What do ogres, onions, cakes and good ad strategies have in common? They all have layers! And if you want to use ads for sales, you can’t go without them.
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➡️ Free resource: The Ads Readiness Checklist – https://onlinetree.com.au/ads-readiness-checklist/
Transcript:
Why Layers Matter in Ad Strategy
Hello! Everybody loves cake. Cake’s got layers, right? Look, I really want to talk about why your ad strategy needs to have layers. I know, I know, like you want to get the sales. I want you to get the sales. Getting sales with ads? Oh yeah, that would be the dream, wouldn’t it?
And yeah, for sure, getting sales is part of the process and part of the results that we want to get from ads. I want you to get that. But let me explain why we also need to have layers.
Understanding Touchpoints in Marketing
We need to talk about this thing called a sales funnel and touchpoints. Now, depending on what kind of business you’re in, you may need more or fewer touchpoints than other products or services.
What do I mean by a touchpoint? Well, a touchpoint in the marketing industry is the term that means every time that your customer sees something from you. It could be your ad, it could be an organic post on social media, it could be a phone conversation they had with you. A touchpoint could even be, you know, after they’ve made a purchase and you send them an email with the receipt or the invoice. They’re all touchpoints.
And usually, the more valuable something is and the more personalized it is, the more involved it is with the person and their life and their money, the more touchpoints someone is going to need before they decide that they’re actually ready to work with you.
Importance of Organic Strategy as a Backbone
But you know, on the other hand, things that don’t really need that many touchpoints are like really crazy exciting novelty things, like cute coats for your dog. Assuming you have a dog, of course. But you know how I imagine how this works. You’re scrolling along Facebook and you see like this gorgeous coat for your dog and you just have to click buy then and there. Unfortunately, that kind of sales tactic doesn’t work with a lot of businesses, especially service-based ones, and courses, and like I described before, things that involve a really deep association with the person that you’re selling to.
So let’s take a look at the structure of an ads account where layers are involved.
The Role of Organic Strategy in Paid Ads
Now, before actually going in and setting up these sections in your ad account, I really strongly advocate for having a good organic strategy as the backbone of your ad strategy. And I’m not the only person who will say this. I will more than likely put notes in this episode linking to other marketing experts who share this opinion and have actually seen the results speak for themselves with this.
Implementing a Three-Part Funnel to Set Up Ads for Sales
So what are some ways that an organic strategy can act as a backbone for your paid ads? Well, this is particularly to do with Facebook and Instagram, but generally, what I like to see is like your natural organic content working well. And the stuff that typically works well on these platforms is the stuff that people actually go there to see.
So on platforms like Facebook or Instagram, people are not usually in a shopping mindset. They’re more in the mindset of like seeing what their friends are up to or being entertained by something funny or cute memes. The things that tend to do well in organic social media these days are, you know, those things that touch our emotions some way.
➡️ Related article: The role of organic social media for a small business – The Digital Picnic
One of the reasons why inflammatory things go so well on Facebook is because the platform just wants people to spend more time on the app or the website. But certainly, if you can create things that make people smile or laugh, then for sure you’ll get people to stick around and like and share your content.
The Funnel Breakdown
Okay, so let’s not stray too far from ad strategy. What you want to do in your funnel is, well, what I like to do is break it down into three sections: top of funnel, middle of funnel, and bottom of funnel. Bottom of funnel is your sales. That’s the exciting part where people give you money. But like I said before, depending on what sort of business you’re in, you sort of have to get people’s trust and interest in you before you start bonking them on the head and asking them for money. If you sort of went straight for the sales campaign, no, no, no, you’ll get people running for the hills.
Targeting Strategies for Each Funnel Stage
Okay, so top of funnel. This is where the majority of your audience is. This is where I’d like to run awareness campaigns. These are the campaigns that show the best of what you’ve got. And you know, I was talking about looking at your organic content and taking note of stuff that does well. This is actually stuff that I like to repurpose into your awareness campaign because you’ve got the proof that people have liked, engaged, commented on that stuff that did well.
So what I like to do with awareness is actually take those organic posts that did well and repurpose them into an awareness campaign. Because we’ve got the evidence that people liked it, we can then say, well, if people like this so much that they liked and commented, why don’t we put this in front of more people? And this is also like, it’s kind of like boosting, really, but boosting in a really smart way. We know that this thing worked. We’re also setting in some parameters to get people moving further down into your funnel.
Nurturing Leads in the Middle of the Funnel
All right, so the next bit of the funnel is the middle of the funnel. This is the part where you’ve got somebody interested. Maybe they are aware that you exist. Now they’ve seen something that they like, they’ve been entertained. So the middle of the funnel is also not the time to ask them to hand over money, usually. Unless it’s something like a mini introductory offer. But even then, the middle of the funnel should be the point in the customer’s buyer journey, the buying journey, where they’re sort of like evaluating you, comparing you to somebody else, trying to make up their mind about whether they want to take the next step.
So the stuff that goes in the middle of the funnel, this is where things like your lead magnets can go. You also want to have things like testimonials and yeah, free, cheap, inexpensive, easy ways for them to work with you or see a sample of your work without committing too deep into the dollars.
Sealing the Deal at the Bottom of the Funnel, the Ads for Sales
So yeah, this could be a low-cost offer, this could be a freebie, as we like to say, a lead magnet, a sample of your work. The middle of the funnel is where we want to get people into your email sequence. So yeah, give them something that they’re happy to say yes to and then we’ll put them into your email database and move them down to the next stage. So bottom of the funnel, okay, yeah, this is where the money comes in, cool. I know you’re excited for this bit. We need to work your people from the top to the middle to the bottom.
The bottom of the funnel will target those people who took the next step in the middle of the funnel because when they’ve taken the next step, you know, opting into your lead magnet or engaging with your posts and doing all that good stuff, showing that they’re interested, people who have opted in and going into the lead magnet are those really hot leads. They are the people who are likely to become your buyers. So we want to target them with the sales ads.
So the number of people in the bottom of the funnel is, of course, going to be smaller than the top of the funnel, but these are also people who are proven to be interested in what you’re doing and what you have to offer. This is why it’s so important that I want you to look at layers in your ad strategy and don’t neglect the organic strategy too.
Ensuring Readiness for Paid Ads
Now, if you’d like further guidance or clarity on whether or not your business is ready to run paid ads, I’ve actually got a great tool for you. It’s called the Ads Readiness Checklist. You can go and grab this on my agency website, Online Tree. It’s got all the things you need to know before you start running ads, just to make sure that your website is ready and that you’re going to get the best out of it. This is based on my own experience working in the industry. I hope you find it useful.
And otherwise, if you’ve got any questions to do with running paid ads for your business, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me. Thank you, and I look forward to seeing you in the next episode.
➡️ Free resource: The Ads Readiness Checklist – https://onlinetree.com.au/ads-readiness-checklist/
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