Welcome to this week’s edition of the Social Media Marketing Talk Show, a news show for marketers who want to stay on the leading edge of social media.

On this week’s Social Media Marketing Talk Show, we explore new LinkedIn ads features and Snapchat partnering with Amazon on new visual search tools. Our special guest this week is AJ Wilcox.

Watch the Social Media Marketing Talk Show

If you’re new to the show, click on the green “Watch replay” button below and sign in or register to watch our latest episode from Friday, September 28, 2018. You can also listen to the show as an audio podcast, found on iTunes/Apple Podcast, Android, Google Play, Stitcher, and RSS.

For this week’s top stories, you’ll find timestamps below that allow you to fast-forward in the replay above.

LinkedIn Unveils Group Experience: LinkedIn rebuilt LinkedIn Groups “from the ground up” and began re-releasing it across mobile and desktop earlier this month. The new LinkedIn Groups experience offers more dynamic conversations with embeddable videos, multiple images, and other rich media in posts, alerts, and much more. LinkedIn states that all groups are currently being migrated to the new experience. (7:00)

LinkedIn Rolls Out Dynamic Ads to Campaign Manager: LinkedIn dynamic ads are now available to all businesses in Campaign Manager. These new dynamic ads will be automatically personalized based on publicly available information from LinkedIn’s member profiles and will leverage LinkedIn’s powerful advertising tools and templates. (14:08)

LinkedIn Rolls Out Automated Bidding for Sponsored Content: LinkedIn is rolling out automated bidding for sponsored content. This new tool uses “a powerful combination of machine learning and pacing algorithms… [to] find the perfect bid for your Sponsored Content campaigns to get you the most results.” (23:54)

Snapchat Partners With Amazon on New Visual Search Tools: Snapchat is testing a new way to search for products on Amazon right from the Snapchat camera. Snapchat users can simply point their camera at a physical product or barcode, then press and hold on the camera screen to get started. Once the item or barcode is recognized, an Amazon card will appear on-screen, surfacing a link for that product or similar ones available on Amazon. (31:23)

Engadget reports that Snapchat is rolling out this new feature slowly and is currently testing it with “a small percentage of users.”

Snapchat Expands Shoppable Snap Ads to All Advertisers: In addition to rolling out an integration with Amazon, Snapchat will make shoppable snap ads available to all advertisers via its self-serve ad-buying platform in October and is allowing advertisers to import product catalogs and other existing assets to automatically create story ads, snap ads, and the new shoppable snap ads. (36:05)

Snapchat also introduced new advanced pixel targeting features and announced the addition of more than 30 new agency partners tasked with helping advertisers build their eCommerce and direct response campaigns on the app.

Snapchat Adds Musical GIFs: Snapchat partnered with TuneMoji to enable users to send musical GIFs in chats and in stories. Business Insider notes that users will need to have both TuneMoji and Snapchat downloaded to send musical GIFs and they’ll have to open TuneMoji to select a GIF to send. They currently can’t open Snapchat and then send musical GIFs from inside the app. The two companies are working on a closer integration in the future. (38:17)

You can now send musical GIFs to Snapchat https://t.co/AkWXMYLp0p

— Business Insider (@businessinsider) August 23, 2018

Snap Inc. Debuts Two New Spectacles Styles and Announces Highlight Stories: Snap Inc. introduced two new styles of Spectacles: Nico and Veronica. The company also announced that later this fall, it will also roll out a new Snapchat feature that automatically curates your Spectacles snaps into a single highlight story. (40:05)

Meet Nico and Veronica.
Two new styles. Now with polarized lenses. #Spectacles. A new way to look. pic.twitter.com/88moPR1Ry0

— Spectacles (@Spectacles) September 5, 2018

Other News Mentioned

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Facebook is not only a great social media platform if you want to keep up with everything from your friends to the news, but it’s a great business tool that can be used to increase conversions, build a community, strengthen a brand, and more. With 1.47 billion daily active users, businesses can’t afford not to be using Facebook as part of their business and marketing strategy.

One of the best ways to utilize Facebook as a business tool is through Facebook ads; however, if they’re not optimized and working properly, then they can seem like more of a waste of time and money than a useful way to build your business and get conversions. Several things could cause your Facebook ads to fail, and if yours aren’t working how you want, then here are ten possible reasons why:

1.  You Aren’t Keeping Up with Facebook Ad Changes

Technology is always changing, and so are the policies, practices, and algorithms. As Facebook makes changes to everything from their algorithms to their core mission, Facebook ads, the way they work, and the practices to optimize them change too. If you’re not keeping up with those changes and adjusting your practices and campaigns as necessary, your campaigns are likely significantly less effective than before.

2.  You Aren’t Running Tests

Although there are guidelines and best practices to follow, each business is unique and so is each customer base, so there’s no way to know for sure that an ad will perform well until you test and prove it. If you’re coming up with ads, publishing them, and letting them run their course without looking at the analytics and seeing how they performed, then your Facebook ads will not work as well as they could.

3.  You Aren’t Making Adjustments as You Go

Not only is it important to test different ads and to analyze the results of each test, but it’s important to make adjustments accordingly. Even if you are looking at how certain ads performed, if you’re not adjusting your other ads to meet the standards that your ads that are performing well set, then you’re missing out on a lot of opportunities and not taking full advantage of the benefits that Facebook ads offer.

4.  You Don’t Know Your Customers Well Enough

83 percent of Facebook users are women and 75 percent are men, but those aren’t the only things you need to know when you start running Facebook ad campaigns. Age range, location, and other demographics factor in as well. But you need to take it even further and get to know your customers and ideal customers on a personal level—not just where they live and how old they are, but what their favorite brands are, whether or not they like dogs, where they vacation every year, and any other information applicable to your company and product. If you don’t know your customers well, you can’t target your Facebook ads well, making them much less effective than they could be.

5.  Your Copy is Uninteresting

What you write in your ad is extremely important, and if your copy is uninteresting and doesn’t grab the attention of your audience, then your ads aren’t going to be very effective. Your headline needs to grab attention, and the body copy should say what it is you’re selling and why your customer needs it, all in a few words.

6.  Your Copy Looks Spammy

Not only should your copy be interesting, but it should be clear and concise. If you’re throwing in too many fluff words or too much jargon, are using images that have too many words on them, or are using headlines that sound like clickbait, you’re probably turning your potential customers off and rendering your Facebook ads ineffective.

7.  Your Site is Unprofessional and Therefore Untrustworthy

What does your website or landing page that customers are taken to after clicking your ad look like? If it has a lot of text, flashing banners, pop-ups, unprofessional logos, and other inconsistencies, then it’s likely scaring off potential customers. Unprofessional translates to untrustworthy in the mind of many consumers and so your website could be counteracting all of the work your Facebook ads have done.

8.  Your Facebook Page Isn’t Current

Not only is it important to have a current, functional, professional website for potential customers to land on, but it’s also important to keep your Facebook page current and professional as well. If you’re not posting regularly, replying to comments and questions, and otherwise keeping your Facebook page up-to-date, it can be a point of concern for potential customers since they’ll wonder if you’re still in business, if you’re legitimate, and if they will even get an order that they place with you. Many customers will look into a company on Facebook, and if your page isn’t current, it could cost you that business and the price of the click on the ad.

9.  Your Budget is Too Low

You shouldn’t be pouring all of your money into just one marketing channel or another, but it’s important that you have an appropriate budget for each. If your budget for Facebook ads is too low, then your ads won’t get the running time or exposure that they may need to get the ROI you should be getting. You don’t need to overspend but having too low a budget could be causing your Facebook ads to fail.

10.  You Don’t Include Strong Calls to Action

Calls to action are an important part of any marketing. If you don’t include a strong call to action, people may not be inclined to click what they need to and make a conversion. If you’re using weak or generic calls to action on your Facebook ads, they may not be working as effectively as they could be. Using strong, enticing calls to action that evoke a sense of urgency or excitement is something you need to do if you want your Facebook ads to perform better.

An Effective Solution

A lot of things could be causing your Facebook ads not to work as effectively as they should be. You may not have the time or know-how to fix all of them and get things running like they need to be, though. For example, if you don’t have the time to keep up with changes to Facebook’s algorithms and policies, if you don’t know how to set the optimal budget, or if you don’t even have time to keep your Facebook page active and current, then working on making your Facebook ads more effective can be hard.

Instead of trying to take it all on yourself, hiring a trusted firm such as 180fusion may be the perfect solution to give you the results you need without having to hire extra employees or take too much time out of your schedule to figure things out on your own. Many times you can receive a free analysis, making it worth a shot if you want to start making the most of the Facebook ads that you have.

What do you think is causing your Facebook ads to fail?

Managing your Twitter followers can feel like a fulltime job, even for professional marketers. Wouldn’t it be great if you could just schedule a couple of tweets and then suddenly you had 10,000 super-engaged followers bringing you regular business?

Not going to happen. To make Twitter to work for you and your business, you need to be proactive in figuring out how to manage Twitter followers. And by proactive we mean having clear objectives, defining a routine and sticking to it.

All that takes time – marketers and small business people can end up spending over an hour a day working on their Twitter accounts. That’s time that could be better spent on other stuff that your business needs.

It’s possible to reduce your Twitter management time to just 10 minutes a day, but only if you define a clear strategy and make use of some of the social media management tools out there to help you.

Let’s break it down minute by minute to help you manage your Twitter followers in 10 minutes a day.

Forget the “how” for a second. Why do we need to manage followers?

Back up a minute. What does “manage twitter followers” mean exactly?

It means taking a proactive approach to who you follow and, perhaps more importantly, who follows you. Back in the early of Twitter, if someone followed you you usually followed them back. That seemed like the polite thing to do, right?

Polite, yes. But it’s not a good policy for several reasons. First, Twitter limits the number of accounts you can follow to 5000 (unless you’re a mega-influencer with tens of thousands of followers). That means if you’re following a lot of random accounts, you won’t be able to follow accounts that could really bring you value in the future.

Second, if your followers are entirely made up of bots or follow-for-follow accounts they will bring you minimal value. Twitter is a tool for meaningful connections that could turn into future collaborations. No one ever had a meaningful connection with a bot in some far-flung country (probably).

Thirdly, if you don’t stay on top of the number of accounts you follow and how your account interface is organised, your home-feed will become way too crowded and full of useless, spammy tweets.

So managing your Twitter followers is essential, not just for your Twitter reputation but also for your actual enjoyment of the tool. We’re going to address three main points for good follower management in this post:

1 – Finding new, relevant followers and convincing them to follow you

2 – Getting rid of followers who are harming your account and Twitter rep

3 – Interacting with the right followers at the right time

Before getting started on any of these, make sure you define your Twitter strategy and spruce up your profile. Now you’re ready to dedicate less than 10 mins a day to the task.

Finding new relevant followers – 2 minutes per day

Finding people to follow is one thing. Getting them to follow you back (organically) is a whole new challenge on top of that.

First up, how do you find relevant potential followers? These should be people who will help you reach your marketing objectives, will find your content valuable and will bring interesting information to your Twitter timeline.

Start off taking full advantage of the tools Twitter itself offers. If you haven’t already, Upload your Gmail or Outlook address to Twitter and select who you want to follow. You can do that by Clicking ‘Find people you know’ in the who to follow section of your profile.

Then go to Twitter’s advanced search feature. You can search people by keyword, language and location. You can even find all the people who @mention another Twitter user, and filter by date range.

To see how powerful this is, let’s take an example. You want to connect with social media marketers in New York, especially those who are fans of Twitter guru Mark Schaefer and wanted to engage him. Key @markwschaefer into the ‘To these accounts’ field of the advanced search form, restrict to 15 miles near NYC and click Search.

Twitter will bring up a ton of accounts. All you need to do is follow them and decide how you’re going to get them to follow you back. More on that soon.

There are also tools outside of Twitter’s own interface that can help and you find relevant followers. If you’re looking for a social media management tool that helps you identify potential new followers based on keywords and connections you could try Commun.it. The tool gives you daily updates on who’s following you, and recommends followers based on your interests and keywords.

You can also interact with potential new followers right from the Commun.it interface, which brings us on to our second point. How to get people to follow you once you’ve found them and identified them as relevant.

Convincing relevant accounts to follow you – 4 minutes

Put all the accounts you want to convert into followers into a Private Twitter list (they won’t be notified as long as it’s Private). Every day, spend a couple of minutes revising their tweets and conversations. Don’t worry, this isn’t creepy, all this information is public.

When your ideal followers tweet something that you can respond to, make sure you do by giving them something of value. Solve a problem they tweet about, send them a great piece of content that might make their day better, find a point of connection and bring something to the conversation.

Once you connect with your potential follower with something valuable for them, they’ll follow you back.

Getting rid of followers who are harming your account – 2 minutes

Managing your “bad” followers is just as important as managing your good ones. Bad followers will reduce your engagement, reduce your impact on the network and just downright spoil your Twitter experience.

So you need to identify those bad followers, and fast. Undesirable followers can be broken into 3 categories:

• Follow-for-Follow-back: These guys only follow you to see if you’ll follow them back. Then they slyly Unfollow you a day later. They get another follower, you get nothing in return. This is against Twitter’s TOS.
• Bots: Robots following you based on the keywords you tweet about
• Shucksters: All those people who’s bio reads “I wanted to take control of my life, work from home and earn millions of $… so I joined THIS PROGRAM…”. They’re schucksters and won’t bring any benefits to your timeline.

Identifying these harmful followers can seem like a mammoth task, especially once your followers number 200 or more.

Free tools like Twitter Audit help you identify bots that follow you. Of course then you have to go and search for each in your follower list and unfollow them.

Some Follow-for-Follow-back accounts will add a hashtag so you know what their deal is. But if they don’t identifying them is almost impossible without a social media management tool, because Twitter doesn’t send notifications about Unfollows.

To be able to identify these bad followers and get rid of them in fewer than 2 minutes a day, you need a social media management tool. There are plenty out there – choose one like Commun.it that identifies:

• Accounts who recently Unfollowed you
• Recommended accounts to Unfollow
• Accounts that don’t follow you and never have

Then just spend two minutes a day going through these suggestions and Unfollowing right there in the Commun.it interface. You don’t have to adhere to all the suggestions. This is the only way you’ll stay on top of undesirable followers and still keep your Twitter follower management to under 10 minutes a day.

Interacting with the right followers at the right time – 3 minutes

So you’ve got rid of bad followers and found good ones. The final part of your daily Twitter management is to start interacting with these valuable followers in the right way and at the right time.

Interaction is tricky. Your Twitter account is personal to you and therefore should be infused with your voice. Don’t pretend to be something you’re not, but don’t be rude and disinhibited either – it’s best practice to be courteous, curious and consistent.

Set up a regular schedule of posts you’re going to tweet out to keep followers engaged. Sadly you can’t schedule tweets to go out later from the Twitter interface itself, but you can use a management tool to set up a varied schedule of retweets and original tweets to go out to your audience weeks in advance. If you’re using Commun.it you can rely on the tool’s ‘best time to post’ feature, which chooses the optimum time to send out your tweets based on your audience.

Spend the extra minute here figuring out what are the best hashtags to use. You can use a directory like Hashtags.org to identify the hashtags that will work for you and engage potential followers.

How to manage Twitter followers in less than 10 minutes a day – conclusion

Proactively managing your followers on Twitter is a must-do if you want to find value via the social network. But being proactive can take up time that you should be dedicating to other things.

Luckily, with some smart tool use and a lot of self-organization, it’s possible to keep Twitter management to less than 10 minutes a day. Identify “good” and “bad” followers, and share the right content with the right people at the right time and you’ll see your Twitter engagement (and enjoyment!) increase fast.

Want your Facebook funnel to be more profitable? Wondering how Facebook lead ads can help?

To explore how to sell with Facebook lead ads in an unconventional way, I interview Oli Billson.

More About This Show

The Social Media Marketing podcast is designed to help busy marketers, business owners, and creators discover what works with social media marketing.

In this episode, I interview Oli Billson. He’s a business growth expert who specializes in direct response and marketing automation. He’s co-host of Path to Purchase Podcast, and his course is called Next Level Growth.

Oli explains why a mobile-only funnel that collects phone numbers helps you have conversations that improve sales.

You’ll also discover tips for setting up Facebook lead ads, qualifying leads, and texting with prospects.

How to Sell With Facebook Lead Ads featuring insights from Oli Billson on the Social Media Marketing Podcast.

Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below.

Listen Now

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Here are some of the things you’ll discover in this show:

Facebook Funnel with Lead Ads

Oli’s Story

Oli grew up in the UK, and at a young age, he became a high-performance tennis player who played all over the world. After he fell out of love with tennis, he needed another way to channel his energy. He’d always looked up to his father, who was in business, so when Oli was 15 years old, he started his first business building custom computers.

The business grew quickly, and soon he was exporting computers to Asia. Oli went on to build several businesses fairly organically and through mainstream media advertising. Then in 2003, he started advertising with Google AdWords. At the time, pay per click was new, and the ads had amazing results with cheap leads and quality customers.

Because Oli believes no one should rely on a single traffic source, he was quick to start running ads when Facebook introduced its advertising platform. Google AdWords was intent-based, whereas Facebook ads worked more like display advertising. Oli viewed Facebook ads as a huge opportunity to dial into all of the demographic and psychographic details for audience targeting.

Today, Oli spends most of his time running Next Level Business, an eLearning platform that helps entrepreneurs and business owners grow their businesses beyond seven figures. He also runs an agency called Oliver Billson that does marketing and consulting for thought leaders.

Listen to the show to hear more about Oli’s experience with Google AdWords.

Common Facebook Funnel Mistakes

When your sales process relies on someone having a conversation with a prospect to make the sale, the funnel needs to collect information that helps you have that conversation. Often, funnels that don’t work aren’t designed with this end conversation in mind. Instead, these funnels focus on activity at the top of the funnel.

For instance, a funnel might generate leads, but those leads don’t convert into prospects with whom you can have a quality conversation and make a sale.

Traditionally, marketers generate brand awareness through advertising on various broadcasting media or online, and then the sales team actually talks to people. Now that almost everything is sold online, the sales process has lost a little bit of the human touch. There are still plenty of products, though, that require the seller to talk through the sale with potential customers.

Oli has found that even when an automated, end-to-end marketing sales funnel with Facebook Ads is working, it’s not as profitable as it could be. So retooling your funnel to focus on conversations has a lot of side benefits over an automated sales process.

Listen to the show to hear Oli share more about who can use marketing and sales tactics focused on conversations.

The Best Way to Sell With Facebook Lead Ads

Oli finds most people focus on driving Facebook traffic offsite using the Conversions objective. This approach is great if you want to send people to a landing page, offer value, collect information, and bring them into a funnel. However, in a funnel focused on having a conversation, Oli recommends using lead ads, which provide a form users fill out so you can collect phone numbers.

Although you may have used lead ads without success in the past, most people use them to collect an email address instead of a phone number. Many people sign into Facebook with an email they rarely use every day, whereas the phone numbers they provide often don’t change and are more likely to be valid.

Also, many people provide their phone number to Facebook for security purposes. Lead ads can pre-populate with that information, which takes friction out of the process.

For the lead ad your audience sees in their news feed, a video that offers value works well. To illustrate, the video might share a case study or a demo.

When setting up the form for a lead ad, Oli makes all of the fields required. First, he asks for the user’s name so he can personalize the follow-up. Then he asks for a phone number and email. The email is a secondary follow-up option. Finally, he asks a custom question: “Can we instantly text you a link to the video?” In the form, the user can select Yes or No from a drop-down menu.

For this funnel to work effectively, you also need to target only people on mobile. With this targeting, the ad and the response to the ad are congruent. Because the ad asks to text the user a link to the video, users who are using a smartphone are more likely to agree and receive the text right away, in the most convenient way possible. Oli finds that about 85% of people say, “Yes, text me a link.”

With this approach to lead ads, you deliver a message that’s almost 100% likely to be opened because open rates on text messages are so high. You also open channels of communication you’ll need in the sales process. And you can pass all of the contact information from the lead ad form to your CRM and autoresponder system (Infusionsoft, Ontraport, or ActiveCampaign, to name a few).

After your lead ad collects the desired information, you need to qualify the leads. You want leads who are inclined to buy and know what you offer, how much it costs, and all of the other things that overcome real obstacles to a sale. When you qualify leads, you educate them about your product and create hoops for people to jump through so you talk with only the most qualified people.

Listen to the show to hear my thoughts about the email address users provide to Facebook.

Phone Numbers Versus Facebook Messenger

Although Messenger bots are popular, Oli focuses on phone numbers over Messenger because text messages are more convenient. He also wants leads to complete steps in which they make micro-commitments to his company. Most marketers want people to move through a funnel quickly, but Oli wants to slow the process down so he can find the most qualified leads.

With text messages, Oli is also able to move people’s attention away from Facebook and onto a page where he has their full focus and attention.

If you do use Messenger, you can create a ManyChat URL on the lead ad’s thank-you screen. Like a ManyChat button on your website, the URL can subscribe people to ManyChat after they complete your lead ad form. ManyChat can then be another way to follow up with people who respond to your lead ad. The ManyChat URL can also help you respond if people want to talk right away.

Listen to the show to hear my thoughts on the limitations of Messenger versus phone numbers.

An Example of the Phone Funnel Framework

To explain the phone funnel framework in more detail, Oli shares an example of a business that sells franchises. These franchises are high-ticket sales of $25,000. For this example, the Facebook lead ad offers a case study video. Anyone who fills out the lead ad form receives a text with a link to the video. When they open that link on their mobile device, they see a primer video page.

A primer video page is a simple web page with a video from the founder of the franchise. The purpose of the page is to slow down the process and frame the video people are about to watch. The page also creates a transition from Facebook to a long informational video, which is like a webinar. Without the primer page, the funnel would lose people.

The content of the primer page thanks people for opening the link and whets people’s appetite for the video by explaining what’s in it. At the end, the page acknowledges people’s pain points by saying something like, “If you’re looking to quit the 9 to 5 and escape the rat race, then this video is definitely for you.” Basically, the text reaffirms that people are in the right place.

Then people see a primer video. This face-to-camera video creates a connection and the feeling of a conversation, much like the actual conversation the business hopes to have later with very qualified leads. The primer video is only about 2-3 minutes and sets up the main video. At the end of the primer video, the speaker asks the viewer to click a button to watch the main video.

By the time leads reach the main video, they understand the video is about 25 minutes so they can set aside time to watch it. If they don’t watch it, Oli and his team know because they track the link from the text message and whether recipients watch the primer video. If someone doesn’t watch a video, contingencies get them back on track.

The ultimate goal is for people to watch the main event video. Oli has run millions of dollars worth of just-in-time webinars for clients. The metrics show people make a purchase, schedule a call, or take another action only if they consume the webinar. Thus the phone funnel framework is beneficial because people engage throughout the process. People who get to the main event video watch it.

In the main event video for the franchise, the video shares three or four points that explain what the franchise is about, who the franchise is for, who it’s not for, why the speaker is knowledgeable about the topic, and so on. The end of the video segues to the idea that the viewer has two choices: implement their own idea or schedule a call to discuss their unique situation.

Because the prospect is on a mobile phone, Oli asks them to text the word success (or another trigger keyword). This tactic is also convenient but presents a small hurdle that ensures you talk with qualified people. After someone texts the keyword, they receive a link to schedule a conversation automatically, which is another way to slow the process and screen for highly qualified leads.

When you do have a conversation with a prospect, the video can then be a conversation starter. You can ask what people think of the concepts or tactics the video introduces and whether the prospect has any questions about what they learned.

For this franchiser, by the end of 2017, Oli’s Facebook lead ads generated about 12,500 leads from cold Facebook traffic. The franchiser spent $90,000 on ads so each lead cost about $7. (This cost per lead was the same as what the franchiser was spending before with an automated webinar.)

Then the phone funnel framework generated 624 phone appointments, which cost $144 per appointment. From the phone appointments, Oli’s client sold 34 franchises at $25,000, which isn’t bad for them and totaled $850,000 in revenue. So looking at the Facebook ad spend, the cost of acquisition was $2,600, and the franchise owner got a 9.5 times return on ad spend.

The phone funnel framework also simplified the technical setup and improved the sales process in other ways. Consumption of the main video increased significantly, resulting in higher-quality conversations. Because incoming leads were more qualified, the company reduced the number of franchise coordinators (from six to one), outbound calls, and lead-to-buy time (by 21 days).

Oli says you can use this approach for any business such as a high-ticket coaching company, a consulting business, an agency, a SaaS business, or even a brick-and-mortar business. The framework is applicable anytime you want people to schedule a time on your calendar to talk with you. Oli has used this tactic successfully for price points as low as $1,000.

Many businesses are surprised by the idea of using salespeople instead of an automated process for a $1,000 price point. However, what Oli has found is that the sales conversations significantly shorten the lead-to-buy time compared to autonomous sales.

For any business that needs to have a conversation to sell its product, reducing lead-to-buy time is important. You want to move the leads your Facebook ads generate toward quality sales conversations, and by texting those leads, you can use your sales staff like a customer support mechanism such as live chat. Those text conversations can then bubble up to phone calls.

With texting, leads can also communicate in the way they want to communicate. When you send emails every day, the recipient feels like the company is relentless in its attempts to sell something. However, when you’re casually texting people, the experience feels totally different, and people are more likely to text you back if you ask the right questions.

Listen to the show to hear Oli and me discuss how Social Media Examiner could use his framework to sell sponsorships for Social Media Marketing World.

How to Text With Prospects

Oli says automating and tracking an SMS message is pretty simple. If you use Infusionsoft, you can send the messages with Fix Your Funnel. If you don’t use Infusionsoft, you’ll want to use YetiText, which connects with many popular autoresponder services.

Although the text messages are mostly automated, the recipient can reply to any of them. To illustrate, for every milestone in that process, contingencies are automated to get people back to the appropriate milestone in the funnel. However, if someone needs to cancel the call, they can still simply text you, and you can reschedule them if necessary.

Oli then explains what the automated contingencies are: if someone requests the video but doesn’t click to watch the primer video, if someone watches the primer video but not all of the main event video, if someone watches the main event video but doesn’t text the keyword, and if someone texts the keyword but doesn’t schedule. When those situations occur, the lead receives an automated text.

Listen to the show to hear my thoughts on the advantages of communicating via text messages.

Discovery of the Week

Zest is a tool for anyone who’s searching for new sources that curate content.

Websites like Zest are important because Facebook algorithms rarely show content people share on Facebook anymore. Zest is specifically for content about marketing, and users can pick, submit, and upvote anything they like. You can sort content by category, most recent, the number of clicks received, or the number of shares. You can also sort by video or audio content.

The Zest website is easy to use. When you create an account, you can personalize the setup. For instance, you can check the tags that interest you to curate your feed. You can also view the content in different modes, including tile (which is a bit like Pinterest), news (which shows just the headlines), or explore (which is a mix of both).

Zest is a great place to search for marketing information on a specific topic, and it’s free.

Listen to the show to learn more and let us know how Zest works for you.

Key takeaways from this episode:

What do you think? What are your thoughts on using Facebook lead ads to collect phone numbers? Please share your comments below.