How to Use Facebook Ads with Inbound Marketing

Facebook, I’d like you to meet inbound. I think you two will really hit it off. 

Facebook ads are a great way to quickly get your business in front of many new people, but if you aren’t strategic, you might as well just kiss all your money goodbye. Integrating your Facebook ads with an inbound marketing strategy is an easy way to see better results and get more actual customers out of your marketing efforts.

What is Inbound Marketing?

Simply put, inbound marketing starts with valuable content that your target audience wants, instead of just advertising your services. In a traditional marketing model, you would simply “spread the word” about your business through print or online ads. With inbound marketing, you instead focus on providing valuable information or items your customers can use. For example, you might start with an ebook, a quiz, a checklist or a blog that your ideal customer might find useful. You dangle that content offer to get nibbles, and then follow-up with more direct advertising. 

How Can I Use Facebook Ads with Inbound Marketing?

Facebook ads are uniquely positioned to help guide a sale no matter where someone is in their buying process.

Attract

Facebook ads work by putting your content in front of new people who may have never heard of your business, or who aren’t fully aware of what you do. This is the perfect hotbed to attract new leads to your landing page or website. Make sure you’re attracting the right kind of leads by honing in on your target market.

Convert

We believe in working smarter, not harder. That’s why we’re big fans of integrating all your marketing tools so you can easily convert people who click on your ad into customers. We recommend HubSpot’s marketing platform for many reasons, but it really comes in handy when running Facebook ads – you can connect your ads directly to your HubSpot account to send them targeted content. Check out how it all works on HubSpot’s website.

Close

After someone engages with your ad and you’ve moved them into your sales process, now is when you can start pulling out fancy automation to really go inbound. Let’s say you’re advertising on Facebook for an upcoming seminar. Once someone clicks on your ad and signs up for the seminar, you can close the deal by sending them follow-up content. You could create a series of automated emails – starting with one thanking them for signing up and details on the event, then following up with another email sending them to a blog post they might find interesting and topping it off with a final email inviting them to reach out directly to one of your salespeople.

Delight

After you’ve successfully gotten some sales from your Facebook marketing, you can start using what you’ve learned to find more leads. Facebook lookalike audiences finds more leads for you by analyzing a list of people you put together and finding new people who match some of the same criteria. You can learn more about how it works on Facebook’s website.

You can also further use automation to continually reach out to those who have already become customers. Try sending them some emails or blogs that are related to topics they might find interesting. You can also invite them to sign up for upcoming seminars that are useful to them, or encourage them to pass along information to their network.

Facebook ads can streamline seamlessly into your inbound strategy, so long as you know how to make it work. 

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Free Checklist: Rev Up Your Marketing With Inbound

Years ago, running a marketing campaign meant developing creative, writing a check, and crossing your fingers that results would follow. The channels that marketers use today are different, but the same problem remains: disconnected tools and channels means it’s tough to measure results, and the experience for your leads often feels disconnected.

With this free checklist, you will be given a new framework for campaigns that solves all of these common marketing problems.

Need a new digital marketing or web design plan? We are a Minneapolis SEO, digital marketing, social media marketing, web design and HubSpot inbound marketing agency. We’re located just outside of Minneapolis. Stop on by and get started – and while you’re here, pick up a free honey stick (yes, we love our bee-related theme).