Make no mistake whether you have purely local business, or you are aiming for a
larger market be it regional or national or even global, you need to consider
Facebook ads. No marketing experts will try to twist your arm and say that you
have to absolutely take out Facebook ads. Please understand that as awesome
and as effective as Facebook ads can be, they are not for everybody. This is not a
piece of advice that applies across the board.
In certain situations, Facebook ads may be counterproductive as far as your
overall digital marketing campaigns go. Still, there are many ways Facebook ads
can take your business regardless of its size to the next level.
Here are just 5 of the biggest benefits. 5 of the most effective ways Facebook can
make an impact on your digital marketing campaigns effectiveness. This by no
means is an exhaustive list. In fact, the only limit to the ways Facebook's
complete advertising network can benefit your brand, is your imagination.
Seriously. Believe it or not, simply posting comments, blogs that use the
Facebook comment plug-in, can actually go a long way in boosting your brand.
Of course, you have to do it at the right time, on the right blogs and with the
right content. It’s not as straightforward or as black and white as a lot of people
make it out to be. Just like anything else in life, just because it sounds simple, it
doesn't necessarily mean that it is.
The fact is when you start on Facebook, chances are your initial campaigns will
not be all that successful. This is called the Facebook advertising learning curve.
Whether you are advertising a dropshipping business, a content base business or
a purely local or break and mortar brand, you have to pay your dues. Now there
lots of self-proclaimed Facebook marketing gurus and experts out there. A lot of
them talk of good game but the truth is, when the robber meets the road very
few, live up to the expectations. That's the bottom line.
They set up all sorts of expectations and unfortunately at the end, it's all a
familiar story. They overpromise and they underdeliver. If you really want to wrap
your mind around Facebook ads and whether it is a good fit for you, pay close
attention to what I'm about to say.
1. BUILD A SOLID BRAND IN YOUR LOCAL AREA
The first benefit Facebook ads brings to the table is you are able to create a solid
brand in your local area.
Quick recap: why is a having a brand important? When you build a brand, you
don’t have to constantly promote your business. Once your business is recognized
as a brand, people will seek you out. Your reputation will precede you-and open
many doors of opportunity for you. Why? Well, people don’t like to take risks.
With everything else being equal, people would rather do business with a known
and trusted entity than roll the dice on some shadowy, less known, possibly
inferior source of products or services. Best of all, people would pay extra for this
sense of certainty.
You may think that you're already doing a good job of branding your business in
your local area. You may think that those bus bench ads that you've taken out are
doing wonders for your local brand recall. You may have reached out to local
business organizations and social groups to publicize your brand. Maybe you’ve
sponsored lots of Little League games and your business is quite well known
among networking circles in your neck of the woods.
All these may well be the case but you shouldn't stop there. You should look for
total local market branding saturation and this includes the digital space. In the
case of branding, there’s no such thing as too much of a good thing. You could
always use more branding.
Please understand that its more and more of your local competitors find their way
on Facebook and other social media platforms. It's only a matter of time until
they'd leave you in the dust. I don't mean to scare you but local advertising in the
united states and elsewhere moves at the speed of light. This is one area you
cannot afford to overlook or neglect. Simply assuming that it’s not going to have
much of an impact in your local business is simply burying your head in the sand.
It's not an effective strategy. So if you want to leverage whatever brand you've
managed to build in your local area, one of the best ways to do this is to run
Facebook marketing campaign.
2. CONDUCT CONSUMER INTELLIGENCE ON THE CHEAP
Surveying your customers and getting crucial products and service development
information from them is an effective way of figuring out what your market
needs. The more accurate your take is on the pulse of your clients, the more
likely you will roll out a successful products or service.
The problem is the traditional the ways of getting this type of consumer
intelligence can be very expensive. I am talking about phone surveys, paper
surveys and focus groups. Traditional consumer intelligence can also take quite a
bit of time. Take note that just because you ran a focus group or put out a survey
that these might not hit the mark the first time around.
Oftentimes, companies would have to run several rounds of surveys to find the
information that they are looking for. Also, some surveys need to be run several
times to make sure they are reaching the right random sample of people.
Otherwise, whatever recommendations the surveys might point to might not
actually do much good for the businesses commissioning these surveys.
Make no mistake, traditional offline or phone-based consumer intelligence
gathering is pricey, eats up a lot of time, and needs a lot of costly fine tuning to
produce solid value for businesses. Worst of all, you have to rely on consumer
intelligence firms to gather and process the data. They are also in charge of
designing the information gathering campaign’s internal processes and details.
Thankfully with the internet, you can cut out the middle men, you can also make
the whole process more effective and efficient. Using Facebook ads, you can
conduct consumer intelligence in your local area very inexpensive. These are
people who already have a declared interest in whatever this you are offering.
3. TEST OUT NEW PRODUCTS OR SERVICE IDEAS
I'm sure you've seen this many times before. You've come up with the product
that you think is very hot and then all of a sudden, nobody buys. Well, it's one
thing to think that a new product offering is the best things in sliced bread. That's
another for that eagerness of yours to actually translate to profit.
If you want to focus on your bottom line and unfortunately losing your own
enthusiasm level is a lousy indicator of future success. The best way to do this is
to run actual ads on Facebook to see whether your existing customer base are
actually interested in the product or service offering that you are so excited
about. That's how you really figure out whether your new offerings will add to
your profitability.
4. BUILD A MAILING LIST
How many times have you hear the saying the money is in the list? It's absolutely
true. The money is in the list. The problem is a lot of businesses go through the
process in an obligatory way. They basically just go through the motions. They
just run a glorified newsletter and not much else. It is no surprise that their
mailing list doesn't really deliver the sales that they need to justify the continued
existence of the mailing list.
There are no two ways about it-mailing lists deliver a lot of value. I’m not just
talking about sales here. While lists are great for cashing in on whatever promo
you are running, your list can also deliver consumer intelligence at dirt cheap
rates. As you probably already know, consumer intelligence is crucial for sound
business strategic decisions. Also, your list can do wonders for your business’
brand persona and goodwill building.
The bottom line? Mailing lists help your brand get ‘up close and personal’ to
people looking to develop a relationship with your business. Treat your list with
the seriousness and close attention to details it deserves. Otherwise, your list
might quickly turn into yet another business liability. Remember, the bigger your
list, the more expensive it is to run. Don’t just focus on growing your list.
Monetize it as efficiently as possible.
This really is too bad because a lot of local businesses have become very
successful and have expanded their operations precisely because they know how
to build and work mailing list. Well, the good news is, a Facebook ad campaign
can help you do the heavy lifting of the most important part of mailing list
marketing which is recruitment. You can get the right ads in front of the right
eyeballs so people can click through and end up on your mailing list squeeze
page. Best of all, you can do this for a fairly cheap rate.
5. RE TARGET YOUR LOCAL PROSPECT
I'm sure you don't need me to remind you that a certain percentage of people
who end up at your website look to buy something. It' s as of they go to the
shopping cart but for whatever reason they don't pull the trigger and actually buy
something. Usually, businesses kiss this prospects divine. They only go to your
website once and you can basically forget about them cause they're never coming
back.
Well, thanks to Facebook's retargeting technology, when people go to certain
pages on your site and they go back to Facebook or websites and Facebook's ad
network what do think you they'll see? That' s right. They'll see your ad. When
they click on it, they go to the page they left or better yet a page that's closer to
the conversion page on your website.
Whatever the case maybe and regardless of how you set it up, Facebook's
advertising system gives you a powerful tool to let your prospects remember that
they considered your site. In fact, this technology called ad retargeting increases
conversions by 40%.
Please understand that those are sales that you could have lost for all practical
purposes, these are lost sales but here you are resurrecting them, "bringing them
back from the dead" through ad retargeting. Keep the 5 key strategic advantages
above in mind next time you consider your digital marketing budget.
Please understand that whether your business is hyper local or semi local, you
have to have a digital marketing strategy. It's only a matter of time until your
competitors eat your lunch. Don't let them do it. The good news is it doesn't have
to burn a hole through your wallet. It doesn't have to be prohibitively expensive.
Just click here to get the inside scoop on how to set up a working Facebook
advertising campaign even if you are a complete and total beginner.
This resource steps you through all the advertising possibilities and benefits
Facebook brings to the table. The best part is that it explains all of these
materials in plain English. That's right. You don't have to be some sort of
computer gig. You don't have to be a big time internet user. Even if you are an
occasional user of the world wide web, that is good enough because the language
is written in plain English. Isn't that amazing?
So if you want to take your local business to the next level or just as importantly
try to protect and maintain the local brand that you have managed to build up to
this point, you need to read this book. It is quick, it is easy to scan and most
importantly it is easy to implement.
We've gone a long way to skip out on the theory cut out on the fluffed. It's time
you tap into Facebook advertising.
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