Finding leads is hard. Maintaining their interest and leading them down the sales funnel is even harder. There are so many distractions both online and offline and people will soon forget about your brand. But this does not mean that you are powerless in this race to keep your leads focused on your marketing messages.
You have to be smart and act at the right moment to make sure that each lead is engaged, entertained and, finally, persuaded to try your products or services. This process is called lead nurturing. Today we will focus on lead nurturing strategies involving Facebook™ ads.
Why Facebook™?
Lead nurturing means ongoing engagement with people who showed an interest in your business. This means that you should display your messages in a place where your leads are most likely to see them. There is only one place that brings together over 2 billion people on Earth every day: Facebook™.
Social media is the public forum where people spend most of their spare time these days. They keep in touch with family members and friends, they follow their favourite celebrities and they look for product recommendations.
So, how can you use this huge public forum to your advantage and keep your leads nurtured along the sales funnel? Here are some practical ideas.
1. Target Your Email Subscribers with Reminder Ads
So, you got some people to subscribe to your emails in an initial Facebook™ ad campaign. But soon enough you see your opening rates dropping at an alarming rate. It is not unusual – people have less and less patience for promotional emails. The most popular email client – Gmail – even helps them segregate between important emails and promotions.
You must not leave things trailing until the leads get cold and forget about your business. Instead, select the inactive email addresses from your list of subscribers and create a Custom Audience on Facebook™. Target these people with reminders of what they’ve been missing by not opening their emails, including special, limited-time discounts for your products.
2. Create a Quiz Lead Ad
Lead ads are increasingly popular on Facebook™. First of all, they are fully compliant with the tightest personal data protection laws (the European GDPR). Secondly, they require minimum effort from the Facebook™ user: once they click on it, and agree to proceed, Facebook™ auto-fills their contact data.
How can you use lead ads for lead nurturing? One smart way is to promote a quiz that helps you learn more about your prospects’ preferences. In time, this information will help you segment your leads and create personalised ad campaigns for each separate group. For example, travel agents can nurture their leads with quizzes for summer vacation destinations or favourite ways of spending Valentine’s Day/Easter/Halloween, etc.
3. Promote Cornerstone Content
Cornerstone content can be anything from a detailed tutorial, cheat sheet to an in-depth white paper where you demonstrate your expertise and provide solutions to some of the most frequent problems your clients encounter. Typically, you share this kind of content on your Facebook™ page. But, let’s face it, organic reach is nearly dead on all social media networks.
If you want to help your leads and nurture them, you need to bring this valuable content in front of them via boosted posts. A boosted post is not exactly an ad. You will pay for it, of course, but the result you get is that the selected audience will see your link and read your content.
4. Feature Your Happy Clients
Client cases make great brand awareness ads. No matter how skilled you are as a copywriter, you can never replicate the trust created by an authentic success story. When they read about a client case, leads can actually picture themselves achieving the same results, enjoying the same benefits.
These ads are very useful in the middle of the funnel phase when leads are familiar with your business and need to build confidence to move on to the next phase: the first purchase.
5. Answer Comments on Your Ads and In Private Messages
Last but not least, be communicative and keep the dialogue going. Many leads lose confidence when their answers and comments are met with silence from brands. They feel ignored and they will soon unfollow the respective page.
Since Facebook™ ads have the general format of a regular post, some leads will comment on it. Some of them will ask general purpose questions, but others may want to know something specific connection with the ads. The right answer, given as promptly as possible, can turn the lead into a confident customer.