Why You Have Facebook Traffic But Still No Sales
We’ve had a few clients tell us that “I’m running ads and have Facebook traffic but still no sales!” If you want to get quick results, then running Facebook ads is one of the best ways to go. But paying for Facebook ad campaigns without making sales is a sure fire way to burn through any ad budget.
The payoff is that once you’ve profitably set up Facebook traffic, it’s easy to scale up and make really big profits. The reason that so many people fail and give up on paid ads is simple.
Most people don’t realize that Facebook traffic is different from the other and so they mistakenly treat all their different traffic sources the same.
The traffic coming from Facebook is made up of people with low motivation.
Now, this doesn’t mean that traffic coming from Facebook can’t be highly profitable, this couldn’t be further from the truth. It just means that your strategy for traffic from Facebook needs to be handled differently.
The mindset of someone coming from a Facebook ad is different to the mindset of someone specifically looking for your store.
Scenario 1: Let’s take an example and say we run a store selling yoga apparel and equipment… If someone types in “YolkYogaGear.com” into their browser we know they are already familiar with our store. They now exactly what to type, maybe they’ve visited before or maybe someone at their yoga class told them our URL because we have theeee most comfortable yoga pants.
They are specifically looking to buy some yoga apparel from us – Yolk Yoga Gear. They’re highly motivated and focused on seeing what we have in store for them. They have a real reason for looking and probably something particular in their minds they want to buy.
It’s similar to if they type “Yolk yoga gear” into google because they may not know if we are .com or .au but they are still specifically looking to buy from us, not GenericYogaGear.com or DiscountYogaGear.co.au.
This motivated shopper’s user experience will be landing on our homepage, browsing through our collections and looking at products they like. Then they will hopefully go through our add-to-cart and finally check out.
It’s similar when someone clicks a link they found on a referral site.
Scenario 2: Now, let’s say our same yoga apparel store runs Facebook ads…. A potential visitor using Facebook is scrolling around procrastinating from work looking at their newsfeed of pictures. They see pics of a friend’s new baby, a workmate complaining about Trump’s tweets… then they see our ad “BUY OUR YOGA APPAREL”.
Most people will keep scrolling down their newsfeed looking at pics of their old classmates.
But some people will think “Hmmm, I like my yoga class, I guess I could get a new pair of leggings or top if it’s worth my time.” They click on our ad because they are interested in the possibility of where it might take them. We might have the best quality unique yoga tanks or low-cost deals that convince them to buy.
They have no clear objective, their motivation is low – we must make it easy for them. Remember, these people don’t know our brand. They’ve never heard of us before. They don’t know what type of quality we focus on, or our shipping and returns policy – nothing.
They are just curious enough to do the bare minimum before they become distracted and leave.
The reason that you have Facebook traffic but still no sales could be because people like this may not be looking to buy anything at all. And this is why we must treat them differently.
For Facebook traffic, it’s important that we get as quickly as we can to the point.
The longer it takes, the more likely they’ll leave. And if we make them do any work like clicking away from popups, they’ll probably just go back to looking at their Facebook feed or go grab a cup of coffee.
A Big Part Of The Puzzle Is Deciding Exactly Where To Send Facebook Ad Traffic
The destination we send the traffic to must logically link up to the ad they clicked on. If we were advertising a specific product in our ad, take them straight to that product. If we were advertising a flash store sale, direct them to a collection or homepage that advertises that sale.
Sending traffic to a page that doesn’t flow on from your ad means that visitors will leave.
Your Homepage
Sending traffic to your Homepage gives visitors information about what makes you different. It shows how you stand out from the competition. If you have storewide policies like free shipping or sales, say so.
But, only send them to your homepage if it’s really easy to navigate from there. Good graphics and features that make it very clear where they should go are essential so traffic has a clear roadmap of where to go to click and buy.
Your Collections
Sending traffic to your collections can cause decision fatigue. Faced with too many choices many people get confused, give up and leave – especially if they’re not highly motivated to begin with.
If you send people to a page with more than three products, they’re now technically “shopping around.” It’s effort for them, they spend a minute or two looking before they get a new email or remember to pay a bill so they open a new tab and you’ve just lost that traffic forever.
Your Starring Product
The best method is to show people targeted ads about one single product. Then sending them to a simple version of your product page that includes some info about your brand is easy.
Your ad featuring one product links with the product page they land on. It gets to the point without creating any hurdles for your audience. Making visitors click extra clicks is more work and increases your chance of having Facebook traffic but still no sales.
How To Set Up Properly and Avoid Having Facebook Traffic But Still No Sales
1. Make a top-notch page
The first step is to make sure your site and the page you’re sending your traffic to is top notch. Be sure to avoid these common mistakes that will mean you won’t make sales. There’s no point in wasting money paying for good traffic going to a site that doesn’t convert into sales. It’s damaging to your brand and your pocket.
2. Spend smaller amounts on several campaigns
This way you can see what works best. Instead of $500 on one campaign, spend smaller amounts on multiple. Begin with $20 on 5 different campaigns or $10 on 10 campaigns to see how things play out.
3. Set your target demographic very wide
You don’t want to leave out groups of buyers based on false assumptions before the Facebook algorithm ‘learns’ who likes what you have on offer. And once you get to know your demographic better you can fine-tune your targeting.
4. Try out many combinations – Experiment
Play around with a lot of ad sets. Part of Facebook ads is luck who randomly sees and clicks. Two identical ads can yield different results, especially in the beginning. The dataset starts small and the algorithm by chance will be quickly picking up your target audience in one ad compared to the other identical ad.
5. Make highly engaging ads, and monetize them
Be open to trying new things. What you initially think will work well, might not be so good in practice, so try different combinations of graphics and wording – and try different products too.
6. Take note of what works and what doesn’t
If you are spending $10 a day, cull out by pausing anything that doesn’t work after 3 days. You don’t want to flog a dead horse, but don’t kill things off too quickly before the Facebook algorithm has a chance to learn anything.
7. Make manual tweaks
Facebook is good at optimizing but it shouldn’t be left alone for weeks to churn through your entire budget without delivering real results.
8. Look at where people are dropping off
If you have Facebook traffic but still no sales you’ll need to look closely at visitor behavior.
If they land on your page after clicking the ad only to leave immediately, there’s a problem. High bounce rates probably is because your page doesn’t deliver what your ad promised it would. If you have a lot of people getting to the checkout but no sales, make sure your checkout processor is working.
9. Continuously learn
What is working and what’s not is really important to optimizing the ad process and increasing profitability through ad spend. This is a moving target, especially in the fashionable niches, what worked last month may not perform the same this month.
If you want to talk about your site you can contact our friendly team here.