In July 2016 a manufacturing company of lighting and decor came to Boomtown seeking to redesign their entire website in hopes to diversify sales. At this point, the majority of the sales were solely from vendors. The website had low, flatlining sales from after the redesign. The was no website SEO optimization on-page or off-page. In May 2017, the retail company initially commissioned Boomtown to post organic posts for their Facebook feeds, to create brand awareness and cause traffic to the website. There was no traffic going to the website from organic posts, and as a result, they were flatlining sales. The company’s Facebook page had less than 500 followers with less than a 40 viewer reach. Boomtown suggested to increase sales using Facebook Advertising was the best option with the least risk.
Methods To Increase Sales Using Facebook Advertising
- To drive brand awareness & exposure.
- To build credibility & authority both in the industry and in the minds of consumers.
- To increase all social media traffic to the website (referrals, direct, and organic searching after seeing an ad).
- To increase conversions.
- Visits to the site.
- Placing an item into a shopping cart and purchasing.
Create three different types of Facebook Ad campaigns directed at different stages in the buying process. This will create brand awareness and increase the traffic to the site, leading to an increase in purchases for those further in the sales. In order to build credibility, for the beginning stages of the sales funnel, periodically posting relevant articles that are also share-worthy from news sites. For those viewers in the mid-cycle of the funnel, creating seasonal ads with coupons. The viewers further in the sales process/funnel, there post remarking ads to all those viewers that visited the website and all that put items in their shopping cart.
Posting articles that were relevant to the season and attaching recommended products to the articles. The intention is to cause brand-association with interesting news topics.
Ads were created to advertise seasonal specials and coupons advertising to the geographic locations that were of highest concentration to the website and the audience to the Facebook page with the highest engagement. This created further brand awareness and exposure to audiences that had the highest conversion rates (purchases and site traffic).
Once the mid-cycle conversions successfully led traffic to the website, Facebook tracked these viewers and remarked to them. – In addition to the ads that were still being seen from Phase 2.
There was an overall increase in all KIPs across the board after a 90-day test period of ONLY using Facebook ads to advertise for the e-commerce company. Not only did the Facebook page-follows increase from 435 followers to 1,278 followers, but the website traffic also increased by 40%. There was a significant increase in gross sales over the period due to the Facebook Advertising, with a $1,244 ad-spend the company saw $14,577 in gross sales from online purchases. (in 7 months prior to the social media advertising the company had a total of $7,696 in gross sales, averaging $1,099 per month).