We’ve never met anyone who says they wouldn’t want more leads for their business – so how do we ‘turn on the tap’?

Given I’m in the “marketing coaching” game, I often hear business owners (many who are franchisees) moaning over the poor results of their “social media” advertising endeavours.

Time, and time again, I hear tales of woe regarding “pay- per-click” advertising failures on platforms like Facebook & Instagram. And most of the time, my response to the business owner is “the online platform is fine – it’s your ads that stink!”

Engagement

Facebook & other social media platforms are all about engagement – in other words, you need to ‘engage’ people via ‘non- salesy’ dialogue before inviting them to consider your product or service.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re a franchisee or a regular business owner, the name of the game in this communications sector is engagement.

Let me make a couple of things really clear;

a. You Can Be Laser-Targeted

Facebook & Instagram are the most laser-targeted advertising channels the world has ever seen, delivering massive opportunities to all business owners.

Unlike TV, radio, newspapers, billboards & magazines, these social media platforms allow us to pinpoint our target audience precisely, and therefore enjoy minimal wastage in our advertising.

Whereas on Channel 9 today, your expensive ‘wrinkle cream’ ad might have a 50% wastage factor (due to half of the viewers being too young for that product), but, your same ad on Facebook can zero in on women 45yrs+ who live in a wealthy suburb & drive a prestige car.

The opportunity for all business owners is insane - never before have we been able to laser target our most profitable audience.

b. Your ‘Creative’ Is Vital

If you put rubbish in, you’ll likely get rubbish out. In other words, your creativity and strategy are vital ingredients when it comes to your Facebook or Instagram ads. Remember, your ad needs to attract attention by either solving someone’s problem or by ‘wowing’ your audience with an incredible, engaging invitation People are attracted to benefits, so stop promoting the features of your products or services.

My business, The Institute of Wow spends a reasonably high amount of money on social media advertising, predominantly Facebook & LinkedIn. And because of this, we’ve worked hard at developing a model that delivers us a somewhat predictable ROI.

We’ve devised this formula through good old testing and fixing. We experiment with countless different ad-sets with different headlines, body copy, images, videos, carousel slides, voiceovers, captions and so on.

As a result, we’ve developed a system that delivers us and our clients an avalanche of leads more often than not. I’m not saying the formula is fool proof, as there’s always variables in all industries and factors that affect the result of any ad campaign be it online or offline.

The Engagement Code

We’ve called the formula The Engagement Code, and it consists of the following components;

1. Identify precisely WHO your most profitable audience is - so you can look for more people online who look like them!

In other words, use Facebook’s lookalike audience facility properly.

2. Position yourself (or your company) as THE EXPERT – people are attracted to experts, just ask Gordon Ramsay!

And people pay more to experts because they are trusted advisors.

3. Create a WOW FACTOR and stop people from scrolling -and take their eyes off the price!

McDonalds have been doing this for decades with their free toy in the Happy Meal box. Harvey Norman does it with 2 Years Interest Free, and Kellogg’s have also been doing it for 50 years – with the free toy in the cereal box.

What's your 'wow' factor?

4. Create videos that look like ‘native posts’ –in other words, they look real and down to earth, NOT Steven Spielberg quality. Don’t make a glossy, Hollywood style video – be ‘real’ and watch the engagement skyrocket.

When you are marketing on social media, remember it’s called ‘social’, so you have to treat the audience as if you were having a casual first-time chat at a BBQ with someone.

In a social setting like that, you wouldn’t talk to people in a salesy-type fashion and start screaming selling messages to them. You’d likely be far more casual and inviting, so you need to create a similar ambience with your communications on Facebook and beyond.

5. Plant emotional seeds in your ads –that is, provide a problem / solution scenario, but in a conversational style way.

So, if you were promoting a headache tablet for example, you’d create a video that showcases mum coming from the school pick-up run, exhausted and tired. Then she’d take a tablet with a glass of water and boast that 15 mins later, her headache has disappeared...ie Problem / Solution.

6. Test ‘teaser ads’ via quizzes&contests –attract interest from your audience by offering a reward for completing a survey or quiz, or via a contest with a good prize incentive.

Imagery and messaging

I had an aluminium fence company as a client and their efforts with Facebook advertising were resulting in almost zero leads. Their target audience were home owners with an old paling, wooden fence, probably living in a house that was 20, 30 or 40 years old.

But because the company was simply showing an aluminium fence in their Facebook ads, the response was woeful. So, when the business became a client of ours, we flipped the campaign on its head and ran ads promoting a contest called ‘The Ugliest Back Fence In Australia!’

The campaign understandably was laser targeted into older postcodes and the prize was a brand new aluminium fence up to $5,000 value, which of course only cost the company a small portion of that.

Home owners simply had to take a photograph of their falling down fence and post it to the aluminium fence’s Facebook page. And whammo! The campaign resulted in 2 years’ worth of leads in just 3 days of Facebook advertising!

We made a gazillion prospects do the equivalent of glowing in the dark for the fence business, and they even provided proof that their backyard wooden fence was crappy!

Now whenever that fencing company wants to get more leads, there’s a proven formula they can follow.

This means that they can turn on ‘the customer tap’ whenever they want via a creative, laser targeted Facebook campaign.

We now devise similar Facebook campaigns for other businesses across many industries. A Kitchen Renovation company attracted 6 months of warm leads in just one week through a Facebook ad campaign I created.

Their target audience were predominantly owners of older homes, where it was more likely they’d need a new kitchen.

Our Facebook ad campaign targeted owners of older homes who were invited to vote for their preferred kitchen design, after we showed them two options, A & B, for the chance to win a $10,000 kitchen makeover.

Again, the clever campaign resulted in an avalanche of fast leads - an insane amount of warm prospects.

It really is easy to get prospects to ‘glow in the dark’ when you know how! And of course, in both the case of the aluminium fence firm and the kitchen renovator, the businesses followed a systemised follow-up procedure (which we designed for them), contacting all of the Facebook ad respondents and offering a ‘special deal’ via phone calls, SMS & email.

So there you have it – the Facebook Engagement Code which can also be used on other social media platforms. It’s your ‘herbs n spices recipe’ to making pay-per-click advertising work for your business.

It doesn’t matter what type of business you operate, services or products, this ‘code’ can work for you IF your creative is right.

Facebook Live broadcasts is another powder-keg leads stimulant, and if you or a member of your team is comfortable in front of the camera (your smartphone), it’s a juggernaut in terms of attracting leads.

But it’s a whole subject by itself, so I’ll cover this in a future article.

Just remember, when you are using social media for promoting your products or services, if you want to get the best result, firstly nurture relationships through ‘Engagement’ tactics, NOT trying to 'sell' to them the moment they take notice of you...

Oh yeah, and that's me with Jerry Seinfeld. He listened to me, so why not you? :-) :-):-)