• You have an amazing product ready to go and want to advertise it on Facebook to get a lot of traffic?
• Don’t rush because you might make a mistake that will cost you half of your advertising budget and end up with no valuable traffic.
• Learn about the 3 most important steps in order to avoid the #1 Facebook advertising mistake made by almost everyone.
  

In the pursuit of drumming up their businesses and being booked out, many in the Professional Service sectors ‘have a crack’ at some Facebook ads and end up disillusioned having contributed to the Zuckerberg Fund.

I’ve even audited major ad accounts with 5 figure ad spends that have thrown money at the (Facebook) wall to see what sticks, but have also made the #1 mistake when it comes to Facebook Advertising.

And that is…

Not being traffic ready.

Think of it like painting a room. If you want good results, there are 3 things you need to do before you apply the topcoat to get the best results for your time and money:

• Sand back the walls
• Wash down the walls
• Undercoat

Once you’ve done the prep work, you can then apply the topcoat and enjoy the fruits of your labour.

It’s much the same with getting started on Facebook Advertising. There are 3 things you need to do to get traffic-ready before you even think about launching an Ad Campaign.

1. Install the Facebook Pixel

This is a powerful piece of code from Facebook that you need to install on ALL of your website assets. There’s the ‘Base Pixel’ and ‘Standard Events.’ The Base Pixel goes everywhere - on every piece of internet “real estate” your business owns. This will build an audience on Facebook for everybody with a Facebook User ID (which is 7 out of 10 Australians) who visits your website.  

Unlike Cookies, which limit the tracking to the device used to visit a website, the Facebook Pixel tracks based on the Facebook User ID. So whether someone visits your website from their phone, iPad, laptop, work computer, Internet cafe and so on, as long as they are logged into Facebook (who ever bothers to logout?) it will add them to your audience, which means you can retarget them with a generic offer or even the specific information they were looking for on your website.  

2. Use a Landing Page

Facebook isn’t Google. People aren’t searching for information and want to go looking at websites. They are on Facebook so that they see what is going on in their world. Thus, you have only 3 seconds to capture their attention and then if they click on your ad, 3 more seconds to keep them there. That’s 6 seconds. You have better chances with a goldfish…

So, you do not want to be sending traffic from Facebook to the home page of your website. It’s far too busy, it’s not congruent to the ad they clicked on and they don’t know what action to take.  And before you can say “Where’s Nemo?” they are off you page and back on Facebook.  

By sending traffic to a specific landing page, which follows the same imagery and headline as your ad and is very clear with one call-to-action, you will get a higher conversion rate on the page, which will get you in the good books of the Facebook gods which will reward you with a lower cost-per-click.

3. Offer

Now unless you own a boutique coffee shop with injectable donuts, you can’t just create an ad that says ‘Book your appointment today.’ Sadly though, this is exactly what many new advertisers do since they are so excited about their service and launching some Facebook ads to spend $1 and get $10,000 back. Ads like this, which just promote and don’t add any value to the Facebook user, will get lost in the news feed. When this happens, fewer people will engage with the ad and therefore, it will cost you more to get your ad into their feed.

You need to have an irresistible offer that’s so good that your potential client will happily save the cat video for later. And what would make an offer irresistible? A dentist could offer free Teeth whitening, a chiropractor could offer a free massage with their adjustments, a financial advisor could offer a free financial audit. It doesn’t need to be something ‘free’ all the time. For example, a dentist could offer a bonus mouthguard when kids get their teeth checked at the beginning of the sports season.

You need to have an offer which your ideal client would find valuable or which could help solve the problem that’s keeping them up at night.

Having these 3 things in place will ensure you are traffic ready. Next, you need to invest some time in preparing convincing ad copy and imagery to help you stand out in the busy Facebook news feed.