Wondering how to move an audience closer to conversion?
In this article, you’ll learn how to grow and convert warm leads with Facebook ads and live video.
How to Develop a Warm Audience With Live Video and Facebook Ads by Andrew Nathan on Social Media Examiner.
#1: Start With at Least Four Facebook Live Videos
These Facebook Live videos need to provide valuable content that helps your target market. To research the content your potential customers want, your best approach is to ask them.
Create a survey with Google Forms or a Facebook poll (with a third-party app like Poll from Kremsa Digital) to find out what questions prospects would like answered to improve their lives or business.
A Facebook poll is one way to ask your target audience what information is valuable to them.
Don’t stop with the form or poll. Research the topic on sites like Quora or Amazon to see what catches your target market’s attention.
After you gather this feedback, use these ideas to create a list of Facebook Live topics. Then turn these topics into content for a Facebook Live audience.
Websites such as Amazon can help you research topics that interest your audience.
#2: Develop a Warm Audience by Boosting Live Video Posts
At this point, spend $1 per day to boost your live video posts. One dollar isn’t much money but it’s enough to do the necessary promotion of your initial Facebook Live videos. Keep in mind that these low-cost ads will save you even more money when the reach of your videos allows you to retarget warm leads later in this process.
When you target an audience for the boosted posts, look at specific demographic and behavioral traits you can target or exclude to improve engagement. For instance, if you’re targeting customers for your marketing agency, you want to find those most likely to purchase your product. This tactic will help you get the most out of every dollar you spend on Facebook.
As you narrow the audience for your initial boosted videos, exclude groups you know aren’t interested. For example, if you’re a marketing services agency, exclude those who like do-it-yourself projects and thus rarely hire marketers. Also exclude competitors such as graphic designers, social media marketers, and freelance writers.
When you boost a post, use the Audience section to narrow the audience and increase the likelihood they’ll engage.
Next, look at customers who use similar services. Continuing with the marketing services agency example, you might target customers who work with HubSpot, Unbounce, AWeber, GetResponse, Infusionsoft, or Optimizely so they see the value of your offer.
Also, consider whether you can make any assumptions about the age of your audience. You might target Baby Boomers and Generation X prospects because they’re more likely to have an established business and the resources to pay for your services. These assumptions may not always be true but the goal in this example is to shrink your audience to those who are more likely to hire you.
Finally, take location into account. If you’re an avid networker, people in your area probably know who you are, and are more likely to watch your videos and engage with your post. With this point in mind, you should target people within a 10-mile radius of your area.
#3: Drive Organic Video Views from Other Channels to Augment Your Warm Audience
Promoting a post is great, but you should expand your reach through organic methods too. Expand the reach of your live video by posting it in Facebook Groups and other social networks.
Facebook Groups and Social Networks
Facebook has about 2 billion active users and many of them use Facebook groups to connect with people who share common interests. With so many active users, you can find a group interested in whatever information you share.
Share your Facebook Live videos in relevant Facebook groups to build organic engagement.
Also, share your Facebook Live videos to other social media platforms where the videos can bring value. Use a tool like Buffer to post your live videos to Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.
Tools such as Buffer can help you share Facebook Live video on multiple social media platforms.
Email Newsletter
Turning social media followers into email subscribers is a standard strategy. The reverse also holds true. Your email list can help your social media marketing goals. Your email subscribers are already interested in your message and pointing them to your social media profiles encourages them to engage there.
In your email newsletter, start by including a screenshot of your Facebook Live video. Then link the image and text below the screenshot directly to your video on Facebook.
To get the link to a Facebook Live video post, right-click the date on the post and select Copy Link Address.
To find the link to a Facebook Live video post, right-click the date on the post.
Blog
Additionally, share your Facebook Live content in a blog post. If you don’t have a blog, you might write the article on LinkedIn Publisher or Medium instead.
In the blog post, use the Facebook Live embed code to share the video so users can watch, like, comment, and share your video directly from your blog post. To find this snippet of HTML code, click the three dots in the upper right of the video post and select Embed. You then see an HTML snippet with an iframe tag, and you can copy and paste the code into your blog post.
To get the embed code to a Facebook Live video post, click the three dots and select Embed.
The blog post should also present content from the live video as text. Repurpose your video into text so you get the SEO benefits of your Facebook Live post.
Services such as Rev transcribe audio for $1 per minute, so transcribing a short 3- to 5-minute Facebook Live video is affordable. After you have a transcription, review and edit the transcript so the text reads well as an article. Also, add relevant content that goes beyond what’s in the video. Otherwise, visitors don’t need to come to your website for more information.
#4: Create a Lead Magnet Landing Page
After you post several Facebook Live videos and follow the steps to promote those videos on Facebook and beyond, you should have an established (or warm) audience. Your next step is to convert them.
To begin, create an enticing freebie you can offer such as an ebook, guide, webinar, or another piece of collateral. Make sure the collateral you create relates back to the Facebook Live videos. Doing so improves your chances of snaring leads interested in your offer.
Then create a landing page where anyone interested enters their name and email address to receive a file, clicks a button to sign up for a webinar, or otherwise takes action to accept your freebie. To illustrate, click a Facebook ad for this Kissmetrics ebook and you’ll see the following landing page.
Create a landing page for anyone who wants your free lead generator.
#5: Deliver Your Offer via a Facebook Ad That Retargets Your Warm Audience
The final step is to create a retargeted Facebook ad that drives traffic to your landing page. The people you want to retarget are those who saw your previous Facebook Live videos.
The traffic from these videos allows you to create a custom audience based on how long visitors watch your videos. In the Audiences section of the Facebook Ads Manager, click the blue Create Audience button and select Custom Audience.
In Facebook Ads Manager, use the Audiences tool to define a retargeting audience based on views of Facebook Live videos.
In the window that appears, click Engagement because you want to base the audience on how people engaged with your live videos. (Watching your live video is a type of engagement.)
In the Facebook Audiences tool, select Engagement to create an audience of people who have watched your live videos.
On the next screen, click the Video option for your custom audience. Your other options include people who interacted with a Facebook page, Instagram people, or Facebook events. Those options aren’t the ideal audience for the purposes of the ad you’re creating for this tactic.
When you create a Facebook audience, you can select from several different types of engagement.
Next, choose a video audience based on the amount of time users watched your videos. Remember, the videos aren’t the destination. Your goal is to add these viewers to a custom audience so you can direct them to your landing page and move them into your sales or lead funnel.
For example, if 100 people watched at least 50% of your videos, you can focus on these very interested prospects. Because you’ve used your live videos to narrow the audience to people more likely to be interested in your product or service, you spend less money on those leads. In other words, sharing at least four live videos has generated a custom audience worth pursuing.
For a custom audience based on video engagement, you can select how much of your video someone needs to watch to see your retargeting ad.
The final part of this process is to create a Facebook ad that you’ll show to your new custom audience. You can create an ad using one of many objectives. For this tactic, the ad you create should use the Lead Generation objective.
When you create the Facebook ad that you’ll show to your custom audience, choose the Lead Generation objective.
Later in the ad-creation process, you can choose an audience for your ad. Make sure you select the custom audience you created based on views of your Facebook Live video to save money on the lead generation ad and improve your results.
When you select an audience for your Facebook ad, be sure to select the custom audience of people who viewed your live videos.
Conclusion
With the steps outlined in this article, you can generate leads at a fraction of the cost you would normally pay on Facebook. First, focus on finding a quality audience that wants what you sell, and then work on converting this targeted audience.
What do you think? Have you created Facebook Live videos? What tips and techniques from this article do you plan to use? Please share your thoughts in the comments.
