For many of us, from small business owners to corporate teams, webinars have become an important piece of our marketing efforts in the past few years.

And for some very good reasons.

In addition to being affordable (affordable as in “free” many times), they’re also the perfect means to bring value to our audiences while generating interest in our brands.

Research has even shown that 61% of professional marketers incorporate webinars into their marketing campaigns.

However, even many of the pros are left guessing when it comes to properly hooking their webinars into a sales funnel.

And while there are many reasons for that, one reason sticks out more than others: pulling off a successful webinar is a complex task.

Sure, your audience is going to love the presentation you’ve put together and the ideas you’re going to cover.

They’re also going to appreciate the interaction with others in their industry.

Really, in a sense, you’re creating a mini-seminar for them and then broadcasting it to the world.

But in the end, many people are left wondering: was my webinar really a success? Was it the best it possibly could have been?

Well, we have good news for you… though you should always be looking for ways to improve your game, you can largely dispel these nagging questions through 1 simple method.

What marketing method could possibly have so much power? A properly set up webinar funnel!

In this 3 part series, we’re going to break down those steps for a successful funnel one-by-one for you.

Ready? Let’s get started.

Putting Your Webinar Funnel in Perspective

If you’ve put on or even attended a successful webinar in the past, you’ve probably seen webinars with anywhere from a few people in them to perhaps thousands of viewers.

So it’s really necessary to get a sense of what to expect for your own webinars.

Pre-webinar, we should set some realistic goals and benchmarks for our campaign.

This step helps you to have a better understanding of how well your content is working.

While every industry is different, it’s helpful to keep in mind about 50% of registrants attend any given webinar, on average.

There’s also some evidence that roughly the same percentage of visitors to your landing page will register.

But our goal at this stage is to use our funnel to increase the number of registrants, and so, increase our audience.

Makes sense right?

Protip: When creating your funnel, let relevant ideas guide your building process.

Questions like “what demographics will most enjoy my webinar content?” to “Are my sign up questions too invasive?” can really give you that added perspective.

Planning a Deployment Schedule

To ensure your pre-webinar funnel goes well, you’ll also want to set the pace with a deployment schedule.

Just like cutting corners for your other sales funnels will hurt your overall conversion rates, skipping your deployment schedule is a serious no-no.

As we noted earlier, webinars are complex affairs, and many audiences have gotten used to a certain level of interaction leading up to the event.

By determining the best time to have your webinar, long before the date, you’re setting yourself up for a far smoother ride during the rest of our steps.

And just like with any marketing campaign, there are good times and better times to have your webinar.

For this step, there are always plenty of tools available online to lay out your schedule.

But really, your deployment schedule can be as simple as using a Google Calendar to mark when you are sending your content.

The goal here is to have simply your content plan laid out in advance, which will enable you to deploy it, measure its impact, and focus on your webinar.

Protip: Here are 2 resources here and here to best determine what might work best for your webinar schedule.

Using Facebook Ads To Get Your Audience Registering

One of the purposes of a successful webinar is to attract new customers to your brand.

But if you only bury a link to your webinar on your own website, who’s going to find out about it?

Probably not very many people. Instead, let’s create some exposure to your event by leveraging one of the biggest social media networks in the world.

According to research presented by DMR Stats, not only are Facebook ads fairly cost-affordable per click, but they also capture, for example, almost 20% of all global mobile digital ads.

According to user statistics, the social media giant also has almost 1.5 billion users.

That certainly is a lot of eyeballs for your brand and your webinar!

You have a few options when it comes to creating your Facebook ad.

While using an ad pixel is by far the best option, we’ll focus here on the simplest method to drive traffic and get people signing up for your webinar.

Choose Your Image and Ad Size

Before we even create our ad, we know to know what size it’s going to be.

For our webinar, we’re going to create an ad that’s 1,200 x 628 pixels.

This is Facebook’s recommendation for for website link ads, but you can also use their handy guide if you’re mixing things up a bit or trying something different.

Be sure to choose an image that has a strong connection to your webinar, but also invokes some emotions in your viewers for greater impact.

Build Your Ad Content And Call-to-Action

Just like with any piece of advertising, you’ll want to guarantee that your message gets across to your audience.

Using content that accurately conveys what your webinar is about is a good start, but also think about the benefits that your audience will get from attending.

Will they discover more about their industry, connect with other like-minded professionals, or learn more about some awesome tips?

Keep your content straightforward and simple, but also include a call-to-action that invites them to sign up for your webinar.

Start Your Facebook Campaign

Setting up a basic ad campaign in Facebook only requires a few short steps.

In fact, you can have your ad running in under 10 minutes if you’ve already decided some of the key factors.

1. In Facebook, select the Ads Manager on the left-hand menu of your page. This will take you to the basic dashboard to create and manage your ads. You’re also able to manage any existing ads and also see some of your performance statistics.
2. You’ll want to use the Create Campaign button to begin a new ad for your webinar. But also be sure to add your billing and payment info if you haven’t already. This can be done by clicking Ad Manager at the top and selecting Billing & Payment Methods.
3. If you’re not using an ad pixel and simply setting up a basic ad for your webinar landing page, you’ll want to go with Send People to Your Website. But there are many choices, and you can feel free to explore them and decide which option might be best for your specific campaign and strategy.
4. Filling out your audience info is going to vary widely, even from business to business. But as you define the type of viewers you’re looking to attract to your webinar, take advantage of the audience definition gauge to your right. This can give you an idea of how many people you’ll reach and how well defined your audience is.
5. Decide your budget, and on the next page, set up your relevant information. If you’re just starting out with Facebook ads, we recommend focusing on single image ads; however, don’t forget to use the ads preview to review how your ad will look across devices and networks. You’re ready to roll!

Protip: You can also add custom audiences to Facebook Ads now with the Create a Custom Audience link on your audience selection page.

This option lets you enter the information for past customers or other database leads, further strengthening your funnel.

Knowing How Long to Run Your Ad Campaign

Too often, we see people shut their ad campaign off a day or two before their webinar.

Many people assume that the rest of their funnel has taken over and should be doing its job.

That sounds reasonable, right?

Not exactly! It might be true that 75% of some Facebook ads come in the first 5 hours they’re placed, but there’s more to webinar advertising than meets the eye.

Even if traffic has slowly trickled off on your ad, there’s still a very good reason to keep it running all the way up until the very day of your webinar.

Research into webinar attendance and viewership have shown that up to almost 25%, 1 in 4 attendees, sign up the day of the event.

That’s right!

Shut that ad off too early and you may be depriving your webinar of a lot of its potential.

We recommend keeping that ad up until the very second your webinar is finished to maximize visitors.

Protip:  Check out our article here on using Facebook ad pixels for an even better way of tracking your conversions. This way, you can get perspective on your own ads over time.

In Part 2 of our All-In-One Guide, we’ll take a look at best practices for your landing pages, capturing customer info for our funnel, and generating some buzz about your event.

Stay tuned!

Webinars can be a lot of fun and excitement when it comes down to it.

Which part of hosting one stays on your mind the most?

Thanks for reading Your Guide To A Successful Webinar Funnel (Part 1) which appeared first on ClickFunnels.

As any savvy digital marketer will tell you, Facebook advertising is a great tool to grow your audience and conversion rates.

First off, there are over 2.38 billion monthly active users on Facebook, and of that number, 1.56 billion use Facebook daily. 

So, how can you best engage and grow your customer base through Facebook ads, all while not breaking the bank?

In this article, we will discuss what Facebook ads are, why they are important to your sales funnels, and seven ways to lower the cost of your Facebook ads.

What are Facebook Ads?

A Facebook ad is a paid social post that businesses create to market a product and/or their services.

Facebook offers various types of ads to engage specific audience members. 

These types include ads with photos, ads with videos, slideshow ads, carousel ads, collection ads, and instant experience ads. Each offers a unique way to engage your target audience and expand your reach.

These ads can appear on desktop as well as mobile. They can appear directly within a person’s Facebook newsfeed or on the right-hand side of their newsfeed. They can also appear in Instagram (owned by Facebook) and on select apps through their audience network.

How Much Do Facebook Ads Cost?

The short answer? It depends.

There are various factors that play a role in how much a single ad costs. These include your ad objective, your target audience and industry, quality of the ad, and how much you are willing to budget for the ad (bidding strategy).

Facebook determines which ads to show to Facebook users through an ad auction.

Facebook charges you either based on your campaign budget or your ad set budget. Facebook will use the budget and spend it based on the time frame you set for your campaign.

Your budget is the amount you want to spend on the campaign or ad set, and Facebook will never charge you more than the amount you set. What you spend within that budget is the cost of the ad.

Because of this, you are in control of how much you spend on your campaign.

There are two types of budgets you can create with Facebook ads — daily budgets and lifetime budgets. 

If you set a lifetime budget on a campaign level, you’ll be charged no more than the amount in the given time period your ads are set to run.

Conversely, if you create a daily budget on an ad set level, you have more control over how much you’re spending daily on each audience.

According to Hootsuite, the average cost per click (CPC) in 2016 Q3 was 27.40 cents and the cost per 1000 impressions (CPM) was $7.19. That being said, much of those stats are skewed due to large brands running “brand awareness” ads. If you are running ads to a sales funnel with the intention of collecting a lead or making a sale, expect costs per click to be between one and two dollars and cost per 1000 impressions to be in the teens or twenties.

Knowing that, how much should you spend on Facebook ads?

The best practice, especially if you are asking Facebook to optimize your ads for leads or sales, is to spend enough to make a minimum of five conversions per day. This gives the Facebook engine enough data to ‘chew’ on and optimize its efforts in your favor.

For more info about billing and other Facebook ad information, Facebook offers multiple Facebook ad guides for those that are new to the process, including how to create, edit and schedule an ad. 

Why are Facebook Ads Important to Your Sales Funnels? 

As mentioned above, the majority of internet users have a Facebook account, and it’s an easy way to target and reach them, and setting your ad objective specifically to conversions is your best bet for getting leads and sales.

Facebook ads can help drive immediate results to your funnels if you are careful and do it right.

The minute you publish an ad on Facebook, it will start targeting your audience and you can easily measure the results. 

Facebook compiles the data for you – including impression, clicks, and conversion numbers — so you can see what is working and what you can improve on. 

Lastly, using a variety of Facebook ad options such as graphics and video can help engage your audience and motivate them to not only visit your funnel, but to convert into leads, sales, and even brand advocates.

7 Ways to Lower Your Facebook Ad Costs 

Now that you know what Facebook ads are, what they look like, and why they’re important, below are seven ways on how to lower Facebook ad costs while increasing your conversion rates. 

1.  Gain a Higher Relevance Score With Your Ads

A relevance score is based on feedback, both positive and negative, Facebook expects from the target audience. 

The more positive interactions expected, the higher the score on a scale from 1-10. When scores are low, 1-3, Facebook tends to charge you more for your impressions.

The score is continually updated as the audience provides feedback and interacts with your ad. 

Therefore, it’s vital that you check your ad relevance score to make sure it’s not only relevant for your audience, but doesn’t end up costing you more to display on Facebook. 

Good relevance scores increase efficiency when it comes to Facebook ads. 

2. Eliminate Overlapping Audiences 

By using the Facebook audience overlap tool, you can see if your ads are targeting similar audiences. 

When overlap happens, it can increase your ad cost as your ads compete against each other and thus, lead to less engagement and conversions. 

Based on your advertisement goals and customer data, refine your targeting and choose the audience within the overlap that is closely aligned to your customers and will bring in the most sales. 

3. Increase Click-Through-Rate With Optimized Content

A higher click-through-rate (CTR) means better engagement and conversions for your funnel, and as such, will increase your relevance score. 

Plus, it will lower your CPC. 

A quick way to increase your CTR and lower your CPC is to revisit your ad copy and call to action.

See if you can optimize your headline or lead sentence. Look for ways to entice your audience and how they can learn more by clicking on your funnel. 

Also, look at your current media and consider doing an A/B test to see if you can improve performance. 

4. Optimize Facebook Pixel

The Facebook Pixel is a tool that helps with two specific things. First, it tracks the conversions which not only lets you know how effective your ads are but also lets Facebook optimize your ads for maximum results.

Second, the Facebook pixel allows you to build audiences based on visitors to your sales funnel. This becomes vital to your retargeting efforts. Also, by collecting these visitors into audiences, Facebook can look at those audiences and suggest new people that are similar who would also likely engage with your offer. These audiences are called “Lookalike” audiences and are simple to setup and can be very powerful in your advertising efforts.

Proper setup of the Facebook Pixel is vital to any long-term effective Facebook advertising and will likely have the biggest impact of all the things we’ve discussed in this article.

5. Learn From Past Results

If you’ve been using Facebook ads for a while, take a minute to look over your previous ads. 

Filter your posts by engagement rates and conversion rates to see what previous posts had the best results.

From those posts, see what messages and visuals you used that worked and use those same tactics in future posts. 

By using previous tactics to increase your engagement rates, your posts become more relevant on Facebook, helping increase your reach and not your spend amount. 

6. Retargeting

In addition to your prospecting ads, consider running retargeting ads. This is when you run ads to those who have visited your funnel but didn’t convert into a lead or a sale. Facebook will let you make an audience out of these people and put ads back in front of them with additional information, social proof, and even emotion to help close the sale.

Also, make sure to run specific campaigns that retarget (sometimes called cross-target) your existing leads and subscribers offering them other goods and services you provide. Since they are likely happy past customers they tend to have less resistance in buying more from you.

7. Use The Video Ad Option More Often

Did you know that video ads on Facebook cost less than image ads? 

CPC can be lower with good video ads because they often earn cheaper impressions than other types of Facebook ads, which keeps costs low. 

Look for ways to incorporate creative and strong call to action videos into your marketing strategy. 

With these tips in mind, you’re well on your way to optimizing your Facebook ads without having to break the bank. 

How ClickFunnels Can Help

ClickFunnels is a great tool to use for your business.

It’s simple for any entrepreneur to build their own sales funnels in just minutes, all without needing to rely on a team of techies.

With ClickFunnels, you’ll build high converting and clean sales funnels. 

Everything you need to build and launch your sales funnel is pre-developed and automatically pieced together for your company, so you have a seamless and fast set up.

If you want to give it a try, ClickFunnels offers a 14-day free trial. Test it out and see the growth you have with your customers.

What ways work best for you when lowering Facebook ad cost? Sound off in the comments below!

Thanks for reading 7 Ways to Lower Your Facebook Advertising Costs which appeared first on ClickFunnels.

Of all the aspects involved in setting up a Facebook Ad, possibly one of them is the most deceptively simple.

Your audience segmenting portion is what sikes the most people out when trying to build a successful Facebook advertising funnel.

And of course, if you pull up the page in Facebook, you’ll see why that is.

On the page, you’ll see a bolded title that says “Audience” and then a basic set of boxes and options to choose a location, age, interests, and more.

It hardly takes up even a 3rd of the page.

Doesn’t seem like there’s much to it, right?

Well, don’t be fooled. Too many people, whether experienced marketing specialists or hopeful beginners, breeze through this step without a second thought.

And yet, it’s really not hard to see how it’s so indispensable to spend a few extra minutes on it (if not longer).

If our ads are going to people who only have a passing interest in our product or service, we’re not going to be making many sales.

And if other forms of marketing are any indication, you can really generate enormous results through narrowing in more on your audience.

It’s also true that social media gives marketers a laser beam like power to target highly specific audiences.

So for our next step in becoming Facebook Ad masters, we’re looking at how we can better understand Facebook targeting, step-by-step.

Defining Your Customers

First things first. Before you even click a single attribute, if you haven’t made an outline of your customers’ interests and demographics, stop!

While you can always experiment and adapt your targeting, having that information in a concrete form provides you with a physical reference point.

This way, you’ll be able to evolve that outline into some topnotch lead targeting confidently.

And with how complex targeting can get, keeping track of your efforts is paramount.

Some of the best ways to create this initial outline are to review your already existing customers as well as spying on your competition a little.

Then all you need to do is list the different values, psychological factors, and demographics that help define them.

Protip: In our case, don’t forget to factor in whether or not the customers you’re considering use Facebook. Even though the social media titan has billions of users, it’s always a question worth considering as the social media landscape matures.

Going Beyond Local

Once upon a time, you could really only target people by geographic location without further consideration.

But now, you have additional contexts when it comes to location, but also some further factors to take account of.

In addition to targeting audiences that are in a current location, you can also choose between people who live in, have recently visited, or are traveling to that area.

Now that’s getting down to some specifics!

Although you might have to use your creative thinking cap for a moment on how these can apply, they open up an entirely new world of possibilities.

At the same time, you can target locations like never before.

Maybe your product or service would hit particularly well for people at your local airport who are about to fly?

Punch it in and add it! This is truly the power of social media at its finest.

Protip: At first glance, you might think that going as broad as possible here is the way to go. But as we’ve seen in our previous articles and with strong research behind it, local-level marketing can improve the quality of a lead greatly.

Pay Attention to Age, Gender

These two category selections are probably the easiest to overlook.

And you can imagine why: they’re set up as a basic set of dropdowns and a series of 3 buttons.

What would be easier than that?

Not so fast!

We’ve seen before how men and women don’t just differ in how they view different types of marketing, we’ve also seen how they differ on consuming that information.

Having a firm idea of what message you’ll be using for each gender and age group you’re targeting is a big necessity.

For example, perhaps your sales funnel is built around a masculine niche like beard oils.

Men between the ages of 25 to 35 might be your prime demographic.

But what about their mothers, women between the age of 55 to 65, who are looking for holiday gifts for their sons?

A new message targeting this group might be equally or even more effective.

Protip: A brief note on the languages option. While it might seem pretty straightforward, don’t forget under-served markets for your sales funnel. For example, hiring a Spanish-language writer to help you craft an ad could represent an unparalleled opportunity in the waiting.

Cracking into Detailed Targeting

Okay, so far, so good. Now we’re going to look at the most complex aspects of targeting.

We’re going to go point-by-point to see how these factors can be used to magnify your conversion.

Even though we’ll touch on many of the options, don’t feel like you must use every single one.

Go with what makes sense for your brand, and your sales funnel.

But at the end of the day, this section is the bread and butter of what makes social media marketing an extremely powerful tool for our funnel efforts.

• Drilling Down on Finer Demographics

From generation marketing to the role that income plays in spending, this section gives us the ability to harness all the data that people put on their profiles. In reality, none of these should be overlooked when it comes to your sales funnel.

However, the few that many Funnel Hackers will find helpful are education, including fields of study; income level under financial data, and generation. Some of the more interesting ones that offer novel opportunities are relationship status, life events, and political affiliation.

Mixing and matching these can help you to see that, for example, your market isn’t just women between the ages of 19 to 30, but those women who are in a relationship and thinking about getting married (which represents a huge marketing segment in and of itself).

• Dominating the Interests Category

Here’s another often overlooked area of Facebook Ads. You might think it’s best to open up the Interests section of Detailed Targeting and start clicking away. You probably have a good idea of whether or not your audience is into fitness and health or shopping and fashion. In many cases, your sales funnel will fall under one or a few of these. But I’m going to give you two tips here that will send your conversion through the roof. The first is super simple: click that checkbox under the Detailed Targeting section near the bottom that says “Expand interests…” This little checkmark allows Facebook to use the power of their networks to find connections we might never see.

The second trick is to type in some specific interests into our Add demographic option. Think about it this way: instead of targeting people who are just interested in luxury watches, why can’t we target people who exclusively read the popular watch site Hodinkee? We know these Facebook users are on fire about watches, so much so that they belong to the watch enthusiast community. Those are some quality leads! And now, Facebook is going to suggest to us, even more, websites, blogs, and venues that similar people are interested in.

• Using Behavior to Getting, Even More, Granular Control

This is probably one of my favorite sections. It gets us thinking about not just who our audience is, but how they act. And since we also want them to take action, doesn’t it make sense that their most common actions are important to the picture? You can hone in on everyone from avid photo takers to small business owners.

There’s even a spending habits method section, where you can target people with the high-end dept. Store credit cards. Or even those people with gym memberships or who are likely to move soon. Having access to this level of marketing data, not to mention being able to target based off of it directly, would have been unthinkable just a few decades ago. Take advantage of it here!

• Ensure You’ve Considered Excluding Certain Leads

Although combining all these categories together can give you an audience profile that rocks, don’t skip the exclude people feature. By clicking this choice, you can then work backward to prune out leads that make less sense for your funnel. Let me give you some examples. Say we’re selling a brand-new type of computer software to early tech adopters.

But we know that avid console gamers have less of interest in this offering. Why would we want to serve these leads an ad? Instead, let’s exclude them and focus in on our early tech adopters who also aren’t avid console gamers. This isn’t a part of the tool that you’ll use every single time, but it’s one not to leave off as you shape your strategy.

Protip: If you haven’t guessed yet, we can create some very targeted audience profiles for every one of our ads. With this type of power, we can also construct ever more robust sales funnels. However, don’t feel obligated to jam your targeting full of parameters if you don’t have to. Do what makes the most sense for every funnel you launch.

What are the biggest challenges you’ve faced in your targeting efforts?

Which ones have you overcome and found the biggest returns from?

Thanks for reading A Funnel Hacker’s Guide To Facebook Ad Targeting which appeared first on ClickFunnels.

Is your Facebook campaign converting but is no longer growing?

Has it stagnated and you’re not sure how to give it a jumpstart?

In this guide, I will explain how you scale your already converting Facebook ad campaign.

I have been asked so many times how businesses and marketers keep on increasing leads when they’re targeting the same audience.

Surely some leads will hit peak and growth while others will slow down or stagnate because you have exhausted your audience targeting? This isn’t necessarily true, though.

There are tools on Facebook and off Facebook to help you better target your ads and scale your campaign.

When businesses ask me these questions, I find most of the time that they have missed opportunities in their targeting that they might not have known how to obtain.

Finding these targeting opportunities and using analytical insights is what I’m going to explain today.

Taking Advantage Of Facebook Insights

To get some real insights into your targeting, you can input your custom targeting or group of interests into the Facebook Insights tool.

To get true insights into your campaign targeting, copy the interests from the campaign to the Facebook Insights tool.

This very neat and free tool can be used to find more Facebook users that have similar interests to those you are currently targeting.

For example, if I had an ad campaign that has a potential reach of 100,000 people and converts really well, I would use the Insights tool to find more targeting opportunities to increase the potential reach thus scaling my already converting campaign.

The insights you will get back from this are age groups, gender, education level, relationship status, location and more.

Another reason this is such a valuable tool is the ‘Page Likes’ tab which gives you a deeper and real insights into what your audience is interested in.

You can find out a wealth of information to expand your targeting here such as what websites they like, what blogs they are reading, what software they are using, influencers they follow and more.

Facebook is handing you your targeting strategy for you.

If you find that there is a common interest among your audience such as the software they are using, it makes sense to add this interest to your targeting.

However instead of adding any new interests to your campaign test them first with the same ad copy and image as your already converting campaign.

Taking Advantage Of Lookalike Audiences

Image Source: Wordstream

Another very useful and clever tool on Facebook is the lookalike audience feature.

While the Facebook Insights tool is great for widening your audience reach, the lookalike audience tool is best for those of you who are using a conversion pixel.

The lookalike audience tool can only be used if you have already been running ads using a conversion pixel.

This is because the lookalike audience will be built around the data previously collected through your campaigns such as your customer list or email list.

If customers have already bought from you or have opted into your newsletter etc., it makes sense to target people who have similar interests.

This is what the lookalike audience tool does.

When you create your lookalike audience, it will give you an estimate of how many people fall within the lookalike bracket.

We recommend not going above the one million reach mark though so if your lookalike audience comes back with a higher reach, I recommend narrowing it down.

You can narrow the lookalike audience to make it more relevant by adding requirements.

Just because they like a few things that your audience also likes doesn’t mean they will be interested in buying which is why it is important to have some control over it.

The best way to do this is to add one broad interest that the lookalike must have to be served your ad.

For example, I would add ‘social media marketing’ as a target interest which is a lot broader than ‘Facebook marketing’ or ‘Facebook advertising’ but still very relevant.

You can then take it a step further and combine both the Lookalike Audience and Facebook Insights by adding your Lookalike Audience to Facebook Insights to get even more in-depth data to scale yet again.

Ad Level Cost Per Acquisition

For some, scaling doesn’t mean to increase conversions or reach but rather to increase ROI.

If this is your main focus then a metric you need to focus on for your scalability mission is the cost per acquisition.

I know many businesses and marketers look at the cost per acquisition on a campaign level however for scalability; it is best looked at the cost per acquisition at the ad level.

To scale and increase ROI, you need to make the most of your current budget before investing more.

Keep an eye on the numbers and split test optimizing per “cost per click”, “cost per engagement” and “cost per conversion”.

Never Stop Testing

I mention testing in almost every single blog post that I do and for good reason.

Without testing, you will never improve performance. Testing is different to changing, though.

Changing multiple things at once makes it harder to determine which change led to a change in performance.

One change could have increased the conversion rate while the other could have decreased it, thus cancelling each other out.

You might not think that any of the changes led to better results but one of those changes actually did but you missed it.

To make sure you don’t miss out on opportunities, test everything one at a time.

Duplicate ad sets to test new targeting methods, ad copy, etc. rather than making changes to active ad sets.

The Three Stages Of Scaling

For those of you who like to follow a process then this 3 step process to scalability will come in handy.

Sometimes businesses and marketers unknowingly try to jump ahead to scale their converting campaign which might not lead to the same results other marketers are boasting about.

It is important to know which stage your campaign is at and have a clear scalability strategy to plan ahead and jump ahead.

Here are the three stages of scaling:

Stage 1 Scaling

The first stage is to duplicate the ad set that is converting and give it a higher budget.

Do not change anything else but the budget.

Test the duplicated ad set with the original set at the same time for the same period to see which results in the higher ROI.

Many marketers and businesses make the mistake of just adding more budget to their converting ad set.

Doing this won’t give you anything to compare the results to. Comparing results to the period before does give accurate data.

Stage 2 Scaling

The second stage uses the lookalike audience I spoke about earlier.

Upload your customer list or email list and create a lookalike audience.

Test this lookalike audience by duplicating a winning ad set.

For accurate results, test it for the same period with the same budget as the original winning ad set.

Once you have done this you can then create a retargeting pixel.

Once you have generated over 1,000 conversions which has been tracked using the retargeting pixel, you can build another lookalike audience based on the data the retargeting pixel has generated.

Stage 3 Scaling

The last stage is to duplicate the winning lookalike campaign and change the goal type for the duplicated campaign.

Your original winning lookalike campaign should have a website conversion goal but for your new duplicated campaign, you want to set the goal to get clicks.

Because you know this particular formula works for conversions, you can reduce cost and expand reach by targeting clicks rather than conversions.

Targeting clicks and not conversions before this stage or without knowing whether your campaign is converting could be very costly.

Once you have completed all three steps, you can then start the process again on another campaign that is converting but needs scaling.

Advanced Tips And Tricks

Once you have mastered this scaling strategy, you can look to scale your winning campaign further.

You can look at new ways to increase CTR by testing different image, headlines and call to actions.

You could also look how to map the frequency of visits to conversion.

Even when you think your campaign couldn’t be performing any better… it can.

There is always room to scale so never stop trying.

Conclusion

Facebook offers some highly valuable insights and great tools which you may not be taking full advantage of.

Use both the Facebook Insights and Lookalike Audience tools to scale your stagnated but converting ad campaigns.

Here are some quick pointers to take away with you:

1. You need to have a conversion pixel installed on your thank you pages before being able to use the Lookalike Audience feature.
2. Track ad level cost per acquisition to make the most out of your current budget before investing more.
3. Never stop testing and optimizing your winning campaigns.

And last but not least, ROI is the game.

At the end of the day, if you’re getting an ROI on your paid traffic, then keep that ad set running!

What do you struggle with most with Facebook Ads?

Let me know by leaving your comments below.

Thanks for reading Best practices for scaling Facebook ads Campaign stably which appeared first on ClickFunnels.

When it comes to marketing live events using Facebook and Clickfunnels I have learnt so much over the last few years, what works, what DOESN’T (oh that was expensive) and how to make sure that you get the best possible outcome.

The major takeaways I have had is that combining these three things has allowed me to generate some pretty powerful results, like spending $400 in ads to generate over $40,000 in front end sales at an event or helping a client generate more leads in a day for his event than he had in the last 6 months.

Why Do Live Events?

Let’s start at the beginning, why should we do live events, let alone market them?

Marketo published an awesome guide on event marketing, and they listed the top 4 reasons for an event;

1. Branding and awareness
2. Generating leads
3. Engaging with prospects and existing customers
4. Educating attendees

I think they missed the biggest one, though… SALES!

Live events are the perfect selling platform for you to get your product or service out there, as long as you are confident enough to present in front of people.

What Type Of Events?

Now, what sort of live events are we talking about here?

Well, I have marketed events that range from Free – all the way up to $4,000. Just today I was checking the analytics for a $4,000 event we are promoting and we had to sales for $0.76 each.

Now that is absolutely ridiculous but it just shows what is possible when you get things setup correctly.

For the purpose of this article I’m going to focus on the lower end events, the free or under $100 events as that’s the easiest way to get started and really, it can give you the best ROI if you can sell as well.

So let’s break it down into three easy to follow sections.

Event Setup

This can cost you thousands of dollars if you do not do it properly.

I recommend if you are just getting started to start with a free event, the reason being that the biggest thing people look at is the opportunity cost.

Is your event going to be more beneficial for me than anything else I could be doing?

If you factor in money at this point in time and you are not very well known them you compound the opportunity cost, and it pushes your audience away rather than bringing them in.

So my recommended setup would be a free front-end live event.

Now if you want (and clickfunnels is amazing for this) you can add in a VIP upsell for anywhere up to $47, giving them front row seating, some added training or some products, the choice is yours.

The benefit of the VIP option is that it allows you to create an ‘event within an event’ which was listed as the number 1 tip from Inc Magazines new rules of event marketing;

“We try to create an event within an event where we can touch a consumer one-on-one, where you can engage directly, and teach them about your product, and do so by interacting in a quality way. I just got back from Sundance, and we were doing VIP and celebrity shuttling to events in our vehicles, and the goal for us is to create an event within the vehicle.”

I love using the template Dark Local Lander for several reasons, but because it is setup with a video optin, it’s something that anyone can use and you cannot really go wrong.

Even if you don’t customize it, and you just use it the way it is then you are still off to a roaring start.

The second reason to use that template or any of the video templates is more psychological.

We are asking people to come to an event, where they will be interacting with us in person, hearing us talk, seeing us walk and basically seeing us for who we really are.

In preparation for this video is going to be key to the optin here – because if they don’t like us on video, chances are they won’t like us in real life, so we are better off NOT having them at an event!

It can be a little harsh, but it ensures that the marketing dollars you spend generate you a result. I am all about ROI.

The Tools & Tech

You will need a few bits and pieces to ensure that you have set yourself up for success with your event;

• Landing Page Software – Clickfunnels (obviously)
• Autoresponder Software –Infusionsoft, AWeber or MailChimp will do
• Event management Software – https://www.dynamicsync.com/

If you are using Infusionsoft I highly recommend Dynamicsync – it allows you to segment your lists by those that attended, didn’t attend, registered, even those that buy and don’t buy which becomes super powerful in the follow-up, plus it allows for text message on registration as well – which dramatically increases attendance rates.

Facebook Ads

Whether you are running an online event or a live event – the structure is mostly the same. A great example of a simple ad is below from Robin Sharma;

Now I understand that this isn’t an event ad – but this has all the principles that you need to be able to create a world class ad and get people to your event.

Designing Your Ad Copy

You can see on this ad that there is CONGRUENCY, which is key – he is only talking about 1 thing, the free training/webinar.The copy mentions the FREE (always use capitals for free).

Training, the image says FREE WEBINAR and the key line at the bottom mentions the upcoming training. This is key to an effective ad. You need to tell people specifically what it is they can

The copy mentions the FREE (always use capitals for free) Training, the image says FREE WEBINAR and the key line at the bottom mentions the upcoming training.This is key to an effective ad. You need to tell people specifically what it is they can

This is key to an effective ad.You need to tell people specifically what it is they can

You need to tell people specifically what it is they can expect, if it is a free live event say; FREE LIVE EVENT. If it is a paid event say; LIVE EVENT and then later on, mention the ticket price.

I personally would have used more ad copy for an event but you can go short form as well.If I was to write longer copy I would have included;

If I was to write longer copy I would have included;

• Benefits of attending
• Outcome of attending
• Who the event is for (obviously in this case not needed as he makes it clear it’s for ‘game changers’

Setting Your Budget

When it comes down to your budget, you are doing extremely well if you are getting conversions for under $20 for a free event – scale it if that is the case.

Average would be $50 per conversion for a free event so if you hit those numbers you are doing well!

For paid events the minimum you should expect is to pay 100% of the ticket price to acquire that lead. If you are worried about making money on the front end, you are doing an event for the wrong reason, so I would rethink doing one to begin with.

Nailing Your Targeting 

Targeting your audience could take us about another ten pages, so here’s just a simple tip – I call it WRF.

W – what do your prospective clients watch?

R – what do your prospective clients read?

F – who do your prospective clients follow?

This should get you kick started on your targeting!

If you want more information on ads and setting up campaigns check out our blog at the end of the post where we have a ton of free resources too.

In The Event (Ie. Sales!)

After running a successful marketing campaign, it all comes down to event experience and the sales you can expect.

The screenshots below are for an event where we had a $17 upgrade to VIP – to help cover some of the marketing expense.

Now if you HAVEN’T sold before I wouldn’t spend as much money as we did on the event, start with smaller crowds and make your way up.

So you will see below we had 107 people register for the event, of which 21 upgraded to VIP. From that, we had 54 attend the event and made $26,000 in sales.

Now most people would leave it there, but because you are reading this blog I know you are a bit more savvy than the normal punter, and we know that we never only have 1 sale opportunity, that is the beauty of a funnel!

The lifetime customer value was actually $11,000 for this client. So after making 26 sales it meant that the ACTUAL total value of sales was $286,000.

Now I don’t know about you, but I would spend $1872.50 EVERY day of the week to make $286,000 in my business.

This is the most important section of the whole process as if you cannot sell, well you won’t be producing numbers as I shared above.

So let’s recap, the 3 steps;

1. Event Setup – creating your lander and everything that goes with it
2. Facebook Ads – tell your audience what you are doing and show them why they NEED to spend time with you
3. Sales – show them value, then ask them to spend money with you

Overall marketing and running events can be ridiculously profitable, but there is also a ton of downside too as there can be many things that can happen outside of your control.

Personally, it’s fun and exhilarating and you should through your hat in the ring at least once – you might be surprised of the outcome.

My question for you today is, have you ever tried event advertising before? If you have, what’s been your biggest struggle I can help you with? Leave a comment below and I’ll get to your questions.

Thanks for reading The Event Marketing Trio: ClickFunnels, Facebook Ads which appeared first on ClickFunnels.