Facebook is an excellent source of traffic for businesses that are actively seeking out website visitors. It’s an easy platform for engagement and has an incredibly wide reach. But before you go investing in Facebook traffic, make sure you know what you’re doing.
It’s easy to assume that Google and search-engine optimization are the most important factors when it comes to driving traffic to your website. This may not be the case any longer, though.
Data shows that Facebook is actually the No. 1 source of referred traffic for hundreds of the largest news and media outlets on the internet, including Wired, The Atlantic, Mashable, Business Insider and The Next Web. It’s likely that Facebook is—or could be—your highest-returning traffic-referral source, too.
There are a variety of strategies for driving Facebook traffic to your site, and you have to consider them all. You also need to think about what you’re doing with that traffic once it’s referred to your website. It’s a meaty subject with lots of valuable information to chew on, but here are a few tips that you should find helpful:
Educate leads before the click
When it comes to Facebook traffic, there are a few different stages involved in the conversion funnel. The first involves getting users to click on a link or advertisement that will ultimately take them to your website. If you’re taking users to landing pages, there isn’t a whole lot of qualifying that needs to be done in advance. But if you’re taking visitors directly to a product page, pre-click education is extremely important.
Take this page from Estate Diamond Jewelry as an example. The page is clearly for high-end customers who have the financial resources and desire to purchase nice jewelry. The average individual isn’t going to spend $8,000 to $15,000 on an engagement ring. So, in order to avoid high bounce rates or wasted ad spend, it’s necessary that leads be properly educated before they click. They need to understand that the page features high-end jewelry.
Pre-click education can happen in a variety of ways—providing specific product details, showing accurate images or even directly mentioning the price. The point is that users need to have realistic expectations.
Make the most out of images
Did you know that Facebook posts with images get roughly 120 percent more engagement than posts that lack photos? In fact, Facebook posts with images perform better across the board, no matter what metric you look at.
If you want to drive valuable traffic to your website, image selection has to be a primary focal point. Low-quality stock photos won’t cut it. You need high-resolution imagery that’s unique and relevant to your value offering.
For a standard Facebook post, go with full-size images. The recommended upload size is 1,200 pixels by 630 pixels. You can read a bit more on how to select the best image size for Facebook ads, but the new platform automatically resizes in most instances. (HubSpot’s Facebook feed is a wonderful example of how to properly use full-size images.)
It’s also worth noting that Facebook images with real people perform best. Whenever you have the option, include images of employees and customers over cheap graphics and logos. This is just another way of grabbing the attention of your followers and maximizing the exposure you’ve worked so hard to earn.
Get better at audience targeting
One of the things that sets Facebook apart from every other social networking site on the web is the robust audience targeting capabilities found within the native advertising platform. In 2017, it doesn’t get any better than this. The only question is, are you maximizing this opportunity?
There’s no excuse for driving poor-quality traffic to your website. There are so many different filtering and targeting features available on Facebook that you should only be funneling highly qualified leads to your site.
Specifically, you need to focus on things like recent purchase behavior and life events. You should also dig down deep by layering targeting options. This will help you weed out users who won’t end up converting further down the funnel.
Do you have a strategy?
Far too many businesses invest in Facebook without having a concrete strategy for driving traffic to their website. They’ll spend time building an audience or invest money into paid advertisements, but there’s no real strategy behind the scenes for how this traffic will be converted.
It may seem innocent enough to take a “wait and see” approach, but failing to develop a strategy for properly funneling Facebook traffic to your website and converting visitors into customers is a costly mistake.
Now’s the time to get your act together and begin strategizing.
Larry Alton is an independent business consultant specializing in social media trends, business, and entrepreneurship. Follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Image courtesy of JayLazarin/iStock.