Email Marketing with Facebook Ads
Just sending email blasts to customers has been in practice for quite some time. If you consider how many really get opened, you’d realize that this is not the best automated marketing option for getting results. And if your customers receive too many emails, the unsubscribe rate is sure to climb.
Email Marketing can be an incredibly effective tool, but only when you incorporate list segmentation to send highly relevant emails to your subscribers in a timely manner. Building a quality email marketing list still remains a very important sales tool for most businesses.
On the other hand, a billion people log into Facebook multiple times a day. Customers in your target audience are likely included in that number. Why not use your Facebook page to draw them in, build your list, and deliver highly relevant and targeted emails? Integrating Facebook Advertising into Marketing Automation is something every business should look at.
There are several options of Facebook advertising for your small business. Depending on your goals and budget, some great options you can choose from Facebook Custom Audiences, Facebook Lead Ads or Facebook Local Awareness Ads. Each is described more in detail below.
Facebook Custom Audiences
With the wide use and popularity of social media, particularly Facebook for businesses, it is wise for small business owners to use the power that a Facebook Custom Audience campaign can offer. It’s a more cost-effective solution to marketing automation that actually works. It combines the power of social media and Marketing Automation to boost your bottom line.
What’s a Facebook Custom Audience?
Custom Audiences is a powerful tool which allows you to create lists of people you want to target Facebook ads at based on a list of email addresses, page likes, web page visitors, unique Facebook IDs or phone numbers.
A Custom Audience from a customer list is a type of audience you can create made up of your existing customers. You can target ads to the audience you’ve created on Facebook, Instagram, and Audience Network.
You upload, copy and paste or import your hashed customer list, then Facebook uses the hashed data from it to match the people on your list to people on Facebook.
The premise behind Facebook Custom Audience follows the adage “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush”. In other words, targeting current customers will likely produce better results than looking for new ones. Using Custom Audiences will strengthen your existing connections.
All you need to get started on a Custom Audience list is a list of your customers. You will need to upload the customers’ contact info; e.g. email addresses or phone numbers. You can also use info from your website or app.
Once you have a Custom Audience created from your customer list, you can create a look alike audience from that Custom Audience. You can also create a look alike audience from the people who already like your Facebook page
Look alike audiences are created in Facebook bases on the common qualities of the people in your Custom (source) Audience, such as demographic information or interests.
You also have the option to narrow your audience to target your ad to customers based on demographics like location, age, gender, and other factors, like interests and buying trends.
Facebook Lead Ads
Facebook Lead Ads are designed to be super easy – in fact, completing a call to action can be as simple as two taps. As more people are using Facebook on their phones, Facebook Lead Ads simplify the process of contacting a business to learn more about their products and services.
How Facebook Lead Ads work
Your ad is displayed on Facebook based on the targeting criteria you select. Once someone clicks on the lead ad, a form opens up with the Facebook user’s information automatically populated, such as Name and email address. The Facebook user can simply press submit if they are happy with the auto-populated information, or they can edit it before they submit. The form is designed to load super-fast on a mobile device.
Once the Facebook user submits their form, you create a trigger to initiate an email with an offer back to the Facebook user, via an email marketing or CRM platform like Mailchimp or ActiveCampaign. Since the form was automatically populated, the email address that the user submits is likely to be accurate, plus they initiated the request by clicking on the Facebook Lead Ad to receive an offer.
Example
After the form is submitted, an email is sent with the offer. This is a great way to get customers in the door and to build your email list for future email marketing campaigns.
Facebook Local Awareness Ads
These ads are designed to reach people near your business. It’s the easiest way to reach your audience – using distance around your business and the age and gender of the potential customers you want to reach.
We recommend using the Call Now button, tied to a call tracking number. When we run the ad in the mobile news feed only display option, we can also use clicks on the Call Now button to send a text opt-in message to build your text message marketing list. Additional calls to action are available to include: Like Page, Get Directions, Learn More, Send Massage, and Save.
How Facebook Local Awareness Ads Works
Your ad is displayed on Facebook based on the geographic, age and gender targeting criteria we select. Once someone clicks on the Call Now button, the call is placed to your business. All calls can be tracked (there is even an option to record the calls).
Text Message Option Add-on
Since the ad only runs in the mobile news feed, a text message can be sent to the phone number of the person who called your business, asking them to opt-in to receive text message offers. This gives them an offer to get potential customers in the door faster, and it allows you to build your marketing database.
Example
Facebook Custom Website Audiences
You can automate a Facebook ad sequence by using Website Custom Audiences. You can drive traffic to specific pages on your website through direct mail, Google AdWords, Facebook or LinkedIn Ads, or let organic search results drive traffic to specific pages, and then create Facebook Ads the run only for the Website Custom Audience that you created – the people who visited a specific page or pages. This allows you to deliver a highly relevant ad targeted to content that you know a Facebook visitor has interest in. This can be really helpful in longer or more complex sales cycles.
Use Facebook with Marketing Automation to Generate Effective Results
When you add Facebook Ads with marketing automation to trigger email or text messages, or even additional Facebook Ads to help move customers through the buyer’s journey, you get a dynamic combination that includes multiple touches through different media that has an amplifying effect.
Need help developing an effective lead generation system for your business? Changescape Web can help – contact us today.