The Facebook ad algorithm changed in January this year and it’s causing a lot of pages to die. Follow this step by step guide to help build page audience engagement and move people from a cold audience into your client list.
The best way to approach Facebook ads is to build a ladder of ads that help a wide audience become an insider client. How do you do this? Through meaningful engagement with the cold audience to help warm them up to you. Once you start running these ads, the idea is to keep them running so they are constantly bringing you new clients.
1. Engagement Ads
Keep in mind you can only start running ads after you have built your Facebook page and starting sharing content. These kinds of ads focus on getting more engagement for a single post. This post should not be trying to sell something, but rather be something people will want to like, comment and share. It has to be worth engaging with. Now why start with an engagement ad instead of an opt-in ad? In simple terms, it keeps Facebook happy. If Facebook is happy and sees that your page is not scaring people off of Facebook, more people will see your ads. Ads like this take a minimum of 10 days to 4-8 weeks to work their magic. The ideal audience for this kind of ad is based on zip code and homeowner demographic.
Example ad: A customer appreciation event ad is a great way to get engagement. Try inviting people who are not only clients to a free wine tasting.
2. Page Like Ads
One week and a half later you can start running these ads. Once you surpass 1000 likes from this ad you will create a second audience that you will continue warming up. The purpose of this ad is to continually have fresh people visiting your page. Once they engage with your page in some way they become part of this second audience.
3. Nurture Ads
Customers love nurture ads because it makes them feel special. Start running these ads a week and a half after starting the page like ads. These ads should not be selling something and they should not require the targeted audience to subscribe, sign-up or buy anything.
Example ad: Run a ‘Happy Birthday’ ad that targets people from your audience that have birthdays within 7 days. It should simply say happy birthday.
4. Opt-in Ads
After, and only after, you have started running ads 1-3 can you start running opt-in ads. Warmer audiences respond better to opt-in ads than cold audiences because they are more familiar with you and your company. Better responses mean more sales. These ads should be started a month after first running your post engagement ads.
Example ad: Starting an ad that allows people to subscribe to a newsletter if interested.
5. Content Ads
These ads should about one week and a half after starting opt-in ads. The purpose of these ads is to tell your audience why they should opt-in. You want to answer a question or solve a problem for them. These can be videos of you giving them advice regarding real estate, or blogs about investing in real estate. This should be genuinely helpful content that will potentially leaving them wanting more.
Example ad: A video of you telling people when is a good time to buy and when is a bad time to buy.
6. Journey Ads
These ads are also known as re-targeting ads. You want to continue to warm your audience up to you. Think about what the next question will be they will ask before they even ask it. You want to keep moving them along so that they become clients and seek you out. This ad should start running a week and a half after the original content ads.
Example ads: Create a part-two to the original content ad that dives into more detail.
7. Event Ads
This the last ad campaign you should start. After your audience is familiar with you and has expressed interest can you ask them to attend something like an open house. These people will actually be interested in your new listings and open houses. These should have a more targeted audience based on the location of the open house. Start running these ads two months after starting the post engagement ads.
The goal is to keep running these ads so you constantly have new people running down this ad chain going from the cold audience to the insiders you invite to go to an open house. Never restart a paused ad either, always just start a new ad campaign. The budget breakdown for spending on different audiences should be close to 60% for a cold audience, 30% for a warm audience and 10% for re-targeting ads.
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