Finding customers isn’t the problem.
Not when there are multiple billions on Facebook and Google each day.
Finding customers is easy.
It’s harder to make them want to buy from you.
Especially when your strategies and tactics are isolated across each platform.
Here are three ways to connect your audiences from AdWords to Facebook for better results and more sales.
Multi-Channel Ads Strategy #1
Retarget Google AdWords Leads With Custom Files on Facebook
Google AdWords is a fantastic place to bring in targeted leads.
In fact, that’s one of the top priorities of advertisers on the platform.
Why AdWords specifically? Because it has keyword search-based intent.
You know that your leads are high quality. They searched for your keywords, found your ad, and signed up for something.
Whereas on other platforms, you are often targeting an audience or interests or demographics or… a bunch of other stuff that has absolutely nothing to do what people actually want.
Meaning you don’t know — with absolute certainty — that they are interested in what you’re pushing to them.
So if they don’t convert on a direct sale, what’s your next move?
You need to warm them up to your brand before they purchase.
And one of the best ways to do just that is by retargeting them using brand awareness ads on Facebook.
Facebook CPMs have been rising in the past few years, but they are still incredibly cheap when it comes to generating brand awareness.
This approach of combining both audiences is a form of personalization. And according to the latest data, personalized marketing delivers 5-8x returns on investment and can increase your sales by 10% or more on average.
That’s exactly what Carbon6 did, using multi-channel ads from Facebook and Instagram to Google to build a $1.7 million business.
So, how do you do it?
The first step is running a campaign on AdWords based on generating leads.
A great way to do this is by utilizing the search network on AdWords.
Create a new campaign on the search network and select “Leads” as your campaign goal. Next, choose “Website visits” as the way to reach your goal:
Complete your campaign set up by editing the settings and targeting to your liking based on keywords you want to target.
Next, you’ll need a landing page that can allow you to collect contact information for your leads.
Essentially, you need a form.
Why?
So you can take your new found leads and turn them into an amazing Facebook audience.
Let your AdWords campaign run for a few weeks to build up your email list.
Once you’ve done that, head over to Facebook and create a new custom audience:
Choose “Customer File” from the audience options list:
This method allows you to upload files with data on your current leads and customers, sending them ads on Facebook after acquiring them on AdWords.
This multi-channel approach will help you send marketing messages to them at multiple stages on two different platforms.
If you use an email marketing tool like MailChimp, you can directly import your leads:
If not, you can build a custom data file in CSV or TXT format.
Download the customer data file template and start to upload your list of leads and their information into the document.
From here, your new audience is ready to go. Facebook will match the data you inputted to real users on Facebook.
Meaning all those leads you just collected on AdWords can now be targeted on Facebook.
This is a great chance to build brand awareness.
Focus your ads on driving value and conveying what your brand does.
For instance, check out this fantastic (😉) ad from AdEspresso geared for brand awareness:
With a simple yet intriguing headline, they showcase the value and what their brand is all about.
This will drive traffic back to your website and continually build awareness from AdWords to Facebook and back.
If you want to take it even further, you can continually set up new audiences on Facebook to remarket your customer list that engaged with your brand awareness ad.
This separates your list and only targets the most active and engaged users, filtering out ones that aren’t converting and are wasting your time and money.
Wanna take it one step further?
Create remarketing lists for search ads (RLSAs) to showcase your ads when they head to Google next.
With this loop, you create a continual cycle of engagement with your brand, giving you multiple touch points to drive value from Google to Facebook and back.
Multi-Channel Ads Strategy #2
Appeal to Specific Market Segments from Facebook with AdWords
Facebook’s targeting options are creepily specific.
The public might not like it. Congress might not understand it. But advertisers relish it.
Because it means you can develop advanced audiences out of thin air by layering interests or disqualifying with exclusions.
Want to target specific income levels? Done.
How about significant life events? Easy.
Maybe even narrow fields and highly specific job titles? No problem.
Marketing executives don’t convert on your products? Exclude them.
The options on Facebook are detailed and limitless.
AdWords has recently stepped up their game on targeting, but it still isn’t quite as detailed as Facebook.
Thankfully, that doesn’t matter because you can turn market segments on Facebook into audiences on Google.
Here’s how.
First off, you will want to create a brand new saved audience campaign on Facebook.
To do this, navigate to your audience manager section on your Facebook Business Manager dashboard:
Next, click and create a new saved audience.
Start by entering demographic info for your campaign.
What demographic does your business target? What age ranges are best? Are your products specifically for men or women, or both?
Fill out demographic info first.
Next, the real targeting comes into play.
Take a look at your existing customers and clients. What market segments do you sell to?
For instance, do marketing managers buy your products? What about sales staff?
Narrow down your targeting by listing out specific markets that you sell to.
Maybe you sell products geared toward outdoor enthusiasts. If so, enter that as your detailed targeting measure.
If you want, you can even exclude specific segments by hitting “Narrow Audience.”
After creating your audience, you will need to run your first ads and campaign to start driving traffic.
But before you do that, this next step is critical:
Setting up UTM codes.
UTM tracking tags are codes that you can attach to a URL to track data on where that traffic came from.
For instance, you can see what source, medium, or campaign drove the traffic rather than just “Direct” or “Facebook” in your Analytics software.
This is great because you can then remarket your audience back on Google using that specific UTM code.
To create a UTM code for your campaign, use Google’s Campaign URL Builder tool:
For your website URL, be sure to list the landing page that people will hit when clicking ads for your new Facebook campaign.
For the campaign source, type in Facebook. As your campaign name, give it something easily recognizable, like market segments.
Now, take this newly generated landing page URL (complete with UTM tags) and use it as your landing page URL.
Every time someone lands on this page, it will record the specific UTM tags in Google Analytics for you.
Treating the UTM link as a separate link, you can then remarket these users using RLSAs on AdWords by creating a new audience based on specific URL visits:
Paste your newly created UTM landing page link into the URL box, and you’re ready to target market segments directly on AdWords.
Multi-Channel Ads Strategy #3
Combine Google Shopping and Facebook Ads for Next-Level Sales and Brand Awareness
Google Shopping can help you dominate online sales.
Benchmark reports found that Google Shopping ads drove nearly 90% of all retail search clicks.
So selling on Google Shopping is one of the best ways to drive ecommerce store sales.
Meanwhile, Facebook is a bit different.
Think about it this way:
What are you there to do on Facebook? What is the sole purpose of using the platform?
It’s surely not to buy products.
It’s to engage with friends, family, and the wacky, embarrassing stuff that your uncle keeps posting…
Yeah, we all have that uncle.
Unfortunately, Facebook doesn’t have as much intent to purchase as Google Shopping does.
People aren’t there to browse your products and discover new ones or research comparison articles.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t use it to drive shopping sales.
You just can’t use it as the first point of contact unless you want to create an entire funnel with 3-5 different stages.
While that works, it’s not as optimal for your time and money.
Driving ads to potential buyers who haven’t researched yet is a surefire way to lose money with zero sales to show for it.
Instead, you want to target interested Google Shopping buyers who have searched on Google and then show them ads on Facebook to keep them interested.
You see, on Google Shopping, someone is literally searching for direct products:
But on Facebook, they aren’t.
So, why not combine your efforts to reach the same audience at both locations simultaneously?
This gives you multiple channels to convert users.
If they show interest on Google but don’t make a decision yet, you haven’t lost them for good, and you don’t have to resort to the display network.
You can switch things up and reach them on Facebook, promptly reminding them to get your products, just like Verizon did to me seconds after searching for galaxy phones on Google:
Creepy? Maybe. Effective? Absolutely.
You can do this a few different ways:
- Using the same UTM strategy in the previous section: set the landing page URL for your Shopping campaign with a UTM code. Head back to Facebook and target URL visits with that same UTM link.
- Create a specific landing page for shopping: this is one of the easiest ways, but it also requires some work. You will want to create a specific, no-indexed landing page that only Google Shopping clicks would land on. Then, you can go back and create a new Facebook audience based on URL visits to that landing page. This way, you know that all visits on that landing page (from Google Shopping) are specifically coming from your AdWords campaign.
Either one of these tactics will get the job done.
Pick one and run with it.
Soon enough, you’ll be seeing increase conversions and better brand awareness across multiple channels to the same groups.
Not only will your brand name get in front of them more often, but striking on multiple channels can help you convert users on their most comfortable platform.
Some of your customers might be more receptive to Google AdWords ads, and some might prefer Facebook.
Doing both with the same audiences is a surefire way to increase conversions and appeal to all audience members.
Conclusion
Both Facebook and Google AdWords are home to billions of users exploring products and services on a daily basis.
But more often than not, both these platforms are pitted against each other, forcing advertisers to choose one or the other.
I’m sure you’ve seen this headline before:
Facebook vs. AdWords: Which one??
That question is inherently flawed.
Both of these platforms offer diverse tools for landing more sales and leads. And in fact, they compliment each other greatly.
Instead of choosing one or the other or treating them as two separate platforms, combine your efforts.
Retarget the leads you capture through Google AdWords with Facebook brand awareness ads.
Appeal to specific market segments from Facebook on AdWords.
Combine Google Shopping and Facebook for a dual-threat that sells itself.
Next time you run ads, don’t treat them as separate platforms. Because your ROI will be the one that shoulders the blame.