Picture this: You just crafted the perfect ad for your Facebook page. After many revisions and hours arguing back in forth with the graphic designer you have finally settled on an eye-grabbing design that is sure to grab the attention of your audience. This hunch is validated when you are pleasantly surprised with higher-than-average click-throughs after only one week of running it. You may be pleased with the high CTR but for some reason you notice that after all the hard work you put into crafting the ad, sales have not budged.

What gives?

Crafting a perfect ad is a great start to making a sale or generating a lead, but it’s not the only step. In this article we’ll provide 6 tips for boosting your social media ad’s (or any ad’s) conversion rate.

6 Tips for Boosting Your Social Ad’s Conversion Rate

1. Tailor your ads to the buyer’s journey

Let’s face it: most people aren’t going to buy your product after seeing an ad. This may be true for commoditized and low-involvement purchases, but the majority of products and services don’t fall under this category. For most products, the decision to purchase is more of a process.

The buyer’s journey is the 3 stages your customers go through before making a purchase. You should carefully consider whether your ad caters to those in the awareness, consideration, or decision stage of the buyer’s journey, and craft your offer to fulfill their needs at that stage.

2. Link your ad to a dedicated landing page

A common mistake people make when advertising on social media is to link their ads to the front page on their online store, or even worse—their homepage. Making the buying process as simple and hassle-free as possible is essential to boosting your conversion rate. If people have to dig through your website or click through pages of products to find what they saw in the ad it will make it much harder for them to even find the product, and many won’t even make the effort and leave your site. Make sure each ad has a dedicated landing page that features the product/offer that is advertised.

3. Make sure the design of your ad and landing page match

Eliminating points of possible confusion is an integral part in getting consumers to convert. With the amount of information and alternatives that is on the website today, consumers are sure to look elsewhere if they do not find exactly what they expect. This translates to ads by making sure you establish familiarity in your advertising campaigns. This doesn’t mean that all ads need to look the same, but the landing pages should at least match the ad that sends them there. Going from a bright, fun-colored ad to a neutral-colored landing page with sharp graphics may cause the user to wonder if they are even on the right page.

4. Remove the clutter from your landing page

This may seem counter-intuitive, but remember that the goal of advertising is for users to take a specific action. According to Hubspot, removing the navigation and other links on your landing page can actually increase your conversion rate. The benefits of this change may not be extreme, but it’s a simple way to increase conversion rates as much as you can in just a few clicks.

5. Give before you receive

This tip is especially helpful for big-ticket items, or products that require a lengthy selling process. Have you ever been in a situation where someone surprised you with a gift, but you didn’t have anything to give them in return? The principle of reciprocity explains our natural tendency to want to “return the favor”. This can be leveraged by marketers to help consumers through their buyer’s journey. Consider giving your consumers a small gift to show that you care about their end of the deal and help reduce the perceived imbalance of value in a transaction. If you are willing to give them something for free, chances are they will be more willing to hear you out and potentially become a customer.

6. Preemptively alleviate purchase concerns

Buyer’s remorse is a real problem consumers are facing today, especially in e-commerce marketplaces. A whopping 8 in 10 people report regretting a purchase, which can make it hard to trust brands when making future purchases. Here are a few ways you can help alleviate perceived risks when asking consumers to make a purchase:

• Offer free returns, or a moneyback guarantee

• Give a trial of the product before buying

• Provide testimonials or a “seal of approval” from relevant authorities

Advertising on social media is a crowded space, and doing it effectively becomes more difficult each day, but these steps can help you boost the conversion rate of your ads to achieve social media success.

Do you want even more tips for boosting your conversion rate? Check out The SMMU to learn all you need to know about social media marketing!