Happy Hallowe’en everyone! Today’s post is a guest post from a former client of mine, Frannie Coggeshall. In this post, she breaks it down on how to get yourself ready to invest in Facebook ads. Enjoy!
How to Know Whether or Not You’re Ready for Facebook Ads
Facebook Advertising is trendy these days. It’s being talked about in all the online forums, people are writing about it on their blogs, and everyone’s trying it out to see if they can hit the business jackpot by investing in ads.
The problem is most people are spending money blindly. They’re all hyped up by the buzz and they dive in with seriously high hopes. The reality is most are diving in before they’re ready and they end their Facebook Ads experiment with a bad taste in their mouth and an empty pocket.
As someone who helps business owners run Facebook Ads, I hate to hear these stories. I started my business because I genuinely want to help people, help people and when I hear that people have been burned again and again by Facebook Ads it bums me out.
You need to step back from the hype and realize those that reach the pot of gold, didn’t land there overnight, they took the long journey over the rainbow.
With that being said, if you’re looking to get some more likes for your page or clicks to your blog that can be easily done with a small amount of money. What I’m talking about is a Facebook strategy that will increase your revenue.
So what does it take to be ready to invest in Facebook ads?
The essentials that you need are:
- To know your customer avatar better than you know your mom
- Have a working funnel
- An email sequence that follows up your funnel
- Help from an expert or a community
- Time & Money to support the effort
Let me break them down for you:
#1 Know your customer avatar better than you know your mom.
It is essential to know your audience before you start investing in Facebook Ads. If you don’t know your avatar as well as you know your mom then you’re doing your business a disservice already (this may be a bit of an exaggeration, but hopefully you get the point!).
It’s not enough to just know their likes and dislikes or their average day. You want to know them deeply. What negative thoughts do they have? What’s their worst day? What would be their best day if your product helped them achieve their desires? Who do they want to be perceived as? Think of the psychology of who they are.
If you don’t already know this you can do some research to find the information. Survey your audience, jump on a call with some of them, check Amazon reviews, ask around in focused Facebook groups or online forums, look up other brands that sell your products/services and check out their reviews or customer comments on their social media pages.
The goal here is to know your avatar so well that you can speak to them from a place that makes them feel understood, you want to empathize with them.
#2 Have a working funnel
No clue what a funnel is? Don’t worry a lot of people are unaware. Or even if they do have a funnel it’s likely incomplete or it could use some improvements. A funnel is a system that you used to warm people up to your business. You wouldn’t meet someone for the first time and ask them to marry you, so don’t do the same thing with potential customers.
Facebook is interruption marketing, meaning you’re interrupting someone’s day with the information they may not want in their newsfeed. It’s different than Google advertising because Google is intent based, people are actually telling good they’re looking for something and then ads pop up. Because Facebook is interruption based marketing, you have to deliver a TON of value. Share information with people, teach them something, show them you can help them by actually helping them. This is the first step in your funnel. If we’re sticking with the dating theme, this is when you first meet them.
From there you would exchange something for even more value like a free webinar, PDF download, mini-course, etc for their email address. This is extremely valuable to your business because you can stay in touch with them. In the dating world, you’ve now talked to them a bit and snagged their phone number.
Next, you’ll offer them something that they have to exchange money for, it’s typically one of your lowest prices products or offerings, what we call a Tripwire in the digital marketing world. This shows that they’re not just the type of person to take you up on freebies, but they’re actually invested enough to hand over their credit card. You’ve got them on a first date, and things are going 😉
Then you’ll put your core offer in front of them, whatever the main product is that you’re trying to sell. The thought behind this is that because you’ve warmed them up with the other steps in your funnel, they’ll be more likely to purchase your high priced product.
There’s A LOT that goes into digital funnels beyond what I’ve just explained, If you’re just getting started and want to learn how to create one, I highly recommend following Digital Marketer, this blog post in particular. They’re an amazing company and they know everything about the digital marketing world! Even if you have a funnel, I still recommend checking them out because there are always ways to improve 🙂
#3 An email sequence that follows up your funnel
Facebook Ads aren’t the end all be all. Once you start getting people into your funnel you also need to have a strong follow-up system. Surprisingly, a LOT of people will convert via email (but will still be tracked in your Facebook Ads, if that’s how they entered into your funnel, thanks to digital cookies).
Many people think, okay we’ll do Facebook Ads and that’s all we need. It’s important to know that Facebook Ads are one tool in your system but not the only tool you need. A strong email sequence will reinforce a strong Facebook Advertising Campaign.
If you don’t have a strong email game or one at all, check out this podcast from Social Media Examiner.
#4 Help from an expert or community
I highly recommend getting help from someone when you’re first starting out with Facebook Ads. I know that because I help people with Facebook Ads that makes this statement seem a bit biased but it doesn’t have to be me who helps you, it could be anyone that knows Facebook Ads.
There is a TON that goes into a winning strategy and I’m sure you can tell from the beginning of this post that it’s not just what happens on Facebook that matters. Somone that knows what they’re talking about will be able to guide you in all areas. Not to mention that the platform itself is very complicated and constantly changing.
Getting help from a FB Ads expert can be expensive though, so if you’re not there yet I highly recommend joining some free Facebook groups. These groups can be super beneficial because you can ask questions, share screenshots and videos of what you’ve done and get a lot of feedback. The downside to this is that you may still feel left in the dark a bit when it comes to the ongoing management but it’s definitely better than going at it alone.
Some free groups you can join are:
You could also take online courses which is a big step up from just joining a free group and these usually come with a private FB Group and offer more high level and ongoing support. The one I took is Facebook Ads University from Dominate Web Media and I highly recommend it. These guys know their stuff and run ads for some of the biggest names in the online business industry.
#5 Time & money to support the effort
If you want to start running ads with just $5/day you’re likely not ready to start running ads. If you just want traffic to your blog, more likes on your FB page, or video views then go for it. $5/day is a great budget for things like that.
But if you’re looking to grow your email list or better yet make some money you need a budget for this. And you have to be willing and able to spend a bit before the money starts rolling in.
Thing is, this stuff takes time to get right. If it didn’t everyone would be doing it and everyone would be millionaires, right? Well, unfortunately, it’s not so simple. So you have to test things, see what’s working, what’s not, make improvements, and so on. It’s iterative.
I highly advise you to wait to invest in Facebook Ads until you have a bit of extra cash to work with to support this effort. I can’t give you an exact budget because it’s very dependent on your business and the specific type of strategy you have but I’d say a good estimate is $750-$1000/month, minimum.
And like I mentioned previously, you need to have the patience to work on the aspects of the campaign that aren’t so perfect. As you improve pieces of your funnel and ads your campaign will improve overall. But this takes time and testing.
So are you ready?
Most people find that after chatting with me, they need to take a bit of time to improve things before they’re ready to invest in ads. Like I mentioned a few times, you can get started with a low budget generating more traffic to your blog posts or adding likes to your page and that’s a perfect way to start! Take advantage of this to get to know the platform better while you’re working on the aspects I mentioned above.
If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me. The goal of my business is to help people so I’m more than happy to chat quickly and offer any advice I can to get you on the right track 🙂
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