Guillermo Ortiz, Founder of Geek Powered Studios
Fundbox customer and digital marketing expert Guillermo Ortiz is sharing some of his hard-earned knowledge to help business owners improve their online presence and get more sales. Guillermo is an experienced SEO and PPC expert and the owner of Geek Powered Studios. In Part 3 of our digital marketing crash course guest post series, Guillermo will focus on how you can use Facebook ads, pay per click (PPC) ads, and popups to generate more traffic and conversions.
Using Facebook Ads
Facebook ads are one of the best ways to start growing your business despite the recent announcement made by CEO Mark Zuckerberg. In our experience, a well constructed Facebook campaign can generate leads at the lowest CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) compared to other digital marketing channels.
Facebook has the unique ability to target users based on their demographics, interests and behaviors to help ensure you get your ads in front of the right users. What makes Facebook ads even more powerful is how they compliment your other marketing efforts. People check Facebook an average of 14 times a day!
Retargeting PPC, website, and other traffic on the platform can work extremely well. There are also a multitude of different ways to target past customers by uploading their emails, phone numbers, and letting Facebook match that data to existing users. I could write a whole separate article about the robust targeting options with audiences, but the easy wins are retargeting campaigns and utilizing your current customer data through the platform.
An example campaign that we ran for an Austin orthodontist generated leads for $4. She was generating leads through Google Adwords for $50+.
In this campaign, we targeted the demographic that converted best on their website with a lead generation campaign. In this case, that demographic was Spanish-speaking women, ages 35+ with children.
For a mobile home manufacturer, we also ran a lead generation campaign that was able to generate $1 Million dollars with just over $2000. That’s a return of over 18,000%.
These are just a couple of examples. It’s extremely common to find that FB is your best marketing channel once you figure out the right messaging to the right audience.
Facebook Ad Action Items
- Set up your Facebook pixel (to allow for retargeting)
- Upload past customer data to create a past customer audience
Pay Per Click
Pay per click, or “PPC”, is an auction-based system for strategically showing ads to users who are conducting internet searches. Every click will cost you a set amount depending on the competitiveness of the keyword being targeting.
For example, someone in San Antonio may do a search for ‘solar company san antonio’, click on an ad costing the advertiser $5, then land on the solar company’s page. The key to pay per click is getting one of these clicks to ‘convert’ or take action through a phone call or contact form submission. PPC visitors are 50% more likely to purchase something than organic visitors.
The key with PPC is to get the lowest CPA (cost per acquisition) possible. This is accomplished by optimizing your campaign frequently to ensure you have great ads driving quality traffic to a high performing landing page. You can learn more about PPC by watching this video.
Below is an example ad and landing page we use for an actual client. The ad and the landing page have a conversion rate of 20%+ which is very high for this type of advertising. You’ll notice that the ad mentions that they’ve been in business since 1982 which is a huge trust builder. The landing page also mentions that the business gives first time customers $20 OFF.
Offers like this work great with PPC. Test different messaging/landing page combinations until you find the one that converts the best. Here’s the text we used in the ad:
bryantelectricservice.com/austin/electrician
Award Winning Texas Electricians. Satisfaction Guaranteed. Call Now!
PPC Action Items
- Setup conversion tracking
- Determine a target cost per lead
- Think of an offer
Popups/Whitepapers
Everyone says they hate pop ups, but nobody can deny how effective they are. Canvas Factory utilized them to the tune of over $1.1 million dollars in purchases. Try thinking of a compelling offer you can give visitors so you can capture their email. That email can be utilized to retarget them on any of the platforms mentioned here in additional to being emailed directly. This greatly increases the chance of converting them into an actual customer.
We also mentioned automating emails and sending one off campaigns in our first tip. Pop ups are an effective way to build up an email list of potential customers. In the example pop up below, one of our clients utilizes it to collect client information from people that are about to ‘abandon’ their website. These types of pop ups are referred to as ‘exit-intent pop-ups’, which only appear when someone is about to leave the website. They are a great way to capture people that are about to leave your website without giving you their information. They came to your site because they were interested in your product or service! It’s important to make every attempt to capture their email and follow up to close the sale.
Action Items
- Create a popup with a compelling offer
- Test Ideas
- Privy is a FREE pop-up creation tool
Wrapping it up
So now that you heard our top marketing tips, how do they all work together? How can you look at things holistically to get the best results? These channels can all be creatively tweaked to strengthen one another.
For example, if you see that specific messaging is working through your PPC ads, try using that same messaging throughout your emails, Facebook ads, and website to see if your conversion rate increases. Emails collected through popups can be used as retargeting audiences in AdWords or Facebook. There is plenty of room to get creative!
