Here’s My Personal Take On Facebook (and how we use it)

my personal take on facebook and how we use it

There’s a LOT of noise about Facebook.

Just last week, the social media giant announced they would be stepping into the cryptocurrency market with a new coin called Libra.

So, to quickly explain:

Cryptocurrency is a form of digital-only money (or “coin”) that operates outside of the banking industry on a public ledger. This ledger gives crypto the security it doesn’t get from a bank. Theoretically, anyone with enough time can trace every transaction back to its origin.

If you’re still like, “WHAT is even happening?”

You’re not alone. I am with you!

Facebook is constantly changing and pushing the envelope. And sometimes they mess it up. From privacy concerns to possible data misusage, Facebook seems to have constant drama going on lately.

I wanted to write you this:

If you’re super confused about Facebook or having any reservations about using Facebook for marketing your business, or if you’re undecided on whether you should #deletefacebook or not, I wanted to share how we personally use this social media platform at PostcardMania.

Hopefully this will help you dial in on what you should be focusing on for your social strategy and ignore the unnecessary noise.

Because:

Like it or hate it — and without getting into any type of political debate — I don’t see Facebook going away anytime soon.

A few people may delete their Facebook, but let’s face it:

It’s become a GIANT. And most people will still use it daily…

In case you need proof —

Check out these statistics I found:

  • 79% of the U.S. population uses Facebook
  • 68% of American adults are on Facebook
  • Users spend an average of 50 minutes per day on Facebook
  • 70% of users login every single day

I find these stats CRAZY…

Though not entirely surprising.

I can’t personally find many people who aren’t on Facebook these days… even my dad is on Facebook, and he’s 88 years old!

So, it’s safe to say:

Your prospects are probably on Facebook.

And I’m not one to tout the all-importance of social media, but I do believe in this day and age you need to market your business in as many places as you can so that your prospects see your message enough to:

  • Remember and trust you
  • Contact you for more information
  • And ultimately, BUY from you.

Nobody sees one ad once and makes a purchase. You have to be seen everywhere to have credibility as a brand.

And let’s face it:

If you simply look around in life, it’s clear that people spend a LOT of time on their smart phones.

family looking at a smart phone

And despite whatever happens in the media, I really doubt most people are going to give up their Facebook anytime soon.

So that’s why I wanted to share the 3 ways we use Facebook here at PostcardMania. And I wrote these in an effort to help you generate leads AND keep it as simple as possible!!

1. Don’t pour your marketing budget into Facebook without TESTING

It can be really easy to throw up a Facebook ad or two…

Only to watch money debit from your bank account straight to Facebook — with NO leads (or customers) to show for the expense.

Facebook offers sooooo many different ways to target prospects using their ads platform — it can honestly get overwhelming!

So I recommend you keep your ad strategy simple and do this:

Test a couple different ad versions against each other. You can spend as little as $10/day to see which ad design generates you leads before you increase your budget.

illustration of a marketing split test on two phones

But a word to the wise here:

Give your ads a little time before you judge which one is the most successful.

Here’s what I mean by that:

Wait until your ads reach about 500 people (“reach” meaning, how many people saw your ad) until you drop any of them. It can take Facebook’s system a little time to optimize (meaning, find people who match what you’re looking for) for your ad specifications.

And then, feel free to increase your budget on the ad that’s actually generating clicks to your website!

Keep an eye on your ads though…

Facebook is notorious for changing from time to time, so you’ll want to make sure the ads you have running (aka, are paying for) are continually performing well.

In other words:

You may want to test another ad set again!

2. Match your ads to lead-capturing landing pages

Here’s the deal:

If your Facebook ad says “Get 20% off your first service!” but then when your prospects click your ad and see your homepage with no mention of that deal…

Your leads will immediately feel confused — like they must’ve made a mistake — and then leave your website. They’re definitely not going to search your site for this.

This makes sense, right?

When you click from one area of the internet to another, you want to sense that you arrived to the right place — otherwise, what do you do?

You click back to where you started.

So you need to ensure that when someone clicks on your Facebook ad, they arrive to a landing page that:

Here is just one example of a Facebook ad that matches a corresponding landing page that I showed recently at our Growth Summit event.

facebook ad and its corresponding landing page

See how the Facebook ad clearly matches the landing page? And the landing page has a lead capture form that’s easy to see and use.

Anyone who clicks on that Facebook ad will KNOW they arrived in the right spot, which increases their certainty in your business, and thereby makes them more likely to contact you.

Here is another example of one of my clients (who also attended the Growth Summit) and their Facebook ad and landing page from their Everywhere Small Business campaign:

facebook ad and its corresponding landing page

Not only do the colors and special offer match, but the lead capture form is designed to show you that to grab that $30 off, you need to contact them by filling in your details there.

Here is the main takeaway I want you to know:

DON’T make your prospect have to think.

You want to effortlessly guide your prospect from your Facebook ad (or postcard, or Google ad) to your landing page, and once there, you want them to:

  • Know they’ve landed in the right spot
  • Easily realize they’re getting a killer special offer they should grab NOW
  • And contact you to get it by filling in a lead capture form

And in the event that your prospect DOESN’T contact you upon landing on your landing page, you want to use follow-up systems that continue marketing to them until they do

Which is what I talk about next in #3:

3. Use Facebook as a follow-up tool

Like I mentioned in the beginning of this article, Facebook has gotten a lot of media attention recently, and one of the issues you may or may not have heard of is a new European policy called “GDPR.”

GDPR stands for the “General Data Protection Regulation,” and it’s essentially a regulation that requires businesses to protect the personal data and privacy of EU citizens for transactions that occur within the EU. This includes online transactions. All in all, it seems like a good thing!

So what does this have to do with YOU being here in the U.S??

I’m only bringing this up to answer a few clients who reached out to us wondering how and if this new regulation may eventually trickle into the U.S.

Again, GDPR doesn’t sound like a bad thing at all, but there may be changes in the future to how we are able to do a very effective marketing tactic that’s called…

Retargeting!

woman on laptop seeing a retargeting ad on a website

Retargeting is essentially showing an ad again to someone who’s already expressed interest in your business. When retargeting happens online (as it often does!), different minute tracking actions occur.

I don’t want to get complicated, but let me explain here:

Have you ever seen an ad on Facebook (or even an ad on a website), and clicked on that ad, visited the website…

And then started seeing that business’s ad ALL over the rest of the internet?

I know I have! Whenever I’m looking at hotels at Hotels.com, and then I leave that website, I see Hotels.com ads all over my Facebook feed.

In order for me to see Hotels.com ads in my Facebook, my internet presence was tracked in a very microscopic way (using a process called “cookies”).

Now, the GDPR regulation may affect how this minute tracking happens in the EU, and this regulation may (or may not) eventually be adopted in some fashion in the U.S.

So with all that said:

Here’s what I want to say…

Until further notice, we should use retargeting!

And since I’m mainly talking about Facebook today, I’ll tell you how we use it here at PostcardMania.

Whenever anyone visits our website, we use retargeting to then show them Facebook ads.

How??

By use of the Facebook pixel, which is just Facebook’s fancy term for a piece of website code that allows you to:

  • Track who visits your website
  • Find those same people on Facebook
  • Target them with Facebook ads
  • So you can advertise on Facebook to people who have visited your website!

Why??

Because of these 3 statistics:

  • 95% of people interested in what you have will visit your website before deciding to do business with you – before deciding to even contact you at all.
  • 96% of those leads will leave your website (without taking action!)
  • Retargeting with ads can increase your marketing response by 400%

In other words:

If you show ads again and again to people who’ve already visited your website…

You’re more likely to generate more leads (and sales).

So my advice:

Don’t worry about the effects of GDPR for us Americans right now. This doesn’t affect us, at least yet.

Retargeting works by getting your marketing seen again and again by prospects, and I always say that repetition of your marketing is one of THE most important elements of successful campaigns!

Take this case study, for example:

When a local Clearwater home renovation company, Nelson Construction and Renovations, wanted to increase their amount of qualified leads (and subsequent revenue), we designed a postcard with matching online ads using Everywhere Small Business.

Here are their designs:

effective postcard design for home remodeling company

That’s the postcard.

And here are their Google and Facebook ads:

effective google ad design for home remodeling companyeffective facebook ad design for home remodeling company

We set them up with a mailing list, targeting single-family homeowners — with home values of $200,000+ — who lived within a 15-mile radius of the downtown Clearwater area.

They took our advice (that repetition is KEY to marketing success!) and mailed 12,000 postcards every month for 12 months — one WHOLE year.

And their consistency definitely paid off!

Check out their campaign results:

  • 12,000 postcards mailed EVERY month for 1 year
  • Online ads seen 2,181,078 times
  • 1,975 qualified clicks back to their website

But the BEST part of their results…

They generated a 14,000% return on investment for their business.

14,000%!

This campaign worked because of this:

  • We coordinated 3 marketing mediums together (direct mail, Google, and Facebook ads)
  • We ran them side by side (with matching designs)
  • AND we tracked their mail delivery, campaign clicks and calls in the Everywhere Small Business dashboard.

Like this:

postcardmania mail tracking results

Here’s what I really want to leave you with today….

DON’T think you need to spend endless hours creating super interesting content on your Facebook business page.

It’s essentially a waste of time since Facebook has largely become an ads platform for us small business owners.

And know this:

No matter what changes may or may not be coming related to Facebook (or the internet at large), I don’t recommend you rely your business’s growth on someone else’s algorithm.

I mean, you can build a business on social media (plenty have!), but you may go a little nuts because things change all the time.

I personally have dedicated digital marketing specialists who study, scrutinize, and work on our Google and Facebook strategies constantly…

But I understand that this scenario is not likely the reality for most of you. You probably just want to run and grow your business, and not spend hundreds of hours online trying to figure out what inevitably will get changed.

That’s why last year, when we released Everywhere Small Business, our intention was to make online marketing not only EASIER but absolutely more effective for busy small business owners to just grow their businesses.

Using Everywhere Small Business, you receive only the most important benefits from digital marketing — meaning, the strategies that generate LEADS. But YOU don’t have to do anything…

Except work on servicing all your new leads and customers, that is!

So I really hope this helped you. I know a lot of you have questions about how to grow your business with Facebook and other digital strategies, and I really wanted to make this information as practical and helpful as possible!

If you have any questions about marketing with Everywhere Small Business, or starting any marketing campaign for your business, don’t hesitate to call one of my marketing consultants at 800-628-1804. Their advice is 100% FREE for you to use!

Or you can email me directly at joy.gendusa@postcardmania.com

Best,

Joy

P.S. If you want to see what our postcards look like, you can order a FREE sample pack here!

FREE DOWNLOAD: How to Get More Leads (and Revenue) from Social Media

4 Comments

  • Hi Joy,

    Thank you for your article. It’s great to see samples, side by side and get a big picture. Keeping everything consistent across your Google, Facebook, and a website is definitely a challenge, especially when promos change monthly.

    One thing you do that I like is when I visit your website, I get a clean, pop-up window that features your current promo. This seems like an easy way to put promos up and down without constantly changing the website code, layout, images, etc.

    -Sean

    • Sean,
      I’m so glad you enjoyed the article! I definitely hear you on about the challenge of keeping everything consistent. That’s why we’re so passionate about our completely automated marketing solutions like Everywhere Small Business that handle it all for you. And thank you so much for your feedback on our website. We see a LOT of success from our popups – in fact, we’ve seen a 400% increase in leads since implementing them! Have you heard about our Catch That Lead Tool? We created it as an inexpensive way for business owners to reap the same benefits from popups without having to do anything yourself. Thanks for reading and thanks for being a customer, Sean!

  • Great post, testing & retargeting are key. Too many SMBs (large brands too maybe, I have no experience with them) waste money chasing vanity metrics, neglecting tracking/testing, or not having the correct campaign architecture – or just boosting posts.

    Great examples too. Happy to share.

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