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6 Fast and Easy Ways to Increase Lead Generation

Looking for simple and effective ways to increase lead generation? Then, check out these 6 lead gen tips. Generating leads has never been so easy.

What do you do to bring in a continuous flow of qualified leads to your business on a daily basis?

Mapping out a lead generation strategy, learning how to nurture those leads and improve your conversion funnel over time, will help your business grow.

But if you’re ready to accelerate and grow your lead gen strategy, here are six fast and easy ways to increase your lead generation.

Lead Generation Solutions from Conversion Sciences

And don’t miss out on these 7 Risk Reversal Tactics For B2B Lead Generation

1. Choose the Right Social Media Platforms for Lead Generation

Social media is a powerful top-of-the-funnel approach to generating leads. Don’t invest time and money into every social media platform there is until you know what works for your business.

The key to social media for lead gen is not just your brand’s presence, but conversion rate. Basically, how prospects turn into leads.

If you’ve already established a presence on all platforms, see how much traffic each one drives to your landing pages via Google Analytics or a comprehensive social media management platform that allows for conversion tracking. What social media channels are consuming your content or bringing you the most traffic and leads?

Choosing the right social platforms for your lead gen efforts will directly impact your conversion rates and reduce your ad spend.

A Social Media Lead Generation Campaign Example

For those connections that are further along in their decision-making process, our conversion tracking efforts focus on those who join our email list, download a report, join our blog course, or complete a contact form.

We run a campaign that offers a free report for specific industries. Our large Twitter audience brought in the most clicks and leads. However, our data showed that LinkedIn leads convert at a higher rate than Twitter leads. As a result, we began focusing more on LinkedIn.

2. From TOFU to MOFU: Educate Your Buyer with Reports and Whitepapers

Offering free white papers, reports and ebooks are a great way to generate leads while making your prospects experts at buying your products. They are also a great way to create email marketing lists for those who are higher in the funnel (TOFU).

Many digital marketing agencies say, “if you provide something of value to prospects, they will give you their respect, time, loyalty, and ultimately their business.”

If it only were that easy.

At Conversion Sciences, oftentimes we use blog posts to test topics of interest to our clients’ audiences. We will prepare a live presentation or webinar on hot topics. These presentations get cast into case studies, blog posts, reports and social media posts.

But writing a report simply isn’t enough. Targeting your whitepapers to the right audience is key. You can earn a second chance to convert visitors (MOFU or Middle of the Funnel) with re-marketing ad campaigns. highly targeted and personalized email marketing campaigns.

Also, consider LinkedIn groups and to test content offers to improve lead generation.

21 Quick and Easy CRO Copywriting Hacks

Keep these proven copywriting hacks in mind to make your copy convert.

43 Pages with Examples
Assumptive Phrasing
"We" vs. "You"
Pattern Interrupts
The Power of Three

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3. Fast and Easy Ways to Increase Lead Generation with Social Video

On social networks, likes and shares have proven to be poor predictors of lead quality. And pretty bad at generating leads as well. Video views, on the other hand offer two benefits to B2B lead generation.

First if a visitor watches one or more of your videos posted to Facebook, Linkedin or Instagram – or embedded on your site – , they begin to build trust and affinity for your brand.

Second, when a visitor watches your video, they can be retargeted by ads and driven to your landing pages. These visitors tend to be more likely to click and to convert into qualified leads.

So in the lead generation game, optimizing for video views could be a better approach than strictly focusing clicks and conversions.

Two examples of Lead Generation and Lead Nurturing when Optimizing for Video Views

Prager U offers mini-courses up to 30-minutes in length to highlight their content. These videos aren’t posted to Youtube. They are run as long-form ads. Their ultimate goal is to generate donations. Meanwhile, they focus on brand exposure (video views).

I watched a 28 minute presentation from New York Times best selling author Jeremy Gutsche on creativity and culture. I notoriously skip ads on Youtube. Ultimately, Jeremy is hoping to get more speaking engagements and book sales.

Jeremy Gutsche ad.

4. How Facebook Ad Targeting and Retargeting Builds A Lead Magnetic Field

Did you know the Earth produces its own magnetic field which is important in navigation? It also shields the Earth’s atmosphere from solar winds that are capable of destroying humanity as we know it!

When it comes to ways to increase lead generation, you should think of your business as the Earth, Facebook Ads at the magnetic field, and your competition as the solar wind.

Facebook Ads will help discover and navigate your prospects to your lead-generating content, and bring them back to “Earth,” aka your business.

Let’s say you are a software business looking to build a sales lead pipeline for a new service for apparel companies. Placing a Facebook pixel on your website will help display your ads to people who visited your site, measure the effectiveness of your ads and gather data on the actions taken by these visitors on your site. You could craft an ad campaign to retarget those visitors that did not convert, or build a “lookalike” audience to reach people on Facebook with similar characteristics to those who did convert.

Facebook Retargeting Campaign Example: Google Fiber

Take Google Fiber for example. I was recently referred to its site by a friend who mentioned it will soon be available in the Austin area. I snooped around the site but lost interest, since it isn’t making itself available in my part of town. In the days following my visit, this is what I saw in my Facebook News Feed.

I saw a retargeting ad about Google Fiber when I logged into Facebook

Their ads were smart enough to deliver geographically targeted content.

When I click on the “Sign Up” button. I’m directed to a landing page to enter my address to see whether Google Fiber will be in my neighborhood.

Total bummer though: it looks like they won’t be available for a little while, so I decided to sign up for their email list.
Guess what? I’m a lead now. They have my contact information and they can add me to their email remarketing campaign. Not exactly a bummer for Google Fiber.

Became a lead after signing up for alerts.

I’m now a lead because I’ve signed up for alerts.

5. More Lead Gen Tips for Twitter Ads with Hashtag Targeting

Hashtags are a great way to generate awareness to an interested audience for your brand or business. Create a Twitter Ads campaign and target people who are interested in relevant hashtags to drive qualified traffic to your site. Though Twitter ads are not for the faint of budget, they work!

6. Juicing Your Lead Generation Efforts With Content for Lead Nurturing

Creating relevant content, such as reports or whitepapers, and promoting them via organic and paid advertising campaigns, is just the tip of the iceberg in online lead generation. And bombarding them with offers or retargeting ads can only take you so far. You have to nurture those newly acquired leads.

By implementing an enriched content strategy in your marketing funnel, you will intrigue and engage your audience, as well as drive them further down the sales funnel. Infographics, videos, images, and podcasting are just a few content ideas that you may use. Think of your entire content marketing strategy as the great magnetic force that pulls in and nurtures new leads.

Only 48 percent of businesses have a documented content strategy.

According to a Content Marketing Institute study, only 48% of businesses have a documented Content Strategy.

A study from the Content Marketing Institute and Marketing Profs states that over 80% of B2B respondents use Content Marketing in their business practices, yet only 38% of these businesses say their strategies are effective.

However, the study also indicates that 48% of these businesses were not documenting their strategies effectively.
In the end, there’s no way of telling what practices are showing results, or hurting business. You need to test yours and discover what works with your potential market.

Here are a few creative examples on how we incorporate content marketing elements in our online lead generation strategy to ensure maximum results.

Webinars for Lead Generation Efforts

Webinars offer exclusive information and help grow your email list and lead base. Keep in mind, you will need to promote your webinars to get people to attend. We promote ours on LinkedIn groups.

On LinkedIn, you can target groups based on field of expertise, interests, or topics. Being in alignment with your audience avoids spammy sales letters and overbearing ads. WebinarNL says, “webinars generate a lower cost per lead and high level of engagement with prospective clients.” They also detail several benefits to hosting webinars including:

Direct contact with your target audience
Reaching your prospects both live and afterwards
Interaction with your target group

A Webinar Lead Gen Example: How webinars save time and money

So, we decided to put this to the test and hosted our very first webinar “UX vs. CRO: The Digital Fight of the Century” As a special incentive for attendees, we had them ask several questions on UX or CRO. The people with the most creative questions won a free website evaluation from Brian Massey himself.

We got 212 conversions in just 20 days of deploying our social media promotion campaign. That’s more leads in such a short period of time than any other way to improve lead generation we’ve executed.

To see how our first webinar panned out, watch the webinar replay.

Data from our webinar “UX vs CRO”

Conversion data from our webinar “UX vs CRO”

Easy Ways to Increase Lead Generation: Podcasting

Perhaps the most underrated form of generating new warm business leads comes from podcasting. It’s free and accessible, and makes radio quality audio shows available for download through an RSS feed to a computer, MP3 player or mobile phone. Listeners only have to subscribe to a podcast once.

Rob Walch of Libsyn says that podcasts are “the opposite of Twitter.” Podcasts give you extended quality time with those members of your audience that listen.

First, you’ll need to conduct a topic search that will get your content noticed in the podcast world. Then, be sure to create blog posts to capture the reader’s attention, launch your podcast, and have them listen.

Interviewing an industry expert or hosting a panel debate can help maximize reach and listeners. Be sure to keep discussions focused on topics you can actively talk about with your prospective leads. This is the perfect way to begin establishing yourself as an industry thought leader.

“The goal of the business podcast is to create a conversational thread that you can pick up with your lead on the next call,” says Benchmark.

Think of this as the firsts experiences with future customers. You are building trust and proving them with valid information to nurture a business relationship.

Again, podcasts are easy to share via LinkedIn groups, Twitter hashtags, and Facebook Ads. Also, you can upload podcasts to your Facebook page, just check the option “Upload as video to Timeline”, so followers can listen in.

More Lead Generation Ideas: Guest Blogging

What does your business specialize in? Moving, fitness, prepping? Is it a rehab center, a college, or a consulting firm?

Writing a guest post for a related industry blog, you will show your subject knowledge and add credibility to your brand, while reaching an entirely new audience. This is also an opportunity to grow your follower base by crafting the perfect bio and byline.

Start by building a list of publications in your niche market that accept guest posts and understand what type of content would be a good fit for them, their audience and, consequently, for you. If their audience engages with your content, they may visit your website, interact with you and maybe even give you their email address. A smooth way to earn more leads.

Again, you want your prospects to know you are an expert or the best in your field, and drive them towards the top of your sales funnel.

Video Marketing

Did you know that 75% of executives told Forbes that they watch work-related videos on business websites at least once a week? The breakdown? 50% of these executives watch business-related videos on YouTube, and 65% stated they visit the marketer’s website after viewing a video.

Adding a compelling call to action will help you drive your viewers to your website of landing page. Tell them what to do and why. Something Free, if enticing enough, may do the trick. Make sure it’s something aligned with your business that the potential leads want.

Or you can promote your offer with YouTube Ads. Let’s take this Heineken YouTube Ad for example. Apparently, YouTube knows that people like me – people who are my age, have my interests, and share a similar browsing and search history to mine, for instance – love beer. Again, this is the whole idea of remarketing.

As I’m watching this ad, what do I see in the bottom of the video? It’s an annotation that says “Visit Advertiser’s Site”. Since I’m curious, I click on the link and low and behold, I’m on their site and enter for a chance to win in their sweepstakes.

Heineken lead generation YouTube ad.

The sad thing is, the campaign was over before I landed on the page, and Heineken missed its chance to get me on its email list. Will I see a remarketing ad in the future? Possibly!

Landing page for Heineken promotion lead gen campaign.

Are You Ready To Try Some of these Fast and Easy Ways to Increase your Lead Generation Efforts?

Don’t just throw content out into the world and expect a beanstalk to grow in your backyard overnight. The business world is not a fairytale.

Incorporate just a few of these ideas into your overall lead generation plan today. Not only will you be able to grow your business, but you will start a snowball effect that brings in new prospects to your sales funnel.

Meanwhile, check out our lead generation solutions that deliver or contact us to generate more and better leads fast.

Lead Generation Solutions from Conversion Sciences

March 5, 2020/by Conversion Sciences Team

20 Compelling Examples of Persuasive Copy in Online Advertising

Advertising CRO, Persuasion Science

Check out these click-worthy examples of persuasive copy for online ads. Discover why they work and how to test for persuasive ad copy.

The world of digital marketing makes it super easy for you to reach your target audience. But you have to whip up a mighty persuasive online ad if you want your prospects to click on yours. Persuasion is one of our CRO Agency secret weapons. It is layered into so much of what we do and is often the difference between beginners and conversion optimization experts.

In this post, we’ll review the definition of persuasive copy, how to make sure it works, and show you compelling examples of persuasive copy in online advertising.

Appeal to logic emotion and credibility all in one. Check out these click worthy examples of persuasive copy in online advertising.

What is Persuasive Copy

Persuasive copy can be defined as an argument that elicits a desired action from a relevant audience. Easier said than done, right?

Aristotle explained what constitutes persuasive copy best in his rhetorical appeals or ‘modes for persuasion’. Let’s keep in mind that his goal was to make his oratory (his presentations) more persuasive. And in doing so, he identified three types of persuasion appeals that are as valid today as they were back then.

the appeal to reason, logic or logos
the appeal to emotion or pathos
and the appeal to one’s character, credibility or ethos

Not everybody makes a decision about a specific product or service based on the same argument. Purchasing a lipstick could be more of an impulse buy and an appeal to pathos or emotion may be the right call. Adding an appeal to reason such as “Free Shipping” may seal the deal and get you the click you desperately want.

An example of emotionally persuasive copy in this Avon color trend nail polish, Fairytale collection: “Until your prince charming shows up have fun with the frogs.”

Avon color trend nail polish, Fairytale collection. The copy reads: “Until your prince charming shows up have fun with the frogs”. Why is this a prime example of persuasive copy in advertising? The famous Prince Charming in other countries, like Brazil and Italy, is called the “Blue Prince” — royal blue blood and all. So, until the blue one shows up, have fun with the rest of the colors. Clever emotional argument to leave the guilt behind and have fun now. If the shoe fits. ;)

Fortunately for most of us, developing persuasive copy is not an art but a data driven process. And as such, it can be tested.

How to Test Persuasive Copy in Online Advertising

As investment in digital advertising increases, it becomes essential to figure out what really works. Ad copy testing can be executed pre-campaign launch or while the campaign is live.

Some methods for online ad copy pre-testing may include focus groups, projective techniques, and recall tests. Performing these pre-tests ensures less spend is lost when it comes to activation.

Running an online ad campaign is costly. This is a different version of the Paypal for Business ad used to test the level of persuasiveness in the copy. What appeal has been dropped? Let us know in the comments section at the end of the post.

But the proof is in the pudding and nothing beats solid AB Testing to provide you with the metrics you need to define what’s really working. If you are looking to learn about testing persuasive copy, our blog is packed with articles that explain how to do this in detail. Check them out:

The Proven AB Testing Framework Used By CRO Professionals

4 Types of Useful AB Testing Tools You May Not Realize You Have

The AB Testing Process that Empowers Marketers

4 Mobile AB Testing Ideas that Worked for Our Clients

Or you can take our CRO Course and become a conversion specialist. Or if you’d rather have an experienced conversion agency power boost your online marketing spend and turn more of your ad clicks into revenue, check out our CRO for Advertising solutions.

And as we promised an article about compelling examples of persuasive copy in online advertising, let’s dive into them!

Why Is Persuasive Copy Crucial to Online Ads

Let’s assume you have the right ad placement, defined the perfect audience, and have properly identified what your audience responds to. After all, persuasive ad copy in and of itself is not the only factor that weighs in on a campaign’s success.

Is your ad copy missing the mark? Has your click through rate hit a new low?

We all want our online ads to influence our audience in such a way that they are inclined to click to call or click to buy from our website. But, what makes copy this convincing? Sometimes, actual examples of persuasive copy can guide us in crafting our own click-worthy online ads.

Compelling Examples of Persuasive Copy in Online Advertising

A genius way to apply emotion to a SaaS service on a Facebook ad for Litmus & dotmailer.

Examples of persuasive copy in online advertising help illustrate the concept.

Appeal to logic or logos works quite nicely for the auto insurance industry. I wonder what would happen to these click-through rates (CTRs) if they added some emotional arguments to the ad copy.

Auto insurance appeal to logic examples. They all look alike. Which one would you click on?

Finding examples of persuasive copy in advertising is simple if there is a Google Guarantee available. Not an easy addition to your online ads but worth every penny. All the credibility you want in a single line.

Building credibility through the Google Guarantee.

Ethos and logos appeal for this Facebook ad campaign.

Ethos appeal.

Lower the guilt with a logical argument. Less fat and less calories than your biggest competitor: McDonald’s french fries. How is that for an attention-getting example of persuasive copy?

Burger King fries ad copy. How is that for an attention-getting example of persuasive copy?

Burger King fries ad copy. Stop clicking the button and keep reading!

Of course #FOMO is an emotion! This compelling example of persuasive copy in online advertising proves it! Almost depleted iPhone battery coupled with “Last Chance to Buy T&C Tickets” An example from a Digital Marketer Facebook ads campaign.

Appeal to emotion iPhone battery Facebook Ad example from Digital Marketer.

Searching for click-worthy examples of persuasive copy for your Facebook lead generation campaign? A winner. Hands-down. No big emotional commitment. Only 8 hours for $500 and you get rid of those pesky projects.

Lead generation ad example targeting homeowners looking to start projects.

IBM Watson understands that their audience responds to reason. And that some may be ready to buy. The free trial is a highly persuasive method to get them to click on their ad.

IBM Watson “free trial” a persuasive element of their offer.

This online ad for WD40 is all about persuading through pathos. You will need some WD40 to unstuck that scroll bar.

Humor, sex and curiosity are all emotional appeals.

Every once in a while, you run across an ad that you just can’t forget. Trident’s Facebook ad that appeals to emotions or pathos through some quirky logic as I am sure deodorant won’t taste like spearmint either.

Example of emotional and logical appeal in persuasive copy for Trident’s online ads.

Although they usually resort to logic and ethos – 4 out of 5 dentists recommend – to craft persuasive copy.

Trident Coupons: Save money, prevent stains.

Sandwich delivery ads leverage a mix of ethos or credibility (reviews, how many served), logical (pricing and selection) and emotional (fresh, good, smells, comfort) elements. Definitely great examples of persuasive copy in PPC ads.

Sandwich delivery ads.

Pizza delivery examples of persuasive copy for Google Ads. One relies on logical and ethos vs emotional appeal.

Logical and ethos vs emotional appeal for pizza delivery Google Ads.

Nike sneakers Google Ads: These are not Nike stores, so they lack the brand’s built in credibility. Therefore, they use pathos or emotional persuasion on the headline and ethos appeal on the body via the rating reviews and the on time delivery percentage.

Pathos or emotional persuasion on the headline and ethos appeal on the body via the rating reviews that give credibility and the ontime delivery percentage.

The Nike Official store, is all about logical persuasion of product availability with some additional credibility elements as message support.

Nike official store Google ad.

PPC ad copywriting for a mobile ad with emotional appeal. Click to call the luxury location of your choice.

PPC ad for best NYC hotels. Luxury, of course.

So many persuasive reasons for that mileage traveler in you. Capital One Venture card uses ethos on their youtube and tv ads but not on their Google Ads. Here it’s all facts.

Capital One Venture card uses logos or logical appeal to persuade to click on this PPC ad.

I hope you found inspiration and ideas on these compelling examples of persuasive copy in online advertising. Now, discover how to Make Testimonials More Persuasive or sign-up to receive our weekly newsletter. Packed with great conversion optimization tips.

April 5, 2019/by Conversion Sciences Team

Facebook Ads Guide Simplified: If You Aren’t Cooking With Tofu, You’re Losing Money

Advertising CRO, Conversion Optimization

Learn how to advertise top-of-the-funnel content (Tofu) with this Facebook ads guide. Use retargeting to increase conversion rates and build trust with your audience.

Facebook advertising has become the premier B2C online sales platform.

The numbers don’t lie—Facebook raked in $27 billion (with a “b”) in ad revenue just a few years ago. And it’s not hard to see why people are flocking to the platform for their B2C marketing needs—it has vast consumer data through the Open Graph, innovative ad units, and a user-friendly DIY ad creation interface. The platform allows for incredibly sophisticated consumer advertising campaigns.

Simply put, if you aren’t running Facebook ads, you are leaving money on the table.

But you know this, so what’s holding you back? Why is clicking that money-draining “Boost Post” button the furthest that most businesses have ever gone with Facebook advertising?

Friction.

Maybe you opened up the Ad Manager, took one look and thought… “nope” (been there, done that). Maybe you tried to launch a campaign and ran into a bug. Maybe you succeeded in actually getting an ad campaign in motion but didn’t see an ROI (my first three campaigns).

What you probably don’t realize is that the most universally successful way to use Facebook is also one of the absolute simplest ways.

It’s called Tofu, and it’s what I’m going to be teaching you today:

Facebook Ads guide – Simplified.

By the end of this article, you’ll know exactly how to cook Facebook-style Tofu and you’ll finally understand how to turn Facebook ads into a profitable marketing channel for your business.

But before I get into the juicy details, there’s a key concept we need to understand.

Facebook Push Marketing vs. Google Ads Pull Marketing

When somebody conducts a Google search and clicks on one of the ads at the top of the search engine results page (SERP), that’s considered pull marketing. Since the user has already established his intent with the search query, the ad he receives is highly relevant to what he’s looking for. He ‘pulled’ the ad to himself.

Facebook ads, on the other hand, are push marketing. This means that when he sees a Facebook ad in his Newsfeed, it’s actually interrupting what he’s doing—’Liking’ family photos, posting food pictures, getting into political arguments, etc. He’s not on Facebook with the specific intent to buy (or even research) anything.

The difference between pull and push marketing is crucial to the state of mind of the person reading your ad, hence crucial to your advertising strategy.

When it comes to push marketing in the Internet Age, people don’t like to be sold to during their first interaction with your brand—especially on Facebook. They need to develop some form of relationship with the brand first.

Facebook Ads Guide – Simplified

As you already know, content marketing is one of the best ways to develop a relationship with your target market. With content marketing, you are creating and delivering a significant value at the top of your funnel. This Top-of-Funnel… or Tofu… content allows you to develop a trust-based relationships with your target consumers.

Facebook ads allow you combine the relationship building of content marketing with the immediate results of direct advertising.

The Facebook funnel is ridiculously simple:

Facebook ad
- Content (blog post)
  - Retargeted Facebook ad
    - Landing page/ecommerce page
      - Sale/Lead

This basic sequence is how thousands of businesses right now are driving insane revenue with Facebook ads. And it’s stupid easy to get up and running.

The first step is setting up your Facebook Pixel.

The Facebook Pixel

If you don’t have the Facebook Pixel installed on your website, please do so now. Seriously, I’ll wait. Go on—here’s what it is and how to implement it.

Why you need to install the Facebook Pixel?

Custom Audiences (retargeting)
Conversion tracking
Lookalike audiences

For our purposes, the Facebook Pixel allows your Facebook ads to talk back and forth to you website—who clicked which ad, who visited which page, who filled out a form, etc. This is all incredibly useful to your advertising campaigns and reporting.

It’s a really simple 2-step process. Here’s how it works:

Step 1. Use the “Traffic” Objective to Season Your Pixel

Find one of your best top-of-funnel (ToFu) assets in terms of engagement or traffic. These are usually blog posts or publicly viewable resources that offer objective value without attempting to specifically promote your business.

Got the URL? Great.

First, head over to the Audiences tab of Facebook Ads Manager:

Facebook Ads Manager.

Next, click Audiences:

Audience tab of Facebook Ads Manager.

Then select Create Audience > Custom Audience:

Facebook Ads Manager How to create lookalike Audiences.

Select Website Traffic and then enter the URL of your Tofu content:

FB Ads Manager: Use website traffic.

Name your audience, add notes, adjust as necessary, and then click Create Audience:

Ads Manager enter blog post URL.

Now, anybody who visits that blog post (regardless if they came in from a Facebook ad or not) will be tracked by Facebook. Cool.

Next, send some traffic to that blog post!

Create an ad
Choose “Traffic” as your objective
Fill out your audience targeting, budget, schedule, etc.
Plug in your ad creative
Launch the ad

What you’re looking for at this point is to get the cheapest clicks possible. This will come down to a few more complex factors:

Making the ad compelling (related to how compelling the Tofu content is but the ad itself still needs to be good)
Targeting the right audience (bigger scope than we have time for, so check out this guide to ad targeting)
Other unique factors specifically related to your niche

OK, so we’re generating quality traffic efficiently—but where is the money and/or leads?!

Keep reading…

Step 2. Retarget Tofu Visitors With an Offer

If the Tofu asset you sent the traffic to is any good, you’ll have accomplished the following with your target consumers:

Introduced your brand
Provided value for free
Built trust
Convert a few into email subscribers
Dropped a cookie into their browsers

You let them read your content and walk away without shoving a sales message at them. Now it’s time to bring them back to you.

Create a new Facebook ad campaign, but this time, instead of using “Traffic” as the Objective, use “Conversions.”

When setting up your audience targeting, instead of using demographic/psychographic data like you did last time, just click Custom Audiences and choose the one you set up earlier. Remember? It’s the one recording people who visit your blog post.

Create a new Facebook ad campaign, but this time, instead of using “Traffic” as the Objective, use “Conversions.”

Now, instead of sending these retargeted users to another blog post, send them to a piece of conversion-oriented content. For advanced marketers, this will likely be a lead magnet, which trades premium content for an email address. From there, they’ll attempt to close the lead or create the sale through email nurturing programs.

If you don’t have a lead magnet and the corresponding email automation system in place, this is the time to use your ecommerce, sales or landing page.

Just make sure that the conversion-oriented asset you send the retargeted traffic to is related to the original ToFu asset! That’s what got them to click in the first place, so stay on topic.

Facebook Ads Guide: Facebook Conversions

Lastly, make sure that you’re using the proper Facebook Standard Events on the conversion page. Standard Events are little extra bits of code that help your website communicate with the Facebook Ads Manager reporting interface.
This is hugely important for the ability to accurately record conversions.

More about Standard Events here.

If you implement your Standard Events properly, you can do a lot of really cool things.

For example, your website can dynamically pass revenue data to Facebook so that you can have your ROI calculations done for you automatically! Pretty nifty for ecommerce stores with a variety of products and price points.

Optionally, if you don’t want to use Standard Events, you can use Custom Conversions to record conversions.

Basically, you tell Facebook that if somebody loads a certain URL (like store.com/umbrella/thank-you) to record a conversion. You’ll miss out on some of the more advanced features, but it’s a good place to start if you don’t have access to the technical skills required to implement Standard Events.

Facebook Ads Guide Bonus Round: Create Lookalike Audiences

You want to hear something embarrassing about me?

I’ve spent countless hours on cold targeting and retargeting strategies for various clients. I like to think I’m kinda good at it.

But roughly 75% of the time, when I let Facebook do the targeting for me, its campaigns out-perform mine!

You might be wondering what I mean by “let Facebook do the targeting for me.”

I’m referring to Lookalike audiences, which are a vastly underutilized tool of the Facebook ads platform.

The purpose of a Lookalike audience is to use a given parameter and let Facebook use the data in its Open Graph to find people who are just like that parameter.

For example, you can ask Facebook to send your ads to people who are similar to your Facebook Page’s audience, an email list you have, or better yet, people who have already bought from you.

Seriously, does it get any better than that? “Hey Facebook—here are a bunch of people who bought my widgets or became leads. Can you send my ads to people who are similar to them?”

To set up a Lookalike audience for people who have bought or converted from you, follow these steps:

Click Create Lookalike audience
Select audience (You’ll need to create a “customer” custom audience first)
Create the audience

To set up a Lookalike audience for people who have bought or converted from you, follow these steps.

Now that you’ve created the audience, choose to target it when you create your next ad campaign (instead of cold targeting or retargeting).

Choose Lookalike Audience.

Test the Lookalike campaign against your other campaigns and see which performs better.

You’ll never actually know exactly what is similar about your conversions and your Lookalike audiences — Facebook keeps that data semi-private. This isn’t ideal, but hey—if you’re getting conversions and making money, it could be worse.

Conclusion: Tofu Is Your Friend

Facebook doesn’t need to be complicated. You can get some truly incredible results with simple Tofu campaigns.
If you follow these steps, you will create a Facebook ad campaign that uses customer experience and natural buyer behavior to drive conversions.

So stop wasting your money on the “Boost Post” button, and start getting real ROI via Facebook ads. Now, check out these inspiring examples of persuasive copy in online advertising.

May 18, 2017/by Logan Mayville

What Advertisers Need To Know About Atlas – New Facebook Ad Network

Lead Generation

Guest Post By Russel Cooke
Facebook has a new advertising network that has some people worried about their personal data online.
The new network, Atlas, uses data it collects from users on Facebook to serve ads on other websites based on what Facebook knows about its users. Facebook already uses personal data to serve up contextual and targeted ads within Facebook, but now Atlas gives them the ability to use this data on behalf of third-party websites and apps.

Atlas allows advertisers to follow users across devices and across the Internet. Image Courtesy of Shutterstock

Facebook bought Atlas in 2013 for approximately $100 million and has entirely rebuilt it. The former Microsoft property will now serve as Facebook’s alternative to Google AdWords, allowing advertisers to follow users across devices and across the Internet.
For example, a beer company utilizing Atlas can use the platform to serve ads on sports websites or game apps that aren’t related to Facebook.

Cookies Aren’t Working

In a blog post, the head of Atlas, Erik Johnson, addressed the limitation of cookies, which had been the industry’s instrument for serving ads on desktop and tracking users.
He noted that cookies are becoming less accurate when it comes to demographic targeting and don’t work on mobile. Cookies also have trouble accurately measuring the customer purchase funnel across devices, browsers, and in the real world. He wrote that Atlas’ focus is on “people-based marketing.”
This type of advertising may make some users uncomfortable in relation to how their personal data is used. Yet, it presents a new opportunity for advertisers and offers up an alternative to Google AdWords management.
The platform will also help marketers and advertisers understand how their efforts across different networks and channels intersect and how they can bolster each other. Atlas eliminates the need for silos in advertising campaigns, which results in a more consistent advertising experience for the end-user.
Facebook’s existing advertising solution previously only used cookies to track the websites that users visited and targeted ads based on that data. As mentioned, Atlas does not rely on cookies to gather consumer information.
In the past if a user browsed the prices of a car on a dealer’s website they would probably see car ads in their News Feed. However, because cookies do not work on mobile, it would have been difficult for advertisers to fully and comprehensively track the behaviors and interests of users.
Atlas is not dependent on cookies and can track the third-party websites that people visit. This more robust information better allows advertisers to target ads around the interests and “likes” of Facebook users.

Tracking Sales Across Screens

The benefits of Atlas don’t end with tracking users and more efficiently targeting campaigns. It also has the ability to determine if a user purchased a product on a desktop after viewing an ad on a mobile device. It tracks the relationships between offline sales and the online advertising that spurred them on.
For example, if a person makes a purchase and gives their email address during the process Facebook would be able to let the store know that the person had viewed an ad online.
These connections will be invaluable to marketers and advertisers, as they will now be able to fully understand the relationship between their campaigns and real life sales activity. As the tracking grows and evolves, advertisers will create more compelling and powerfully targeted campaigns.
Atlas is making the advertising process more people-focused and the most successful advertisers will follow their lead.
Russel Cooke is a business consultant and writer from Baltimore, Maryland. He graduated from the University of Louisville, and worked in the Louisville area for over ten years before become an independent consultant and business writer. He recently relocated to Los Angeles, CA. You can follow Russel on Twitter @RusselCooke2.

November 4, 2014/by Luis Ramirez

3 Must-Use Facebook Ad Tactics for 2014

Conversion Marketing Strategy

This is a guest post by Simon Campbell

Facebook is not only the most popular of the many social networks; it’s also the most prone to changes. What worked well just a few short months ago on the site may not be the best formula to try in 2014.
Changes in the News Feed have been among the most recent from the site. With a much larger emphasis on quality content that weights well via Facebook’s unique algorithm, marketers are forced to up their engagement tactics in order to survive inside of News Feeds without being missed, ignored or forced out.
Along with other changes, such as the sheer size of the mobile market today, anyone’s Facebook ad tactics should be updated. Not overhauled, just tweaked to remain a relevant and engaging brand on the site.

The Audience Growth Survey: Subscribers, Fans, & Followers – Report #22 by ExactTarget a Salesforce.com company

3 Must-Use Ad Tactics for Facebook Marketers

1: Find the Right App

Facebook presents many tools to help marketers achieve success without having to venture offsite for much of anything. However, creating, testing, tweaking and targeting content is exceedingly difficult to do without some third-party assistance. Marketers looking for a sharper edge this year should try to find a third-party ad-management application that offers freedom and ease of use.
What you’re looking for in the right ad-management app includes:

The ability to schedule entire ad campaigns

Automated campaigns with rules you (the user) create

A plug-n-play Google Analytics feature

A streamlined interface

Templates for saved work

Organizational folders

Split-testing capabilities

Easy features for creating ad variations

Full control over which ads are actually used.

The end results is an easily programmable app that allows you to create, change, test and launch entire ad campaigns on a schedule you select, using ads you personally deem appropriate for the task. Every other tactic’s success depends in large part on the app you select for your ads.

2: Expand on Proven Organic Content

While paid advertising will, by design, always trump organic reach, many marketers find that some of their best ongoing success comes by way of everyday posts that ultimately build an organic following. Due to changes with Facebook’s Promoted Posts feature, you can now take an ad that was already popular and really kick it into overdrive with a bit of paid targeting.
Used in conjunction with your ad-management app to fine-tune the targeting, a Promoted Post can provide you with a litany of benefits, including:

The ability to boost a post visitors have already been engaged with

Adding new life to a post you feel hasn’t run its course

More views in more News Feeds

A longer lifespan in News Feeds for quality, paid posts

An expansion of the audience every time someone engages with the post

The ability to pin the post to your own page

An affordable way to keep pace with bigger brands

Along with greater reach comes greater recognition. Using a Promoted Post in 2014 is one of the safest, most affordable, and effective forms of Facebook advertising.

3: Target Small

Although niche marketing is a tried-and-true principle of advertising that doesn’t change much on a year-on-year basis, 2014 presents a couple of solid reasons to quickly narrow your advertising focus. With more brands, more mobile users, and many more advertisements, focusing on direct niche marketing allows you to target those most likely to engage. This offers quality control abilities you wouldn’t otherwise have.
When setting up your next advertising campaign, think about:

Starting with no more than 1,000 people

Split-testing and tracking variations of ads for effectiveness

Choosing a single interest so that you can directly target prospects

Split your campaign between male and female, measuring the results

Try age variations to see which demo bites the hardest

Targeting small, and in spurts, allows you to quantify your efforts easily and without must hassle. After seeing which group is most responsive to a certain ad type, you can begin expanding your efforts to draw more interest from more areas.

Bonus Tip: Tracking Advice

No matter the type of app you’re using, the type of ad you’re releasing, or the size of the market you’re targeting, your progress must be tracked in order to ensure the success of your tactics. Releasing an ad campaign and letting it run its course without a watchful eye could result in disaster.
Use Facebook Insights to your advantage to view your engagement numbers, such as Likes, comments, shares, etc. You can view an assortment of graphs to tell you if you’re heading in the right direction.
Using the right app for ads is also going to give you an easy way into Google Analytics. This is a more in-depth analysis of how your campaign is doing. You can track URLs, create separate landing pages, and pretty much customize the system for optimum convenience.
Tracking allows you to tweak when necessary, to cut your losses if needed, and to double-down on working tactics. A campaign that’s not being tracked is a campaign doomed to failure.

About the Author: Simon Campbell, a writer from a Facebook ad campaign tool – Qwaya. He loves to write different topics about social media and participates in some communities and forums. If you have more social media marketing questions, feel free to ask Simon on Twitter

April 3, 2014/by Simon Campbell

Using Facebook to Sell Products

Ecommerce CRO

Social media sites can be used in a wide variety of ways in many different industries. Though for most businesses, a site like Facebook is typically used to promote products and services rather than to sell them. With a few key tweaks, however, you can change that and actually use the social networking giant as a direct sales page for your products.

You can sell directly on Facebook? Yes! Some market analysts even think that Facebook will eventually spawn a whole new category of online e-commerce, called F-commerce.

Melding your social media advertising with your selling and creating one centralized hub might just be a great way for your small business to cut costs and increase productivity. Follow these five simple Facebook marketing steps to help you sell products.

Selling Products with Your Facebook Page

1: Building a Store Page

Creating a Facebook page (rather than a simple profile) is the first step in this process. Take advantage of the customizable tabs and other options on Facebook to fill in your company information, your mission statement, and other essential info about your business.

Use the cover photo of your page to present your brand’s logo and to create a clean, professional-looking environment that seeks to use Facebook for business and not for personal interactions.

2: Constructing a Landing Page

You need to create a separate landing page, where you will set up a store experience. Chose a platform that allows you to create custom pages, different categories, an SSL certificate, a responsive, adjustable format, and more. Just search around through different apps and platforms, read real user reviews, and find a store platform/app that’s affordable, feature-rich, and one that can be used to tie your store in with Facebook seamlessly.

3: Finalizing the Store

Once you have a landing page/store created and your Facebook page finalized, you have to bring the two together to create a seamless store experience on Facebook. To do this efficiently, you should use one of the e-commerce widgets on the market today.

Ecwid is a one widget to try out. It’s affordable, provides around 30 separate payment options, and you can sell shipped products, downloadable products, and more. It’s also a responsive widget, meaning that mobile users will go to the same fully functioning store that desktop users go to.

This isn’t your only option, though. Other widgets, including StoreYa, are available and allow you to create multiple product categories, list dozens of products, choose from a variety of templates, and ultimately integrate your store with your Facebook page to create a seamless e-store experience. Your Facebook fans will be able to purchase your products without ever leaving your Facebook page.

4: Marketing Your Products

Now that your store is created and running on your Facebook page, it’s time to implement some Facebook marketing to help you sell your products. Your first step should be to check out some of the literature available on Facebook marketing tips and tricks. Look into third-party ad-management apps, various ad types, different organic methods, and other marketing staples.

To start out with a bang, however, you may want to try running a promotion right out of the gate. Spread the word around through targeted advertisements that you’re offering a free product or a hefty discount for people who like or purchase through your Facebook page. You can use a wide range of apps to create games and other promotions, hold photo or slogan contests, and a slew of other promotions that will draw people in.

5: Performing Brand Upkeep

It’s up to you to stay entertaining and engaging as a marketer on Facebook. Make sure you post on a regular schedule, provide interesting material that your audience wants to see, solve problems for your niche, always add incentives, and give people material that they would want to share with their friends.

Paid advertising in the form of Sponsored Stories and Promoted Posts are great, but don’t forget basic methods like video reviews of your products, real user feedback, infographics explaining things, and other social-friendly and trending methods that will help keep your brand in a good light.

From creating your Facebook page and store page to promoting your products and working to engage with existing fans while attracting new ones, you have to play to the social context of the network. It’s hard not to come across strictly as an advertiser, so don’t try to be something you’re not. Promote yourself as a business – just make sure to include a personal side that likes to engage with people on Facebook, that cares for and appreciates fans and customers, and that always offer quality products and quality customer service.

February 18, 2014/by Simon Campbell