Do you need to know how Facebook can work for your business? Do you need to bring more people into your community? Facebook can be a great marketing tool but you need to make sure you are reaching the right people, at the right time, with the right message.

In this article I’m going to share how you can plan your Facebook content and your Facebook advertising so that you are maximizing your efforts and your budget.

This is a summary of my presentation at Social Media Marketing World 2017 – #SMMW17.

Your Facebook Marketing Funnel

Think of how people get connected to your business on Facebook.  What is the customer journey like?  Think of how you have gotten connected to other businesses – how did you become aware of them?

Someone might have shared something from their website or provided a referral or maybe you saw an enticing ad.

Here are the typical steps for getting people connected into your community and what type of content work at each level.

I’ll go into deeper into each level in this post and show some good examples.

Have a Goal for Each Piece of Content

Sometimes people judge each piece of content the same but they aren’t created equal. The purpose of each piece of content can and should vary.

Content that is humorous or fun is going to get more engagement than something that is more promotional. Those pieces of content have different goals – one engages your audience and one drives traffic to your website.

Each piece of content should have a “Key Performance Indicator” that fits with the funnel.

Here are examples of the types of key performance indicators that should be used at each level.

• Awareness:  Reach, Engagement, Video Views
• Consideration:  Website Clicks, Email Optins
• Conversion:  Sales
• Retention:  Reviews, Repeat buyers

Choose the key performance indicator that is right for your content.  You can watch your Key Performance Indicator in your Facebook Insights.

Have a Target

Now that you know what statistic you are going to watch, make sure you have a target in mind.

You need to know what “Success” looks like for your content so you can evaluate if that content worked.  And it may be a series of pieces of content that you evaluate together.

For example, your target may look something like this:

• Double your average Reach for that post
• 30% more video views than other videos
• 3x your website clicks compared to last month
• 1000 new optins over 3 months from Facebook posts

If you are using Facebook ads, then you may have different metrics you are watching like cost per link click, cost per conversion, or impressions.

Set Up Your Tracking Method in Advance

Make sure you know how you are going to measure your key performance indicator.

• If you are running Facebook Ads, make sure you are using the Facebook Pixel
  • Install the Pixel on your website
  • Create Custom Conversions for each Thank You Page
• If you have a local business, know how you will track sales (coupon codes, ask, offsite tracking with Facebook Ads)
• Use Google Analytics to track Facebook traffic to your website
  • Use Google Goals to track conversions
  • EACH link you share to your own content should be a Google UTM Link

One of the beneifts of using UTM links is that you are going to be able to separate the organic traffic to your website (via links you share) vs. the advertising traffic vs. the general social traffic (via links other people share).

 

So now that you have your goals, your targets, and your tracking in place, let’s talk about the different layers of the Facebook Marketing Funnel.

In this next section I’m going to talk about both Facebook content as well as Facebook Ad types for each stage of the funnel.

Awareness

When someone is just getting to know your business, you need to deliver high value.  And you don’t want to ask for a big commitment right away – you can’t ask someone to marry you on the first date.

Again, think of how you first became aware of another business, it may have come through a share, a referral, or a Facebook ad.

Facebook Activities for Awareness:

• Commenting on other people’s Pages as your Page – Participating in the Conversation
• Participating in Groups (make sure your profile is properly linked to your Page)
• Facebook Videos with good content (Live or prerecorded)
• Other people sharing your content (post good content)
• Sharing your content from your Page to your profile (warm market)

Facebook Ads for Awareness:

• Boosting your best posts (5% organic engagement or higher)
• Like Ads (minimal spend) – Facebook Like ads are ok for general awareness but I’m not recommending a big budget for Like Ads
• Video Views

I used to not recommend Boosting Posts as much but now the new Engagement Retargeting has been a big game-changer with that.  You can now reach the people who have previously engaged with your Page.

Make sure you are only boosting your best content.  Take a look at which posts have a good Engagement Rate – I typically recommend 5% or higher as a good benchmark but you may need to see what is normal for your Page.

For example, I wanted people to get to know my philosophy around how I view marketing.  So I created a Business Manifesto video.  It was getting good engagement but then I spent $13 to boost it.

Video – Business Manifesto Results:

• 3811 Video Views
• 92 Link Clicks
• 10,734 Reached
  • 4350 Organic (5x higher than average)
  • 6384 Paid with $13 boost
• $0.01/video view

And the video continues to do well with over 6,500 views.  This piece of content was successful for the goal I had set for it.

Consideration

In the Consideration phase, you are inviting your audience into a deeper relationship with you.

You are wooing them with your excellent content and you may then ask them to optin to your offer or get a coupon from you.

Facebook Activities for Consideration:

• Drive traffic to Landing Page with email optin
  • Freebies, coupons, video series, webinars, ebooks, contests
• Facebook Videos with focused call to action (Live or prerecorded)
• Longer form content
  • Case Studies, product comparisons

Facebook Ads for Consideration:

• Traffic or Conversion ads 
• Lead Generation Ads
• Boosted Posts to targeted custom audiences (retargeting, email subscribers)

In this example we had a goal of getting people signed up for our webinar.  We were testing between our warm traffic (website retargeting) and cold traffic where we were targeting by a variety of keywords.

 

Results:

• Retargeted web traffic minus people already on our email list – $1.56/lead
• Cold Audience – $5.40/lead

Conversion

In the Conversion phase you are driving traffic to your sales page or your product page.  In this phase you should only be targeting your warm audience with your Facebook Ads.

Your warm audience can include:

• Your Fans
• People who have been to your website
• People who have signed up for your email list
• People who have engaged with your content (video view retargeting or engagement retargeting)

Sometimes people don’t have enough website traffic (or it hasn’t had time to build yet with the Facebook Pixel).  You may want to think about combining the warm audience targeting so that you can get a large enough audience to target.

One thing that is great about Facebook Ad reporting is that you can track through the whole sales process so you can see each step.

 

Here is what your setup would look like so you can track everything properly:

You can bring someone from Awareness all the way through Conversion in a short time.  I did a recent Case Study on how we did that with Facebook ads here:  Vital Animals Case Study.

 

Retention

The sale isn’t the end of the story.  Facebook shines at helping you stay top-of-mind with your current customers.  When you can continue to use your good content to connect with customers, they are more likely to remember and recommend you to others.

Facebook Activities for Retention:

• Stay top of mind with good content
• Create Facebook Group for insiders
• Facebook Live
• Answer Messenger questions
• Watch Notifications

Mari Smith does a great job with providing ongoing value to her community by doing live video where she answers questions.  In this case she is using Belive.tv to overlay the questions on the screen.

 

Key Takeaways

Some key takeaways from my presentation and this article are:

• Set up your funnel and tracking method
• Experiment with tactics and measure!
• Focus on what works for YOU

Hope that is helpful and feel free to share your comments about what works for you in the comments below!

Also make sure you grab my free ebook (and bonus videos):  How to Get Highly Targeted Leads with Facebook