Google and Facebook Advertising - Common Mistakes and How to Move Forward With A Better Strategy
Often times clients contact us about Social Media and Search Marketing where they have started and are not having success. In this post, we would like to set the record straight on some of the different items that constitute paid-for marketing between some of these channels. As the majority of what we have been doing are through platforms like Google and Facebook, we will use those as the common theme for this post.
As an example, many clients contact us asking why their marketing is not working. In this example, let’s use Facebook. Many times, they feel that because they are posting about what is going on at their business, they feel like that should drive more and new business. It could, but often times, we find that the client does not have a lot of followers for their page and are not taking the necessary steps to help their post grow (Like, Share, etc.). The clients are not even liking the post, or sharing the post through their personal pages, or getting people in the business to do likewise. Many times, we simply point these things out, as well as how to hashtag to increase the potential scope of a post. Next, the client falls into the trap of paying Facebook by boosting a post and dropping some cash to increase the audience size. This is fine, but a common trap that likely will not get you too much bang for your buck due to the post leading to just a wild spread in the audience to catch everyone based on numbers. E.G. you can boost your post and get 10,000 people to see more by spending $10 to increase the audience. Great, you’ve just advertised, but you likely are getting 9,995 people who have no interest at all in what you sell. The smart money would be to promote your product/service to an audience likely to buy from you. Some savvy clients know how to do this and have utilized Facebook’s Business and Ad Manager platform to manage their advertising on the platform. Still, we often find that the strategy in the platform could be flawed. E.G. if your target audience is not built correctly, you may be wasting money on an audience who has no plans to buy what you are selling. Building an audience can take time on the platform and should be done right. Consider your customer and who you have been selling to - what are their demographics, age, likes, etc. Facebook allows you to create an audience based on your ideal customer so advertising is more targeted and less waste involved. You can dig deep into this process too and really develop something that clicks - literally. See what I did there? Ok, no more #dadjokes, back to the story. In addition to developing the audience, you will also want to define your strategy. When you start, you will likely want to build an Awareness campaign, and based on what you’re selling, you then may want to move to Conversions and develop a strategy that asks people to get in touch by filling out a form directly on Facebook. If you have a good sales or close process, this will allow the company to move quickly to contact the people submitting forms and close the business. You will also be able to shape and mold the creative messages and test what works best. While this will likely cost more than boosting a post - the effectiveness will be worth its weight in advertising dollars. We recently quoted Henry Ford, who said something along the lines of "stopping advertising to save money is like stopping your watch to save time.” Too many businesses build a business without an advertising plan, or attack advertising by trying to do it yourself without an appreciation of the methods that can be used. Most clients waste more time, effort, energy and money using this path vs. paying someone to do it right. It’s also fine to promote your business to your friends in your network, but think about what you’re doing and how you’re doing it. Your business expects customers to pay for your service and buy your product because you are the best at what you do, ensure you think of your business the same way when it comes to advertising. Now, on to Google.
Regarding Pay Per Click advertising (Google), we often find that clients go down this path without much though or strategy, just hoping to drive clicks regardless of if it is the audience that they want. They measure effectiveness by the size of the audience of and number of clicks regardless of ROI. Really, the point of PPC advertising is to drive business. Often, we find flaws in the approach and base what we do on how it can most benefit the client. For example, driving traffic to a client website alone is not built for conversion. Potential clients get lost on websites, there is a lot of information to absorb and often they click around seeking information, then an email or a phone call comes in and get distracted, lose focus and move on to something else forgetting why they were on your site in the first place. The close needs to happen faster, so in many cases we recommend landing pages to covert the client with a direct action for more information such as a phone call or a form fill. We want the client to get in touch and make a deal. Why would we do this, well the numbers speak for themselves and facts are stubborn things. Landing pages convert at a rate much higher than websites to the tune of 3% conversion to 10% conversion. For a recent client that had a $2000 budget on ad spend, that equated to the following. With the landing page, they drove 202 clicks. Utilizing a Landing Page that led to 20 estimated leads at $99 per lead. Without a Landing Page, it equated to 6 leads at $330 per lead. Strategy and execution are the key, but you want to give yourself the best chance of success. While we have only scratched the surface here, the best thing that we can tell you is to ensure that you spend money wisely when it comes to advertising online. Otherwise, you may be gambling on a not so sure thing. If you are going to go about it on your own, use some of these tips to help you on the way and build a better audience and strategy. The advertising platforms are getting more and more complex. We didn’t even talk about creating lookalike or custom audiences using prior client lists or building the remarketing platform to follow people around after they have visited your website. All things we can talk about later and really dig into the details. Advertising is a marathon and not a sprint, so be patient and build upon your success over time and try new things and be willing to experiment. You’ll get there and if you need help…ask us and we’ll be happy to walk you through strategies that may be beneficial…or some that may not.
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