Wondering what influencer marketing and Facebook ads have in common?

When used as part of a cohesive digital marketing strategy, they are a winning combination to push consumers down the buying funnel.

Influencer marketing has proven to have almost 7x better conversions than regular ads. When you amplify an influencers message to Facebook’s limitless audience, you have the potential for instant, credible growth, and visibility.

From Awareness to Consideration to Decision, here’s how to use Facebook ads with influencers to push consumers down the buying funnel.

Facebook Live Video

Video is one of the best ad formats on social, and Facebook Live Video ads are taking center stage. In fact, Facebook is giving special treatment to businesses using video posts. Even Mark Zuckerberg used Live video to jumpstart its inception.

“Live video checks a lot of boxes for Facebook: It pulls in users, keeps them coming back, encourages them to post more original content, and gives Facebook a big runway for new advertising dollars,” said Jillian D’Onfro of Business Insider.

This makes video creatives a must for your Facebook ads at every stage of the buying funnel. From awareness to conversion, here’s how to go Live with your marketing message.

Step 1: Testing in the Awareness Stage

Let’s face it, people don’t hop onto Facebook with a desire to buy products or services. The over one billion active daily users on Facebook are mainly looking to connect with friends and family or catch up on what’s trending.

From one minute videos to two-second gifs, it is essential that your creatives are highly engaging.

This makes targeting users with high purchase intent challenging, but not impossible. To drive more users toward your top of the funnel marketing strategy use ads to test a variety of audiences.

• User Interests: Think about what your potential customers are interested in. This could be associations they belong to or even your competitors. These interest-minded groups serve as tests to narrow down the ads you will use later.
• Custom Audiences – Engagement: These will be the users that have already interacted with your brand on Facebook. Maybe you already ran a few product ads or users who have commented or liked your past posts.
• Custom Audiences – Lookalikes: Use a custom audience to build lookalike audiences. Your custom audiences can be based on email lists that you upload, website traffic, or engagement as mentioned above.

How to create Facebook video ads

1. Log into your Facebook account, go to your Ads Manager, and then select Video views.

2. Name your video ad campaign. It is best to give it a unique name to easily find it if you want to use it again down the road.

3. Here you will create your Facebook ad audience parameters. These include location, language, gender, age, and more.

In the awareness stage of your social buying funnel, you are testing multiple audiences. This allows you to identify new audiences you may have otherwise overlooked. For instance, an age and gender range that gives you a larger potential audience.

4. Now we want to narrow in our potential reach. It is best to aim for a potential reach between 1.5 to two million people.

To achieve this, use the Detailed Targeting section. For instance, let’s say you are marketing a wearable for women’s health. By adding a few keywords you can start chipping away at your broad reach to get within 1.5 to two million people.

5. Once your potential reach is targeted, it’s time to set your budget and launch your video ad campaign.

Setting up targeted Facebook ads that can be utilized throughout your social buying funnel is really that easy. To make your videos even more engaging and click-worthy, pair them with influencer marketing!

Testing your Facebook ad audiences with influencers

Your awareness stage ad creatives will be your first influencer marketing test. Facebook videos, and especially live videos are the most engaging content that Facebook rewards with a high relevance score. To test your awareness ads, you will need to find influencers that are not camera shy, and who already have a video following.

Remember… it’s all about remarketing!

In the awareness stage, you may be tempted to try for those quick conversions. However, it is best to test your audiences and let your influencer introduce your brand via Facebook Live or pre-recorded videos.

You may get a few conversions right away, but the big sales will come later down the funnel. Remember, you are simply building up those qualified leads to remarket in a powerful way in the consideration and conversion stages.

Step 2: Nurture in the Consideration Stage

New Facebook users are interacting with your influencer’s awareness stage ads and the top of the funnel is filling up. Now it is time to take all that data from those ad tests and drive the qualified leads through the consideration stage.

Your consideration stage influencer videos should be aimed at specific groups that have interacted with your Facebook ads. For example, people who may have watched a specific amount of your influencer’s Live video or people who have engaged with your Facebook page.

You can easily segment your users based on the percentage of time a video was viewed:

• 10 seconds or less
• At least 10 seconds
• 25 to 50 percent
• 50 to 75 percent
• 75 to 95 percent

This gives you and your influencer a better look at who is ready to be delivered the next set of videos. For instance, someone who has viewed less than 10 seconds of a video is probably not worth remarketing to. And someone who has viewed 95 percent of your awareness stage video is probably ready to convert and you can skip the consideration stage for that audience group.

However, the users who watch 25 to 75 percent of your awareness video are ready for the consideration stage. This adds a few more touchpoints to the buying funnel to move those leads downward.

You and your influencer should collaborate on a number of videos, both regular and live showcasing features of products, benefits of using them or even introducing new products and services as well. The key is to show the value you offer in a very natural way.

One of the most challenging aspects of the consideration stage is creating enough Facebook ad creatives to deliver fresh and new content to your new leads. You should definitely continue with the influencers from the awareness stage, but you may also want to employ a few others to keep the content fresh and engaging.

Step 3: Offer a discount ladder in the Conversion Stage

By the time your target audience has reached the conversion stage they have seen your products or services several times, they have already interacted with your influencer videos, and they have most likely done a bit of research on your brand. Now it’s time to deliver a discount ladder to close the deal.

Offering discounts give consumers a little extra nudge to purchase. After all, if their favorite online personality has recommended your products, they have the confidence to buy from you, so it may simply be a matter of price. Offer them a deal worth converting on to finally close the deal.

It’s your turn…

Combining the reach and segmentation features of Facebook ads and the trust and built-in follower base of influencers is a recipe for marketing success. By using the above strategy for each stage of your buying funnel, you will net qualified, ready to buy leads that are excited about your brand, products, or services.

How will you make influencer marketing part of your Facebook marketing campaigns?

Guest author: Nick Rojas