All you need to know about Facebook ads

A step-by-step guide to getting results.

Have you been thinking about advertising on Facebook?

Or perhaps you have tried, but didn’t quite see the results you’ve hoped for?

If you’ve been wanting to know more about Facebook ads, how to start, what to do, and how to get fab results, this blog will answer many (if not all) of your burning questions.

>>>Download the 10 Steps to Profitable Facebook Ads here.<<<

Why advertise on Facebook?

If you’ve been wondering what’s all the buzz about Facebook ads and whether they’re worth it, you’re in the right place.

Without trying to sound like a boring scientific paper, let me just show you a couple of stats, so you see I’m not making stuff up.

About 96% of social media marketers consider Facebook advertising the most profitable paid option out there.

93% of marketers use Facebook advertising regularly ( Sproutsocial ).

As you can see, I’m not alone in saying that Facebook ads can be super profitable, if you know what you’re doing.

One of the reasons they can be so profitable is because Facebook users continues to rise, with billions of people on the platform daily.

Second, they’re much cheaper than Google ads, for example.

Last but not least, Facebook offers an array of advertising possibilities, from displaying your ads on the Newsfeed, on the right column, on Instagram, on the Audience Network, and of course, in messenger.

You can really display your ads where YOUR audience hangs out.

But to me, the beauty of it lies in its targeting capabilities.

You can narrow your target market down to the detail. You can be so specific, that no wonder sometimes we see ads that seem to have been written specifically for us. Yeah, a bit spooky, I know!

Gone are the days you had to waste thousands of dollars in mass advertising, paying to show your ads to people who didn’t matter to your business.

Who should advertise on Facebook?

Most businesses that can afford to spend at least $100 per month and take the time to learn, understand and create a strategy for their ads, should do it.

With 2.27 billion monthly active users worldwide, chances are, your target market is on Facebook, and with the right strategy, you can start, grow and scale your business in no time.

Should you hire a Facebook ads manager or do it yourself?

Whether you should hire a Facebook ads manager or do it yourself, is another question altogether.

My advice is: If you’re turning over a minimum of $100K per year, and you can afford to spend at least $500 per month on Facebook ads (budget), you’d probably better off outsourcing to a Facebook ads expert and use your precious time elsewhere.

The benefits of hiring someone to do it for you include:

- Their expertise – even if you know how to do it, you probably don’t dedicate tons of time learning, testing, improving as an Ads Specialist would. So, she’d most likely get you better results.

- How much is your time worth? You need to take your time into account, and where else you can spend it to grow your business.

If your business isn’t at this stage yet, and paying for an ads manager would stretch you too much, I suggest you learn how to do it properly, through one-to-one training, a workshop or an online course.

So you can make more sales online and scale your business faster, until outsourcing becomes a better option.

One of the advantages of learning how to do it yourself, is that you’ll feel more confident outsourcing it later, when your business grows.

You will know what questions to ask and what to look at when choosing an ads expert.

Unfortunately, I’ve heard some horror stories of self-proclaimed ads managers who don’t even know what the pixels are, or what re-targeting is.

How Facebook ads work and how to achieve fab results for your business

Let’s start with the most crucial step…

1- Your strategy!

Bear with me… I know the ‘S” word is dreaded by small business owners. But oh! so necessary to make money, instead of losing money.

The biggest mistake small businesses make with paid advertising is selling to a cold audience (people who don’t know you) from a paid ad without a strategy.

I’ve discussed the 5 costly mistakes people make with Facebook ads here, if you’re interested.

In a nutshell, to create a Facebook ads strategy, you need to think about the following stages of a buyer’s journey:

- Build awareness

- Build Interest

- Offer something small first, so they can try your business.

- Nurture the relationship

- Propose marriage = make a bigger offer.

Instead of creating ads that sell your expensive services, programs or products, start by building awareness of your brand.

You can do that by promoting your content or sending them to your website, for example.

But don’t expect to make a sale immediately.

Next, increase their interest by showing different ads, with different content or with a freebie to people who have already interacted with you (your ads, your socials, your website) before.

Only then, you will make them an offer. My suggestion here is, start small.

You don’t just meet someone a couple of times for drinks and propose marriage, right? So, why would you do it to your prospects?

Every business is different, and this is just an example of how to approach Facebook advertising.

If you want help with your Facebook ads, get in touch for a FREE 30 min chat, and I can point you in the right direction.

2- The next step – You target market

Your target market is never people between 25 and 65 years old who like chocolate.

If you haven’t narrowed down your target audience, this is the time to do so.

Facebook ads are fantastic because you can target people based on location, demographics, interests, profession, level of education, family status, brands they like, where they shop, etc.

So why would you target the masses and spend your valuable money on people who are not going to buy from you?

It’s a waste of your money.

Spend some time understanding your ideal clients and write down everything that comes to mind.

I’ve written about target audiences here.

You can also use my “ideal client avatar” workbook here to help you define who your target market is.

Once you know who you’re going to target, split your groups.

Most businesses have more than one target audience, and that’s fine. But make sure to split your audience into specific groups, so you can measure which groups respond better to your ads.

Also, the images and copy you use to speak to a 25 years old woman shouldn’t be the same you use to target a 55 years old woman. They’re not the same market. Their reasons for buying from you aren’t the same.

Let’s use an example. Let’s say you are a yoga teacher, and your clients range from 20 to 70 years old, mostly women, in your local area. Is that your target audience?

Nope, it’s not.

A 25 years old woman might want to do your classes to stay healthy, fit and beautiful. Let’s name her Anna. She wants a healthy lifestyle, wants to save money to travel overseas or to buy her first house. She has a promising career and most likely doesn’t have financial problems.

Anna is full of energy, she eats healthy food, reads health blogs and women’s magazines, and has super foods shake for breakfast in the morning.

While Sarah, a 35 years old just had a baby and is feeling run down, sleep deprived and is on maternity leave. She has a mortgage, and her main concerns now are to pay her mortgage and to get her body back to shape (not to mention have one good night sleep), lose baby weight, spend some time on herself (not just focusing on her baby).

Her mental health is also a concern because she’s tired and going through hormonal and big life changes.

Sarah likes parental magazines, parenting blogs, mums’ blogs, and Facebook pages related to babies (food, clothes, toys, etc).

Do you see the difference?

How does that affect your Facebook ads? It affects everything.

Put it simply, your audience selection, copy and image should be totally different.

3- Your Ad creative

Images

When you advertising on Facebook, you can test up to 6 images per ad, which means Facebook will show all the images you selected to your audience, and you will be able to see which image gets a better response.

Select attention-grabbing images that appeal to your target audience and stop them from scrolling down.

I like to use bright colours, or a colour border around my images, so they stand out in the Newsfeed. Just like the image below.

Ad Copy

Your ad copy is super important. It can be the difference between someone clicking on your ad, or not at all.

Believe it or not, I’ve seen ads with no copy at all. How will your audience know what’s all about?

When writing copy for your ads, aim to:

- Grab attention with the first line. You only have a second to get your audience’s attention. Don’t wait to do that at the end. Do it in the first sentence.

- Use an attention-grabbing headline.

- Create interest and desire by highlighting the main benefits and features of what you’re promoting.

- Be clear and don’t confuse your audience.

- Keep your copy positive.

- Tell them who your ad is for. The last thing you want is people who are NOT your target audience clicking on your ads. That’s just going to waste your money.

- Have a clear call to action within the copy. Don’t expect your audience to just know what to do. Tell them what you want them to do.

4- Budget – how much should you pay for ads?

Ha! The million-dollar question! Pardon the pun.

Every campaign is different, and your budget will be dictated by your goals and by how much you’re willing to invest.

What you need to calculate is how much a client is worth to you, and how much you can spend to acquire a new client.

Make sure to consider the lifetime value of each client, and not only their first purchase.

Other things that will influence your budget are:

- Your sales funnel – do you have one?

- Will you follow up with an e-mail campaign, or are you using only ads?

If your only communication channel is paid advertising, you will spend more.

If you have other communication channels supporting your campaign, you will need to spend less.

· Brand awareness and community building.

Have you been building your audience consistently?

If you don’t have an engaged email list, social media followers, or a community around your brand, you will need to spend more on paid ads.

As discussed above, first you should spend your money building your audience and raising brand awareness, and then promote your products and services.

5- Facebook Pixels

You can’t measure what you can’t track.

Facebook provides several pixels that should be installed on your website, landing pages, add to cart page, thank you pages, and all pages that are relevant to your campaign.

Why?

Because then you can track how many people responded to your ad, how many added your product to cart but didn’t proceed to check out, how many clicked but didn’t subscribe to your e-mail list, etc.

Then, you can re-target all those people who started an action but didn’t complete it.

How often do you find something online that you love, add it to your cart, and just before you pay, you’re interrupted (or have second thoughts) and don’t finish your purchase?

I know this has happened to me many times, and I bet it’s happened to you too.

You have a much higher chance to convert your audience into buyers if you can re-target them.

You can also measure your campaign success, as the pixel will tell you how many converted as a result of your ads.

Last, but not least, the pixels can track website visitors up to 365 days. So, if you don’t have the pixels installed on your website, do yourself a favor, and install your pixels.

6- Re-targeting

Re-targeting means showing different ads to people who have already seen your previous ads, or already know your brand either by visiting your website, following you on social media, or subscribing to your e-mail list.

A Facebook ads campaign isn’t complete if you’re not re-targeting your audience.

If there are no major flaws in your campaign (poor copy, poor image, poor targeting, etc.), you will see much better results if you re-target your audience with different ads.

7- Test and Experiment

You might think that some people just know the secret formula. They launch a campaign, and BANG! Get amazing results straight away.

But this couldn’t be further from the truth.

Successful businesses have and continue to test several variables before they hit a formula that works. And by the way, works today. In a few months’ time it may not work so well anymore, and changes will need to be made again.

Things you should test, especially if you’re starting with Facebook advertising, or if you haven’t tested before are:

· Several variations of your target market. Don’t condense all your market in one big bucket, split your audience so you can see who responds to your ads.

· Your images

· Your copy – test long and short copy, change it if you need to.

· Your placements

· Your landing pages

· Your call to action

· Your strategy

Everything can be tested to see what works best. But make sure to test one element at a time.

If you change two elements at the same time (image and copy for example), how do you know which one made a difference to your results?

8- Measure your Results

To measure the success of your campaign, the first thing that needs to be clear is your campaign objective.

What was the goal of your campaign?

• Brand awareness?

• Engagement?

• Video views?

• Event registration?

• E-mail subscribers?

• Webinar registrations?

• Sales?
  

  Those are mainly the results you need to measure, but not only. Here’s what to look at when measuring your results

Reach - You want to make sure your ad is reaching thousands of people, not 1 or 2.

Clicks – You might have heard about click through rates, or not. To assess whether your campaign is performing well, check that your ads have at least 2% click through rate. Below that, I’d be making changes.

Frequency – High frequency (above 3) means the same person is seeing your ad too often. This maybe because your audience isn’t broad enough or your ads are irrelevant to that audience. Consider expanding your audience or changing your ads.

Relevance score – The higher your ads relevance score, the better. It means the audience you selected is responding well to your ads, and that’s what you want. I would worry if your relevance score is below 7

Now, to what really matters – Results and Cost per Result.

Regardless of all of the above, what you need to look at is if you’re a achieving the results you wanted for a low cost per result.

What’s a good cost per result in Facebook ads?

That’s the toughest question. It will depend on several factors, such as:

Your industry average – every industry is different, some cost more than others.

What are you comparing it to? If you have run campaigns in the past, you can compare your current results with your past results. But keep in mind that Facebook advertising costs have been and will continue to rise, as competition increases.

Your return on investment – Here’s the true key to measuring your results. What each result means to your business?

How many leads are you converting into clients?

What’s the lifetime value of a client? In other words, how much is a client worth to you?

As an example: You may be spending $1000 in ads, attracting 500 new leads, and converting 10 clients who will pay you $3000 each. You’re making $30,000 after spending $1000. Great result!

Or

You may be spending $1000 in ads, attracting 500 new leads, converting 50 clients, but each client only spends $30. You’re only making $1000, even when converting more leads into clients. Not so great.

Here’s where your strategy will play a big role. Do you have a value ladder (pathway) to sell more, or to sell high priced products/services to those 50 clients who only paid $30?

If you don’t know what value ladders are and how you can make more money from the same clients, watch my video here. How to increase your profits without acquiring new customers.

Your campaign data will tell you so much about your brand and about your audience.

For example:

· If your ads are getting clicks but no subscriptions, the problem may not be the ad creative, but your landing page.

· If your ads aren’t getting many clicks, the problem maybe your ad creative or your audience. There’s a mismatch between your audience and the ad you’re putting out there.

· If on the other hand your campaign is getting clicks and subscribers but not sales, you have a sales funnel problem.

Do you see how you can identify problems within your business and your offering by analyzing your results correctly?

I find it fascinating! But beside that, it’s very helpful. With this data you can start making improvements in your business and campaigns, close gaps, and maximize your sales.

9- Optimize your campaigns for best results

After testing and measuring your campaign, you can optimize your campaign to achieve the best possible results.

Let’s assume you’re testing 6 different images per ad, and you have selected 10 different audiences.

After watching your ads performance for a few days, you will see:

Which images perform best, and which ones don’t. Switch off all the images that received the least number of clicks. You should only have 1 or 2 active images per ad.

Check your audiences. Are they all performing well? If any of your selected audiences is costing you too much in comparison to the others, switch them off too.

Now, look at the audiences that are performing well. Could you increase your budget and inject more money into those? It’s probably a good idea to increase your budget if your ads are doing well to amplify your results.

Conclusion

When it comes to Facebook ads (and marketing in general), strategy is everything.

If you want to build an audience, launch a business, sell more, acquire more clients, or scale your business, Facebook ads can help you.

Having a clear strategy and realistic goals for your campaigns will see you hitting you goals faster than you could with organic methods.

But be sure you know what you’re doing, or you’re happy to invest in an Ads Expert to either do it for you or teach you how to, so you don’t throw money out the window.

Also, ensure you have a sales funnel (client path pathway) to move your audience from leads into clients, increase the lifetime value of each client and maximize your profits.

If you want to get started with Facebook ads or improve what you’re doing, get in touch for a FREE 30min chat. Schedule here.

If you’d love to win my Facebook ads for FAB Results online course (Valued at $297) enter the competition here.

I love helping businesses get fab results from Facebook ads via training, courses or through my done-for-you service and would be delighted to help you too.