Facebook Advertising

As a marketing consultant, trust me when I say Facebook’s advertising platform is a vehicle worth exploring and recommending to your clients. In 2016, it was one of the most powerful lead generation tools that marketers recommended because it is one of the best, most simple, and most affordable ways to build awareness, generate leads, and ultimately gain clients for local and national businesses.

Don’t know where to begin? Simply follow the steps below.

Set up a Facebook ad account

Setting up and running successful campaigns didn’t use to be as straightforward as it is today. But now, advertising on Facebook is about as simple as setting up an email service. While Facebook advertising can be more complex, it doesn’t have to be.

To create a Facebook ad account for your client, you’ll need to use a personal Facebook account to become an account owner, then associate your account with a business page. Once complete, make your client an admin on the business page in ad manager settings so that they have access to the ad account. Note that your client will need to add a form of payment, and I’ve found sending them instructions on how to do so is always appreciated.

Remember, just because it’s easy to set up and run an ad on Facebook doesn’t mean you should just put it on auto-pilot. It will still require a lot of care and thought over time.

Install the Facebook ad pixel

Many businesses set up Facebook accounts, but it always amazes me how many of those businesses don’t properly install a Facebook ad pixel along with it. This is a critical step in determining the success of a campaign.

Advertising on Facebook revolves largely around the Facebook pixel. Once you create the pixel, you’ll install it on your site and various other locations. Follow these steps to install the pixel and don’t forget to glance over the many things you can do with the Facebook Pixel.

Build your client’s custom audience

With the Facebook Pixel installed, you can begin to tap into the custom audience. This is basically a way to tag everyone that visits your website or takes an action so that you can then adjust what you do specifically for them.

Use lookalike audiences

Once enough people meet the custom audience criteria, you can notify Facebook to build a lookalike audience of even more people who seem to have similar demographics and interests. Consider using Adespresso for this. In my opinion it is so much more intuitive than the Facebook Ads Manager.

Drive traffic and leads

Now that Facebook is set up, it’s time to focus on driving traffic and leads for your client. Have your clients commit to writing one very useful, practical, and informative blog post per month for the next year.

For each post, your client will need to create a simple one-page checklist or case study to drive traffic to that will act as a lead capture device. In my experience, checklists are easy to consume and convert very well. Make the checklist available via a content upgrade using an inline form through a tool like Thrive Leads.

Run your ads

Create a status update for your client pointing to their blog, boost the post, and see what happens. It’s important to explain to your client that it is best to learn by doing and testing, as opposed to bending over backwards to find the perfect approach from the beginning. Aim for 10% conversion on the content form.

One of the great things about Facebook advertising is that you can set your own budget, making it a useful tactic for clients of all sizes. While you can set your budget very low, don’t expect much from it. Initially, you are just testing so you’ll want to set the budget around Facebook’s suggested amount. You can always go back and adjust based on performance.

Test and analyze

Monitoring and analyzing your ads is critical to the success of your Facebook ad campaigns. Considering A/B testing various ads to see which is performing the best and optimize from there. The easiest thing to test is the ad’s image. I’ve seen ads go from no response to a huge response just because it had a different picture.

When used correctly, Facebook advertising is one of the most effective small business lead generation channels out there. Are you recommending Facebook advertising to your clients? What kinds of results are you seeing?