Many new businesses make this mistake when they start doing online advertisements on Facebook, Google Adwords, and LinkedIn — they don’t do the recommended market research first to qualify the advertising campaigns, or have an effective sales system in place. This is often what sinks them, ruins their advertising budget, and doesn’t get them the leads they were looking for.
SET UP AN EFFECTIVE SALES SYSTEM
Before you set up an online advertising campaign, please check your website first. Make sure you have a sales system in place to hook these customers into their first purchase. Is the product page clear? Is there sufficient copy that describes the product? Can they clearly see the product price, the tax, and if there are any shipping costs? Approximately a third of cart abandonments are a result of unclear pricing, and the use of the shopping cart as a pricing calculator. You can convert that third of shoppers to actual buyers by removing any objections they would have to the price.
If your website layout is effective, then it makes it easier to have your sales system in place. You can use these elements to get people into your sales system:
Capture name & email address in the cart checkout
Make sure you have email signup forms visible on website to get people signed up for newsletters
Make sure you have social sharing buttons available on the product page as this increases visibility of your product and gets you more fans on social media
Now that you’ve reviewed your sales system and made the needed changes, we move onto another essential part that needs to be in place before you start your advertising campaign.
KNOW YOUR TARGET MARKET
If you’re a online retailer selling t-shirts, then you need to know your target market, depending on the types of shirts you sell. If you’re selling athletic t-shirts, political t-shirts, or comfortable women’s shirts, then you need to know your audience.
Let’s say you sell athletic t-shirts, and you want to do ads on Facebook to drive traffic to your website and increase your t-shirt sales. The good news is that you get a lot of targeting options on Facebook. You can filter by:
- Age
- Gender
- Interests
- Location
- Job Title
- Pages Liked
- Religion
If you select age (18 to 45 years of age), gender (male or female), interest (exercise, fitness, nutrition), and pages liked (very popular fitness pages) then you would end up with a Facebook target audience that would be likely to buy your athletic t-shirts.
HAVE AN EFFECTIVE AD COPY/DESIGN IN PLACE
Your Facebook ad campaign should clearly display what you’re selling, have an attractive offer, and fun copy that entices your potential customers to come to your website to buy your athletic t-shirts.
If you want to increase traffic to your website, then you need to ensure great design that speaks to your ideal customer online, and that the ad takes the potential customer to the website where the item they are looking for is displayed. Make it easy as possible for them to purchase, and if for some reason, they do not complete the purchase, you can use the retargeting option in Facebook advertising to remind your customer of the item that they were going to purchase.
This retargeting pixel can show them the product again on Facebook. We’ll have more on Facebook retargeting soon as this can be a little complicated for you to use, but what we have written so far is what you need to know to get your ad campaign launched on Facebook.