Mar 8, 2021
FB Ads Not Working? Did you try B.E.L.T?
A simple 4-step guide to $$$!
In today’s digital world, one of the easiest forms of advertising is Facebook ads.
It’s fairly easy to set up, can be monitored/optimised, and if the right strategies are applied — you can even get the required sales.
I know that’s a generic statement but that is also the truth!
Advertisers often get entangled in the purchase objective, driving the highest ROI, getting the maximum sales that they forget the most important thing — you need to talk to your audience before you ask them out on a date :)
I understood the B.E.L.T (Belief.Engage.Lead.Transact) method in depth in the CXL Growth Marketing minidegree. The lessons were taught by the expert Curt Maly (Founder, Black Box Social Media) who invented the method and has been using it for the last decade.
He has had tremendous experience implementing this method on numerous clients. Hence, it’s tried and tested.
Before diving deep into B.E.L.T, there are a few scenarios that you need to understand:
a) Full funnel strategy
As mentioned earlier, we end up focusing only on conversion without even reaching enough people who we can retarget.
Here is a pictorial representation:
In simple words, the small portion in orange is the audience you’re focusing on. There are much larger audiences in blue, pink, green, etc.
Don’t get me wrong, every person on planet earth is not your customer but there is a sizeable audience for any audience (unless, you’re selling something super niche)
b) The types of audience
As per Eugene Schwartz (one of the best marketers to have ever lived), your audience can be split into 5 sections:
The type of content/information you should ideally share with each type of audience is also given above.
c) TOFU, MOFU, BOFU
The levels of awareness can be taken to the next level:
TOFU — Top Of FUnnel
- This is the audience who are either not aware of your brand or are not aware that they have a problem
- The audience need to be educated here — not about your brand but about the problem
- Retargeting is never done for the upper funnel audience because they wouldn’t understand what’s happening
For example, if you’re selling cameras, use the following content here:
- Why photography is a fun hobby
- Technical details about photography
- 5 DSLR tips & tricks
MOFU — Middle Of FUnnel
- They have heard about your brand but don’t know too much
- They need to see content and the ads. Treat it like a newspaper phase — you see both content and ads
Example content ideas:
- Talk more about the brand
- Mention about the various product offerings
- An unboxing video of a particular model
BOFU — Bottom Of FUnnel
- This is the audience who have heard about your brand, understand the product features and are comparing your product with another brand
- All retargeting ads should be aimed at this audience
Example content ideas:
- FAQs
- Social Proof
- Testimonials
- USPs
B.E.L.T
a) Belief — Help the audience believe that they have a need and realize that your business can help fulfill that need.
Goal — awareness of product and problem
b) Engage — Help the audience to evaluate why your offer is best positioned to give them the solution they need.
Goal — nurture and engage with the prospect
c) Lead — Help the audience to a clear next step by leading them to your solution or by offering them something in value in exchange for their information
Goal — lead prospect to your solution
d) Transact — Help the audience do business with you through offers and retargeting
Goal — get prospect to do business with you
In detail
a) Stage 1 — Belief
- Often, many advertisers use 1 of the objectives for the upper funnel activities. If possible use 2 or 3 of them here because the Facebook algorithm can find the suitable audience based on the objective
- The content should ideally educate and excite the audience about the product
- Tip — post engagement has lower cost for video views than the video views objective
b) Stage 2 — Engage
- Audience need to be nurtured and educated further in this stage
- Educate your audience more in this stage, don’t push them with the sell
Someone once told Jeff Bezos:
“It’s great you’re selling books online”
He responded “I don’t want people to like the books. I want them to like the checkout process, the reviews, ratings, and the experience.”
We all know where Amazon is today.
c) Stage 3 — Lead
- The audience would be considering your product at this stage
- The Leads objective would be useful here but there are a few concerns:
- The Facebook form is auto-populated and it wouldn’t be their updated email id
- Since the effort is less, they may have hit submit by mistake
Solution? — Create a landing page and optimise for landing page views
- If you run only conversion objective and expect Facebook to magically find you customers — it doesn’t work that way. Hence having a full funnel approach helps reaching the right audience
d) Stage 4 — Transact
- Show me the money! stage
- In this stage, run retargeting ads to the customers you have built up in the above funnels
- Tip — Don’t start 2 days before a big sale
For example, if you have big offers for the Black Friday sale, start running the ads from Nov 1st and start educating the audience about your product. Closer to the sale, the ads are expensive and there is a lot of competition
The principles are straightforward and can be applied to your current campaigns/clients/business etc.
It may require additional budgets because it’s a full funnel approach now but it’s the right step forward and will definitely pay off in the long run.
To recap
a) Belief — Inform the audience about the problem
b) Engage — Nurture them further, mention about your product and the problem
c) Lead — Talk specifically about your product/service
d) Transact — Retarget the customers and talk about your USPs
