Capturing email leads with a strong content offer is easier than ever with Facebook ads.
Brands everywhere have caught on to the power that Facebook ads have for driving conversion-ready traffic to their landing pages. But, most companies who are running massive campaigns also have a strong budget to back up their ‘ad testing’ phase.
So what do you do if you don’t have a big budget for ad testing? How can you know that the ad traffic you’re sending to your landing pages is conversion-ready and matches your target customer persona?
The answer? Take advantage of the Facebook pixel.
Facebook’s Pixel enables you to track all the traffic you’ve received from Facebook Ads or elsewhere. Using this insight, you can then create powerful and targeted custom audiences known as “Lookalike Audiences”.
As per Facebook:
“A Lookalike Audience is a way to reach new people who are likely to take interest in your business because they’re similar to your best existing customers.”
Essentially, through Lookalike Audiences, Facebook is able to use its vast data network to create an audience of people with similar interests and traits to those who are already clicking through to your website.
Pretty cool, huh? And the best part is that you can do all this for free.
To get started, you first need to create a valuable blog post and embed your Facebook Pixel on your website.
The key to creating a detailed lookalike audience is to create a blog post about a topic you know your target customers will love - what massive problem does your buyer have that you can help them solve? What questions are going unanswered by your competitors? What keywords are going unnoticed in your niche?
This is the time to dig deep into your most valuable and relevant content ideas you’ve been storing.
After you’ve finished your post, leave a link to the content offer you’d like visitors to download at the end of the text. This will be the same offer you advertise to your Lookalike Audience once your Pixel has worked its magic.
Finally, attach your Facebook Pixel to the blog post. The purpose of the Pixel on your blog post is to capture and record any traffic that your post gets, so you can use it later when creating your target audience.
If you’re unsure about how to embed the Facebook Pixel, or how the Pixel process works, check out this detailed guide from Facebook.
Next - send traffic to your blog post.
Drive as much traffic as you possibly can to your post. You know the old approach of “20% of the time spent writing, 80% on promotion”? Since we’re trying to build our Facebook Pixel, let’s change that to “5% writing and 95% promotion”.
A good goal to aim for is at least 500 unique visitors to the post.
Here are some ways that you can drive traffic to your content:
1. Promote it in relevant Facebook groups
Be sure that you become a part of the group’s community before you start linking your post, as you can get banned for blatant self-promotion in many communities.
2. Get quotes from relevant influencers
Do some research on key influencers in your niche and reach out to ask for a quote for the piece. Then, once the post is published, you can ask them to share it with their followers.
3. Post a summary on Reddit
Search for relevant subreddits and post a summary of your piece there. Be sure to link back to your content within the post itself.
4. Promote on social media
This one’s simple - let your followers know about your new post.
Once you’ve driven at least 500 unique visitors to your post, you can then create your Lookalike Audience.
To spare you some time, we won’t get into the details of creating it. Rather, we suggest you check out this post from Facebook for more information on the steps needed to finish creating your audience.
After that, your Lookalike Audience will be complete, and you’re ready to run your ads.
To start, set up a campaign targeted towards the Lookalike Audience you've created, then create your advertisement.
Finally, place a call-to-action that links to a landing page for your content offer and publish your ad.
This is a great way to drive targeted and conversion-ready visitors to your content offer’s landing page, all without spending a dime on ad testing. Apply basic email nurturing principles to your email list, and you’ll likely have a ton of happy buyers on your hands.
