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5 Unique Ideas For Growing Your List Using Facebook Ads (That Your Audience Will Love)

Growing your list, for the brands who are a little too “hip” for white papers, reports, and webinars…

We’ve got your back.

We’ve put together a go-to list for unique, out-of-the-box ideas for attracting prospects and turning them into leads using Facebook Ads.

Don’t get me wrong. Webinars, case studies, and reports all work well as lead magnets. But you won’t find those on this list.

This collection is for brands who want to spice things up!

We’ve seen all of these ideas work for our clients (plus, they’re all a lot of fun).

But before we jump in, let’s cover a few basic Facebook ad principles to help you get the best results for growing your list from whichever idea you put into action.

First, it’s important to understand that warm audiences convert better than cold. So, when asking for something from your audience (even an email address or other personal information), you’ll find that those who have interacted with you before will be more likely to exchange information or money for something they perceive as valuable than someone who has never heard of your brand before.

For that reason, you can think of these ideas as a middle milestone for your prospects.

Use these ideas to move colder prospects closer to a sale by inviting them to engage with your brand at a higher level… one that requires more commitment on their part.

They’ll need to exchange some information for the offering, but these offerings also might require some time on their part to really implement. So, they’ll typically work better with audiences who have had some exposure to your brand already.

And they’ll help cold prospects become warm prospects, so you can more easily market to them in the future when you’re ready to ask for a monetary exchange for a product or service.

Ok, back to the ideas!

The following are 5 unique ideas for growing your list using Facebook Ads.

Growing Your List - Timely Checklists:

If you’re ever at a loss for what to promote, just take a look at the calendar.

Seasons, holidays and industry events could all serve as inspiration for a unique lead magnet or promotion.

We’ve seen good results using seasonal, holiday or other “timely” checklists.

Is there something your prospects should do around back to school or Halloween time? Can you help them get prepared for an upcoming industry conference?

When the season, holiday or event is on your prospects mind, it’s easier to enter the conversation with a helpful checklist (and it’s easier to get your prospects to share since the event is already on their mind).

Here’s an example of a holiday specific checklist that will help in growing your list. In this instance, warm audiences performed better, resulting in 329 leads at a total of $3.86 per lead.

Note: remember to test different audiences, images and copy! All of the campaigns in the previous example made the same offer, but some performed significantly better than others.

Plans

Can you create an experience for your audience and help them walk through a challenge, each step of the way?

Consider putting together a digital kit to help them achieve a small goal.

Try meal plans, lesson plans or planning pages.

These kits could include a plan to follow for a day, a week or a month. It’s a good way to help the audience engage deeply with your brand and develop habits that they’ll want to continue (with your help).

Giveaways

Giveaways can get people talking about your brand and sharing the opportunity with their friends.

This is also a good way to develop a targeted list of people who are interested in a specific product, which means you can market that product to them again later on using Facebook’s retargeting options to show your ads to people who visited the giveaway page!

Ask the Expert

Are there questions that your audience asks over and over? Do they feel awkward asking in a public forum or on your social media pages?

Ask The Expert campaigns send prospects to Messenger where they get to ask you anything they want.

This is a nice way to engage with prospects on a personal level, but you can also create a process for responding where you’re sending prospects to blog posts, downloads or other goodies to get them closer to becoming leads.

Challenges

Why not create a challenge to inspire your audience to take action and reach a goal?

Run the challenge inside their inbox or right inside a Facebook group.

Make it fun with videos or live streams. Invite everyone to interact inside the group for added engagement!

So there you go…

5 unique ideas for growing your list using Facebook ads.

Which one do you think your audience will love the most?

In the meantime, why not find out what the “7 biggest mistakes you’re making with your Facebook Ads are”, and how to fix them:

7 Signs It’s Time To Try Facebook Ads

Do you know the signs that it’s time to try Facebook ads?

"In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create."

- David Ogilvy

In the last 20 years, the internet has made just about everything infinitely easier.

From ordering food to finding a date to seeing a doctor, consumers can access virtually any product or service they desire with unprecedented ease and convenience.

Conversely, the same is true on the business side.

Creating a product or service and offering it up to the right people has never been simpler.

But selling that product or service… that’s a bit more challenging.

As it has become easier and easier to make offers online, the competition has gotten fierce.

For many businesses, social media advertising is a viable solution and could lead to some impressive results (as long as you’re following the right strategy).

But is it for you? Let’s find out.

Following are 7 signs that you should be running ads on Facebook.

#1: It takes your customers more than one visit to make a buying decision

Most businesses fall into this category. People typically won’t make a purchase the very first time they are exposed to a product or brand. This isn’t true in all cases, but consider this… how likely would you be to drop $50,000 on a car you’ve never heard of or seen before?

Sure, that’s a big purchase…

But work your way down. Are you more likely to spend $20,000 on an unknown brand? $5,000? What about just $500?

Even smaller purchases requires a level of trust that is difficult to establish on the first touch.

Facebook Ads makes it easy to keep in touch with people who have visited your page, checked out products, or even who have abandoned their cart.

You may not have turned them into a customer the first time they stumbled across your site, but with a strategic campaign that nurtures and moves them along the customer journey, you’re more likely to turn that prospect into a customer at some point down the line than if they never run into your brand online again.

#2: Customers Can Easily Purchases Online

The less friction between seeing an ad and the customer getting what he or she wants, the better chance they will take action.

For example, it’s easier for most customers to enter their information online once they decide to make a purchase than it is for them to pick up the phone and order via an inbound call center.

Although this isn’t a hard and fast rule (we have clients who run local services who require customers to call or stop by), it helps.

(If you're interested in promoting a local store on Facebook, check out this post for more ideas).

#3 Your Business Is Scalable

If you’re able to service more customers without greatly increasing your costs, you may be a good candidate to try Facebook ads.

That’s because it’s possible to increase your profits while advertising without having to increase costs per goods sold.

For example, if you sell a digital product that won’t run out of stock, and if an influx of customers won’t strain your current team, you can scale your business using advertising and still maintain the same (or greater) profit margin.

#4 You Want To Target a Specific Niche? Try Facebook Ads

Facebook makes it easy to target a very specific avatar. If you know that your ideal customer falls within specific demographics, it only takes a few clicks to find them and show them timely messages.

The better you know your avatar, the better you can target them. Do you want to reach customers in the greater New York area who are between the ages of 25-55? Easy.

Want to target moms living in the U.S. who have children in grade school? You can do that too.

Whoever you want to reach, you can find them on Facebook, giving you a great reason to try Facebook ads

#5 It’s Time To Build An Audience

Facebook advertising is a great way to build an audience. If you are gearing up for a launch, an event, or otherwise want to build up an audience that is familiar with your brand, try Facebook ads; they can work for you.

Besides running ads to drive traffic to a sales page, ads can be used for a number of reasons. Try Facebook ads for building an audience using native video, or sending traffic to content on your website. Or, boost social posts to stay front of mind.

#6 You Have a High Converting Landing Page

If you have a landing page that converts well, why not send over more traffic?

If you try Facebook ads, they can give a quick boost of traffic that would otherwise be difficult to get organically.

If more targeted leads will lead to more customer conversions, you may benefit from paid ads. However, be careful. Simply sending traffic to a page that isn’t converting well won’t do any good.

Check out this article for more tips on optimizing your landing page for ad traffic.

# 7 When the Lifetime Value of A Customer Is Higher Than Advertising Costs- It's Time To Try Facebook ads

When deciding if paid ads will work for you or not, the bottom line is… is this good for business?

To answer that, it’s important to consider the lifetime value of a customer.

Calculate the profit on the initial sale, but also consider future sales.

Because you experience an acquisition cost every time you acquire a new customer, but pay significantly less (or virtually nothing) to sell to the repeat customers, it makes more sense to try Facebook ads when you can continue to sell to that same customer for a long time to come.

If the expected lifetime value is higher than what you’ll pay to turn that prospect into a customer, it’s worth it!

So… are you ready to try Facebook ads? If any of these 7 signs resonated with you, it’s worth taking a look!

In the meantime, why not find out what the “7 biggest mistakes you’re making with your Facebook Ads are”, and how to fix them:

Wait… You’re Still Not Posting Videos on Facebook?

Social media videos, specifically videos on Facebook… it’s all the rage in 2018.

No doubt, you’ve heard marketers sing its praises for years now. So… what’s stopping you from utilizing videos on Facebook as an effective piece of your marketing puzzle?

Maybe you already have a general idea that video is the way to go, but aren’t clear on the how or why…

We’re going to break it down for you in this article as we dive into why posting videos on Facebook for your marketing strategy is a no-brainer and how you can fit it into your current marketing strategy.

And don’t worry, you don’t need to produce a viral video to make a healthy return on your investment. We’re going to show you how to get maximum reach just by using short, authentic videos that speak to your ideal audience.

A few short videos can quickly build trust with your audience, reach a large number of people within a short period of time, and, most importantly, help you convert Facebook users into customers.

The reason this works so well is simple, audiences love video.

Audiences Want Videos on Facebook

It’s no secret that audiences are choosing video more and more as their primary form of content.

Forbes reported more than 500 million people watch video on Facebook every day.

When people watch video, they share. Social users share video up to 1200% more often than they do text posts.

And when that video does get shared, it will have a greater impact on the audience than text-only posts.

That’s because where video really shines is by building relationships with audiences. Unlike text, video provides a rich, multimedia experience that allows your audience to connect at a deep, emotional level.

It’s also easy to increase reach via paid promotion. Videos uploaded as native Facebook content can usually be promoted for less than $.05 per video.

The bottom line: if you want your audience to see your content, try video.

How to Monetize Videos on Facebook

We regularly use video as part of a healthy Facebook marketing ad strategy for our clients. That’s because we’re able to use video as a monetization strategy. It’s all about building up your ideal audience.

Here’s how…

First, create videos that provide value for your audience. Think short how-tos, tips, or other insights your audience might like.

This Inc. article summarizes how to best use your videos on Facebook to build trust and happy brand advocates, but the key takeaway is to create authentic, on-brand videos.

Next, upload the videos to Facebook. You’ll want these videos uploaded to the platform as native content rather than linking to a video hosted elsewhere.

You can upload the video to your page as a video post, then boost it for extended reach.

Or, you jump right inside Power Editor and create a campaign specifically for your video views.

Create a “Video View” campaign. This will show the videos to your audience inside Facebook.

Then, create the Ad Set.

Quick note on audiences: You can show the videos to a cold audience who hasn’t interacted with you before. This is a great way to introduce your brand to potential future clients.

Or, show the videos to a warm audience who has interacted with your page, joined your email list, watched previous videos, or visited your website. This is a great way to strengthen brand identity, build trust, and educate future customers to move them closer to a sale.

Next, create the ad.

Pro tip: Use the “thumbnail and captions” button to choose an appealing video thumbnail and generate captions (review the captions before publishing, the automatic generator isn’t 100% accurate). Many people watch videos without sound, so captions help drive home your message even if they don’t tap to turn on the sound.

Finally, it’s time to utilize this audience.

After your videos run for a little while, you’ll have built up a warm audience who recognizes and trusts your brand. Because warm audiences are more likely to make a purchase than cold audiences, people who have watched your videos are the perfect people to show offers to.

To do this, you’ll need to create an audience and populate it with people who have watched your videos on Facebook.

This post will help you get your audiences setup: 3 Ways to Target Your Ideal Audience via Facebook Ads

Then, simply create a new campaign.

This time, create a conversion campaign with the goal of driving traffic back to a landing page.

Choose to show this campaign to people who have watched your video.

Your audience will be much more receptive of the offer after watching those great videos you’ve posted!

There you go, you’re all set to incorporate videos on Facebook into your existing marketing strategy. Shoot a few videos and get started. The sooner you begin to build that warm audience, the sooner you can start moving prospects over to your landing pages!

In the meantime, why not find out what the “7 biggest mistakes you’re making with your Facebook Ads are”, and how to fix them:

2 Variables To Test For Better Facebook Ad Results

In the world of marketing, testing is king for better Facebook ad results.

Finding the exact right elements, tweaking for perfection, and coming up with a winning combination is how marketers find what works and what flops.

If you’re not a marketer, the thought of testing might feel a little overwhelming.

Just consider the endless possibilities when testing for better Facebook ad results.

There’s the image, the text, the headline, the link description, the landing page (not to mention everything on the landing page), the audience, placement, conversion goal, the time of day, the day of the week… the list goes on.

The combinations are endless, but before you throw in the towel, I’m going to share a secret:

At Marigold Marketing Group, we’ve found that testing even two variables leads to significantly better Facebook ad results.

To be fair, we didn’t just guess at which variables to test. We run and test hundreds of ads each week, and that has given us insight into what works best when it comes to things like campaign type, placement, conversion goal, etc.

Basically, we know what typically works best when it comes to better Facebook ad results. Yet, even when following all the best practices, it’s still beneficial to test each ad because there are significant differences when it comes to audiences and images. You’ll never know exactly what the audience will respond to until you test!

Here’s what you need to know about testing images and audiences.

Image

According to Kissmetrics, images can increase a piece of content’s visibility by 94%.

Posts with high quality images get more attention than those with no images or those with poor images.

Through our own testing, we’ve seen that images affect reach and cost per result, even when all other variables remain the same.

Here’s an example:

In the above image, 3 images were delivered to the same audience, with the same copy, the same call to action, the same landing page, and the same placement. In fact, everything was identical. Yet, the cost per lead varied based on the images alone.

Because images have such an impact on whether or not people will even see or engage with an ad, it’s important to test multiple images to see which performs better.

Still… there are an unlimited number of photos, and even more possibilities when it comes to graphic and photo combinations. Obviously, you can’t test them all. Here are some guidelines for getting started.

Images should be 1200x628 pixels, and keep text to under 20%. Although Facebook has changed their text ration rule recently, images with more than 20% text won’t reach the full audience.

To check the percentage of text on an image, Facebook has created a tool. You can find that here.

When it comes to creative, keep the colors, images, and fonts consistent with the landing page in which the ad is driving traffic. Having a drastically different landing page can lead to poor conversions, even if people are clicking through the ad in the news feed.

Finally, images that reflect positive sentiment typically do better than those with negative sentiment.

If you have a designer to create images, great. If not, it’s still possible to create images without using Photoshop or other graphics programs.

Canva is an easy-to-use, free, web-based application that allows users to click and drag to create images.

Or, select a stock image when creating an ad. Facebook allows users to select stock images and use them on ads for free. Just remember, not all images will comply with Facebook’s policy. So, don’t assume that the text meets the 20% rule just because it was found under the Stock Images section.

Now that we have the basic requirements, it’s time to test.

For a conversion campaign, we recommend testing 3-6 images. Let them run for a few days, then come back and make adjustments based on which ones are delivering better Facebook ad results.

Let’s move to the second variable, audiences.

Audiences For Better Facebook Ad Results

We’ve talked a lot about building an audience, and the benefits of creating a warm Facebook audience before, but this is about testing between those audiences that you’ve created.

For most campaigns, we test 4-5 warm audiences and 5 cold audiences.

By breaking up the audiences, it’s easy to see which group is responding best to the ad. It also will give you control to put more money behind the audiences that are giving you a lower cost per conversion, and reduce spending (or turn off) audiences that aren’t responding as well.

Take a look at the following example:

Notice that even with the same photo (and all other variables being the same), each audience within our cold audience set performed differently with the lowest cost per lead coming in at just $2.75, and the highest being $4.81. That’s quite a difference!

You may also find that certain combinations are performing better than others. For example, maybe the audience made of email list subscribers is responding better to an image that includes your branding or face, but a cold audience isn’t responding well to that same image.

By breaking out your audiences and photos, it’s easy to adjust the ad spend to reflect these differences. If all of the audiences were grouped into one ad set, it wouldn’t be possible to make these adjustments.

Testing doesn’t have to be complicated. If you want to get a lower cost per conversion, but don’t want to run hundreds of variations of the same ad (or don’t have the budget to support such testing), start with just these two variables.

After a few days, jump back into the campaign and make adjustments. The results might pleasantly surprise you!

In the meantime, why not find out what the “7 biggest mistakes you’re making with your Facebook Ads are”, and how to fix them:

7 Simple Tips For Better Landing Pages

You’ve finally nailed down your targeting, warmed up your audience, and now you’re sending your dream clients over to your web page.

People are clicking, so your job is done, right?

Just kick back, sip a hot, delicious latte and let the leads roll in!

Until… nothing happens.

Don’t panic!

If your target audience is clicking on your ad, but they’re not following through, there’s likely a problem with your landing page.

We see this sometimes. A client wants us to send traffic over to a page, but that page just isn’t quite ready to do the job of converting prospects to leads, or leads to buyers.

Luckily, the problem is fixable.

Here are 7 simple tips for creating better landing pages.

Our Facebook Ads team uses this checklist to review every client’s landing page before sending traffic their way.

Use this checklist to quickly evaluate your landing page and make any corrections to help improve your landing page and your conversion rate before you hit “run” on any of your Facebook ad campaigns.

Add Your Pixel

Before you can get an accurate depiction of what’s happening with your campaign, you’ll need to accurately track all traffic.

If you’re not yet using Facebook’s tracking pixel, make sure to get that on your landing page (and any other page your audience might land on).

The pixel is fairly easy to install using Facebook’s instructions, or you can ask your tech team to get it up and running for you.

You can create a pixel inside Facebook’s Power Editor.

Just go to the Power Editor Menu, then find it under “Measure and Report.”

Once the pixel is on your page, check to make sure it’s working properly.

An easy way to do this is by using Facebook Pixel helper. It’s a Google Chrome extension that lets you check which pixels are installed on any web page.

Now that your pixel is properly functioning, you’ll be able to get accurate data on how many people are landing on your page. You’ll also have the ability to retarget them later if they don’t convert.

Make it Mobile

If your landing page isn’t mobile-friendly, this could be a big part of the problem. Mobile traffic is taking over desktop as the preferred method to browse Facebook (and click on ads).

Having a desktop-only site will alienate a large percentage of your audience, making it impossible for about half (or more) of your Facebook Ad traffic to convert.

Check your page on a mobile device.

To do this, navigate to your landing page inside Chrome. Then, hit Command+Alt+I (Mac) or Ctrl+Shift+I (Windows, Linux) inside your Chrome browser to pull up the developer tools.

From there, you can simulate your page on a variety of device by clicking on the image in the upper left hand corner that looks like a tablet and a mobile device.

When checking mobile, make sure the user won’t have to scroll to the left or right to read the text, that your CTA is still viewable on the first screen (above the fold) if possible, and that the buttons and forms are easy to use on a mobile device.

Check the Details

Do a once over and check the details on the entire page. Check for glaring typos, grammatical errors, and readability.

Then, go a little deeper. It’s common to reuse a landing page from another campaign, and that’s ok. Just make sure to check that you’ve updated all the details.

Are your times and dates correct for any live events? Is your offer showing the correct expiration dates? Is your offer consistent throughout the entire page?

Make sure your page reflects the current offer and is ready to receive your prospects!

Check for Policy Violations

Facebook updates policies frequently and without warning. It’s easy to have a landing page that meets all requirements one week, then have one that breaks a policy the next.

Before you run a campaign, review the ad policies.

The policies change so frequently that our Facebook Ad Team reviews the ad policy at least once a week. We often find new policies and update our clients’ accordingly.

If your landing page is violating any policies, don’t chance it. Before sending over any traffic, make the necessary changes to avoid possible complications.

If you’re in certain industries, you’ll need to be more careful than others. For example, if you are offering weight loss products, money making, work from home, gambling, alcohol, supplements, or adult content, be extra vigilant when proofing your page. These are restricted areas and you need to be careful about your offer and the promises you make.

Fix Broken Functionality

It’s easy to get wrapped up in all of the moving pieces that go along with a new campaign. Sometimes when that happens, it’s easy to overlook something major, like page functionality.

Check that all your videos play, the sound works, forms function, and emails go out as planned.

Not only can a non-functioning landing page get your campaign shut down, but it will definitely kill your conversion rates and skyrocket your per conversion costs.

Privacy Policy

This last tip isn’t sexy, but it’s absolutely necessary.

Facebook requires all landing pages to display a link to a privacy policy.

Don’t skip this step. Set up your policy page and outline your privacy policy to let your potential prospects know what you will and wont’ do with their information once they trust you with it.

Link to that privacy policy page somewhere on your landing page to meet Facebook’s ad requirements.

Create Consistent Messaging

If your page looks good, reads well, and you haven’t found any major errors when running through this checklist, it could be your messaging.

There’s good news and bad news here.

The good news is, if people are clicking on your ad, there is interest!

The bad news is, your messaging on your landing page isn’t creating the same desire.

The solution is to make the messaging match. Are you promising something in the ad that isn’t mentioned on the landing page?

Is there conflicting information? A different tone?

Make sure that everything from the copy to the images are consistent. Not identical, but consistent.

Give your prospect a clear reason to sign up, let them know what will happen when they do sign up (receive an email, book a call, claim an offer, etc.), and make sure your offer itself is compelling.

These steps won’t just ensure that Facebook continues to happily send traffic over to your page, but that you will reap the rewards when they do.

Use this quick guide to assess your landing page. Make necessary changes, and then it’s time to finally kick back and enjoy that latte!

For more tips, get "7 Deadliest Mistakes You're Making With Facebook Ads...And How To Fix Them!"

In the meantime, why not find out what the “7 biggest mistakes you’re making with your Facebook Ads are”, and how to fix them: