Today, B2B marketers engage with their prospects and clients through various social media channels, but Facebook is currently the most successful method. According to research by Social Media Examiner in 2022, 90% of B2B marketers use Facebook to connect with their customers and prospects, outranking other successful platforms such as Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
Despite the top performance of Facebook in B2B marketing, most engineering firms that try this option end up with not much to show for their efforts. Fortunately, in this post, we've identified nine common reasons why your engineering firm isn't generating leads on Facebook—and possible solutions to address them.
Why Your Facebook Ads aren't Generating Leads
As a qualified engineering firm with years of experience satisfying clients' needs, it can be disappointing to discover that you're not generating enough leads for your business.
You may have spent countless hours creating content, optimizing campaigns, and even spending money on paid advertising. But if you don't see any results, something must be wrong.
There are several reasons why your engineering firm's Facebook ads are not generating the leads you anticipate. A list of reasons includes:
- Wrong target audience
- Poor inbound strategy
- Low advertising budget
- Overlapping audiences
- Ads stuck in review
- Irrelevant or ineffective content
- Poor keyword research
- Not using social media monitoring tools
- Not using calls-to-action (CTAs)
Wrong Target Audience
Even if your Facebook advertisements are the best and most engaging thing on the internet, you won't ever achieve your goals if they don't reach your target audience.
Facebook has an enormous audience, so it is essential to target your message correctly. Knowing your target audience well, therefore, is crucial for any digital marketing campaign, including Facebook advertising.
You can easily target your ads to those most likely to be interested in them if you know your target audience's age, spending patterns, locations, and other interests. Depending on your product offerings, you might have more than one specific audience with various demographics.
Building specialized audiences based on the user types who generate the most revenue for your business is the best way to make the most of your Facebook ads.
Poor Inbound Strategy
The best way to generate leads on Facebook is not to advertise for them but to attract them. You should have an inbound strategy that focuses on creating content people want to share with friends and family. If you only focus on ad campaigns, you will never gain a strong following. Choosing a suitable inbound strategy will allow your business to acquire more prospects.
Thankfully, there are several ways to improve your Facebook inbound lead generation, including:
- Creating relevant lead magnets.
- Creating great content.
- Curating more video content.
- Incorporating mobile lead generation ads.
Low Advertising Budget
More than ever, companies are making every effort to reduce costs. That implies many of them are reducing their advertising expenditures.
You can do a lot if you have a modest budget for Facebook ads. However, if you set your budget too low, you may not see your desired result.
Set your budget much higher at the beginning of your campaign to compel Facebook to pick up on trends more quickly. Facebook paces itself to guarantee that they match your budget when you establish one, which, regrettably, also means that they will gradually figure out if your budget is low.
Reduce your budget to the amount you had initially planned to spend once Facebook has concluded its learning phase and is aware of what you're aiming to achieve.
Overlapping Audiences
Multiple advertisements targeting the same audience amounts to direct competition with yourself, which might negatively impact the delivery of your ads.
You can solve this issue with a tool that Facebook provides. Known as audience overlap, it allows you to check your audience targeting to determine where there is a sizable overlap among your ads.
When targeting two distinct audiences with various ad sets, one method of avoiding comparable audiences is to exclude them from one another. To do this, you'll choose two of your audiences by going to audiences in your Ads Manager. Choose "audience overlap" under actions after that. Whichever audience you choose initially will be compared to the other, and Facebook will highlight any overlap.
Ads Stuck in Review
Each ad is reviewed by Facebook to make sure it conforms to their terms of service and advertising guidelines. Facebook uses a combination of automatic review systems and manual evaluations completed by support staff to review ads.
Although it occasionally takes longer, Facebook advertisements are typically assessed within 24 hours; thus, your advertising may remain pending for up to a day or more.
Plan or schedule your ad posts ahead of time to remedy this. Choose a start and finish date in the Budget and Schedule portion of the ad creation process. This gives you more leeway if Facebook wants to approve your ad manually.
Irrelevant or Ineffective Content
Your content needs to be relevant if you're trying to generate leads on Facebook.
One of your goals is to get people to share your content with friends. But if they don't find your content relevant or interesting, you have no chance of going viral. People might even unfollow you if they find out that you're spamming them with irrelevant posts.
Be sure to choose appropriate content that will make viewers click through and share your posts with their friends after discovering helpful information about your company.
Poor Keyword Research
Non-optimized keywords can cause your firm to fail to generate leads on Facebook. Your keywords are the words and phrases you use to describe your products or services. For example, if you were selling computer products, you would want to advertise on Facebook using "laptops" and "computers" as keywords.
The same goes for selling your engineering services. You need to optimize suitable keywords for your posts, such as "high-tech civil engineering services," "reliable mechanical engineers," and "data engineers."
Unfortunately, most people don't take the time to perform thorough keyword research before launching their campaigns. This means when they run their ads, they target keywords that aren't relevant to their products or services. As a result, their campaign performance suffers.
To avoid this mistake, spend ample time researching your keywords. Take note of the ones that are performing well and those that aren't. Then, focus on improving your Facebook ads based on these insights.
Not using Social Media Monitoring Tools
Social media monitoring tools are a must-have for any business aiming to acquire new customers, raise brand awareness, and increase sales. These monitoring tools help you keep track of your competitors' activities on social media platforms. They can also show you the content your competitors share and how often it's being shared.
Knowing your competitor's social media profiles can help you create a better strategy for your company's Facebook account.
Not Using CallS-to-Action
A call-to-action (CTA) is one of the most critical elements of your Facebook ad campaign. It tells your target audience what action you want them to take next. Without a clear CTA, it's hard for users to know whether or not they should click through your ad.
The best thing about a CTA is that it allows you to track conversions from each post. So, if you're trying to promote an upcoming engineering workshop, you'll know which posts generated more leads than others.
In addition, you can also use a CTA to increase engagement with your followers. For example, you could ask them to sign up for your newsletter, follow you on Twitter, or subscribe to your YouTube channel.
Five Quick Facebook Post Ideas for Engineering Firms to Gain Traction
On top of avoiding the mistakes above, you want your ad campaigns and posts to be outstanding. Here are five bonus ideas for creating engaging Facebook posts:
- Create a video about your company. If you want to gain traction with your target audience, video is the way to go. Create a short, interactive video explaining what you do as an engineering firm, how your company helps its clients, and how your services benefit them.
- Share a quiz. This works exceptionally well if you're promoting a product or service. Ask your followers to answer a question related to the product or service you're offering. Then, compare their responses to those of other followers.
- Showcase results. Another great idea is to showcase the results of your previous projects. Share photos of completed projects, explain how they were designed, and discuss their benefits.
- Promote a workshop. Promoting workshops is another great way to get new leads. Start by sharing information about the event, then invite people to attend. You can even offer a discount to attendees who register early.
- Comment on industry news. Commenting on industry news is a great way to build relationships with your followers. When someone shares a link to an article about your industry, comment on it to show that you care about the subject matter.
Let Us Be Your Expert in Generating Facebook Leads
Running Facebook ads that generate leads requires your engineering firm to have a solid marketing strategy. You must exercise extreme discipline to conduct appropriate testing and perform ongoing optimization.
Eternal Works can help if you want to expand your business and enhance your Facebook advertisements. Whether nobody is seeing your Facebook ads, you're not seeing any conversions, or you just want the tiresome job of managing Facebook ads off your hands, contact us to schedule a call.
