How to Use Facebook Ads to Generate Revenue and Leads
Facebook is one of the biggest platforms for small and big entrepreneurs to generate leads. Whether it is a startup businessperson or a digital media expert, Facebook offers everyone to generate revenues and leads through Facebook ads.
Do you know that generating traffic and leads are
the most important marketing challenges for any business? Even if you are a
blogger, you need traffic on your blog or website to get leads or generate some
income.
The Facebook ad is the prime social media platform
other than YouTube that guarantees a plethora of leads and good revenue with
the minimum effort. As per the Facebook
annual report, it has 2.2 billion monthly active users. Over
1.5 billion people daily visit Facebook globally. You can
imagine the ocean of leads you can get from these many people worldwide.
Let us see what is a Facebook ad and how does it work?
Facebook ads target audience at the micro level.
You can choose your audience based on demography, language spoken, gender, age
group, interest or profiles. It helps you to look for specific potential
customers without much hassle or a headache. Also, check out our recent post to
know how
to optimize Facebook ads
Nevertheless, before jumping to create your own
Facebook ads, it is significant to understand how it actually works. Various ad
types and targeting options might confuse you on Facebook Ads. It is better to
learn a little about the ads type you get on Facebook.
Types of Facebook Ads:
·
Photo
Ads:
It is the simplest way to start with your
advertising campaign on Facebook. You can easily create a photo ad or use your
already posted click for the photo ads. A photo ads
must be interesting and eye-catching. You chose an area and the types of people
you are targeting and facebook ads helps you to boost your photo ads as per
your instructions.
·
Video Ads:
Apart from still visuals, videos
speak a volume about your product. Facebook offers you video ads facility to
impress your target audiences.
·
Slideshow Ads:
What is better than creating
slideshow ads from collections of photos you have? In a small video, you can
insert many pieces of information about your product through various still
snaps in the form of an impressive slideshow.
·
Carousel
Ads:
You must have seen carousel ads on Facebook. It
allows inserting a combination of 10 photos or videos in a single frame like a
big panorama. You can insert various information of a single product, or
various products under the same banner through carousel ads.
·
Collection
Ads:
A mobile exclusive feature, the Facebook offers the
ads for easy online shopping experiences. It allows users to have an instant
experience of shopping where they buy products without leaving the Facebook
interface. It encourages users having a bad or a low internet connection to do
easy online shopping.
·
Dynamic
Ads:
These ads are mobile-specific that allows brands to
display only one or two products at a time. The customer can click and buy
those products easily from their mobile.
·
Instant
Experience Ads
If you own a website, you must use Instant
experience Ads. Earlier, the Instant experience Ads was famous by the name
Canvas. Customers can load the ad 15 times faster than the mobile website when
it is outside the Facebook. In addition, the “Facebook Pixel” is an automatic
add on with the instant experience ads. It helps you to check the full tracking
of your leads and revenue generated.
·
Messenger
Ads:
It is one of the most popular Ads systems among the
corporates. You get the wide 1.3 billion potential customers who use the
Facebook messenger frequently. You also get many privileges on this platform.
You can set Photo Ads, Dynamic Ads, Carousel ds and video Ads for the
messenger. Also, you can advertise on the Facebook feed by running the “Click-to-messenger”
ads.
It also allows customers to have a one-on-one
conversation with your customer representative directly through the “call-to-action”
button on messenger.
·
Lead
Ads:
In the UK alone, the people are generating more
than 9k leads for promoting their product sample. Lead ads are exclusive to
mobile users. If you are looking for getting subscriptions or signing people
for a campaign or a trial of a product sample, this is the one for you.
Lead Ad Format:
Lead
ads help to get the people info from Facebook and
Instagram who could be your prospective clients. You can present a lead ad
either by image, video or carousel. Therefore, when the user engages in the ad,
an auto-filled form encourages them to share their info with you.
How does it work?
Lead ad allows you to do a
lead generation campaign. You can run this campaign on both Facebook and
Instagram.
You must have played games
on Facebook or clicked on links that ask your permission to access your
information. Likewise, through lead ads, you can get the contact information or
the email address of people without asking them to fill any form. As soon as
someone clicks to your ad, Facebook provides an automatically filled form on
behalf of the customers. You can also ask custom questions to people.
A lead ad format helps you
to gather the lead information easily. You can directly download these data
from Facebook and connect it to your CRM. You can use this data for various
purposes like:
Ø Follow
up calls,
Ø Price
estimation,
Ø Business
information,
Ø Sign
up for newsletters, etc.
You can create
a lead ad either through your Facebook fan/business page or
through the Facebook Ad manager.
How Can You Generate Revenues and Lead Through the Facebook Ads?
It
is important to understand the concepts behind the Facebook Ads. Remember, the Facebook
ads are more for demand generation. You can display your products through Facebook
Ads. You can attract more potential customers to your brands. However, Facebook
Ads do not assure you that the visitors will use your services.
The Facebook Ads works like a trap to bring
customers to your door. Whether the customer will buy from you or not totally
depends on the customers and your product. In addition, Facebook users do not
use the social media platform to do shopping. They visit to connect with
people. It is up to you to convert those visits for your own benefits.
There are few other aspects also that you must
understand before going much deeper into the topic.
· Generating Leads from the Low-Friction Conversions:
There is no magic wand to generate high ROI from
Facebook users. They sign up the platform not to buy your products. Perhaps
they have clicked to your ad on a whim.
The moment you try to sell everything that you
have, they perhaps behave fussily. Now, the million-dollar question is to
convert these fickle visitors into real customers. The idea is to connect with
them through simple conversions.
Encourage them to sign up for your service first.
You can request them to fill a short form or can ask for the e-mail address.
You can anytime upsell them later through e-mail marketing. Here, you are
generating leads only that will convert into the revenue ultimately.
· Building Trust in Your Business Model:
Once you collect the e-mail address of the
potential customers, your next target must be to generate some revenue. Have
you thought how many daily deals a person gets through his e-mail? The answer
is easy to guess. We all get numerous deals daily and most of the e-mail
marketing goes unnoticed or into the spam folders.
What Can You Do to Gain the Customer Trust and Attention?
Remember, through Facebook ads, you generate
revenue not at all once but over time. You get the valuable leads through
Facebook Ads. Then you start building your brand value by offering daily deals
and subscriptions.
Facebook Ads do not give you an instant customer
but it helps you getting lifetime loyal customers. It is wise to target 20%
payback on Facebook ads. You can easily get 100% payback within the span of 6
months. So, it would not be a good idea to look for some quick revenue, rather focus
on gathering leads and building a great business model.
A Systematic Guide to Creating a Facebook Ad
If you are running a business or a brand, you must
have a Facebook business page. However, if you are new to it, you first need to
sign-up for a Facebook business page. You do not need to be a pro to create a new
Facebook business page.
Creating a Facebook Business Page:
Follow this Step-by-step tutorial to create a Facebook business page:
Ø First,
click on the link to create
a new page. After the page is opened, you will see a Green
Button with the text ‘Create Page’. Click on it.
Ø Another
page will open. It will ask you to choose between a business or brand page and
a community or public figure page.
Ø Now
you have to select your page. Next, name your page and find a suitable category
for your page from the catalogue.
Ø After,
you have to add a profile picture and a cover photo.
Ø Congratulations.
You have created your Facebook Business Page.
Creating Facebook Ads
Now
you have a Facebook Business Page. You are ready to generate a Facebook Ad.
Here is a step-to-step guide to generate a Facebook Ad:
1. Choose your Objective:
It is the most crucial step. Before starting your
Facebook Ad campaign, you must be very clear about your objective. When you log
into the Facebook Ads Manager, you have to select a suitable campaign tab.
Facebook offers 11
campaigns options based on marketing objectives. They are:
·
Brand
Awareness: Getting the new audience for your brand
·
Reach:
Spreading the wings of your reach to the audience and maximizing brand
awareness.
·
Traffic:
get the organic traffic to a web page or app.
·
Engagement:
This helps to get a wide audience. It also helps to maximize the number of
likes on your post or page.
·
App
Install: It
encourages people to install your app.
·
Video
Views: It increases the reach of the video views.
·
Lead
Generation: It helps to add new sales prospects to the
business.
·
Messages:
Facebook encourages people to contact you through Facebook Messenger.
·
Conversion:
If you have a specific task, like getting more subscription or leads on your
website, Facebook helps you by conversion.
·
Catalogue
Sales: You can connect your catalogue to Facebook Ads. It
helps you to show your products to those who could be the buyers of those
products.
·
Store
Visit: It helps to
drive nearby customers at your store.
Now,
select an objective for your Facebook Ads. Remember, there are two payment methods
depending on the objectives.
·
Facebook charges pay per action for all
conversion-oriented objectives like sales.
·
For exposure objectives like traffics or
leads, Facebook charges pay per impression.
Let’s
say I use Traffic as my objective of Facebook Ads.
2. Name the Campaign:
Now
give a name to your campaign. You can choose a name manually or look for the
default name that Facebook suggests.
3. Choose the Ad-set:
Now
is the time to look for budget optimization. It is useful when you opt for
multiple ad sets. For the ad-set, you can use the default name appears on
Facebook or set a specific name. You can also create multiple at-set at once.
4. Choose Your Audience:
Facebook
offers unparalleled targeting options. You can target user by:
ü Location
ü Age
ü Interests
ü Connections
ü Gender
ü Relationship
status
ü Education
ü Languages
ü Workplace
Generally,
businessperson focuses on the age, location, language, and interests. You can
go for other choices as well depend on the product or services you are
offering.
You
can also go further into broad categories but it is costly and the success rate
is not impressive. Here you can focus on a specific interest. It helps to
target precise customers from the oceans of heads.
You can also go for
the custom audience.
5. Select the Ad Placement:
Through
Ad placement, you can choose the platform where Facebook displays your ad. It
could be Instagram, Facebook or the Audience network. You can go for automatic
placement chose placement as per your choice.
6. Set the Budget and Schedule the Ad:
Now,
you have to decide your budget. You can choose a daily budget or a lifetime
budget. In addition, you can decide the start and the end date for a scheduled
ad in the future or a live ad right away.
Advanced Budget
Option:
You
can go into more detail with the advance budget option. It is efficient and
cost-effective. It assures to display your ad only when the target audiences
are live on Facebook. Nevertheless, you can schedule your ad only with the
lifetime budget option.
7. Creating your Ad:
Creating
the ad is also easy. First, you need to select the page for which you are
creating the ad. After that, select an ad format. It can be a carousel, video,
single image, slideshow etc.
8. Media Selection:
Here
you add images, text, and design for the ads. You can add call-on-buttons,
pixels and many others to create an impressive Ad design. Once you complete the
design, click the confirm button to publish the ad immediately. You can also do
a review before the confirmation by clicking the review button.
How to Create Facebook Video Ads to Generate Leads and Revenue?
If
you are creating a Facebook video Ad, chose single video views, carousel or
slideshow as the campaign. Here you can optimize the video delivery between
10-second video views and 2-second continuous video views.
Now
you have to follow the process below:
a) Uploading the video:
ü For
single video or slideshow: If you have chosen single video or the slideshow,
upload video by clicking “UPLOAD VIDEO” button. You can upload a new video or
browse your library to select a video from the library.
ü For
the slideshow, click “Create Slideshow” button and upload the video or still
images from the library. You can also upload a new video or image.
ü For
Carousel, scroll down to the Creative/Link section. There click
“Video/Slideshow” button. Now, select the video or create a slideshow as per
your choice.
b) Cropping the Video:
ü For
cropping the video, select the Crop
ü Now, select a thumbnail for the video. After
finishing, click the confirm button. The Facebook will display video right
away.
c) Write a Facebook Ad Copy:
You cannot lure Facebook users just by
displaying images or video. Texts are significant because users read text apart
from the visuals. Facebook allows only 25-character headline and 90-character
body limit for the text.
To create a catching text, you can use the
copywriting formula AIDA.
Ø
A-Attention: Chose an eye-catching headline to
grab the user’s attention.
Ø
I-Interest: Describe the USP (unique selling
proposition) of the product in a brief. You can grab the user’s interest by the
USP.
Ø
D-desire: Lure the users by generating
desires. You can offer a free trial, discount, giveaway or some limited period
offers.
Ø
A-Action: At the end, finish the task with a
call to action.
To get the best of AIDA, write 8-10 ads and
find the crispest sales pitch that you can put into 115 characters.
How
to Bid on Facebook Ads?
If you invest the money,
your prime target must be lead and revenue generation. Strategic bidding
let you understand the difference between the profit and a failed
performance. Bid strategies control the cost. It works same as budget the
overall event. It also helps Facebook to understand your choices in ad auction.
You can choose from two bid strategies:
i) Lowest Cost:
By choosing this
strategy, you tell Facebook to get you the lowest possible cost per
optimization. You also allow Facebook to spend the entire budget at the end of
the day as per the ad sets or campaign. You can also have the option to go for
a “bid cap” where you limit the maximum amount for the bid.
ii) Target Cost:
When you target an
average cost per optimization, Facebook bids as per your specific goal.
However, you can use this strategy only the marketing objectives. For example,
lead generation, conversion, app install or catalogue sales.
What Bid Strategy Helps Me to Get More Revenue?
The answer depends upon
your objective of setting Facebook Ads. The basic trade-off between the lowest
cost and the target cost is efficiency versus stability.
ü
You get the most efficient use of the budget
through the lowest cost strategy. Although, it fluctuates a lot, through bid
cap you can control cost per optimization.
ü
Target cost strategy is stable and keeps the
average cost at par even if you increase the budget. You get the closet average
cost per optimization to your target budget for a lifetime for your ad-set.
Getting
higher CTR (Click-through Ratio):
A higher CTR indicated
greater engagement of audience to your Facebook Ads. You can track the
performance of your ads through CTR on Facebook. Remember, CTR does not give
the conversion data of leads. However, you get the idea of audience reach and
success of the ads.
A good CTR depends on:
·
Your product or services
·
The niche/market
·
The graphics quality
·
Post type
·
Target audience
You can check the CTR performance by comparing your
multiple ads by split testing.
Importance of Landing Pages:
Through Facebook ads, your ultimate goal is to
convert the visitors into customers. This is possible when you send these
visitors to a high converting landing page. When a user clicks
your ads, you get the user’s information like age, interest etc.
You lead the visitors to a page of their
interest. You must have a registration
form or an e-mail submit box handy to track the exact conversion. Not to
forget, your focus must be on conversion and not selling. Lure the visitors to
sign for the subscription or the newsletter. You can offer the visitors gifts
or other benefits for the e-mail subscription.
· Tracking the Performances Using Third Party Analytics Tools:
Facebook only offers data for users that behave
within the Facebook. It does not track conversion once a visitor leaves the
Facebook. Therefore, apart from Facebook Insights, you need other analytical
tools like Google Analytics to track the performance. You can tag your ad
tracking using Google URL builder for tracking the conversion.
· Tracking the Conversions:
Once you have separated campaigns by interest
group, it is easy to track each performance. You can use UTM (Urchin tracking)
campaign parameter to understand the ads performance based on user’s interest.
When you tag your URLs with UTMs, it gets you a
clear data of visitors’ behavior and interaction with your website.
·
Tracking the AD Performance within the Facebook Interface:
You cannot rest just by placing Facebook ads.
Monitoring the Ads performance within the Facebook interface assures good
leads. Various metrics allow you to track the performance. However, CTR
(Click-through-rate) is the best metric for tracking. It helps you to
understand both,
Ø Number
of clicks within the parameter
Ø The
amount you need to pay per click.
A low CTR is not good for Facebook Ads because it
indicates fewer clicks and high pay. Ads with high CTR indicate greater clicks
within your budget. In a long run, high CTR is less expensive as you get the
maximum returns of your budget.
To work well with CTR, it is important to have an
eagle’s eye on CTR by interest. You also learn the behavior of Facebook
audiences for your ads. You understand the interest of visitors and learn to
create ads that resonate with audiences.
When Should You Refresh the Facebook Ads?
Everything
has an expiry period. The Ad performances are also having a limit period
shinning time. Even the most popular Ads lose its charm over a period. It
happens more quickly with Ads that have smaller target audiences.
As soon as you see the continuous drop in traffic
on your Facebook ads, you know the time has come. Refresh your Facebook ads
with new images and videos. Change the text and create it more relevant
according to the time or season.
You do not need to edit your Ads for all these
changes. You can simply duplicate the previous Ads and do changes. This gives
you the privilege to have multiple different Ads for the same brand. In
addition, you can delete those ads that are getting none clicks. You will see
the change in performance by the next day.
Rotating High-Performance Images:
Your duty has not finished just by refreshing the
Facebook ads. You have to monitor the image performances on a regular basis. It
will tell you the best performing images. You can rotate those images in every
few weeks until Facebook audiences stop reacting to these images.
Conclusion:
Facebook Ads are great when you know how to use
them. Facebook does not claim the success of your business. However, it surely affects
the business world with highest leads. You need to learn how to work on the
target-specific interest. Channel your creativity towards the right pitch.
The success of Facebook Ads depends upon
eye-catching images, a low friction conversion, and careful tracking of
performance. When you choose the right strategy and monitor everything
carefully, you can ensure high leads and great revenues.