A deep dive into the effectiveness of Facebook Ads

Ever wondering how effective Facebook ads really are?

Inside this episode I take an  honest look at how Facebook ads can work for your business. In short, yes they work, but not as you may expect. 

Marketing always works, but it might not always work straight away.

Tune in to this episode to learn more 🎧

Learn more about the Client Attraction Code that I mention in this episode. 

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Website: www.newschoolofmarketing.com
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Transcript

Episode 153

Welcome back to the new School of Marketing Podcast. I’m so grateful to you for tuning in. But before we dive in, I would love to pay respect and acknowledgement to the Paloa people of Luther Rita who are the traditional owners of the land on which my business operates. And I pay my respect to their elders, past, present and emerging awesome. 

I hope you are well and I hope you’re ready for yet another practical marketing episode. I’m going to put a little bit of a disclaimer here because it might get a little bit ranty. So really want to have an honest conversation. I see. And I hear a lot of people saying that Facebook ads are a waste of time and they’re a waste of money and they don’t work and they’ve put all this money in and they’ve got nothing in return. All of you know, I totally understand where they’re coming from. I really do. But I also want to say this.

Obviously, I’m going to talk about this because I love Facebook ads. Facebook ads are pretty much what pays my bills. So yeah, I do love it. And not just because it pays my bills. I want you to think about why would Facebook be earning billions of dollars from something that doesn’t work? Because if it didn’t work, it would come out pretty quickly that it didn’t actually work. Right. Why would so many people keep investing in ads over and over again? Yeah, think about that. They do work. They do. They really do. 

Otherwise I would be out of a job. I wouldn’t be making any money because I run Facebook ads for people. If they weren’t working, I wouldn’t have any clients. So I want to talk about this, and I want to talk about this from a point of marketing always works. 

Marketing always works. But it might not always work straight away. Facebook advertising can do amazing things for your business, but your foundations need to be solid first. Like if you haven’t poured a slab, you are going to struggle to build a house that is going to stand the test of time. And it’s the same with Facebook. Your foundations need to be in place. You also need to know how to set up your Facebook ads to get the most out of them. So let’s take a closer look at how Facebook ads work and how you can make them work for your business. 

And firstly, I want to let you know that when I talk about Facebook ads, I also mean Instagram ads. Because Facebook owns both and advertising to both of the platforms. Facebook and Instagram ads is both done through Facebook ads Manager. So you do it all through the Facebook ads Manager dashboard. So when I say Facebook ads, I really mean Facebook and Instagram ads. Secondly, this episode is most relevant to people who sell online courses, who are in service based businesses, or who offer one on one services such as coaching. So now that you’re aware of this, let’s dive in. 

So I really want to make clear that Facebook ads are an amplifier. That means that whatever is already happening in your business is going to be put on steroids. Like it’s going to blow up. That’s what Facebook ads does. So if you put a strategy like a well thought out strategy, and some ad spend behind it, whatever is already working can be amplified. And I also want to say that Facebook ads and Google Ads or search engine ads are very different. Search engine advertising generally relies on someone to perform a search for a certain term or a product before they are actually served ads. So it is for those who are problem aware and in a way, solution aware, so they are searching for it, whereas Facebook ads are a little bit different. On Facebook, you can advertise to people who are likely to be interested in your brand or your product, but they may not be solution aware and they definitely might not be problem aware, problem and solution aware. So you can get in front of people. It’s kind of like a little bit of a, hey, I have this. You might be interested in it and you might not have ever heard of me, which is really cool. 

And I’m saying this with some caution because I’m sure that you’ve seen ads in your newsfeed that seemed completely irrelevant to you. And this kind of tends to happen when the ads are not set up with the correct targeting options, because sometimes the advertiser didn’t really understand the options or to actually set them up to development audiences. So the way Facebook ads work is that the person setting up the ads is in control of setting up the ads with a specific goal, a specific audience, and they also decide what they will show as part of the images and copy. And the business that is advertising on Facebook is the one in the driver’s seat, and they determine where an ad is shown and who gets to see it. That’s why if you don’t know what you’re doing, you can be wasting a lot of money showing your ads to people who might not really want to take an action. And Facebook has, over the years, changed things and it is getting better in terms of finding the right people. But I still like to be in the driver’s seat and actually have a little bit of control over it. 

So the magic behind Facebook ads really lies in the strategy. Actually, the magic behind any marketing tactic lies in the strategy. So simply putting an ad together, clicking a few buttons and making it go live is unlikely to get you any results. So the first step is to determine what journey you want to send your potential client on. Because let’s be honest, most of us don’t hand over our money willy nilly, especially not when the price point of a product is relatively high, or when we are seeking out a service where we’ll most likely be working closely with the business owner or with their team. We want to make sure that it’s the right fit for us. So going from discovering a business to clicking the buy now button, it just doesn’t happen instantly. So you need to think about how you want your business to be introduced to someone who has never heard of you or never heard of your business before. And what steps do you want them to take next. 

So, for example, if you sell one on one services like coaching, photography, design, any sort of service based business, your ideal client needs to get to know like and trust you before they invest working with you. And I have previously spoken about the know like Trust factor and how you can build that trust so that someone is ready to take the next step and actually buy from you, pay you money. And in terms of advertising, you need to think about how you can get someone to know like to know you, to like you and to trust you. You need to create a strategy that, in a way, addresses each point. 

You can’t expect someone to go from not knowing you to buying from you without actually knowing you at all. It very rarely happens. So I’ll give you an example of what you can do in terms of Facebook and Instagram advertising by looking at creating a funnel for each step. So your first step is to get seen and to get noticed by your ideal clients. So you could do a Facebook Live on your Facebook page where you introduce yourself, what you do. You can also give people a tip on the topic that you specialize in. And then once this Facebook Live or this video is finished, you can go into your ads manager dashboard and you can turn it into a Facebook ad so that your target audience, you obviously have to target the right people, but so that your target audience gets to see you, they get to hear from you, they, in a way, get to know you. This is the first step. 

So once this ad is running, you’ll be able to look at the Facebook ads Manager dashboard and you’ll be able to get some data based on your ad. It will tell you how many people watched it, how long have they watched it, some people might be engaging with it, and then this data can be used for the next step, which could be an ad to get them to go to a landing page where they can opt in to receive a free download. Like a lead magnet. A lead Magnet is a valuable freebie that you can create for your audience, and it could be a guide, like a download. It could be a video series or one video, it could be a webinar, it could be a challenge, whatever your audience finds usable and valuable. So once this ad is running, you’ll be getting more data and you should be able to see how many people clicked on the link, how many signed up for your freebie. And there’s benchmarks for all of these kind of things, but for the sake of this episode, I’m trying to keep it simple. So the people who signed up for your lead magnet, for your freebie should then be nurtured with an email series so that they actually get to know like and trust you. 

So after they’ve, in a way, gotten to know you from a free video and now they’re ready to take the next step, sign up. They’ve given you their email address, which is kind of like a currency. Then once they’ve given their email address, you then put them in an email nurture series so that you can really showcase who you are. So don’t try to sell to them. In a way, introduce yourself further and further and further. So with this nurture sequence, you’re in a position to build a real connection and get people hooked on what you do. And your nurture sequence is kind of like the equivalent of lots of coffee dates where you get to know each other well and they get to know you and what you do and how you can help them. 

So for a service based business, a one on one offer, or for online courses, you need to map out the customer journey and how you want to introduce your business to your ideal client before you ask them to purchase from you. It’s just like nobody purchases instantly. Well, I’m not saying nobody. There might be like a very small percentage for an online store, it’s often less complicated and you can actually ask straight for the sale unless you sell a high price point product. So, for example, like jewelry, that’s over $1,000. Very rarely do people see an ad and go, I’m going to spend $1,000. They would need to get to know you a little bit more as well. So you might need to do some storytelling ads first to get a potential customer to really feel your brand and build that trust. Because, yeah, we don’t just hand over money to everyone. So back to the question. 

Are Facebook ads actually effective? Do they actually work? Yes, they are effective. They do work, but they’re not as straightforward as people think. And really, the magic is in the strategy and in the example I gave you of first showing them an ad to get to know you and your brand and then showing them an ad to get onto your mailing list. 

The real magic is in the email marketing Facebook ads. They really work. But you need to think about how someone is going from getting to know you to buying from you. So you need to know the customer journey before you think about sales. And often the process has many steps, and each step should be designed to bring your ideal client closer to you and buying from you. It is, in a way, a little bit similar to dating. You wouldn’t ask someone to marry you like someone who’s never met you. You wouldn’t ask them to marry you. You go on dates first and they need to know, like, and trust you. So, yeah, think about that in terms of your business, it’s all part of a well working sales funnel. 

And like, in short, a sales funnel looks like an upside down triangle with the wide section at the top and then the narrow section at the bottom. And the amount of people who enter your funnel at the top will be much larger than the amount of people who come out at the bottom as paid clients. And that is totally okay. It’s literally a process of educating them and building that relationship with them before they are ready to purchase. 

Facebook ads are a brilliant way to make people aware of your business and to get them to take the next step of entering your funnel through signing up for a free, like for a lead magnet for something free so that they’re then on your mailing list and then you can nurture them. You can start those coffee dates. So once they’re on your list, it’s up to you to nurture them so that at some point they have the opportunity of becoming a paid client. 

So do Facebook ads work, yes, but you need to be aware of the customer journey and which part Facebook plays in it. So Facebook ads is not your first step. It is part of the whole journey. So Facebook is not your salesperson. Facebook ads are really a tool to help people find you and then take action based on what you instruct them to do, which could be to sign up to your mailing list or to purchase something after you’ve built a relationship with them and your nurture. Funnel emails, your sales funnel emails, your landing pages, your sales pages, or you might have product page descriptions. They are your salesperson and they need to do your heavy lifting and not the ads. The ads can push someone over the line if you have retargeting ads, but they’re not your salesperson. 

Facebook ads amplify. So whatever is already happening in your business will be put on Rocket fuel if you put some ad spend behind it. So I want to give you some homework for this episode so that you’re more aware of what’s happening in your business and whether or not you’re actually ready for Facebook ads. So listen up. Here’s your homework. Look at all the numbers in your business and write them down. So for the past three months, look at how many visitors, a specific landing page or sales page received and how many people took an action. For example, how many people visited your landing page versus how many people took the action of signing up. Once you’ve written down these numbers, grab your calculator and calculate the percentages. So, for example, if 100 people visited your landing page and 20 signed up, you have a 20% conversion rate. And some people will be okay with this rate. But I want you to think about ways to improve this rate. Like how can you get that to be higher? Think about the journey. 

You’d like someone to go from the first step of finding you to becoming a client. So how do you want them to feel at each step? For example, if they find you on social media, how will you encourage them to take the next step and join your email list? So that is your homework for this week. I want you to really think about the customer journey, and I want you to treat it like dating or developing a friendship. Like they need to get to know you. So think about how you can best go about this in an online know. It’s pretty tricky, but it is very much possible and very much doable. So as soon as you have the mindset shift of seeing Facebook ads as an amplifier and not a salesperson, things will start to make more sense. 

Facebook ads are a tool in your toolbox that can help drive more people to the right pages on your website, and then your website needs to instruct them what to do next. I hope that this has been helpful and I hope it all makes sense. And I hope that you’re going to make the next step and actually figure out where Facebook ads will fit in with this journey. 

So go and do your homework. And if you are ready to take the next step or the first step of advertising, check out the client attraction code. It’s a $37 program, and inside this program you’ll learn the strategy of setting up your ads to be seen, to attract and to nurture your audience. And I’ll pop the link in the show notes, but it actually will help you with that first step of being visible and really position yourself as an expert. 

Awesome. I can’t wait to hear back from you. So drop me a note in Instagram or leave a review on the show. Tell me how you went with your homework. 

Thank you so much for joining me on this episode. I hope it was helpful and I can’t wait to share more marketing tips with you next week. If you’re ready to take your business to the next level with Facebook and Instagram advertising, make sure you visit Newschoolofmarketing.com to download practical free resources, plus subscribe to the podcast and never miss an episode. I can’t wait to go on this journey with you. Until next time, take care and market your business every day.