My favorite thing to hear from prospective clients when discussing their digital ad campaigns is how the leads they are getting from a platform are not good and the campaign is a waste of time. The truth is that very rarely if ever is it the platform itself that is to blame. It’s simply the impatience of the brand.
It’s understandable that if a business owner starts running a campaign on Facebook and they get a lot of lead traffic downloading whatever item of value they attached to that ad, they want to see those leads turn into customers. It’s just rare that a lead that has come across that brand for the first time will immediately become a customer.
Think about it from your own experience. How many times have you seen an ad, downloaded say a link to a webinar or a PDF and immediately been willing to commit to entering a business relationship with a company? Odds are it’s very infrequent.
So for the brand that just ran a Facebook campaign that is picking up leads, the leads don’t suck. Your expectations are misaligned and you need to remind yourself that all buyers go through a buyer journey. You can’t just stop at your ad campaign and expect money to start rolling in. You have to nurture the lead and bring them along the journey to the point where they are comfortable with you, think of you as a thought leader in your space and are ready to pull the trigger.
Today I want to share with you three great ways you can continue to engage your leads, getting them to shift from lead to customer.
Run Retargeting Campaigns
One of the most powerful ways to convert your leads into customers is with Facebook retargeting ads. Once someone has taken that initial action (such as downloading a free PDF guide), you can retarget them with ad copy that could read something like:
“Thanks for downloading my free guide! Be sure to take the next step here…”
Often, when leads don’t take that next action, it’s not that they don’t want to or they’re not interested. It may be because they were distracted or it wasn’t convenient at the time.
How many times have you gone to purchase something online and suddenly your phone rings and you get distracted? Of perhaps you realize your spouse has your credit card and you need to purchase at a later date? Then, as you move on with the rest of your day, you may just simply forget to go back to that page and complete your purchase.
We all do it. Sometimes a little reminder is all it takes to get someone to come back and buy from you. Retargeting ads are perfect for this.
Retargeting ads to leads with an invitation to purchase can result in some of the best ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) ads you will ever run. You know the audience. You know what their problem is (based on the topic of your lead magnet), so you can be super-specific and personable in your ad copy.
To create a Facebook retargeting campaign, you need to create a custom audience of people who have become leads. You’ll do this based on people who have visited the thank-you page that is associated with whatever landing page your original campaign took them to.
Create A Strategy To Offer Warm Leads Follow Up Purchase Offers
So now that you have someone that has downloaded a PDF, or signed up for a webinar, you have to remember that since they may not commit immediately, you need to have a strategy to offer them the opportunity to purchase again. In fact, you should be doing this a few times and across multiple channels.
One thing I do frequently is on the thank you page for a downloadable PDF for instance, I will put a video in the thank you page itself, thanking the lead for the action they just took and offering them a tripwire offering that they can purchase right then at a discounted price by clicking a button below the video.
Since the lead is already in the frame of mind for what I am offering, if my message to them is succinct and details for them exactly what they’ll be getting and how they get a discount for acting at that moment, the odds are much higher that they will convert right then and purchase.
What if they don’t take that opportunity then? That’s okay also and I am already equipped with countermeasures to deal with that.
For instance, anyone that doesn’t act on the tripwire page will then get two or three follow up emails from me that restates the tripwire offer and offers to extend the same deal to them, should they click on the link in the email and complete their purchase.
If the landing page they originally clicked on included them giving me their mobile number, I’ll also use an SMS campaign to remind them about the tripwire offer and try to get them to click on a bitly link to go back to that page and complete the offer.
You should have a few different strategies set up ahead of time. This will help you capture more business and make your campaign that much more profitable.
ABT (Always Be Testing)
One of the most important things to take into consideration when you are running digital campaigns is you do not know everything. While you may have the perfect campaign on paper, sometimes for whatever reason, things just don’t work the way you anticipated.
You may be getting tons of leads downloading your initial PDF for instance, but then nobody converting after that point. Because of this, testing is a critical part of the process.
For instance, on your thank you page after the initial download, test a page that has a thank you video embedded in it against a sales copy page that has no video and just copy and a button to the upsell.
With your follow up campaigns, test different email formats to see which get the most engagement and click-throughs.
The point is, remember that no matter how smart you think you are, you are eventually going to hit a roadblock. The roadblock isn’t that the platform you are using is giving you bad leads. It’s just that there is a puzzle you need to figure out to get your lead to move through your funnel to get them to the point where they want to do business with you.