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Where To Focus First When Using Facebook and Instagram Ads For Your Local Business

Where to focus first

This is a question I get often. Most local businesses have no idea where to focus first when it comes to optimizing or fixing their ads.

They spend their time worrying about tweaking and optimizing the wrong things and never are able to focus and establish why things are or are not working.

    Your ad has to capture the attention of the audience long enough for them to read.Then, your copy needs to be compelling enough to get them to click. Without clicks on your ad, you can’t convert anyone

So that’s where you have to start focus first by getting your ad to actually produce the results that you want, whether that’s:

    EngagementVideo viewsClicks to your landing pageClicks on your messenger

Whatever that goal is or that destination is, you can’t convert without the traffic.

The traffic is important. You want to test those outs before you worry about testing your destination such as landing page or form.

You do want to think about where you’re gonna send them and why.

There are different types of audiences that respond better to different destinations, so you need to take that into account as well.

There are some markets that I’ve seen that love messenger. There are some that they don’t. They’re a little confused on how to use it. Maybe it’s not as commonplace in that market. You won’t know without testing.

Sometimes you would want to send them to just a booking link. If this is something where you feel like you can get that actual commitment either for a call or for an appointment, you could absolutely send them directly to that link.

Sometimes you may want to test lead forms. There are definitely some do’s and don’ts with lead forms; they can generate more leads, but sometimes the information is not always accurate.

Sometimes they can be a little lower quality. There are ways to absolutely maximize them and increase the quality but that is something you want to think about. If you don’t have strong follow-up systems, lead forms may not be the best option for you.

So thinking about why you’re sending them to the place you’re sending them, and then figuring out how you’re gonna optimize that when you start to generate traffic.

In this order, these are the things I typically would test:

    Your offer firstThen your audienceThe creative and copyFinally your destinationThen tweak follow up

I hope this helps! Are you testing this way, or just winging it? Make sure you take the time to do it right!

Have questions? Drop them below. Want to talk about working together? Visit alliebloydmedia.com/local-call to schedule a time to talk!

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How to Properly Utilize Facebook and Instagram Ads Strategy for Your Local Business

Over the years, I’ve had to create an effective ad strategy for local businesses in order to get my employers, then clients, then students, the results they were looking for in terms of ROI. This led me to create the AB3 Ad Method (AB = Allie Bloyd).

These different ads levels correspond with not only the awareness levels and the buying cycle but also the traffic temperatures.

Level 1: Educate Level

With the right type of ads strategy and content, you are going to be able to make a big impact and develop a very large warm audience on social media.

Level 2: Offer Level

This should focus on conversions here and we want to make sure that we’re either

    Getting subscribers
    Getting leads
    Getting someone to claim our offer
    They’re going to come into our physical location

Retargeting Level

This level is people typically from that offer level that have not converted yet. They are potentially people who have converted that you want to continue to show your ads in an effort to solidify that you are the best choice in their minds. You are simply telling them that this was a good decision, to overcome the objections or so they may have to actually take that next step in terms of turning into a sale.

All three levels are essential!

I have come across very few local businesses that don’t need these three levels in ads strategy.

So what happens a lot of times is that businesses will do one level, but not all of them and when things aren’t working the way they want them to work, they feel like the whole platform isn’t working but really it’s just them.

Maybe they’re just putting out good content and wondering why they’re not seeing a lot of leads, but this level isn’t necessarily designed to get leads. It can, but they’re not going to be super consistent and that’s really not even the focus of the ads themselves.

A lot of other businesses are simply doing the offer level. But they’re sending it to all cold traffic. They have no audience-building strategy. Everyone that sees their offer but is really unfamiliar with who they are, meaning it’s going to be a pretty HARD SELL to get them to take that next step.

Have questions? Drop them below. Want to talk about working together? Visit alliebloydmedia.com/local-call to schedule a time to talk!

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How Local Businesses Should Budget For Marketing

I want you to think about omnipresence in marketing if you’re a local business looking to make an impact. This doesn’t mean you have to be everywhere. But it does mean that you need to be hitting people from a variety of angles.

You may have a larger marketing budget and you’re doing TV advertising or radio advertising or trade shows or Direct Mail. This needs to be a compliment but also a core part of that strategy.

However it’s not going to end there you want to focus on your email marketing, text message marketing. Any type of touchpoint that’s going to increase frequency is something that you have to focus on in 2020 because consumers are now savvier.

The immediate direct response marketing does not work exactly the way that it used to. You have to get in front of people multiple times in order for them to trust you enough to make that buying decision.

What is your marketing budget?

Overall, establish what your company’s marketing budget will be. There is no one right answer. The range is between 3% and even up to 12% of revenue on your marketing that can depend on how aggressively you want to grow.

If you are a new company or an established company, First, identify what the overall marketing budget is based on actual facts. Again everything should be based on real facts and real data.

You’re also going to want to pull all the information you have on cost per lead, cost per acquisition. These very critical numbers that are going to guide you through this strategy.

Those numbers are going to heavily dictate what you should be budgeting on this type of marketing based on what you expect to see. So again, setting those goals is crucial because if I want to see 200 leads coming in per month.

Well, I can’t just throw a dollar amount and say this is our budget and I expect 200 leads. I need to know this is our typical cost per lead. I may not have that data from Facebook and Instagram yet, but that’s a great place for me to start.

How much money will I then have to spend theoretically to be able to get 200 leads?

Again, make sure it’s really based on facts!

If you don’t have those numbers yet, that needs to be a top priority for you. It’s going to be very difficult for you to make educated decisions without that type of information.

Your cost per acquisition is also a really strong number to know because you will be tracking that throughout this process.

If you’re really serious about maximizing your return on investment, so the next thing you need to talk about is are you going to have a testing budget when you first get started on Facebook or Instagram? Or if you’ve already been advertising, you need to test there is no one-size-fits-all method.

There are different audiences and different markets that respond to different things. Again, you don’t want to drag out the process of finding out what they’re responding to. You want to find that out as quickly as possible.

Most importantly find out what’s not working and stop doing that. This is going to save you a lot of money long term. It’s going to save you time and it’s going to expedite the success that you’re going to see. You also want to understand if your offer is proven.

I work with a lot of local businesses that don’t even have an offer. But if you do, has this offer been proven to work? If it does that’s something that you can factor into the budget because you already have a good idea of what may work for your audience.

This is pretty extensive because those things are going to help you. If you do have those things again something to factor in. It will play a part in the results that you’ll see early on. If you do not have an audience you need to understand that you’re essentially the new kid on the block.

Whether you’re just a business that’s never done a lot of advertising or you’re an uber business people don’t know you yet. So you have to be realistic in the time that it’s going to take them to be aware of you and also to buy from you.

Have questions? Drop them below. Want to talk about working together? Visit alliebloydmedia.com/local-call to schedule a time to talk!

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Local Business Ad Strategies: Leveraging Buying Cycles and Awareness Levels

As a local business, your ad strategy won’t be successful (or nearly as successful) if you’re not using the length of the buying cycle and awareness levels to build your ad strategy.

This is what I use to craft the types of ads that we would be shown to a local audience for any industry or any market. The most important thing to think about right off the bat is how long your customer’s buying cycle is.

Short vs Long Buying Cycles for Local Businesses

There are some businesses that have very short buying cycles.

For instance, if you are an emergency restoration and water cleanup company. That’s something that happens and you need someone right away. You’re going to be making a very quick decision about the company that you hire. The strategy that you would need to build around is going to be significantly different than something that takes a long time to think about.

Things that are the higher ticket, they naturally tend to have a longer buying cycle. That’s not always the case but that usually is a pretty good gauge. There are some statistics out there that say that it can take for any business up to two years for someone to make that buying decision.

There’s a small percentage of people that are going to make that decision within the first three months, but there is a much more significant portion that is going to make that purchase over the next two years.

If you don’t know how long it’s taking your audience to make these decisions, you’re not going to have a good plan in place that follows them through the length of the buying cycle. That’s very important if you are a business that it could take someone up to two years to decide. You can’t expect results right away or a return on investment specifically.

You may see results. You may get leads. You may get foot traffic but if you’re looking for an immediate return, you’re not being realistic.

This is a very important thing to know. If you don’t know, you absolutely need to find out. This is also something that’s gonna affect your re-targeting strategy, something that’s going to affect your email strategy and your manual follow-up.

Understanding Awareness Levels for Your Local Business

You must be crystal clear about the overall awareness levels of those making a buying decision.

You’ve got the top of the funnel, which is simply being aware of either a problem or a product.

Then you’re gonna start to develop interest.

It’s going to lead you into the decision-making process and finally, the purchase.

There is no one length of time that people make these decisions. You need to know exactly how long your ideal client is taking if you need to pull past customers. Or simply pull past data on the time that someone reached out to you versus the time that they purchased pull as many of those as you can.

You will start to see a pattern or at bare minimum an average on that. This is what I call the local buying cycle sequence.

Those awareness levels should depend on the content and ads that you’re putting out to your audience and at what time they’re seeing them.

Most businesses never consider that there are people who may need them, but they don’t even know they have a problem. That happens more often than you would think.

You’ve got the problem unaware level, where they don’t yet know there is a problem to solve.

You have the problem aware level – They know they have a problem.

You’ve got a solution aware level – They know there is a solution to their problem.

Then you’ll have YOUR solution aware, meaning they’re aware of your specific business and the solutions you provide.

Then, they’re going to make the decision to purchase.

The goal is for us to funnel people from the top to the bottom and walk them through these different levels via our content and our ads.

Utilizing Traffic Temperatures in Local Marketing

What else can impact your buying cycle sequences?

Traffic Temperatures

Different Approaches to the Traffic Temperatures:

    The types of messaging
    The types of content
    The types of ads

The ads that you’re sending these people are going to be significantly different depending on their traffic temperature.

For the most part, a cold audience is either going to be a problem unaware or problem aware.

Your warm audience tends to be solution aware and your solution aware and finally your hot audience there.

They’ve either already purchased or they’re ready to buy.

Cold traffic, these are the people who don’t know who you are. They’ve never engaged with you. They’re not familiar with you. They have no trust with you.

Then you’ve got your warm audience. These are people who do know who you are. They have engaged with you. There’s already more of a relationship started there.

Your hot audience is going to be someone who has purchased from you in the past. Maybe someone who has reached out and inquired. They could be:

    A past lead
    Anyone who is very close to the business,
    Anyone who is close to making that buying decision as possible.

You could define these slightly differently based on the type of business that you have. But overall that’s how I established the different levels.

The majority of your leads are going to come from warm and hot traffic. The goal has to be to turn cold traffic into warm traffic and so on. We’ve got a much larger audience at the top. We just want to make it smaller and smaller by identifying the best prospects and people who are most interested today.

There you have it. If you simply leverage buying cycles and awareness levels in your advertising, you’ll be lightyears ahead of other local businesses and your advertising will immediately see an improvement in terms of results and ROI.

Have questions? Drop them below. Want to talk about working together? Visit alliebloydmedia.com/local-call to schedule a time to talk!

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4 Things Local Business Should Focus On When Using Paid Ads

Why do local business need to leverage social media and more specifically paid ads on social in 2020?

There are a variety of reasons, But number one, you need to be marketing aggressively if you want to stay relevant.

You’re also in a local community where building relationships are very important and I think there’s no better way than social media. You can develop that trust, that sense of credibility and really connect with your audience on a different level.

So how does this apply to you?

Well if you’re reading this, then you are likely a local business owner. Unfortunately there is not a ton of information out there that’s been designed specifically for you.

There’s tons of information for online businesses, e-commerce businesses, coaches. But when it comes to actual local marketing strategy, there’s almost a void in the marketplace.

I want to make sure you have a very clear picture of what you can do to succeed. You also don’t want to become irrelevant in your community. If you have a local business, you’ve worked hard to build that business up.

You want to make sure that you’re going to be for years to come that you are front and center in the minds of the consumers in your community. Maybe what you’re doing right now is working just fine. But you feel like it could be working better potentially what you’re doing is working really well now. But it could stop working so well in the future.

So this is something you should always have in your arsenal when the time is right. I see no better time than right now. This is a great way to do everything your business needs to do to increase your revenue through social media marketing.

You also really have to be aware of the competition in your marketplace. Not only are there other local businesses just like yours in your community. You’re also competing against online or e-commerce businesses in many industries.

There are big corporations that have massive marketing budgets. You’ve got to find a way to stand out. A lot of those big businesses are not doing this type of marketing so it becomes an amazing way to really set yourself apart.

There are things you can focus on to improve your ROI on social, or any marketing platform for your local business.

    Pillar #1 The Right Strategy
    Pillar #1 The Right Offer
    Pillar #3 The Right Content
    Pillar #4 The Follow Up

If you can get these four things right, I can guarantee that you’re gonna see the results that you’re looking for with your paid ads on Facebook, Instagram or even other social media platforms.

Your strategy guides you at every step
Your offer gets your audience excited to convert
Your content builds your audience
Your follow-up converts your leads into customer Continue reading “4 Things Local Business Should Focus On When Using Paid Ads”

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Local businesses and Covid-19: How to survive or thrive in uncertain times

covid-19 and local business owners

I hate to jump on the bandwagon here, but my clients, students, friends and referral partners are all anxious about what this “Corona lockdown” means for us.

The good news is that there are things you can do to continue business growth if you keep calm and play your cards right.

Tips for local businesses to weather the Covid-19 storm and come out on the other side:

1. If your local business is a crowded retail location or busy space, have reservation or appointment only options. This will help those who are serious buyers still come with confidence.

2. Be willing to do delivery, in-home consults, or virtual consultations. Remind your prospects that it’s crowds and very close personal contact, not human interaction of all kind, that should be limited.

3. During the Coronavirus outbreak, local businesses should take any possible product sales online for the time being. If you need help with this, let me know. You may have more options than you think.

4. Grow you email list, Nurture your current lists and take the time to develop content and engage with your audience as a group or individually.

5. If you’re hosting in-person events, switch to webinars. We’re doing this with clients of mine for the time being.

6. Showcase product options on social media and give people the opportunity to buy through messages.

7. Send out messages or emails confirming the cleanliness precautions your business is taking and letting them know that it is, in fact, safe to shop/consult/work. It has been repeatedly stated that we do not have to limit human interaction, but groups are discouraged, and social distancing in smaller groups should be observed. If you’re coming into someone’s home, offer to wear gloves and a mask if it makes them feel more comfortable and still allows you to do your job.

8. Create brand awareness by doing community outreach such as donating to food banks for those affected by not being able to work (if you can). Promote the content and build goodwill in your local area. You may get picked up by TV or News outlets and get even more free PR for doing a good deed. Win/Win.

9. Cut out wasted spending. That doesn’t mean sales, marketing, customer service or your people. It means cable in the office, Starbucks, stocked fridge full of snacks, high-end services you never use, etc. If you have UNUSED subscriptions, cancel them. Double down on the things to help you gain more clients and increase revenue. If you wouldn’t want a client to cancel their services with you due to these outside circumstances, don’t cancel on your current commitments. It all comes full circle.

10. Sell gift cards online for full or discounted price. Put together birthday, Christmas or anniversary packages to be used during the year that will be purchased regardless, but collect the cash NOW.​

11. Invest your time in educating yourself in how to emergency proof your business long term if anything like this happens again. You CAN have a local business / online hybrid model or have an online marketing system that can sustain you through any tough time you may have. If you can generate an ROI whenever you need to essentially, it’s worth it.

12. Don’t panic. You will survive this. The more we panic, the less we spend. The less we spend, the worse the economy becomes. Don’t contribute to the problem. Stay safe, but support other local business owners who need you as much as you need them. Come together as the entrepreneur community to support each other in a time of uncertainty!

I hope these tips help. Feel free to reach out if you need someone to explain how to take parts of your business online. I’m happy to help.

If you want to schedule a call to learn how we can help you ensure you’re put in this position moving forward, and that your online marketing is as effective as possible when this is all over, visit alliebloydmedia.com/local-call

All the best,

Allie Bloyd

Need help marketing or taking your business online? Schedule a call with me or my team!​

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