Cold Email Prospecting vs. Marketing Emails: The Difference Explained

Cold email prospecting and email marketing are two VERY different strategies, yet some marketers think they are the same thing or get them confused. We are here to clear up the differences while also discussing the advantages of each email strategy.

Email has got to be the greatest thing to happen to business communication since the invention of the Internet.

It’s that good.

We ask you, who has had the biggest impact on your business?

Your boss? Your customers? Your investors? Your sales team? Your mom? Meghan Markle? Chad the Starbucks barista?

Nope. Guess again.

It was Ray Tomlinson.

Yeah, that dude.

Ray Tomlinson invented email.

Ray is the reason you’re able to work from home right now. Why your finance department, sales team, and analytics gurus can talk shop without ever knowing what each other looks like. Why you always remember to pay your bills. Why no one ever has to spend full price at Bed, Bath & Beyond. Ray’s invention is pretty much single-handedly keeping the economy afloat.

Oh yeah, and it saves trees.

Sure, Chad makes one tasty Iced Caramel Macchiato, but he can’t send an attachment at three in the morning. Ray’s creation can.

If you’re a marketer, life is even more plush, thanks to Ray and his “electronic mail.”

Has any other marketing tool in the history of marketing tools provided a better return on investment?

Nope.

On average, email generates $38 for every $1 spent. That’s a 3,800% return on investment! Amazing! Who knew percentages even went that high.

Email marketing is perhaps the best channel a business can use to build an authentic connection with customers. Even better, it is the best way to authentically connect with potential customers.

You know, those people who haven’t realized yet that they want to give you money.

Well, you’re just one email away from making that happen.

All thanks to Ray Tomlinson, and that one time back in 1971 when he sent out the first-ever initial unsolicited email to himself.

Come to think of it, that means Ray Tomlinson also invented cold email prospecting.

Alas, the wide world of emailing has changed a lot since then. No longer is an email just an email. Particularly for digital marketers.

Cold emails themselves have gotten a bad rap, relegated to the shadiest corners of emailing. This is really a shame because cold email prospecting can (and should) be an integral part of your online marketing strategy.

In fact, cold email prospecting is one of the best tools in your arsenal for business growth.

That’s right, we said it. Cold email prospecting. Your business. Lots of growth.

This is why it’s so important to understand the difference between cold email prospecting and marketing emails, and when to send each to incur the most benefit.

Email Marketing Explained in A Nifty Graphic

Email marketing is a lot of things. But very often email marketing gets muddled together as one single process.

It is not.

Email marketing is an umbrella term that covers several uniquely different forms of sending an online message to potential or current customers. Treating email marketing as a singular process can be kind of vague, confusing, and even detrimental to your email marketing strategy. When really, email marketing is a symbiosis of sales and marketing tactics.

So when you plan to implement “email marketing,” make sure you know what you’re getting into. That means differentiating email marketing into its distinct subsets.

Think of your email marketing strategy as a family tree. A happy family tree with marketing and sales as the parents. And their budding offspring are cold email prospecting and marketing emails.

Side Note….

As you might have noticed, it can get really confusing really quickly using the terms “marketing emails” and “email marketing.” Technically, they are not the same and should not be used interchangeably.

To help differentiate, it’s often easier to refer to “marketing emails” as “warm emails.”

The more you know.

 

Where were we?

That’s right…

Cold email prospecting and marketing emails are the one-two punch of customer outreach.

The best email marketing strategies tie one into the other as part of a bigger sales funnel, both with specific goals to either sell or nurture leads.

With us so far?

Great, now let’s get granular.

The Difference Between Cold Email Prospecting and Marketing Emails

Each aspect of email marketing serves a unique purpose and should be tailored to satisfy their separate goals.

If email marketing were a funnel, your cold emails would constitute the top, and marketing emails would comprise the middle and bottom sections. Here’s what else you need to know about the difference between cold email prospecting and marketing emails:

Cold Email Prospecting

Cold email Prospecting targets people who either have no idea who you are or have yet to engage with your brand. It is the first stage of lead generation and the first step to leading prospects down the sales funnel.

 

  • Target: New prospects
  • Objective: Introduce yourself, engage, and funnel into further interactions
  • Benefits:
    • Broadens your brand’s reach
    • Builds out your contact lists
    • Initiates people into your sales funnel
    • Helps convert customers currently using competitor solutions

 

When composing cold emails, write a short, simple, plain text message that is easy to read and promotes a singular call-to-action (CTA). Similar to if you were writing a friend an email, which would use very little graphics, if any.

Marketing Email Outreach

Marketing emails (also referred to as “warm mailing”) target specific audiences who have already engaged with your brand and opted in to receive emails from you. These are typically warmer leads, or are interested in learning more about your brand.

 

  • Target: Existing prospects (or customers)
  • Objective: Inform, build brand credibility, and convert leads
  • Benefits:
    • Creates trust between your brand and contacts
    • Provides insight into how people engage with your brand and service
    • Funnels marketing qualified leads into sales-qualified leads
    • Helps convert leads into customers

 

When composing warm emails, write informative, HTML-based messages. Ideally, this includes offering something of value to attract and engage your audience.

Going from Cold to Warm: Outbound vs. Inbound Marketing

Aside from the by-the-book definitions above, there is another way to differentiate cold email prospecting from sending warm, marketing emails.

This difference lies in who initiates contact.

Marketing, in general, can be broken up into two types: outbound marketing and inbound marketing.

With outbound marketing, the business contacts the prospect first. A business gathers contact information and sends out messaging to prospects. Outbound is considered the “traditional method” for outreach, contacting potential customers with cold emailing and cold calls.

Marketing emails, on the other hand, are a form of inbound marketing.

With inbound marketing, the prospect starts the sales process. Prospects come across a brand’s messaging and decide whether or not to engage with it. Inbound is considered the “modern method” for outreach, attracting potential customers with creative content, and lead magnets.

To summarize: cold emails are initiated by you (the business) while marketing emails are initiated by the prospect (your potential customer).

Do a quick Google search, and you’ll see what the Internet thinks of outbound marketing.

Spoiler: It’s not good.

You’d think anyone doing outbound marketing was a greedy, diabolical villain.

Whereas inbound marketing is depicted as all rainbowy, unicorny, and Taylor Swifty, presenting a wonderfully welcoming way to engage and converse with customers, outbound marketing is shown as an unwanted one-way conversation to doom, providing no value and seeking solely to steal the soul of your customers.

Unfortunately, a lot of this has to do with the stigma of spam and telemarketing.

But this bad rap can actually be a good thing for your business.

Because sometimes the “villain” is actually the lovable hero all along.

Why Outbound Email Marketing Can Beat Inbound Marketing

Most will tell you that sending marketing emails is always a better bet. But when people say cold email prospecting is a waste of time, we beg to differ.

In fact, when done right, cold email prospecting can be more cost-effective than inbound marketing.

Which is a taboo thing to say these days.

Well, guess what? It used to be taboo to have a tattoo and look at us now.

What do taboos know?

But just like how Post Malone’s face art might have put off a colonial puritan from enjoying the lyrical masterpiece that is Sunflower, the spammy stigma of cold email prospecting turns off a lot of businesses from outbound email marketing.

You can tell because there’s such a big emphasis on improving SEO and enhancing CRO and boosting PPC and streamlining marketing emails and social media and content creation and other forms of inbound marketing.

Less so with outbound email marketing.

Alas, most businesses’ loss is your brand’s gain.

Few pushing hard to do cold email prospecting (save for maybe link building or influencer marketing) means there is a low-hanging fruit opportunity to stand out from your competitors.

That’s the first way outbound marketing can outshine inbound marketing.

The second is by saving time. (Outbound marketing is a long game with its lengthy marketing email drip campaigns and long-winded lead nurturing.)

And the third is by better optimizing your budget for lead generation.

The list building software company LeadFuze sums up how by noting:

Outbound funnels are a lot shorter than inbound, making them ideal for early growth.

To understand why, let’s take a look at this funnel.

The outbound funnel starts right where your inbound ends.

With marketing emails, selling is equated to nurturing. In cold email prospecting, selling is equated to — well — selling.

The outbound sales funnel is so much shorter because it goes right after sales qualified leads from the start. It foregoes taking the time to nurture leads, most of whom will never convert anyway.

Instead, outbound efforts like cold emailing is a more proactive strategy that relies less on waiting around for leads to decide whether or not they like you, and more on directly engaging leads who you already know do.

In other words, with cold email prospecting, you cut right to the chase.

So don’t discount outbound marketing from your email marketing strategy. While there is little doubt sending warm emails is a tried-and-true method to funneling prospects into becoming customers, cold emails can be just as effective in winning the day.

Cold Email vs. Warm Email: The Choice Between Nature and Nurture

Which email marketing strategy should your business go with?

A definitive both.

The best marketing strategies are the most diversified. You wouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket, would you?

Of course not. That’s just silly.

So why would you bank all your email marketing efforts on just one type?

What you want to do is use cold email to reach new prospects naturally ready to purchase and use warm marketing emails to nurture existing prospects into making a purchase.

That’s the one-two punch of email marketing in action. No leads left behind.

It’s the reason why email was invented in the first place. To communicate with others when, where, and how you want. Open your email marketing strategy up to all cold emails and marketing emails have to offer, and you’ll reach every kind of prospect that could benefit your business.

Now doesn’t that sound nice?

Ray Tomlinson would be proud.

Not sure where to start with your cold email prospecting or want to know the most common mistakes we see?

Get in touch with our cold emailing experts for ways you can grow the profitability of your email marketing today.

5 Ways FAQ Schema Markup Can Amplify Your SEO

FAQ Schema Markup. Ever heard of it?

What if we told you there was this handy, underutilized SEO hack that has the potential to instantly improve your site’s rank, CTR, and dominance over SERP competition. You’d probably be skeptical, and think we were talking about some kind of SEO unicorn.

Well, guess what, SEO unicorns are real. And they’re called “FAQ Schema Markup.”

There’s a good chance you’re looking at us weird right now. A FAQ, really? What is this 1985? FAQs are a second rate page. There’s no value there. They’re just a dumping ground for content that can’t be squeezed in anywhere else, right?

Don’t write off FAQs quite yet. The times they are a-changin’.

When Google got onboard with adding structured data for FAQ, they opened a treasure trove of SEO opportunity.

At face value, there’s not much to FAQ rich snippets. Just a way to display some of the frequently asked questions listed on your FAQ page. But take a closer look at what FAQ schema actually does, and you’ll see just how powerful it is.

So get with the times. FAQs are where it’s at. Not a believer? Follow along…

The Secret Trick to Improving Performance with FAQ Rich Snippets

There are two places to include FAQ schema markup on your site:

 

  • FAQ pages
  • Pages with a FAQ section

 

It may not seem like it, but there is a big difference between the two.

FAQ pages rarely rank well. More often than not, if a user visits one, it’s because they navigated to it through your site, rather than an organic search result.

This is because search engines are all about content that answers the intent behind a specific search query. FAQ pages, on the other hand, are typically broad in content, not focusing on keywording or answering a single question, but rather trying to hit as many bases as possible in one place. So by nature, they conflict with the type of content Google wants to promote.

While adding FAQ schema for your Frequently Asked Question pages is definitely a good idea, this alone will probably not have a huge, noticeable impact on your SEO.

However, adding FAQ schema to your product and service pages will.

At this stage, we should probably do a quick review of what exactly is FAQ schema markup.

FAQ schema is specialized markup you can add to a webpage’s code that contains a list of questions and answers. Google then reads this markup and uses it to generate a rich snippet.

Like this one:

This FAQ rich snippet shows a collapsible list under your typical SERP result. When a question is clicked, the answer is revealed in a dropdown. If your markup contains more than four questions, a “Show more” link will be shown that will reveal all your FAQ markup.

But again, FAQ schema isn’t only for a FAQ page. It will show an expandable list on SERP for any page that is properly structured with a “frequently asked question” section.

This ability is what makes FAQ schema the bee’s knees—the cat’s pajamas. Lit, I believe, is what they’re calling it these days.

To better see why, take a look at the following service page FAQ rich snippet for a surf lesson provider.

Notice how the enhanced snippet directly ties into the page title and meta-description, and better targets the intent behind profitable queries this surf school wants to target. Google loves this.

Why?

Because the overall snippet is more relevant and valuable.

If written strategically, this added SERP content will also open up the likelihood of your snippet appearing for other longtail queries where it might not have previously. For example, “What age is too old to surf,” or “How much do surf lessons cost.”

To figure out where FAQ schema can most help your rankings, we recommend reviewing all your bread and butter pages. These are the ones that directly tie into your sales funnel. Specifically pages that:

 

  • Consistently generate leads and conversions
    -or-
  • Have the potential to help generate more leads and conversions

 

Likely they will be your product and service pages.

After choosing the top pages, see if there are opportunities to add a FAQ section, covering at least three questions directly related to the topic of that page. Then add the corresponding FAQ schema markup. (We’ll show how to do this below.)

Trust us; you’ll be happy with the results.

But don’t take our word for it…

5 Ways FAQ Schema Markup Can Take Your SEO to the Next Level

There are a lot of amazing things you can do with structured data. (As we saw in our rich snippet guide.) However, one of the most valuable often gets overlooked. That’s because it doesn’t provide all the pomp and circumstance of other more flashy rich results.

But what FAQ structured data lacks in sex appeal, it more than makes up for in function.

Read on to see how FAQ schema markup improves your SEO like a boss.

1.     Provides an Instant Rich Snippet

Everyone and their mother is trying to get a rich snippet these days. They’re the golden goose of SERP. But it’s not always so easy.

Even if you implement all your structured data properly, it can sometimes take months for the fruits of your labor to show.

FAQ rich snippets are one of the easiest and fastest to obtain.

In some instances, some report seeing a FAQ rich snippet appear in under 30 minutes.

Granted, there is no guarantee of immediate results. But Google is super fast at picking up FAQ structured data and adjusting your SERP listing, more so it seems than with other structured data types.

To give them a nudge in the right direction, be sure to “Request Indexing” of your page in Google Search Console after implementation.

 

2.     Lets Your Snippet Absolutely Dominate SERP

What really makes FAQ schema markup so exciting is how much real estate it uses.

Currently, Google shows your first three FAQ results. This alone doubles the amount of vertical space your snippet takes up in search results.

If you want to take up even more room, we’ve seen instances where Google will actually show four FAQ results. The only catch is your markup needs to have precisely four questions.

If your page has more than four FAQ results, the rest will be hidden. But if a user selects “Show More” than the full list appears, pushing all the results below yours way down.

In every one of these scenarios, your page comes out a winner. This is especially key on mobile, where space is limited, to begin with.

So don’t let other results crowd yours. Push them off the screen entirely.

3.     Improves CTR

Looking good on SERPs is great. But looks will only get you so far. At some point, FAQ schema is going to have to justify itself with some cold hard stats.

One case study saw an over 50% increase in their CTR after implementing FAQ schema. That’s enough to make even the most grumpy of actuaries smile.

Since your snippet is both taking up more real estate in SERP and providing your target audience with more useful content, it only stands that there is an increased likelihood of someone clicking your snippet.

As an added bonus, you can also create hyperlinks in your dropdown answer copy, providing more opportunities for users to click through.

Just be sure not to give away the whole shebang in your answers.

For instance, it’s very easy to create rich snippets that are too informative. So much so that users get everything they need from your FAQ schema alone, negating any reason to click your snippet.

If your page is a product or service, also be careful revealing pricing in your FAQ schema. Only discuss costs if they are really strong selling points. If, on the contrary, your prices aren’t lower than your competitors, then they might actually work against you and deter clicks.

That said, when strategically written well, a FAQ rich snippet can pull your target audience in like a tractor beam.

Though you know what’s even better than an improved CTR?

Feast your eyes on this…

4.     Generates Higher Quality Leads

There are two types of leads in this world: leads that convert, and well, leads that don’t convert.

Guess which type you want?

Despite your best efforts, the former will balk and fail to convert. The latter, on the other hand, are primed to convert. They are the ones ready to download or purchase or signup. You just need to show them the way.

FAQ schema helps put the odds of attracting these higher quality leads in your favor.

With the right type of FAQ schema, you can weed out prospects less likely to convert. Through your questions and answers, you can give a sneak preview of what’s to come if they click through. If it is not of interest to them, then they’ll move along.

And that’s a good thing.

Because while clicks are important, they shouldn’t be your primary goal. Converting is. You want visitors that will not just click through, but follow through, and improve your site’s conversion rate. These are your high-quality leads.

High-quality leads are more likely to do this.

Optimizing for these types of leads increases ROI and decreases spend. So, adding FAQ schema markup that appeals to your most profitable leads isn’t just good SEO, it’s also great CRO.

5.     Connects to Voice Search

Last but certainly not least, FAQ schema is poised to help bring your business into the 21st century.

One of the biggest digital marketing trends right now is voice search.

Alexa. Siri. Google Assistant. Your refrigerator. All of these virtual assistant AIs are changing the way we get information and connect.

FAQ schema plays a significant role.

Right now, one of the most common ways for people to interact with their smart speakers is to ask a question. If that question relates directly to your FAQ schema, then the AI’s answer will be whatever you marked up in your structured data.

The possibilities here are pretty cool.

As you can imagine, Google Assistant is leading the way in building voice search actions using FAQ schema. But the other AIs aren’t far behind.

So when coming up with your FAQs, be sure to optimize copy for voice search (or as the kids are calling it these days, VSEO).

How to Add FAQ Schema to Get Rich Snippets

So now that you know why you want to use FAQ schema markup let’s show you how to implement it.

It’s actually really easy.

First, create a FAQ page or FAQ section on one of your pages. Write at least three questions, each of which are followed by relevant answers.

After that, if you want to get technical, you can use either JSON-LD or Microdata to create the markup. (Google recommends JSON-LD.)

Here’s a FAQ schema markup template for three questions using JSON-LD:

<script type="application/ld+json">

{

"@context": "https://schema.org",

"@type": "FAQPage",

"mainEntity": [{

"@type": "Question",

"name": "INSERT QUESTION TEXT HERE",

"acceptedAnswer": {

"@type": "Answer",

"text": "INSERT ANSWER TEXT HERE"

}

}, {

"@type": "Question",

"name": "INSERT QUESTION TEXT HERE",

"acceptedAnswer": {

"@type": "Answer",

"text": "INSERT ANSWER TEXT HERE"

}

}, {

"@type": "Question",

"name": "INSERT QUESTION TEXT HERE",

"acceptedAnswer": {

"@type": "Answer",

"text":"INSERT ANSWER TEXT HERE"}

}]

}

</script>

Just replace the capitalized text with your own questions and answers.

Though you don’t actually need to know any of that to create your markup, we recommend the far simpler and easier method of using a free online FAQ schema generator. Two of these include:

 

 

Just copy and paste the questions and answers from your page into these generators. They will then automatically create the script you need to produce a FAQ rich snippet.

Make sure that the copy on your page and code in your script are exactly the same. If they’re disparate by even a comma, then your page won’t be eligible.

Also, be sure to follow Google’s FAQ guidelines:

Once you have the script in hand, there are several ways you can implement it onto your page.

  1. Insert the script manually into the header <head> section of the specific page.
  2. Use a WordPress plugin like Insert Headers and Footers to add the code for you.
  3. Use Google Tag Manager to add the code for you.
  4. Add the schema into your WordPress theme’s function.php file.

 

We don’t recommend implementing the last two methods unless you know exactly what you’re doing. The first two are your best bet. (Though if you need help at any stage of implementing FAQ schema markup, get in touch. We’d love to help.)

Once you’ve added you’re FAQ schema, the final step is to test if it’s working. Just copy and paste the URL of your page and run it through either Google’s:

 

 

We prefer the Rich Results tester. It’s a little more user-friendly.

And there you have it!

You’ve successfully added FAQ schema markup to your page, and are ready to dominate search results.

FAQ Schema Wrap Up

Word is going to get out about the benefits of FAQ schema. So don’t wait to implement it into your SEO strategy.

Just be aware, there’s potential here for people to abuse FAQ schema. Foreseeing this, Google has already taken measures to reduce FAQ schema abuse. But you can get ahead of all this by properly implementing it today and standing out with quality FAQ content that your users know they can trust.

Not only will FAQ schema have the potential to increase online visibility and site traffic, but it can also help improve the authority of your brand.

Best of all, you can implement FAQ schema in a matter of minutes and have it appear in a short time. There aren’t many (whitehat) SEO hacks easier than that.

That’s why all the cool marketers are using it. But pretty soon, everyone else will be too, so much, so the mere mention of FAQ schema markup will cause 16-year olds to roll their eyes and reply, “You’re basic.”

So, stay in the know and use FAQ schema to make your rich snippets DA BOMB.

No, wait. Now we’re dating ourselves again.

How about…

Let’s get this bread!

That’s the one.

How to Drive More Quality Leads with Facebook Advertising

Facebook Advertising is like the social media marketing version of courting. You refine your targeting to prospects that look good, send them your best messaging, maybe a photoshopped pic or two, hope they’re into you, and then try to get them to convert.

Some call it dating. We call it lead generation. Regardless, it’s a digital tango your brand needs to master like a blind Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman.

Both sides know what the other is really looking for. The only challenge is getting them to take the actions you want. All is fair in love and marketing.

So, let’s put the odds of scoring a lead in your favor.

But first, we want to tell you what this post is not.

 

  • It is not a generic guide on how to set up Facebook Ads.
  • It is not an examination of social media advertising best practices.
  • We will not discuss what a lead is.
  • We will not lecture you about the sales funnel.

 

We assume you already know all that.

We’re here because you want to generate more leads, and you want to generate them today, specifically with your Facebook Ads.

But even better than that, you want to generate more quality leads.

Because let’s face it, a lead by itself is worth about as much as a Zimbabwe one hundred trillion dollar bill. Utterly, worthless.

It’s what that lead does that really matters.

Do they aimlessly open your emails, haphazardly add things to their cart, and otherwise hang around your site all day doing nothing, like a teenager playing Fortnite in their parent’s basement? Or do they provide value?

The former is what we like to call a “lead mooch.” The latter is a quality lead. Guess which one you want to score a date with?

A quality lead converts. They buy your products, subscribe to your services, download your apps, and help you make money, which is why quality leads are also known as Sales Qualified Leads (SQL).

If your lead gen funnel is lacking, don’t despair. You can start driving more qualified customers to your site with a few simple tactics and new approaches. Tactics that are extremely effective, but not always so obvious.

After all, the best customers always play hard to get at first. But that just makes converting them all the more gratifying.

1.     Give Away Something High-Quality for Free

Freebie marketing is one of the most powerful marketing strategies in your toolbox, and one of the best ways to generate leads.

Even science backs us up here. Neurological studies show that receiving discounts and freebies make people happier, less stressed, and healthier, causing a 38% increase in oxytocin levels, a 5% decrease in heart rate, and a 32% drop in respiration rate. So not only are you benefiting your business, but you’re practically saving lives with your lead magnets.

Now, we’re sure you played around with lead magnets before, so this recommendation probably isn’t all that mind-blowing thus far.

But remember, the whole point of your free offer is to encourage the purchase of another, higher-value product.

Anyone can get a donkey to follow a carrot. Dangle something free in front of someone, and there’s a good chance they’ll bite. Why else would a grown man wait in line to get half a chicken nugget at Costco?

So generating leads from freebies isn’t the tough part. Making sure they’re sales qualified is. That’s why you want to offer a high-quality lead magnet.

A high-quality lead magnet specifically targets — you guessed it —  quality leads. They are distinguished from less awesome, regular humdrum lead magnets by several key factors.

 

  • Promoting your brand
  • Not being sales-y
  • Being tailored to your ideal customer persona (ICP)
  • Targeting a pain point of your ICP that directly ties into your main products
  • Actually solving that pain point
  • Being something not easily found anywhere else

 

If your freebie checks off each of those items, then it is a high-quality lead magnet.

The last three are particularly important because they focus on providing value, positioning your brand as an expert, and building trust — all essential components required for generating quality leads.

A run-of-the-mill video isn’t a good lead magnet. You can find a thousand of those on YouTube. A how-to guide, listicle, or checklist isn’t all that unique either. We provide this type of content all over our blog, and you don’t have to give us your email to read them.

No, what you’re looking for is something irresistibly unique that is well worth someone giving their information to obtain. You don’t want it to be a fluff piece. The freebie’s value prop should be specific and directly related to your paid products and services.

Types of high-quality lead magnets include:

 

  • Webinars
  • Templates
  • Swipe Files
  • Workbooks
  • eBooks
  • Toolkits

 

Here’s a great example of a high-quality lead magnet offering a webinar:

Melyssa’s Facebook ad hits all the right spots.

Facebook Ads like this one are ideal for offering freebies. More so than Google Ads. That’s because there’s a lot more space to create content for your audience to connect with, and you can leverage photos and videos to enhance engagement.

After all, seeing a smile can go a long way.

You know what else goes a long way?

Free food.

Offering something truly awesome for free can pique the interest of the right kind of leads for your business, and preview just how great you are at solving their pain points. Or hunger pains.

2.     Build Higher Converting Audiences

Your online ads live and die by the audiences they target. So if you want to attract more quality leads with Facebook Ads, make sure you’re flaunting to the right audience.

This means making sure what you’re offering aligns with what they want.

What this doesn’t mean is trying to trick people into liking you.

Pro Tip: Don’t lie with your dating profile or audience building. You’ll just end up disappointed. The people you end up meeting won’t be a quality match for you. All they’ll really want is a free meal or copywriting template.

Digital marketing, especially on Facebook, isn’t about tricking or influencing people with fluffed up claims. It’s about providing value that matches their personas and existing behaviors.

And it all starts with targeting the right audience.

In trying to reach a new purchase-ready audience, look at what’s worked for you in the past. More specifically, this involves:

 

  • Targeting new high-quality leads based on your most engaged users
  • Targeting new high-quality leads based on your top converting users
  • Targeting new high-quality leads based on your existing high-quality leads

 

We’re guessing you’re familiar with lookalike audiences.

Just in case you’re not, a lookalike audience is a type of audience you can generate on Facebook from your existing customers (i.e., “custom audiences”). They are comprised of the most similar Facebook users to your existing audience, based on actions, demographics, interests, and a slew of other intel.

One pitfall many fall into is creating a lookalike for everything under the sun. This gets very confusing and spreads your targeting strategy too thin. Instead, you want to create a select few high-quality lookalike audiences to build campaigns around and A/B test.

To do this, you need first to have the Facebook pixel installed on your site. Once that’s in place, create a custom audience for each of the ones we listed above.

For your most engaged users, create a custom audience based on website traffic.

From there you’ll want to access two options:

 

  • People Who Have Visited a Specific Web Page
  • Visitors by Time Spent

To create an audience around your most engaged users, select “visitors by time spent” and set it to the top 25%.

Then add the page URL you want to target.

The pages you use here will be the most important pages in your sales funnel. They include product and service pages, cart pages, and any others directly tied your macro conversions. The further down the funnel, the better.

If you have a high volume of traffic, we recommend testing an even more granular custom audience by selecting the “+ And Also” link. This tracks multiple pages and allows you to include other key pages in your lead generation, like a contact page.

Now you’ve created a custom audience for those who have demonstrated a high level of purchase intent on your site.

Next, set up a custom audience for your top converting users.

The process is very similar to the one we just did, except instead of filtering your audience according to “Visitors By Time Spent,” you will select “People Who Have Visited a Specific Web Pages.”

Add the thank you page URL or whatever screen appears after a conversion is executed. Ideally, you would have a different screen for each type of conversion so you can better differentiate.

There are a lot of combinations here to refine, including using event tracking if you’ve previously set it up.

With that, you’ve created a custom audience for your top converters.

For the final group, let’s create a custom audience based on your existing high-quality leads.

For this, choose to create your audience using a customer file.

Upload a contact list filtered according to your top leads, either because they’ve been deemed sales qualified or because they followed through and converted. Upload this list and map the identifiers you want to use for your custom audience.

And with that, you will have created three high-quality custom audiences. The final step is to create then a lookalike audience based on each one of these as you normally would.

For customer lists, you can also create a value-based lookalike. Some call this the “bread and butter” of Facebook Ad targeting. They’re not wrong.

The entire purpose of this feature is to help you do exactly what we’ve been discussing.

To implement this mode of targeting, you will need to know the lifetime value (LTV) of each of your contacts and indicate it by creating a “value” column in your spreadsheets.

Then when you upload your CSV customer list, select the “customer value” identifier to tell Facebook how much your current customers are worth. It will then, in turn, prioritize finding people similar to your most valuable customers.

Lead generation doesn’t get much more quality than that.

What all this boils down to is being very selective when building your audience. Your ROI will thank you.

3.     Target Intersecting Interests

Facebook’s interest-based targeting is what sets it apart from all other online ad platforms.

Just like with audiences, Facebook ads can get incredibly specific with the interests they allow you to target.

You can appear solely to people who don’t have kids, or parents with kids aged 8-11, if that’s your thing. You can target people who’ve recently gotten out of a relationship or have a specific income level. You can even target people by the type of car they drive, or want to drive.

The possibilities are endless.

Which is exactly why it’s so important to be strategic when choosing interests to target, and not just throw a bunch into your ad targeting with hopes you get lucky.

This is doubly important, given the fact that there is so much competing for your audience’s attention on Facebook.

That’s where targeting intersecting interests comes in.

This very effective targeting technique catches people’s attention because it seeks to appeal to people from several different angles.

Here’s the basic setup:

  1. Select “Detailed Targeting” under Audiences while setting up your Ad Group.
  2. Add an initial interest to target.
  3. Select “Narrow Audience” and add a second interest.
  4. Select “Narrow Further” and add a third interest.

In the example below, we’re targeting the people who like cars (interest #1), sports (interest #2), and pizza (interest #3).

The key is only to include one interest per audience box. Adding them to the same box expands your audience. This method narrows your audience to where these interests intersect.

Below is a visual of what’s going on here.

Think back to the Venn diagrams we used to create in elementary school. The center where your audience interests overlap is where your quality leads reside.

Please note that to get the most out of targeting, you should choose interests that aren’t too closely related to one another.

Once you have your audience set up, there’s one final important step.

To truly be effective, and draw in those quality leads with Facebook Advertising, the interests you select for targeting need also to be brilliantly reflected in your messaging and images. In other words, design your ad and lead magnet around the intersection.

Let’s look at an example of this in action.

This Dr. Pepper ad targets an intersection of interests for their target market. An audience comprised of:

  • Interest #1: College students
  • Interest #2: Soda Drinkers (or more specifically, Dr. Pepper)
  • Interest #3: Sports Fans (or more specifically, football)

 

You could also say this ad targets potential college students interested in paying their college tuition. So that’s 3-4 right there, perfectly reflected in the ad copy and imagery.

Why is this type of targeting so effective?

One word: Personalization.

If you can make your audience feel like an ad was made just for them, then they’re more likely to pay attention, click, and convert.

So figure out where that intersection lies for your best leads and set your audience targeting accordingly.

Conclusion: Create a High-Quality Facebook Ad Experience

There are a lot of things you can do to get the most out of your Facebook Ads. All of these can positively impact your lead generation.

For one, there’s Facebook Lead Ads. Writing captivating ad copy with a strong offer, CTA, and sense of urgency is another. Strategically designed images can obviously go a long way as well. As too can having a well-optimized landing page.

If you’ve made it this far, you probably know all that already. But it’s still worth repeating.

Because you’d be surprised how many spend all their time trying to create the world’s most perfect Facebook ad and then barely give their landing page any attention. Or worse, skip a landing page altogether and have their ads point to their homepage. Not cool.

For example, if you are a restaurant looking for new customers, your chances of sealing the deal are far better if you take them to a place where the food is well-prepared and the desert so appetizing they can’t resist.

After all, who wouldn’t want to engage with a Michelin star landing page?

But we digress.

The point is, in order to generate not just any lead, but high-quality leads, you need to pay attention to every aspect of the Facebook Ad experience. So, amplify these tried and true best practices using the strategies we discussed above to ensure you are finding the best prospects and connecting with them in the right ways.

Rest assured, if you play your cards right, you and your quality leads will live happily ever after. If you need help with Facebook Advertising, contact us today!