A strong lead-gen funnel is more important than ever especially considering the COVID time period in which I am writing this. Informing users and helping guide them through the funnel is the best way to continue to drive qualified leads. One of the better strategies I have recently implemented is a cross-platform play between LinkedIn and Facebook – gaining qualified users higher up in the funnel and then remarketing to bottom-funnel leads for a cheaper overall cost and a more qualified audience making it to the sales team. Let’s dive into this strategy.
Create Valuable Content
This strategy starts with strong content. If you do not have content people want to click, then you cannot expect results. The content can be high-funnel – ebooks, webinars, blogs, etc. – but needs to be worth reading and valuable to your targeted audience. I recommend the content be gated as you get an initial touchpoint and can reach out to the user via other channels but even ungated blog posts can be used if other options are not available. The end goal is to create content that resonates so users will click through to your site.
Starting Your Funnel on LinkedIn
Once you have the right content, you should build your initial audience on LinkedIn. We start on LinkedIn because the professional targeting parameters allow for a more qualified click than on Facebook. To keep costs low, I recommend building a broader targeted audience that is still qualified for your end-goal product. Having a broad audience can help lower the average cost-per-click on LinkedIn especially compared to going after a smaller targeted audience with a lower-funnel lead. The common practice is going for a granular audience on LinkedIn, but that is often more competitive and much more expensive. By going after a broader audience with high-funnel content, you are lowering your overall cost on LinkedIn for more clicks that you can then remarket.
Remarketing on Facebook
With your higher-funnel built on LinkedIn, you then move to Facebook to set up your remarketing. The first step is ensuring you have your Facebook Pixel set up on your site. The pixel ensures Facebook can track your audience as they visit your site. This is important as Facebook is where you will be building your remarketing and bottom-funnel leads.
With this build, you remarket to visitors who visited the pages you are using in your ads on LinkedIn. You know these are qualified users as they were originally targeted on LinkedIn and have clicked through to your high-funnel content. Once on Facebook, you can target these users with bottom-funnel leads at a much lower cost-per-click and cost-per-lead than you could on LinkedIn. This strategy takes advantage of the professional targeting of LinkedIn and the cheaper costs of Facebook.
Results
There is your new cross-platform funnel strategy. I have found it to be an improvement over having siloed funnels on Facebook and on LinkedIn. For Facebook, this strategy helps improve the quality of the lead as you are leaning on LinkedIn’s ability to target professionals more accurately. On LinkedIn, you are lowering costs with a broader, but still qualified audience that you can then close on Facebook.
Before implementing this strategy, I was averaging a ~$100 bottom-funnel cost-per-lead on LinkedIn. After shifting to higher-funnel ad copy and landing pages, our cost-per-lead has been averaging between $10 – $30, a massive decrease, albeit a different lead type. Shifting over to Facebook, our LinkedIn remarketing campaign is bringing in bottom-funnel leads at a $30 – $40 cost-per-lead. Totaling the two CPLs, our total cost in the average range for a bottom-funnel lead with this strategy is a $40 – $70 cost-per-lead. This strategy is saving us $30 – $60 per lead versus the siloed approach.
Do you have any cross-platform strategies? How have they worked for you? I’d love to hear your thoughts or results on Twitter.
