Why Starting Your Marketing With Facebook Ads Is A Mistake

Facebook Ads are a powerful tool for promoting your business but what many businesses fail to realise is that paid advertising is an amplifying tool. This means they amplify what is currently going on in your business.

If your business is making sales organically (using free methods), then Facebook Ads will very likely work for you as they will amplify this success.

If you are relatively new to business and don’t have a conversion rate of two percent (two out of every 100 people that visit your website book or buy), then you are not ready for Facebook Ads. You need to focus on improving this number first and stick to free organic traffic methods like Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and email marketing.

Why? This is because you are pouring money into a leaky bucket. You’re going to be spending money bringing traffic to your website and your visitors aren't going to buy. 

WEBSITE CONVERSION RATE

You first need organic traffic to make sure that your website is converting and your products, services or programs are selling. Once your website is converting at two percent, you can move on to Facebook Ads to grow at scale.

Let us use a real example to help you make sense of it. If you’re currently getting 1000 visitors to your website per month and your average sale is $100 and you have a conversion rate of 1%, you will make $1000 per month, at 2% it will double to $2000 per month and then at 3%, it will be $3000. As you increase your traffic dramatically with Facebook Ads, you can increase your revenue very fast by having a higher conversion rate in place. That's why it's important to have a strong conversion rate before you start running Facebook Ads.

As you can see, by increasing your conversion rate, you decrease the amount of traffic you need to hit your sales goal.

You can check website analytics or Google Analytics to see what your conversion rate is. There are many ways to improve this number. This should be your focus before you spend any money or time getting paid traffic. If you can’t sell to 100 people, you certainly won’t be able to sell to 1000.

Further to this, increasing your Average Order Value (the amount people spend with you per transaction) will also help increase your revenue (and reduce the amount of traffic needed to hit your sales goal).

Need help calculating your conversion rate and/or average order value? Download our free Traffic & Sales Calculator + Planner. You’ll also be able to quickly determine how much website traffic you need per month to hit your sales goal too.

YOUR SALES OFFER

Before you look first for ways to improve your conversion rate, you need to first nail your sales offer (which is what you’re selling).

Your offer (particularly when you’re first starting out) needs to either offer more value than your competition for the same price or be cheaper.

If you offer exactly what everyone else in your niche or industry is offering, you aren’t going to stand out from the crowd. With larger competitors that have established brands, it will be difficult to compete with them unless you have a better offer, price or promotion.

You either need:

• A cheaper priced offer and the difference in what you're offering doesn't matter to your audience
• A cheaper priced offer or one that is the same price but your offer is more compelling
• A more expensive product that has a differentiating factor your audience is willing to pay more for e.g., better inclusions, features or benefits.

Once you know you have a winning offer, you’re ready to start trying to drive traffic to your website. Start with organic (free) marketing. We recommend beginning with Search Engine Optimisation. This is the steps you take to rank in Google so that your dream audience finds you the moment you make a search. SEO drives 1000% more traffic than social media to a website.

For other ideas on how to market your business (free and paid), visit our latest blogs How To Market Your Business And Make Consistent Sales Without Being On Social Media.

Once you are getting traffic, it’s time to measure and improve your conversion rate. Aim for a conversion rate of two percent, with a view to constantly increase this number.

WAYS TO INCREASE YOUR WEBSITE'S CONVERSION RATE

3 Second Test

Run the three second test to make sure your website is hitting the mark. 

Show your website to someone who hasn’t heard of your business and ask them if they can tell you what you sell or do within three seconds of landing on your website’s homepage. They can’t scroll and they must stay above the fold. Then ask them who you sell to.

Did you pass the test? If you aren’t sure, reply to this email and we will guess for you.

 If you didn’t pass the test, edit your hero image, headline, and sub-header to clearly state what you do and who for.

Messaging

The right messaging is knowing what to say to your audience to get them to take action.  

The first step is knowing who your target audience is and what is important to them. That way you can talk directly to their pain points or desires to trigger them to buy or book.

Get clear on the problem. For example Naked Sunday, the award winning sunscreen brand solves the problem of being able to reapply sunscreen over the top of makeup and doubles as a paraben free skincare.

It provides a solution to make-up wearing women who want SPF protection and great skin without a 5-step process.

Communicating these exact benefits to their audience makes the product an easy sell especially as it’s never been done before.

Know what your audience struggles with or desires and use that in your messaging. Don’t forget to include your tone of voice across all your content.

Improve Your Website Speed

Your website pages need to load within three seconds of a visitor arriving. Otherwise you run the risk of them bouncing out and going to a competitors site. You also run the risk of being penalised by Google too. Use the Pingdom Speed Test to see how fast your website is loading and then take action to make improvements. The main offender is usually image size. Compress your images to make them smaller so that they load quicker. Uninstall unnecessary plugins.

Optimise Your Website For Mobile

Google now ranks your website based on your mobile site. Be sure your website is responsive (renders well on different device types, especially mobile).

The majority of visitors these days will view your website from their mobile device. For this reason, it is important you make your mobile site easy to use and navigate, so your visitors take your desired action.

Google Analytics can tell you how many people visit your website on a mobile device vs. a desktop computer.

Easy To Navigate

Make it easy for your visitors to find exactly what they are looking for on your website (and do so within three clicks of landing on your website).

You can always use a behavioural analysis tool like a heatmap or scroll map to see how users move throughout your site and where they spend the most time. You’ll often be surprised how they do. Software like Crazy Egg, and Hotjar can help here.

Step-By-Step Instructions

Create clear step-by-step instructions that help push prospects towards a purchase or booking. 

Each page of your website should have a call to action that encourages the user to go to another page, towards the final action you want them to take e.g., buy or fill out a form for you to get in contact.

Trust Factors

You need to include reasons why your dream buyers should trust you on your website.

One of the best ways to build trust is through reviews and testimonials. Buyers feel more comfortable knowing they aren’t the first to use your product or service and that others have first been satisfied with what you sell. You can do this through written or video reviews or testimonials or even better, user generated content.

Add reviews to your home page, product or services pages and your cart page. We personally have a Results page to showcase all ours.

Adding a shipping policy, returns policy, privacy policy and terms and conditions also helps build trust. It helps answer all those questions a potential customer or client could normally ask face-to-face and provides a guarantee that if the product or service fit isn’t right, they have an option to opt-out. If your product is as great as you believe it to be, not many people will need to make use of this guarantee anyway.

Another great way to add trust and credibility to your website is payment icons especially Paypal. If a potential customer knows they can get their money back if your website turns out to be a scam, they’ll feel much more reassured when making a purchase or booking.

Finally, share the story behind your brand. Include an about page with your founding story. This helps the user connect to the brand.

Conclusion

Be sure to make the most out of users already visiting your website before you invest in Facebook Ads. Increase the percentage of those who end up becoming paying customers, clients or students by implementing these factors.

If you want an easy way to check if your brand is ready for Meta Ads before you spend a cent, download our free Meta Ads Starter Checklist today.