages when you start advertising your business directly on Facebook:
- You can run advertising directly to your fans. For example, you might encourage them to visit a sales page. Because the ads are shown to people who have already Liked your page, it’s very targeted. Consequently it is often very cost effective with a high ROI (return on investment).
- Secondly, and this is very powerful, you can let Facebook find you a ‘lookalike audience’ based on your existing fans. This means they will locate people on Facebook with similar interests who are likely to be in your target market too. This vastly extends your marketing reach. It also means your ads will be increasingly targeted which helps keep costs low.
Hopefully you can now see the importance of starting with an effective Like campaign when you begin advertising on Facebook. To ensure this is effective, as described above, this goes hand in had with regular updates on your fan page.
Let Facebook Find Other Potential Buyers For You
Start ‘tagging’ people who purchase from you and identify them as buyers. You do this by putting some Facebook conversion tracking code on your site.
This basically tells Facebook who has purchased from you. You can then ask Facebook, once again, to find you a lookalike audience who you can advertise to.
This has the potential to be incredibly powerful and valuable for your business. The more buyers you have ‘tagged’ in this way, the more effective and accurate the process becomes. Over time, your ads become increasingly targeted, cost-effective and profitable.
As you can see, by using Facebook advertising, finding a market for your business consisting of interested prospects and potential buyers becomes a largely automated process. When approached in the way described here, it can be very profitable.
The Essential Elements Of Profitable Facebook Advertising
By now you may well agree that if you’re not already advertising on Facebook, you probably should be.
The important point to reiterate is that it should start with two key essential elements:
- Running a Like campaign to increase the number of Likes your fan page has. Ideally, you should keep this going as a long-term activity, although you will need to update, refine and optimize the ads every so often.
- Posting regular updates to your page to:
- Encourage Likes
- Build trust and credibility
- Boost sales conversions
- Keep in touch with your fans and foster positive relationships
- And more …
Get this right, and the rest can follow …
Unfortunately many people don’t take this approach when they first advertise on Facebook. They leap straight into advertising their website directly. As a result, they can be left with a campaign that loses rather than makes them money.
They also miss out on the opportunity to build influence within a community they can then communicate with directly.
Posting Regular Updates
As discussed, by updating a fan page on a regular basis:
- It looks more credible.
- It has more content to grab the visitor’s attention.
- It increases the number of fans (Likes) your page attracts; and
- Ultimately it means far more people connect with you and enter what could be referred to as your Facebook sales funnel.
This ‘funnel’ can be roughly outlined as follows:
- Like your page and become a ‘fan’ …
- Possibly opt-in to your email list via a tab on your fan page (as mentioned above) …
- See updates from you on Facebook on a regular basis (and emails if they’ve opted in) …
- See advertising from you directing them to your website …
- Through this relationship-building multi-touch approach, they become a customer …
And, let’s not forget, once someone is a customer with you, they can potentially purchase from you multiple times. The oft-mentioned statistic is that it’s 10x easier to sell to an existing customer than to a new one.
So, posting regular updates to your fan page can lead to a profitable Facebook advertising campaign.
The only problem is that many business owners struggle to do this on a consistent basis. Often it’s only taken care of sporadically or not at all. And that means wasted opportunity and money left on the table for your business.
While you can take care of the posting manually, you can save a lot of time, make it more efficient and even outsource the post writing itself by using vWriter.com.
More importantly, you can ensure it gets done. As described in this post, that means you help ensure advertising on Facebook is a profitable experience for your business.
