Four Facebook ad campaigns you should be running to attract and retain investors

With around one-fifth of the world’s population on Facebook, you would think generating brand awareness and leads from it would be a piece of cake. The reality is less straight forward. With a complex algorithm and other advertisers vying for your audience, you need to think outside of the box when it comes to promoting on Facebook.

Fortunately, we have come up with an integrated, four-step campaign for Facebook ads, designed specifically for P2P lending and crowdfunding platforms looking to increase brand awareness and investor registrations.

Before you start, you need to make sure that the Facebook tracking pixel is on your website, otherwise this won’t work for you. For more information, clickhere.

1. The attention grabber
   It’s often said that it is easier to sell to an existing customer then it is to attract a new one, but in order to grow your investor base, you have to find a way to get new ones on board. The first step is letting investors know you exist.
   Facebook helpfully structures its campaign types into three types: awareness, consideration and conversion. The first campaign in our sequence of four is, therefore, a brand awareness campaign. The campaign can be a video, a link to an interesting blog post or a page likes ad: either way, the aim is to create interest in your product and drive visitors to your website.
2. The lead grabber
   Now you’ve started driving traffic to your website, you need to convert some of it into names and email addresses that you can target. If your Facebook pixel has been setup correctly, you will be able to re-target Facebook users who have already been to your website and shown an interest in what you have to offer.
   Now you are ready to choose a campaign from the Consideration stage. I recommend you choose a Lead Generation campaign. Your aim here is to offer a piece of content that warrants someone handing over his or her contact details. These contact details will allow you to nurture leads through marketing channels other than just Facebook, such as email marketing. We strongly recommend a marketing automation system here, such as Constant Contact, which will allow you to automate this process and gain valuable insight into your leads' behaviour.
3. The sign-up
   Now you’ve got a pool of data that has shown further interest in what you offer, it is time to convert them into registrations. In the Pixels tab of your Facebook ads account, create a new audience of people that have downloaded your content offer, but haven’t registered. Once this has been built, select the ‘Conversions’ campaign as your objective, which is located under the Conversion stage. Now create an ad that encourages Facebook users to register as an investor. More often than not, the initial sign up to be an investor is free, so make this clear in your ad to help increase the number of conversions. As with all your ads, make sure they comply with the FCA regulations!
4. The retainer
   Do you remember me saying it was easier to sell to an existing customer?
   The fourth and final campaign you need to create is another Conversions campaign, but this time, your target audience is only those that have signed up. Here you should be promoting the investment opportunities available on your platform.
   Using the power of your Facebook pixel, you can create ads for each investment opportunity, and choose which investments to promote based on each user’s behaviour. For example, if Investor A has invested in Investment A, but not Investment B, you can prevent ads showing for Investment A, and only show ads for Investment B.
   The rate of conversion here should be a lot higher, and a lot more cost effective than promoting existing deals to people who are not as far down the buying cycle.

There you have it, the days of getting nothing for your Facebook ad spend are over!

Case Study: The Replace Base

An online retailer of mobile device repairs and replacement parts

If you would like to see some of the paid social media advertising campaigns we have managed for our clients, click here.