Are Your Facebook Ads Bringing More Business?

I like to maco as much as the next Trini. I see a Trini looking ad on the side of my Facebook page and you bet I’m going to click. For every 10 Trinis who see that ad my guess is that 9 won’t resist and the 10th already clicked it yesterday. So if that local business is yours then there’s no doubt you’re getting the eyeballs. But it’s not just eyeballs you want do you?

The goal of an ad is to bring new business

I suspect that many of local Facebook ads I see daily don’t work as well as expected save for a few. They may bring in new visitors, new likes but not much by way of new dollars and cents. New visitors and likes certainly kick off the process leading to new business, part of my pet acronym AIDA— Awareness → Interest → Desire → Action. The problem is, one doesn’t automatically follow from the other.

You may be blowing your opportunity

You may be blowing your chance and you don’t even know it. Again I have to say that the Trini marketplace is not that unique that it requires a different set of marketing tools. The Trini propensity you can count on is to click on any/all local Facebooks ads just to maco.

Though your reach may include many who are a slim to none chance of ever becoming customers especially if you’re selling commodity items (and your store is in Sangre Grande and they live in Siparia), but you still have the opportunity to make an impact where you do have a chance which brings me back to the rules. You’re wasting your opportunity because:

• You’re failing to identify your buyers’ personas, i.e your ideal customer
• You’re using a one size fits all ad
• You’re writing poor ads titles, descriptions, images
• When they click YOU’RE NOT PREPARED FOR THE VISIT!

Some of you need a clout!

Even if you screw up everything in the ad itself you’re still going to get the clicks. But where your visitor lands (hello LANDING PAGE?), it’s like ending up in no man’s land, kind of like when a dog chases a car and the car stops, i.e. he catches it and it’s like what now, hell does he know what to do.
You invited me, act like you’re happy to see me!

My point is that you need:

1. A LANDING PAGE and
2. A LANDING PAGE THAT CONVERTS

Stop linking to your website’s homepage

That you take the time and effort for a Facebook ad campaign and just link to a plain old page on your website is an egregious sin and unforgivable. If you don’t have a website (and we’ll have to have a serious talk about that) then linking to your Facebook Page is fine but at least design a cover picture and pin a post to to act as a landing page.
There must be a continuity between the ad and where the visitor lands.

Design a Landing Page that converts

It’s all about where your visitor lands and what you do from there. Your goal is to ACQUIRE and RETAIN the visitor as a customer which requires a thoughtfully prepared landing page that does the job. I’m not going to explain the do’s and don’ts of landing pages today, my goal is to impress upon you the dire need to have one.

A Landing Page is a waste of time if the rest of your site sucks

Sorry to drop this on you just when you think you’ve gotten a grip. It’s another one of my pet peeves (I have a virtual menagerie of them), which are websites designed ‘for so’, i.e. no real thought behind content creation for the ideal customer you’re trying to attract. This is going to hurt and I only say it because I love you, but it’s like putting lipstick on a pig.

Inbound marketing is an art and a science

This online thing is not about websites and social media, something I quickly learned when I first started the website business. It’s about marketing, and that was the missing element in the website designs of yore in Trinidad & Tobago and perhaps the main reason why website design in Trinidad & Tobago languished as an afterthought all these years.

Social media, especially Facebook has been the catalyst to bring it to the fore as businesses could now see that online is for real and Trinis are ripe for the picking. But they still have to be picked and some of you are only shaking the tree or pelting stones.

[note align=”left” title=”Let me help you reach your ideal customer”]As you can see, I’m not flying by the seat of my pants, I’m INBOUND MARKETING CERTIFIED and know what I’m talking about. If you need help crafting a Facebook ad, Landing Page, Cover Pic then I’m your guy.

But the above is the second place to start. The first is bringing your website up to speed. I’m not suggesting a website re-design (though it may be better to start from scratch) but a website re-positioning with the right content.

Call me and I’ll review your site for free.[/note]