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Facebook Advertising for High Ticket Items

Do you market or sell products which have a high price tag associated with them?

Facebook ads are perfect for companies who sell high ticket products or services. This article will tell you what you need to know to maximise this opportunity with your campaigns.

What Do You Mean By High-Ticket? 

To kick things off, let’s explain what we mean by high-ticket products and services. Typically, this is a product or a service that has a healthy margin attached to it, usually more than $1,000.

An important note is that the initial sale does not need to deliver this profit.

If the average lifetime value (LTV) of your customers is around these figures, then you’re still perfectly positioned to make the most from Facebook advertising. 

Why Do These Businesses Kill It With Social? 

So why are these businesses so well positioned to use Facebook ads? 

Well, simply put, it’s because you can afford to spend more to acquire a customer in the form of your cost per lead or sale. 

To move someone through the purchasing process, from first becoming aware of a product or service to considering the purchase to finally taking action, takes multiple interactions between the business and the prospect.

Each of these interactions needs to be managed by a smart strategic combination of content and marketing messages. These messages should move a prospect through the process, building momentum towards a purchase. 

The higher the value of the sale, the more that you can invest to ensure that prospects are moved through this process effectively and at scale.

If this resonates with your company’s products and services, below we discuss the key things that you need to know to see maximum results from your Facebook campaigns.

#1. Leverage Facebook’s Insanely Powerful Targeting 

Facebook’s targeting is insanely powerful. 

From targeting indicators of household income to those present in the market for particular goods or services to those with a specific occupation, Facebook will allow you to separate your ideal prospects from the herd.

Make sure you’re using Facebook’s powerful targeting features to get focused in on those who make the purchasing decision for your high-ticket item or service.

#2. Advertise According To Points In Your Purchasing Journey

Not all prospects are at the same point in the purchasing journey, so don’t advertise like they are. 

It is vital you make sure to tailor your message to where a prospect is in their purchasing journey. 

For example, for those who are at the consideration stage, you should leverage retargeting messages that leverage social proof like reviews or testimonials.

Alternatively, for those who are ready to buy, leverage campaign-specific offers. 

#3. Understand That Social Won’t Make The Sale For You

This concept is crucial to understand.

Your Facebook campaign is a tool to identify and send qualified prospects to your business. However, it can’t do the heavy lifting in completing the sale for you.

We’ve sold purchases as large as homes through our Facebook campaigns. However, underpinning the campaign is always an intelligent, repeatable sales process. 

Before investing in your Facebook campaign, build a reliable, repeatable sales process that turns prospects into customers.

Now, Make Some High Ticket Sales 

So, there you have it. 

If you market or sell products or services, which have a high price tag associated with them, make sure you’ve included Facebook advertising as part of your ongoing marketing activity.

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Using Facebook Interest Targeting

In part 3 of our 5 part mini-series on Core Audience Targeting, we have a piece dedicated entirely to Facebook’s Interest Targeting Capabilities.

If you’re yet to, please read watch the previous two post in this series: 

If you have already, then let’s get stuck in.

What Is Interest Targeting?

So Interest Targeting is where Facebook’s powerful Ad platform comes into its own.

Interest Targeting is how you’re able to find your ideal target audience based on their passions and the type of content that they engage with on and off Facebook. 

Facebook stores this continuously updated data at an individual user level based on the Pages we follow on, the articles, videos and content we engage with, and the links/ads we click.

All this is explicit and implicit information we provide Facebook with each time we log on.

Now, when it comes to specifying the interests you want to target within your Core Audience, you have two options:

Option 1: Browse Through Interests

You can browse the range of Interest categories that Facebook has already collated and select those best suited to your target audience. These include;

  • Business & Industry Interests
  • Entertainment Interests
  • Family & Relationship Interests
  • Fitness & Wellness Interests
  • Food & Drink Interests
  • Hobbies
  • Activities and Events
  • Shopping
  • Fashion
  • Sports
  • Technology

Within each of these categories lie more detailed child categories.

For example, if I was looking to target those interested in becoming a member of a gym, I could target the ‘gym’ interest grouping. This ‘Child 

Category’ is found under the Fitness and Wellness ‘Parent Category’.

Option 2: Specify Interests

Rather than browsing the existing interest categories, Facebook has curated, you can specify your own by typing interests you’d like Facebook to target.

These can be anything from activities, celebrities, magazines, Facebook pages, whatever articulation of an audience’s passion point you can imagine.

If you’re opting for this option, make sure you’re making the most of Facebook’s suggested Interests. These will appear once you’ve selected one or two interest options as Facebook offers other interest targeting options closely aligned to those already set.

The Key To Success: Be Specific

Whichever option you choose, the key is to ensure that you’re focusing in on the specific interest areas that are unique to your target audience; the areas that they are MOST passionately involved.

For example, say I was selling a new set of golf balls specifically designed to help weekend golfers improve their handicap. I could target “Golf” as an interest category; however, this would be too broad, ranging from pros to armchair enthusiasts.

Similarly, I could target “Tiger Woods” however this would also be too broad, encompassing those who are more mainstream fans of the sport or his celebrity. Instead, far more focused options would be to target information sources that this audience would go to for tips to improve their game, such as YouTube Tutorials or Magazines.

Remember when it comes to Interest Targeting, it’s not so much about where your Target Audience COULD be but finding the interests and identifiers that ONLY they would be part of or would be most passionately involved.

Stay Tuned!

In the next post, we’ll build on both Demographic and Interest targeting to show how you can add Behavioural Targeting to refine your audience.

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Using Facebook Demographic Targeting

In part 2 of our 5 part mini-series on Core Audience Targeting, we cover Facebook’s Demographic Targeting Capabilities.

If you’re yet to read the first post, an introduction to Core Audiences, then make sure you check that out first.

If you have already, then let’s get stuck in.

Introduction To Facebook Demographic Targeting

So when we’re talking about Demographics Targeting on Facebook, we’re talking about being able to access;

  1. Data that we’ve explicitly provided to Facebook (like our age and where we work)
  2. Data that we’ve implicitly provided to Facebook by using the platform (like our location or major Life Events)
  3. Data from Facebook’s third-party providers (such as household income and composition).

Now, let’s breakdown the individual Demographic Factors that you can choose from and how each can define your ideal target audience.

Age and Gender

This factor is a pretty basic targeting option, which means we won’t spend too much time on this.

We recommend that if you’re targeting by age, allow some room either side of your sweet spot target. 

So if you’re ideal customer is men in their mid-twenties, set your targeting parameters from 21 – 29 to ensure you’re capturing all prospective customers.

Relationships

Relationship targeting involves targeting whether someone has identified themselves as single, in a relationship, engaged, married and more. Again this is relatively basic targeting which will apply to some products and services more than others. 

This parameter is highly relevant for:

  • Dating services
  • Those within the wedding industry
  • Travel companies

These advertisers can leverage this parameter for their product offerings.

We’ve interestingly seen quite a lot of advertising for law firms making the most of this targeting feature for newly separated couples.

Location

Location targeting falls into three main options

  1. Everyone within a Location
  2. People who have recently visited a Location
  3. People who are travelling to a location.

Remember that this is data isn’t necessarily explicitly provided to Facebook; it’s provided by our use of the platform and through IP and Location Tracking.

Pay attention to this parameter if your business targets tourists or visitors to an area rather than residents.

Languages

This parameter is another self-explanatory one. 

However, it can be vital to including or excluding key fragments of your target audience.

Unless the language that you’re focusing on isn’t particularly common within the location that you’re targeting, we’d recommend just leaving this blank.

Education

Now things are starting to get interesting!

Within this section of your Core Audience, you can specify the Education parameters that your targeting audience have previously completed or are currently studying; from Education Level to Field of Study to Schools to the year they graduated.

We find that this parameter can be a beneficial complement to people targeting a particular industry or occupation rather than just relying on Job Titles alone.

Work

Of all the Demographic targeting parameters, this one is the most relevant to those marketing B2B products or services.

Within this parameter, you can focus in on the type of industry your ideal customer works within, what their job title is – even who their Employer is.

If you’re targeting a B2B audience, we strongly recommend focusing primarily on this parameter for much of your targeting – it’s incredibly accurate while providing a significant scale of audience members.

Financial

Within this targeting parameter, you can specify the income levels of your target and their level of affluence.

If you know the approximate household income level of your ideal client or customer, then this is an excellent targeting parameter to trial for your business.

Just remember that this data is a combination of Facebook data and data provided by local third parties so we’d recommend either A/B testing audiences or adding additional targeting parameters to ensure accuracy.

Home

This parameter is an incredibly powerful option for those within the property, construction, household services and insurance industries.

Within this parameter, you have the option to specify the following: 

  • The type of home your target audience currently lives in
  • Whether they own their home or are renting
  • The composition of that household
  • Who else they live with

Again this data is a combination of Facebook data and data provided by local third parties so ensure that you’re A/B testing audiences or adding additional targeting parameters to ensure accuracy.

Parents

If your business targets those with Children (or their close relatives), then make sure you’re taking advantage of this demographic targeting option.

From Expecting and New Parents to those with Adult Children, you’re able to target the full gamete of those with kids with highly relevant messages based on their child’s age segment.

Life Events

If you’re in the events industry or provide business or services tied to specific occasions, then this parameter should sit at the core of your Facebook campaigns.

Within this parameter, you have the option to target people: 

  • In a new relationship
  • With an upcoming anniversary
  • Who have recently moved homes or jobs
  • Who have recently become engaged or newlywed 
  • Currently away from Family
  • Presently in a long-distance relationship.

Within this factor, you can also target friends of those who fall into any of the above segments. 

This targeting is perfect if your business involves the sale of products or services which can are commonly gifted.

Stay Tuned!

So there you have it – some incredibly powerful Demographic Targeting parameters that you can use to start developing your Core Audiences.

In the next post, we’ll build on this by covering how you can use Interest Targeting to get even more focused on the passion points of your target audience.

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Finding Your Ideal Prospects Using Facebook’s Core Audiences

Welcome to the first part of a 5 part mini-series on how you can use Core Audience Targeting to find your ideal customers or clients on Facebook or Instagram.

If you’re looking to improve the effectiveness of your Facebook Advertising campaigns or want to get started on the right foot, then this mini-series is for you.

What Are Core Audiences?

Facebook’s unparalleled targeting capabilities come from the fact that we can pull from arguably the most extensive online collection of first-party data (provided by Facebook and advertisers) plus third-party data from Facebook’s localised consumer data providers.

Core Audiences allow us to access this data and define the parameters which represent our ideal target audience. From demographic information such as location and lifestyle factors to interests and passion points to online and offline browsing and of course, purchasing behaviour – it’s all at your fingertips.

Core Audience Targeting is unlike Custom Audience or Lookalike Audience targeting which leverages existing customer data possessed by an advertiser. 

Instead, Core Audience Targeting is where leverage Facebook’s data to find the ideal target audience for our campaigns.

Core Audience Categories

When it comes to creating a Core Audience for your campaigns, there are four main categories from which to select. There are:

Stay Tuned

We’ll cover all four of these over the next four parts in this mini-series so make sure you join us for the next post in which we focus specifically on the Demographic Targeting component.

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Social Media Does Not Make You Sales

In this article, we point out something that may seem obvious, but many people don’t realise, and that is social media does not make your company sales!

Ok, so let me clear up what I mean by ‘social media does not make you sales’.

What I do not mean is that social media activity, be it paid or organic, will not result in sales. 

I mean that social media activity cannot do all the heavy lifting.

Social Media Cannot Do Everything!

There is no perfect Facebook or Instagram post/ad that will result in money ending up in your businesses bank account. 

Now, as I said before, this might seem like common sense, but we frequently have prospects and clients think that we can magically run a Facebook advertising campaign and fill up their wallets.

Now before you start thinking that social media is worthless, which is something that I do not want you to think, I will remind you that I did say the social media can result in sales. 

However, to do so, you need a reliable, repeatable sales process that turns leads into customers. 

You Need A Reliable, Repeatable Sales Process

To use an oversimplified analogy – think of social media advertising as a traffic store. You go there to buy traffic or visitors. 

We use social media to drive qualified traffic, that contains people that look like your ideal customers, to your website or landing pages. 

It’s the job of this conversion asset – the landing page or your website – to turn this traffic into a sales lead. 

Finally, it’s the job of your sales process to turn this lead into a sale. In the absence of a reliable, repeatable sales process, you won’t have a deal. 

It’s up to your sales team to make the sale. Social media activity can result in sales – but it does not make them for you.

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6 Essential Elements Of A High Converting Landing Page

In this article, we discuss the six essential elements of a high converting landing page. 

If you’re running paid advertising but just not getting the results that you want then this article is for you!

#1. An Engaging Hero Section

So firstly let’s clarify what a ‘hero section’ is.

The hero section is the area of a landing page that appears on your screen when it first loads before you scroll. 

The hero section is vital because on the web, seconds count, and your first impressions are essential.

Otherwise, people will hit the back button on their browser, and they’re gone forever! 

To avoiding bouncing traffic, the hero section needs to be highly engaging, including:

  1. A fantastic headline
  2. A supporting subheading or tagline and
  3. A great image or background video.

One Additional Pro-tip: Is that you should have complete alignment between your ad creative and your hero section on your landing page. As an example, if your ad creative says “Your Hot Water System Fixed Within 4 Hours Guaranteed”, then make sure your landing page headline says the same thing.

#2. A Unique Value Proposition

In other words – why the heck should someone choose you and your business?

What are you offering them that no one else is? 

My previous example of a guaranteed fix to your hot water system within 4 hours is a clear value proposition. Suppose it’s between this and a competitor promising a solution within 24 hours, who do you think will capture the lead?

Thus, make sure you possess and communicate a unique value proposition.

#3. Clear and Concise Copy

You have to balance the line between effectively communicating the benefits of your product or service and ending up with an overwhelming amount of text.

Massive blocks of unbroken text are an absolute conversion killer. 

Thus, keep your copy easily understood and to the point.

When writing your landing page copy, rather than merely talking about your product or service, make sure that you include number 4 below.

#4. Social Proof

Social proof is a fancy way of saying things like client testimonials or customer reviews. 

It is proof that your business genuinely delivers the benefits that the landing page states it does. 

Honest and believable testimonials and reviews will give your landing page much-needed legitimacy in the eyes of the visitor.

#5. Clean and Modern Design

In my opinion, nothing is a worse credibility killer than a poorly designed landing page.

Now, that is not to say that you need an award-winning design for a high converting landing page. However, the inverse of that statement is definitely true.

If you have poor design, poor legibility, poor user experience, then your conversions will suffer. 

By making sure that your landing page uses a clean layout, professional imagery and a modern design aesthetic, your conversion rates will improve.

#6. One Clear Call To Action

Your landing page must have a clear call to action with a single conversion objective.

One objective only;

  • Submit an enquiry
  • Complete a download
  • Make a purchase
  • But not all three!

After all, that is the whole point of using a landing page, to ensure that the visitor only has two options:

1. Take the action that you want them to, or;

2. Leave.

Despite that being the reason that landing pages exist – we still consistently see landing pages that have too many calls to action! 

These include ‘give us a call’, ‘submit your information’, ‘get a quote’, ‘join our newsletter’, ‘follow us on social’, ‘leave a comment’, and too many more – this gives the visitor too many options!

Rather than giving you multiple bites at the cherry, which is what people mistakenly think it does, it just dilutes your message and lowers your conversion rates.

In Summary

  • #1 Engaging Hero Section: Quickly capture someone’s attention
  • #2 A Unique Value Proposition: Why should someone pick you or your business?
  • #3 Clear and Concise Copy: Communicate a benefit, but do not overwhelm them with words
  • #4 Social Proof:  Back up your claims with real people who like what you do
  • #5 Clean, Modern Design: Look good, convert good.
  • #6 One Clear Call To Action: Be single-minded and don’t go for multiple bites at the cherry,

Do all of that – and you’re on your way to a high converting landing page!