Facebook Ads Mistakes Blog

With over 2.6 billion monthly active users and a sophisticated algorithm that understands intent and behavior, there is no doubt that Facebook is an excellent platform for advertising.

By placing an ad on the platform, your chances of reaching your target audience skyrocket. This is why it’s no surprise that businesses, big and small, continue to devote substantial marketing budget to Facebook ads.

Facebook advertising requires a bit of a learning curve. Many of us tend to make a lot of mistakes, especially when we’re starting out. Understanding some of the most common Facebook ads mistakes will help you get more bang for your advertising buck.

Here are 6 common Facebook ads mistakes that are destroying your campaign.

Choosing the wrong objective

If you’re running ads and you don’t know what an objective is, then that would be big problem. In this case, you’re probably just boosting the post (we can talk about that in a separate blog post).

Choosing the right objective is vital to the success of your advertising campaign. Facebook has 11 objects, and each of them helps get you closer to your goals.

Basically, you’re telling Facebook what you expect to gain for this specific campaign. Let’s say you want to make your video viral, then an engagement campaign would be a great option. If you want to generate leads, then choose lead generation as your objective. If you’re running an e-commerce business and you’re looking to get more purchases, then choose conversion as your objective.

Choosing the wrong objective will not only give you unfavorable results, you’ll also be wasting money.

Poor targeting

There are billions of people on Facebook. Showing your ads to all of them doesn’t make sense. That’s why it’s important that you know who your target audience is before you start creating a campaign.

Targeting is a vital element when creating an ads campaign. Try to be as detailed as possible with your targeting. Narrow down your audience by targeting by gender, age ranges, geographic areas, and interests. The more specific you can get with your targeting, the better results you’ll see.

Forgetting about Facebook Pixel

Pixel provides a way to track interactions that are happening with your ad. By installing it on your website, it would be easier for you to track your visitor’s behaviors and gather data.

From the data you have collected, you can learn how your audience engages with you off of the Facebook platform. It also provides a way to measure your ads effectiveness in driving results.

Without Pixel, how else are you going to prove that what you are doing to drive opportunity to your business is working?

Sticking to one type of media

The primary goal of creating ads is to get people to take notice and take action. But since most people aren’t on Facebook to shop or checkout ads, it can be extremely difficult to get people to do that.

It takes an intriguing, creative, and a compelling ad copy to capture the attention of your audience. Video ads are one of the most powerful ways to capture the attention of your audience. But if you’re using videos on all your FB ads campaign, it can start to feel a bit stale after a while.

Consider using a variety of media – videos, photos, animated photos etc. Also, create a variety of ad copies and test them out. This way, you can determine which one resonates best with your audience and provides the best results for your business.

Impatience

Like any other digital marketing campaign, it takes time to create and optimize a Facebook ads campaign. Your Facebook Pixel is smart, but you need to give it time to learn and gather data.

The problem is that some people get impatient, thinking that they are losing money but still not getting results.

For instance, if your Pixel is fresh and you set your campaign objective to conversion, Facebook may not even know what a “purchasing” customer will look like, especially when you’ve never had any sales before. You’ll have to wait until you’ve gathered enough data before making any decisions on your ads like pausing or tweaking them.

Don’t think of it as an expense. Rather, think of it as an investment. Remember, you’re paying Facebook for the data.

Set it and forget it mindset

This is one of the biggest mistakes we’ve seen over the years. While it’s important to be patient and allow Facebook to do the work, it’s also important to check your ad campaign once in a while.

If you leave the ad campaign as is after it went live, there’s a good chance that the results will diminish over time. Why? It’s because of ad fatigue.

Let’s say you’ve been running the same ad for a month and you didn’t make any changes since it went live. Chances are the same people will be seeing the same ad over and over again. Not only will people find it annoying, you’re also losing money in the process. Read the data and make the necessary changes to get better results.

Running a remarketing campaign can be an effective way to re-engage potential customers who may have shown interest in your product or service, but did not convert during their initial visit.

Final thoughts

It’s important to be aware of the six common Facebook Ads mistakes so that you can avoid them and have a successful campaign. A good way to start is by understanding your target audience, setting clear goals and objectives, and creating high-quality ads.

All the tips mentioned above will help ensure your campaigns are successful and are getting the results you desire.

6 Common Facebook Ads Mistakes That Are Destroying Your Campaigns

6 Common Facebook Ads Mistakes That Are Destroying Your Campaigns6 Common Facebook Ads Mistakes That Are Destroying Your Campaigns

Tips to Boost Your Online Sales

(Updated Post from 2016)

Increasing sales is undeniably the primary goal of many businesses, small and large. But the biggest challenge business owners face is how to increase traffic to their e-commerce store. Once you’ve accomplished that, your goal is to turn those visitors into paying customers.

Here are 4 simple things you can do to boost your online sales.

Post fresh content

Just because you have a website, doesn’t mean that you can relax and just wait for potential clients to visit your site. You also need to post fresh content to encourage visitors to return to your site. Having well-written content and product descriptions are important. The more they return, the more likely are they to buy your products and services.

Be honest in your sales copy

Honesty is crucial, not only in building trust in your brand; but also in improving your business’ reputation. Your goal is to show people that you are the best person to provide the products that will help solve their problems. But in order to do that, you need to add credibility to your copy. Be honest in your sales copy and include customer testimonials in your sales letter. It is through this process that people will come to trust you and feel comfortable enough to buy from you. The golden rule – Know, Like, Trust.

Go social

Social media is one of the best ways to increase brand awareness, sales, and customer satisfaction. Actively engage with prospective customers via social media. Talk to them. Answer their questions as quickly and as honestly as you can. Studies show that customers are more likely to purchase products if they receive fast and honest answers from the company.

Don’t forget about your customers once you get them to purchase your products. Send them an email, offer discounts or free shipping on their next purchase. The more attention you pay to them after they have bought something, the more likely are they to turn into repeat customers. Think relationships, not sales.

Offer fewer products

Most businesses create an extensive list of products and services, thinking they’ll get more sales if they have a little something for everyone. But the problem is that prospects will have a hard time deciding whether to buy or not when you have an exhaustive product list. Instead of trying to please everyone, you might want to streamline your products and offer one set of related products. Then, describe those products as best you can.

Also, buyers need to see the benefits of purchasing your products. Try to answer all doubts and questions your visitors may have about your products and really focus on one key set of benefits.

 

Benefits to Retargeting ads

Today’s blog discusses remarketing ads or retargeting ads. Specifically, we’re going to be focusing on Facebook, however, this also applies to Google or any other ad network that you’re on, as long as you have that tracking code on your website, that then tracks what people have been doing with either the ads, or with your website once they get there.

First of all, why should you have retargeting ads for your marketing?

There are five main reasons that I think of when it comes to remarketing ads. These include:

  1. Brand Awareness
  2. Create more qualified leads
  3. Show Your Audience Compelling Content that Aligns with Their Interests
  4. Automate and Streamline Upsells and Sales
  5. Increase ROI with Retargeting Ads

 

Listen to the Digital Marketing Podcast

Read the Transcript

Hi there, Caitlin McDonald here with the Social Speak Network, and today we’re going to be talking about remarketing ads, or retargeting ads. Specifically, we’re going to be focusing on Facebook, however, this also applies to Google or any other ad network that you’re on, as long as you have that tracking code on your website, that then tracks what people have been doing with either the ads, or with your website once they get there.

First of all, why should you have retargeting ads for your marketing?

There are five main reasons that I think of when it comes to remarketing ads.

Raise Brand Awareness

The first is to raise brand awareness. It often takes people between seven and 12 touches in order to make that purchasing decision with your company, and so by having retargeting ads you are really building that brand awareness. The second reason is to increase the marketing efforts from your other platforms. So let’s say you have an email campaign, or you’re working with another company that drives a lot of traffic to the site, you’re paying money to get people there the first time, you might as well make sure that they are then converting into clients of yours, or customers of yours. So remarketing really helps to make sure that people who are being driven to the site through other efforts, then are growing with that brand awareness and learning to know, like, and trust your business.

Create more qualified leads

Next, it helps you create more qualified leads. And the reason why this is, is because you can actually utilise retargeting ads to track somebody and to drive somebody through your sales funnel. So what we sometimes do, is we’ll show ads to somebody who’s been to a landing page, but not a thank you page, or we’ll show ads to somebody who has been to a thank you page, or looking very high top of the funnel, maybe somebody has just been to the home page of your website, but never drilled down to specific content. Having the retargeting ads really helps to drive more qualified leads, because we are progressively getting somebody to interact more and more with your content, with your website, with your services, so that when you actually get on the phone with them, or they actually get to the sales page, they’re ready to say, “Sign me up now.”

Show Your Audience Compelling Content that Aligns with Their Interests

Next, number four. Is that through using retargeting, you can actually show people more compelling content. If you know what pages of the website, or what products, or services, people have viewed you can actually create a whole campaign to show them more similar content, or similar products, related products, or even the same product, over and over again through different media and through different links, so that you really are showing them that you understand what they are looking for and interested in. If we’re talking about a website let’s say, that has both books and products on it, and somebody keeps on going to the book section of the website, they’re probably not as interested in the product services of the website, so you want to make sure that they’re seeing more and more information about potential books that they could be interested in. If you notice that somebody never goes to the book section of the website and only looks at the products, then they probably are going to be more interested in there.

You can also think about the same way with videos. Let’s say somebody watches part of a video, Facebook allows you to target people who have only watched three seconds let’s say of a video. You can show them content that’s related to that first three seconds of the video, and show somebody who’s watched more of the video more advanced content, so that you are really helping them move through that sales funnel, without them having to remember to come back and go to your website, or check you out.

Automate and Streamline Upsells and Sales

Now, the fifth reason is to help automate and streamline some of the upsells and sales moving forward after somebody has purchased that initial product. So if you know somebody has gotten to the thank you page after checking out, then you can show them more advanced products, or related products and services that are going to help them even more with whatever journey they’re on with your business. And so this is a great way to help get repeat customers, or help them share your offer with other people. Imagine having a Refer a Friend ad pop-up after you’ve made a purchase for a website, this would be a great way, an easy touch, to get them to interact with your business more and to engage their family and friends with your business as well. And so we highly recommend creating multiple different types of retargeting campaigns on Facebook and testing out linking to things like blog posts, product pages, posting videos, boosting posts, and diving in deeper with webinars or more advanced pieces of training.

So by doing this, again, really you’re working to build that brand awareness, working to drive people down through that sales cycle at lower cost than just showing somebody one ad and forgetting about them, and also making sure that people don’t get bored seeing the same thing over and over again. You want to make sure that you’re showing them related content that is very interesting to them, but not the same offer over and over again, especially if they’ve already clicked to learn more and decided not to move forward.

I hope that this has been helpful, about the reasons why you should make sure to include remarketing or retargeting in your ads on Facebook. It is pretty easy to set this up. You need to make sure that you have the Pixel installed on every page of your website, and that you’ve created audiences for either specific pages on your website, or categories of blog posts, or things like thank you pages, or landing pages about specific topics. You can group these together in different audiences and then just select that audience as you are creating the ad campaign. Additionally, if you have an email list, let’s say one of the things that you’re working on is growing an email list, you can then re-target to these individuals, or create a lookalike audience to continue growing your email list at a lower cost. We’ve done this for a few clients where their big goal is growing that email list with qualified candidates. And so we take the list that’s already built of qualified candidates, we load it as an audience and then we create a look-alike audience, so that we’re sure we’re targeting similar people to the folks who have already pushed forward and moved forward. And so this is a great way, again, using remarketing and re-targeting tools, to drive the cost of your marketing down.

Increase ROI with Retargeting Ads

If you can squeeze a few more conversions out of each person who sees the ad, or each campaign, excuse me, then it’s definitely well worth your effort to spend the time to create the remarketing campaigns. Of course, pay attention to what website, or what pages people are going to on your site, how they’re interacting with the content, and from there you’ll be able to drive your business forward with Facebook ads.

Now, if you have any questions about how to run these ads on Facebook, or get your account all set up, we’d love to have a conversation with you. Head on over to socialspeaknetwork.com, click that Free Consultation link and we can hop on a 30-minute phone call just to get acquainted. If this has been beneficial for you, click that Subscribe button and of course follow us for more information. Thanks so much and I’ll see you next time.

Types of Adwords Campaigns for Healthcare Marketing

Healthcare practices often have an advertising budget, and typically this advertising budget can be split between digital and traditional marketing. We found in our digital marketing experience that Google Ads is one of the best places to run advertisements for your business to make sure that you are reaching prospects and getting new leads into your practice.

We’ve talked in the past about how it’s important to have a landing page and a lead capture system so that you can then follow up with these individuals as well. So here we’re going to be talking more on the Google advertising side of it.

So I’m going to be showing you a few of the campaigns that we utilize for our clients and that we are seeing tremendous results from. So let me jump over and we will share my screen.

Okay, so this is just a random account that we have that has a small budget, but I’m going to be utilizing it for a demonstration of these different ad groups.

Oftentimes, you will already have a Google Ads account set up. You could create a new account. I like always being able to look back and see old data, so you can always pause the ads that you currently have running, the campaigns that you currently have running, and then start a new one.

Traditional search term campaign

So the first type of campaign that I always recommend for our providers to be running is just a traditional search term campaign. So here we’re going to click New Campaign, and oftentimes we have it where we have the lead conversion set up.

We have talked about this in the past as well. But what you want to do is make sure when you have that “Request a consultation” page, that you then have a “Thank you” page, that’s the easiest way to set it up. You can also use the Google Tag Manager to have a tag in the code up here when somebody clicks “submit” or when the thank you message pops up, we find it just easier to have that “Thank you” page. The reason is that you can then make sure that front and center is the phone number to call immediately, maybe there’s an online scheduling tool in addition to just collecting their name, email address and phone number, or maybe it’s a video from one of your doctors or specialists.

So here, if you check leads and then you want a search campaign. And so what we want to do is website visits, and then you could also do phone calls, for example. And you put on your website here.

Try to be as specific as possible

Now, when we are creating ad campaigns for our clients, we try and have it be as specific as possible. By that, I mean we want to have a campaign that’s specifically for search networks and we have text ads and another campaign that’s specifically for the display network.

Now, some of these do have text ads as well, but they’re also the banner ads and you’re having it show up on womenshealth.com, for example. They might have advertisements that show up as pieces of their content. And so if that’s your target market, you might wanna have ads show up there too.

Target by specific location

But the search network, this is for somebody searching specifically for your specialty within your geographic area, so we want to have the search network and then the location. We want to be able to enter a specific location. So when you’re doing this, click advanced search, and oftentimes we will do a radius around a specific area.

So let’s see, I don’t have an area off the top of my head, but you type in your address here and you can go from, one mile, is the minimum, up to hundreds of miles. So if you are really the only specialist in the entire state, you might want to have this be a state-wide radius. If you have multiple locations, you would want to have a campaign for each of those locations.

Target by zip code

So something else you can do is a target by zip codes. So if you have any sort of report that says X condition is more prevalent in this zip code, this zip code, and this zip code, you might want to create a campaign specifically for those three zip codes, rather than doing a radius around the location or a full state or full setting. So that’s one targeting option there.

Target by neighborhood level

We are also working on, kind of internally, ways that we can get more specific and even go down to a neighborhood level, and that would be by having a location, setting it to one mile apart, so you have a radius around a location, and then excluding specific radiuses that are around there, so that you can get that one-mile radius down to a quarter of a mile, for example.

Using longitude and latitude

Using longitude and latitude, a lot of geofencing companies are able to do this. This is different than what we typically are doing on Google AdWords, but I did want to bring that up that there are ways to get more specific than that one-mile radius. But for the search term, typically we want to go sometimes 20 miles, sometimes six miles, it really depends what the competitive landscape in the area is looking like, how easy it is to travel from place to place, you know your location.

Boulder, Colorado, for example, would have a much larger radius that we would run there potentially, rather than New York City, in which case, that would be a much smaller radius.

Target by language

Now, if you’re writing ads in different languages, let’s say you have a high Hispanic population and you wanna do Spanish, again, I would recommend dividing this out, so you have a campaign that’s specifically for that other population.

Budget

As for the budget, we often start the budget around $3-5 per day and then grow it from there. The reason why is we want to see those leads coming in, especially as we’re putting out new ad text, and we also want to have the focus again, beyond conversions, and this is with that lead capture form.

Target cost per action

Oftentimes, we have a target cost per action, and this is just to help Google be able to estimate whether or not their own optimization is helping us reach that conversion metric that we want. Oftentimes, we set this for a healthcare center around $100 or so. Our cost per conversion is often much less than that over time.

Ad extensions

Then there’s this area for ad extensions, we always recommend filling these in. Just the more tools that you utilize through Google, the better it is. Site linked extensions, these lead people to other parts of your website, maybe to learn more about the position or about the practice in general.

Call extensions

Call extensions, these are just more business information, telemedicine consults available, for example. Call extensions, these are places where somebody would be able to click your phone number, especially on a mobile device, and get to call immediately. Google then could track those calls.

So this is a search campaign, you would create the ads, and these ads are text ads and the ads show up on Google at the top, into the sides of the search results.

Smart campaign

The next item that we are going to show is the smart campaign that is driving conversions as well. So smart campaign is a campaign that ties into your Google My Business page, so this is that Google Maps listing.

We recommend every healthcare center has a Google Maps listing, both for your center and for each of the specialists there. So basically, you create the page, you link it to your Google account, and then you add information here. People then can leave reviews for a specific position or for the practice as a whole.

How to setup a smart campaign

So this type of campaign, again, you click new campaign, you want leads, but you’re going to click the “Smart Campaign.” And so here, we recommend having a campaign that specifically is for calls for your business and potentially one depending on what type of center you are for visits to the store front.

So let’s click “Calls to your business.” And it’s important as you’re setting up this campaign to link it immediately to your business page.

So here, I’ll do “Share Social Speak Network,” and our goal, in this case, you can have it be to get more calls or to get more leads through the website.

So for our healthcare practice, oftentimes people still do want to talk with somebody on the phone as they’re scheduling that consultation, especially if you have a specialist, a doctor who’s a really well-known specialist in the area, you want to make sure that you are advertising his or her Google My Business page, and that you have this get more calls.

Target by specific zip codes or areas

For these campaigns, we recommend having it be in specific zip codes, for example, to make sure that you are targeting the right people. So again, this is driven by leads and then I selected the “Smart Campaign.”

And so you can set up specific areas. We want it more specific than just the location, so let’s say we did Niwot, Colorado, for example. Niwot is a small town, so that is a very specific location right here. However, if you did Manhattan, you’d want to narrow it down to specific zip codes from there.

Keyword themes

Here, you choose what they call them keyword themes. So basically in Smart Campaigns, you have less control over the keywords that you’re going to be bidding on. So it will give you suggestions for things to use.

Now, I would X out all of these and start with a fresh list. So if you are a gynecologist, you’d want to do Gynecologist. If there’s a special type of birthing plan that you do, you can put that in, if you have a doula, you could do that. So really just making it very specific about what type of people you are trying to attract with the ads that are within this campaign.

I didn’t mention this with the search campaign, just ’cause I didn’t go through far enough in it, but when you choose the keywords, you want to have multiple ad groups potentially for each of your centers. For example, we have some clients who have multiple practices and within those practices, they have potentially five different specialties.

Ad campaign settings

So we have an ad campaign, search ad campaign, let’s start with, that is for the center and that so that we can really identify what their budget is and easily track conversions from there. Then within that campaign or a search ad group for each of the different specialties.

Some people do it the other way where they have a campaign that’s just for the specialty, and then each of the ad groups are for the specific locations. It doesn’t really matter which one you do, though we find targeting by geographic location is a lot easier on the campaign level than on the specific ad group level.

For these ones, for example, you’d want to just focus on a singular specialty within these keyword themes, so even if you provide five different services, 10 different services, 30 different services within your center, you want to make sure that these keywords are all very specific towards one of the services that you provide. The reason is because the next thing that you’re going to do is create the ad text. Now, this ad text has to be directly related to the content, the searches that you are wanting your ad to show up for.

So if you have a campaign that’s running in an ad group that’s running a Smart Campaign that’s for knee surgery, you don’t want your ads to all be talking about hip surgery. You want them to be aligned. So in that case, you’re an orthopedic surgery, I would have an ad campaign that specifically is for one type of knee surgery, you could even divide those into two different types of knee surgeries or joint replacement versus ACL tear versus all of these different things, just so that it’s as specific as possible.

You want your ads to directly correlate to the content, keyword, the searches that people are looking for. So the thing to make sure that you do here is when you are writing an ad, you want to make sure that the clicks to the ad go to a special place. You also want to make sure that you have a phone number that’s specified for that call extension.

So when somebody sees the ad, they are going to see that there’s this “Click to call” button with the phone number here, and so they would actually be able to click on this call and then that number, for example. And so that’s really powerful.

Google actually then tracks how long those phone calls are. Basically it says, you have a Google My Business call or a Google phone call, and then it will transfer over to the person who’s calling. So they hear just like a normal phone call, your admin, your staff will hear it, a brief Google message. So just make sure that they know that that message is going to happen, and then you’ll be good to go.

So these are the two types of ads that we really recommend running. Again, in the campaigns, new campaign, we have both of them under the leads and one search and one’s the Smart Campaign.

Video campaign

Now, we also utilize video campaigns in the display network, etcetera, we’ve run Gmail ads before, but these ones we’ve found to be much better for overall branding, whereas the search campaigns and the Smart Campaigns are really driven by those conversions and getting leads, new patients in the door for your practice.

We’ve seen even the day that some of these campaigns are set up, that new leads are coming in for our clients. Sometimes it does take a little bit longer, but as long as you have that content where you’re focusing on a call to action, you’re showcasing your expertise, you’re trying to build trust, even though it’s just a small amount of text, these are really where you’re going to see people calling up and wanting to schedule a consult with you with your business.

Additional tips

So please take a look at your Google ads when you’re creating them. Again, be as specific as possible with the keywords that you’re focusing on, as well as the ad text.

We’ve even run ads and set up campaigns for people where we only want the ads to show up for one single keyword, and that’s because that keyword is so important to us and we’ve seen a majority of the conversions come from that keyword.

So you can get that specific, where you have one keyword, one zip code and it goes to a landing page that’s specifically about that service, has a video of the doctor, and is just really powerful.

The display network, video network, etcetera, these could be used for retargeting ads, for example, but Google does have some pretty strict guidelines on healthcare and who can actually run these remarketing campaigns.

Get a free 30-minute consultation

So please, if you have any questions about how to set up the Google ads for your healthcare center, or just to double-check that they’re set up as we would recommend them to and how we’ve seen results before, please head on over to Social Speak Network, click on that “Free consultation button,” we’re more than happy to set up just a 30-minute call to run through your ad groups, your campaigns, make sure that they’re working as efficiently and effectively as possible for you and for your healthcare center.

Be sure to subscribe to our channel on YouTube, on Podbean, iTunes, and also jump on over to Social Speak to follow us over there.

Types of Adwords Campaigns for Healthcare Marketing

Types of Adwords Campaigns for Healthcare MarketingTypes of Adwords Campaigns for Healthcare Marketing

Facebook Advertising for Healthcare Industry

In this podcast episode we talk about how Facebook Ads work and the top benefits for having a Facebook ad campaign running for your wellness business.

  1. The first benefit is getting in front of new people, new prospects. So you’re actually helping your business see an ROI from the social media efforts that you have.
  2. The second thing is that you are nurturing those relationships of people who have heard about your brand or your practice, but haven’t taken that step to come in and learn more or meet with one of your staff. Running these Facebook ads helps you make sure that you stay top of mind to the people who haven’t yet come in.
  3. Then the third thing that it does, is it helps you re-engage with the patients who have been in to see you and just need a reminder every once in a while, that it’s time to come back in and schedule their next appointment.

Take a listen and read the transcript below!

Facebook Advertising for Healthcare – Digital Marketing Podcast Transcript

Hello and welcome to the Social Speak Network podcast. I’m Caitlin McDonald, one of the co-owners over here at Social Speak, and in today’s podcast episode, we are going to be talking about Facebook ads. Facebook ads are really important for health and wellness businesses and for healthcare.

Facebook Ads help you establish brand recognition and brand trust quickly and easily. They also allow you to get in front of the right people at the right time. Managing Facebook Ads for your healthcare business is really to not only build your prospect list, but also to nurture those prospects.

Last week, Amber talked some about creating a social media content calendar and figuring out how many times to post and what topics to post about, and so this is taking your social media presence to really another level.

Types of Facebook Ads for Wellness Center

On Facebook, there are a few different ways that you can advertise your business. There’s organic posting, there’s boosting those organic posts, and then there’s a whole slew of different ads that you can run from the Ads Manager.

In our digital marketing for healthcare we try and focus on the conversion ads. The reason why we do this is because it helps tap into Facebook’s algorithm for figuring out who’s going to be most likely to take that next step, and we’ll get into this in a few weeks, but that next step often is signing up to be a lead on your website.

This is something I’m going be getting into in a few weeks here. However, I did want go through a couple of real life Facebook campaigns that we’ve managed for some of our clients. The reason why I’m bringing­ up real Facebook Ad campaigns for some of our wellness clients is because I want to set the stage about the amount of time and effort is can take to nail down and optimize a Facebook campaign that’s going to work for your unique offerings and your unique target market. So let’s dive in.

The first business that I want to highlight is a Healthcare Education Association. They provide healthcare resources and education to constituents online and through live conferences and events. This group has a tremendous following, however, they are trying to grow and boost their new members. Over the years, just because of some ideological differences between some of the older members and the newer members, they have dropped some of their old membership base. Now they’re trying to really grow with new members that are more aligned with where their organization stands. This healthcare organization had only ever run boosted posts before. Yes, this does boost an organization’s exposure and engagement, but are you really seeing a return from that investment?

This is where the Facebook conversion ads come in that we created.

The Social Speak process with Facebook ads, typically, is having some sort of free resource or free download, even free consultation, that somebody can sign up for when they click on your Facebook ad. We’ve used webinars, e-books, and, in this case, we took articles that the client had previously written and bundled them together in the form of an e-book. Our first ads tested out the interest in this resource, which audiences lead to the most clients and conversions, ad what imagry and text were most effective. In this first go, there were three different audiences, but we did not see anything more than a 1% conversion rate. We spent about $160 in advertising budget spread across our A/B tests and saw one lead come in. Giving these tests a rest, we moved to the next digital project.

When optimizing Facebook ads for your wellness practice you shouldn’t just work on testing how you position your free resource or content upgrade, but also what offer is going to align most closely to the needs of your target market.

At this stage, we moved on to their next resource that we could offer and we did this a few different times, and we came across a quiz that they had. After repackaging the quiz so that it lived directly on their website we were ready to capture the leads directly into their email system rather than going through a third party. With this quiz, we found that through running the leads ads on Facebook rather than sending somebody to a landing page, we’re able to get the cost per lead down to almost $2. Additionally, we tried two different other campaigns, one for a fact sheet, and one for an e-book, focusing on a different topic, a different service that they provide from the first e-book, and each of these were able to get a sub $3 cost per lead as well. We’re still in the process of testing new services to promote new offers to promote, new educational resources to promote for them. We’re building another quiz that has to do with that second topic that we are talking about with them, and through this process, we’re continually able to decrease that cost per lead and get consistent results.

The reason why I shared this one first and kind of that failure story of spending $160 for one lead, is that your whole staff and your whole board needs to have the expectation that optimizing Facebook ads does take time. And so yes, you want to have an end goal of, I want to only spend $10 per lead, $15 per lead, $1 per lead. You need to have that goal, but you need to have the expectation that you’re not going to be there right now. So for this organization, we want that cost per lead to be lower, and we are working to get there. But we are testing out different audiences, different offers, different ad content, as a way to get there. I think in all, we’ve run over 100 or 150 different ads for them, that maybe it’s the same ad text but a different picture, different ad text, same video, or different audience, same audience, merging audiences together. And so it really is a process where you need to let the data speak for itself. And if it doesn’t stick on the first try, try again. So have kind of that budget in mind and that end goal right into the forefront.

The next client I wanted to share is a dietitian and health coach. She has been working with us running ads for over the past year. For any ad campaign, we do recommend giving it at least six months to make sure that with that first example is process that you are giving it time to really figure out if you’re getting results or not. Afterwards you have to then convert the leads into actual folks who are booking appointments with you, coming in, signing up for those paid services, or purchasing a product from you. So with this health coach, this dietitian, she has been running ads long before we even first sat down with her. And for her, our technique is really to focus on each of the different e-books, downloads, free offers that she has. She is very geared towards sharing educational resources, as are most of our clients. And for this client, we’ve had a few home run offers, timely offers, holiday diet tips and back to school tips and things like that, that have worked really well; with landing pages getting 60-70% conversion rates. However, the cost per lead has still been a little bit higher.

In this recent campaign, she had a great idea of grouping all of the resources together and having a complete resource library that folks who enter their name and email would gain access to. We created a new conversion campaign for this and a new landing page. And rather than creating individual ads for each of the different items that we want to test, we used Facebook’s, it’s not new, but newer feature where you can actually test multiple headlines, bodies and calls to action in each of the ads that you’re running and images or videos. And then Facebook will automatically pair and match and test the different items for you. So it takes a lot of the guess work out of creating those 100 or 200 different ads to make sure that you’re testing all of the different combinations. So for her this new campaign, we’ve been able to bring her average historical cost per lead from about $3-$4 all the way down to $0.50 cents. Now at this 50-cent mark, she is just pushing money towards this campaign and we’re continuing to see Facebook’s algorithm lead to better and better results. Now for her, because she is getting this quantity now, we are making sure that we still have that quality.

We’re working on that next part of the campaign, which is that email marketing follow-up. And here, we’re testing to make sure that that open rate and click rate on her emails actually is going up rather than going down as we’re getting more quantity in there.

Setting Goals for your Healthcare Facebook Campaign

The goal for your Facebook campaign should be within the first, I’d say, three months to really start seeing movement in a positive direction. And that could be starting with a cost per lead or conversion of $60 and working it down. But you don’t want to throw all your money at something until you see that upward momentum towards positive return. So for this dietitian for example, we are telling her to throw money at the campaign because it is currently working, and she’s getting conversions from it. If it was that first example that I gave, we did not spend their whole monthly budget until month three [chuckle] when we were finally able to push the dollars behind a campaign that was getting the results in the price point that they needed.

Always start small, test multiple things at once, and utilize Facebook’s ability to really optimize the campaigns for you.

A trick for optimizing a Facebook Ad Campaign

Now, one of the tricks that we have for tapping into how Facebook can optimize this is utilizing a landing page or a lead page sort of alternative. You can put this directly on your WordPress website or Square Space website. We typically use LeadPages, which is a software to build the lead pages. You can send an automated email afterwards and test to make sure that it really works. I recommend doing this for your business, your healthcare center as well. But of course, if you need any help, we are here to help.

As I wrap up, let’s just talk again about those top benefits for having a Facebook ad campaign running for your wellness business.

  1. The first benefit is getting in front of new people, new prospects. So you’re actually helping your business see an ROI from the social media efforts that you have.
  2. The second thing is that you are nurturing those relationships of people who have heard about your brand or your practice, but haven’t taken that step to come in and learn more or meet with one of your staff. Running these Facebook ads helps you make sure that you stay top of mind to the people who haven’t yet come in.
  3. Then the third thing that it does, is it helps you re-engage with the patients who have been in to see you and just need a reminder every once in a while, that it’s time to come back in and schedule their next appointment.

In terms of what to expect, don’t expect results in the first day. Yes, you might get lucky and you might find that combination where they are coming in right away. Most likely it might take upwards of three months. Now, don’t spend your whole marketing budget in those first three months. Wait for you to see that upward momentum and that path towards getting a positive ROI. From there, give it another three to six months to really run its course and make sure that you are getting after you get that lead, that prospect, that you are then getting someone in the door.

In health care, yes, there are services that need immediate bookings of appointments and somebody needs to come in right away for a consultation or even a surgery. However more often than not, for health and wellness, it’s about educating, teaching people why they need to come in and getting them to know, like and trust your brand. Again, my name’s Caitlin McDonald. This is the Social Speak Network podcast. You can follow us on Podbean, on iTunes or head on over to our website to check out our blog posts and social media as well. I’ll see you next time on the Social Speak Network podcast.

[This blog post is updated from March 8, 2016]

Optimizing your website properly is crucial to improving your site’s rank in search engines, as well as driving more potential customers to it.

Are you satisfied with your website’s performance? If not, then we urge to you to try these tips for optimizing your website.

Title tags matter

Title tags play an important role in optimizing your site. A title tag tells both the visitors and search engines what the page is all about.

A title that is highly relevant to the page it refers to will provide better usability and optimization for your search engine ranking. People won’t stay on your site if there’s no relevance and you’ll lose ranking in the end. The title tag should also be unique.

Select common-sense keywords

A search engine’s job is to refer users to websites and contents that are relevant to what they are looking for. If you run a chocolate chip cookie business and you want your website on the first page of Google, then you need to write blogs that are related to this topic. Use keywords like chocolate chips, chocolate, sweets, baked goods and desserts. When incorporating keywords into your content, make sure they sound natural to the reader.

Write great content

Dedicate some time to write content that are useful and engaging for humans. As Google’s algorithm become increasingly complex and intelligent, it is no longer sufficient to create content, stuff it with keywords and publish them to your site. If you want to your content to rank in search engines, you need to provide visitors with relevant and well-written content. Remember, content still reigns as the king in the world of search engine optimization.

Continuous testing and measuring

The process of optimization is not a one-time process. It requires tuning, maintenance, as well as constant testing and measuring. Something as simple as testing the layout of your landing page, the wording of your call-to-action or the images you’re using can do wonders for your click-through rates.

 

Are you a part of a networking group? How did you decide on which one to join? 

I personally hate the concept of networking groups because of the notion that you attend these meetings to sell yourself and your services. Too frequently I’ve arrived at a leads group with one too many sales guy personas – you know the type, leans back in their chair, disregards your needs, and goes on about how they are the best of the best? Yea, I see one of those and run for the hills. 

How do you find a group that focuses on relationships? 

If you have the time and personality, absolutely start one yourself. Build your tribe from the ground up while focusing on the success of others. Or, if you are more of an introvert, set out to attend different groups in your area until you find one that feels right. 

A client first introduced me to the BNI group I’ve taken leadership roles in and immediately I got the sense that this group was different.  From the conscious disregard of some BNI policies to the personal friendships that have blossomed, this networking group has turned into one of the lifelines of my business! 

Other groups I’ve been a part of didn’t quite feel authentic or never lead to true business being passed.

What does it take to get business from a RELATIONSHIP networking group?

Commitment. Hands down being committed to your networking group is the way to get business. For members within the group I share as much information as each individual needs (within reason) to excel at their marketing. Through doing this, some folks have jumped right into their social media profiles while other take one look at me and ask how much it will be for BIMS to manage their accounts.

The main goal of networking should be gaining access to members’ networks.

Within our group, typically 75% of the business passed is to outside referrals, which means we are introducing each other to people not in the group. Though many of the members have hired our team, we currently have a handful of 4th tier referrals (e.g. a referral from a member, passed a referral, who then introduced us to another business). Rather than the small project from the first referral being the end all be all, our team strives to exceed expectations so that our clients want to introduce us to the other business owners they know!

Have you started your own networking or MeetUp group or have you been constantly let down by groups filled with the typical salesman? I’d love to hear your experiences below!

Never join a networking group Are you a part of a networking group? How did you decide on which one to join?

P.S. If you are in Boulder, CO, come join us, Boulder BNI R.A.I.S.E., at 8:30 am on Thursdays!

Facebook Ads is a very powerful tool. It is an excellent way to promote your business, increase brand awareness and can lead to increased conversion rate. Unless you have a big budget, achieving these goals can be difficult if you’re not an expert.

In this blog post, we’ll give you 4 tips on how to create an effective Facebook ad campaign. Use these tips and you’ll be on your way to a great Facebook campaign.

Identify your target audience

To make the most out of your Facebook ad campaign, you first need to identify your target audience and then create an ad that is targeted to them. Take a moment to decide who you want to see you are ads. Are you looking to reach new audience? Do you want to connect with your existing fans? Or do you want to focus on the people in your area?

Facebook allows you to target your audience by gender, age, location, education, relationship status, workplace etc. The more relevant the ad is to the people you’re targeting; the more likely are they to notice and act on your ad. If done correctly, this will lead to a higher success rate and will reduce your spending in the future.

Establish goals

Before launching your ad, you need to consider what you want to get out of it. Ask yourself, why are you creating an ad in the first place? Do you want to increase your followers? Do you want to increase your web traffic? Or do you want people to download your app? This is important as it will help you plan your strategies for the said campaign and help you assess whether or not it is a success later on.

Choose your bidding option

If this is your first time to create a Facebook ad, you may think that your only option is to optimize your ad on a CPM basis. But the truth is that you have the option to choose from a number of bid setups. You can opt for CPC pricing or opt for bidding based on your objective. Don’t let Facebook do your bidding.

Use eye-catching images

Posts with eye-catching photos get more likes, comments and shares than those without. The same principle also applies with Facebook ads. If you want your ads to perform better, then you need to invest in good quality photos. If you are a restaurant owner, make sure your photos look appetizing. If you own a salon, then feature women with gorgeous, shiny locks. Remember, your goal is to create an ad that gets noticed and create more clicks. Good quality photos will help you achieve that goal.

 

boost-your-holiday-sales-with-these-quick-tipsHoliday season is the busiest time of the year for online retailers. According to studies, there is a 20% increase in online sales between Black Friday and Christmas. This is a wonderful time to attract more customers to buy your products and grow your business. But with so many businesses vying for the attention of consumers online, it’s time to think about how to capitalize on this potential influx of buy-happy customers.

Here are our top tips for holiday sales conversions.

Post regularly

During the holidays, social media usage is at an all-time high. Most people are at family events and are scrolling through their news feeds to pass time and keep themselves entertained. Some are looking for special offers and gift ideas. More users on social media mean more potential clients for you.

With more people turning into their smart phones during this time of the year, you want to make sure that you’re posting more often. Remember, more engagement means more exposure, which may lead to an increase in sales.

Get your visitors into the spirit of Christmas

Just like you decorate your home to get in a festive mood, you should also consider sprucing up your social media page or e-commerce site. Spread holiday cheer with seasonally themed cover images. Or better yet, give your online store a quick holiday make-over. Use the holiday season to change things up.

One study revealed that theming a shop for the holiday season excites visitors and gets them into holiday shopping spirit. This is a clever way to turn visitors into buying customers.

Don’t be a stranger

A lot of people fail to realize this, but it is far easier to sell to existing customers than it is to approach new prospects. Don’t be afraid to market to those you know. The best way to do this is by sending them an email. Let customers know that you have this certain product on hand. If they’re interested, they can drop by your store or visit your online store to buy the product. It’s as simple as that.

4-ways-to-get-readers-to-spend-more-time-on-your-blogA blog’s success greatly depends on its readers. Without readers, all those content you’ve created will go down the drain. The problem is that, modern internet user have short attention span.

More often than not, people will browse through your post for a few seconds. If you fail to give them what they want, their cursor will be heading to the back button and on to another site. You’ve worked hard creating those contents, but why isn’t anybody sticking around to read your posts?

Here are 4 ways to get your visitors to stay on your site longer.

Provide them with valuable content

Content remains the number one reason people visit your site. You need to provide readers with valuable content. This includes detailed information about your products, educational tools, industry news or updates.  This will give you an opportunity to share your knowledge with your prospects and will eventually help you build a loyal fan base.

Use subheadings

Most people will scan through a post and just pick out pieces of information they need. Make it easier for them by using subheadings with descriptive wordings. This way, it will be easier for them to find what they need and allow them to jump to the appropriate section if they wish.

Ensure fast loading time

Your site speed is also critical to its success. No matter how interesting and informative your contents are, people may not be interested to read them if your site takes too long to load. Remember, you only have a few seconds to convince people to hang around. A sluggish site will cause you to lose readers and subscribers. Don’t make people wait.

Make it visually appealing

People make snap judgements. In fact, it only takes less than a second for people to decide whether they like your site. You want to make sure you make a good first impression.

Aesthetics play an important role in first impressions. People like to look at pretty things. A visually appealing blog can attract attention, and may even convince them to stay for a little longer.