You manage the company’s Facebook account with a pretty decent number of followers. You have a posting schedule detailing when to post, what to share. These posts receive a couple of likes, but not very significant. You are probably running some ads, but they are not converting very well. If this sounds familiar to you, then read on. That was our situation in 2016. After two years and various experiments, we have found a way to make Facebook a sustainable lead generation channel for us. Here are our best tips to make it happen.
1. Optimise your audience
Understanding your audience is key to any marketing tactics. The question is, to what extent can you understand them? On Facebook, you can fine-tune the audience targeting to micro-details: the neighbourhood people live in, the magazines they follow. You can also create lookalike audiences to reach people with similar profiles as your current targets. What’s more? With Custom Audience, you can do re-marketing with people who have visited your website or event a specific page on your site. Here’s a complete guide on creating custom audiences. Once you know the audience, you can then serve the right content to them.
2. Use the right tone
One of the big marketing trends of 2019 is humanisation. People want to speak to a person, not a faceless business. They want to feel the connection with the brand. You can start incorporating a more “human” tone to your messages by:
- Using the pronoun “I”: Instead of using “we” to represent a group or a business, try speaking from the first person’s point of view and share your personal opinion. What do you like about the product or service mentioned in the post?
- Writing as if you are talking: Most of the time, the languages we use when we speak and when we write are different. Some structures that read well in a writeup, but you will never use them when you are speaking. So if you want to appear as casual and conversational, write the way you talk.
- Using stickers and emoticons: These are handy tools to appear fun and casual. While you want to keep a professional image, sticking rigidly to the business style may create an image that is too serious for a relaxed environment like social media’s. Try to find the right balance to connect with your followers.
- Signing with your name in comments: This adds a personal touch to your message and lets your followers know whom they are talking to.
3. A/B test your ads
There are so many things you can do with Facebook ads, and Facebook keeps adding more options! Sometimes, it can get quite overwhelming. The only way to know what works for you is to test them out. Here are the things you can test on:
- Style: Canvas vs single image, vs videos
- Ads placement: desktop, mobile, right-hand column
- Ads copy
- Call to action button
- Visuals
Be sure to organise and keep track of your tests, especially when you are doing multiple tests at the same time.
4. Track the traffic
By default, Google Analytics can only tell you if the traffic is coming from Facebook or not. If you want to go a step or two steps further, you will need to customise the link to provide more information for Google Analytics. Campaign URL Builder is a convenient tool for this purpose. You can use it to separate the promoted posts from the Facebook ads, as well as distinguish the ads to know which ones bring more traffic.
Khanh Tran, Marketing Communication Executive, Villa Finder
