Are you getting hundreds of clicks from your ads but no sales?
Starting to lose faith with Facebook ads? This is one of the common struggles you will have when starting out, and certainly one that I had for SO long with my subscription box trying to get people to sign up.
Most people think it’s their site itself that is the reason people aren’t buying, and sometimes it is, but there are a few other places to look when trying to diagnose this issue.
I recommend these 3 places to start looking.
Who am I? I’m a co-founder of BusterBox, a subscription box that’s sold over $1.4M in a dog toys subscription box.
- Intent
What is your campaign objective?
A common mistake when creating a campaign is to use the wrong objective for your ads. What you may think is you want to maximise the bang for your buck in terms of visitors to your site, because statistically the more people you have on your site the more likely it is that someone will buy.
And yes, I get it. On the surface this makes sense because in real life whenever you see a busy store that’s full of people, for example a clothes store. Invariably you see a line of people with their credit cards out and hands full of clothes waiting to buy, and stressed cashiers struggling to get through the line of people handing them money.
Online, and especially with Facebook, this works slightly differently. Facebook is actually so powerful that it knows a lot about the people that use it (no shit). They have usage data on every one of their users and they know which actions they are likely to take when browsing the news feed. So when you set your campaign objective to optimise for traffic, then Facebook will find the most likely people to click over to your site (I.E. give you traffic).
This will mean that your ads will be more likely to be shown to people that often click on links on the newsfeed and read articles, visit online stores, enter competitions and other things like that.
What Facebook won’t do is find the people most likely to actually buy anything from your site or subscribe to your box. In order to have the best chance of making sales, you must always use the conversion objective. This means Facebook will put your ads in front of the people that the algorithm thinks is most likely to buy from you.
Now one thing to note, the conversion objective is the most expensive objective you can use on Facebook. Why? Because they know this drives the needle for you, and they charge you more to show your ads to people most likely to make a purchase. Facebook is a business after all.
One way to counteract this higher cost? Make great ads, and test 3-4 ads to see which ones resonate best with your audience. If your audience likes your ads, and they like to click on them, then this will increase the percentage of people that click on them (click-through rate) and should also reduce your cost per click (CPC). Giving you more clicks and (hopefully) making you more sales for the same ad cost.
- Trust
OK, so sometimes it is your site.
People buy from people, and only from people they trust. When you are just starting your subscription box then you have no reputation and an unrecognisable brand name. Is this a big deal? Yes, it is.
Think about it this way, when you go to a website, you can look around all you want and there’s pretty much nothing bad that can happen to you or your bank account. You could get a virus on your phone or something, but realistically it’s unlikely.
When you go to buy something from a website. Now a lot of bad shit can happen. What if my card details are stolen, my bank account is emptied and the bank won’t reimburse me?
What if I buy this product and it never arrives and they won’t refund me? What if it’s complete crap and the owner of the site starts arguing with me back and forth over email for 10 days and refuses to refund me and I have to call the bank for a chargeback, I haven’t got time for that.
Then they think “OK, let me have a look at the domain name and brand.” “Oh, I’ve never heard of them before, I don’t know who they are, where they’re from, or if I can trust them. Better safe than sorry, time for me to leave.”
Bye-bye ad spend.
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Even if people like your products, they don’t like them enough to go through stress, annoyance and anger over them. It’s much easier to order from Amazon because they can open a case and get refunded if there’s any issues.
So how do we calm the nerves and counter these objections? The first step is to be aware of them, so I hope this post was helpful for you for that, at least.
Then, make sure your site has the following things before you start to run traffic to it:
- Good Reviews (not fake)
- ‘About us’ page explaining who you are – not your products or suppliers
- Accessible support channels and contact info
- Clear return/refund policies – 30 Day money back
- Guarantee of delivery times and good service
Get to work adding these to your site and watch your sales increase.
Remember, one of the most powerful things you can have on your site is social proof. People want to buy what everyone else is buying. If you have subscribers get them to send you pictures or videos of them using and enjoying your products, and put them on your site. Use social proof to your advantage and make your site more likely to convert visitors into buyers.
- Offer
People that are coming over to your website from an ad have no intention of buying anything from you. Yes, even the people Facebook thinks are most likely to buy from you. They’ve just been looking at funny videos, pictures of friends and the latest viral trends while wasting some time on their phone before they have to get back to work or living their life.
This means if your ad has done its job and got someone to pay attention to you and click over to your site, then you have to quickly turn someone from bored and browsing Facebook, to Wow, I really want that right now!
How do we do this effectively? Create a brilliant offer. What would make someone think “I can’t miss this unbelievable deal!” This is what drives action and is the single most important factor in determining the results from your ads.
Could you toss something extra in for new customers? Include an extra item in their first box? Give something away for free that’s worth more to the customer than it is to you? Every business is different so try to come up with a perk or offer or discount that new customers get and make this the first thing somebody sees when they land on your site.
If you can, try to add some urgency to really get people to take action fast. Just be careful with this because fake urgency starts to lose its effect if people see your ads multiple times over 2 weeks and it says your ‘sale is ending in 24 hours’.
See what you can come up with to make a customer jump over themselves to subscribe to your box. Then watch your sales skyrocket when you figure out what offer is most effective at getting people to take action.
P.S. – One extra tip: 3A. Capture email addresses.
Sometimes people are just not ready to buy right away. Their credit card is upstairs, they are about to drop the kids to school, they’re on the bus to work and this is their stop.
You need to maximise the bang for your buck with ad spend and try and capture email addresses from your site visitors. Firstly you can retarget them on Facebook, but email is free, so try get an email address too.
Use a popup or collect their email in your order process (comply with GDPR). Use these emails to follow up with people that didn’t complete the purchase and nurture them, showing them the benefits of your product and nudging them back to your site to make a purchase.
To sum up, send the correct type of traffic to your site, make sure people trust you, and create an unbelievable offer. Follow these steps and you will see a big increase in subscribers fast.
If you have any questions about Facebook ads or email marketing for subscription boxes, let me know and I’d be happy to help!