Are you running Facebook Ads for your business? Are they working? Or are you buying the team at Facebook a whole lot of Margaritas*?
Because if you aren’t doing them the exact right way, then that’s where your ad spend is going. But more on that below….
So this is what often we hear from business owners and marketing managers who haven’t started working with us:
“Facebook ads don’t work. We’ve already tried them.”
We talk to a lot of different people who want to grow their business, and when we tell them that we can generate business growth through Facebook ads, be it getting either leads or sales, many have a preconceived idea about it.
This is a fairly frequent conversation:
‘We’re already doing it, and it doesn’t work.”
So what are you doing?
‘Well, we boost posts once a month, and it doesn’t deliver any leads or sales.”
Ok. So let’s talk about that for a minute.
Doing boosted posts is not doing Facebook advertising. Full. Stop.
It DOES expose your content to more people, but it isn’t part of a Facebook Advertising strategy to garner real, hard leads or sales.
But boosting posts is so easy, right?
Just press that blue button, spend say $20, and congratulations, you’ve just bought our friend Mr Zuckerberg a beautiful Margarita! Cheers!
The point is, yes, you can show your post to a lot more people, but it doesn’t contribute to getting real, hardcore results.
Then what does, I hear you ask?
There are lots of options, and it really depends on your strategy and industry as to which ones you would implement, but here are a couple for you to go over, and these are the types of formats we use for a lot of our clients to deliver cash-in-the-bank results, each and every day.
First option: LEAD ADS
As the title suggests, this is all about getting leads. A lead is whatever you choose it to be, but we usually select Name, Phone Number and Email address. And with lead ads, we deliver those exact details to our clients.
Lead ads show a form which can be easily filled out while staying within the Facebook platform. Easy, right?
But here is thing to note about Lead Ads: they need a sturdy, robust process around them.
It’s great to get a name and number to a client, but who is going to call them, how long will it take for them to contact them, what are they going to say to the lead.
Lead ads need a firm strategy and strict process behind them to make sure that they are effective. For example, all details should be put into an email sequence, so that if they don’t take up the offer, you can nurture them for a longer term result. It’s something that we do regularly with our clients, going over that process, and making sure they get every possible result out of their ad spend on the back end.
Here’s the kicker with Lead Forms though – the quality of the lead can be less, so it’s super important to have the correct targeting plus some qualifying questions to get the best potential prospects in the door.
Next option: CONVERSION ADS
Now these require a little more elbow grease.
They need a strategy, same as lead ads, but the prospect is taken off the Facebook platform onto a dedicated landing page.
From there, with the right tracking code and flow process, you can nurture and track users through our sales process – we can see where they drop off, improve that piece of the flow, and keep tweaking until we are getting the results we want.
The reason that I’m writing this is that, unfortunately, most people think that a Facebook ad is like printing an ad in the paper.
Put it up, sell some stuff.
Ahhh… no. If only it was that easy. There is no way you can do that and get results with Facebook. If you take that stance, you will just keep topping up those margaritas….
The algorithm is constantly being updated and changed, audience behaviours are always transient, the only constant with Facebook is change (which is why, in our own agency, we train every single week with a global group of peer agencies to make sure we are across the latest updates and issues).
So keep your margaritas coming to YOUR part of the bar. Get an expert on board.
*Thanks to Stan Way for the Margarita Analogy….
