Is Facebook Ads not converting into sales? There’s a good reason why this rarely produces the results that businesses expect.
In This Facebook Ads T-Time Show
– Where Facebook activity and Facebook Ads fit in the digital marketing funnel
– What results you should expect
– How to track the traffic and the influence that Facebook Ads have on your sales
Where does Facebook Fit in Your Marketing Strategy?
(01:00) Firstly it is important to understand the three stages of the marketing funnel. The top part is your brand, building the awareness and trust of your brand. Basically giving yourself a reputation. The second layer of the funnel is search, that’s SEO and search campaigns. This represents people who are searching right now for what you do or for your brand. The final part of the funnel is User Experience. Ideally, you need all three of these working together really well.
Facebook belongs in the top of the funnel, in Brand. Social media is not really designed for direct action unless you have an amazing offer. That could work well.
Why do Facebook Ads Fail?
(03:20) Targeting is the classic one. If you target a massive audience with the same ad you are not going to get as good a result as if you break the ad down. Split it into smaller groups and tailor it for each of the smaller audiences and measure the results.
Facebook ads interrupt people. With search marketing we are entering the shop because we are already interested in what you are selling. When you are interrupting me I have not interest what so ever, so the conversion rate is lower. Even if I am the sort of person that would like to buy your product I might not want to do it right now. You will not get an immediate response.
This doesn’t mean that Facebook Ads don’t work. They most certainly do and they can be very profitable.
Why Your Facebook Tracking Is Lying To You
(6:24) You must track this activity. Facebook has it’s own conversion tracking and Facebook in the interface will tell you the results of the campaign. You must also tag your Facebook Ad URLs with Analytics tags so that Google Analytics segments that data for you and then you can see where the direct conversions are happening.
The majority of users of Facebook are typically on a mobile device which means they may click through the ad but then get distracted. At a later time, they may then go to Google to search for your product which means you then need an ad or organic placement to get the conversion and make your Facebook Ads successful.
The other thing that may happen is that the ad is seen on a desktop device at work for example, but then they revisit the product page later but on a different device. ~When the second visit is on a second device the tracking breaks. There is little relationship between a mobile device and a desktop device. Facebook is then not being credited with the sales that it should be.
Why It’s Almost Impossible to Accurately Measure Facebook’s Value to Your Brand
(08:50) If you start a Facebook campaign and you get a heap of traffic from that what it also produces is Brand Search. Facebook starts creating traffic to your website from search which otherwise wouldn’t have happened. This traffic is not then attributed to Facebook.
This is when we need to look at Google Analytics and look at the spikes in behaviour around the time that you created your Facebook Campaign. Look at the sales that are attributed to brand search, direct traffic, email traffic and if they all spike at around the same time as you started your Facebook campaign you can see that there is an attribution, although not a direct one.
This is where the challenge lies.
Resources Mentioned in the Video
Facebook Conversion Tracking
Google Analytics Campaign Tags
Measuring Brand Value Signals
Google Analytics Training
