“Run ads!
“Facebook is the way to go!
“Drive traffic to your offer and you will never have to sell a day in your life!”
Not so fast!
Running Facebook ads is not for everyone. Especially if you have no idea what you are doing. You can lose a small fortune if you don’t understand the strategy behind advertising.
You should also find someone who clearly understands your ad campaign analytics. It takes more, much more, than putting up an ad with “Get mine!” or “Buy me mine!”
Case in point …
Recently, I received a message from an author who spent a small fortune on Facebook advertising. I was extremely disappointed with the results.
“I didn’t sell a single book from the ads,” he complained.
“Did you send people directly to your book’s sales page?” I asked.
“Yes. That should have been enough for them to buy,” he replied.
Wrong! It’s not. Simply driving complete strangers to buy anything is a waste of money. It is NOT a good use of your ad spend.
Get the most out of your ad spend
To get the most out of your ad bucks, you need to test the waters first. You absolutely need to know that your ads are being shown in front of people who are interested in what you are offering. In addition, you have to build trust.
My experience has cost me dearly
A few years ago, I hired an advertising specialist who claimed that I would get a great result under his careful guidance. According to her, it got excellent results for other recognized experts in my industry.
I did my homework and it seemed like everything he said was true.
With complete confidence, I invested in your substantial fee and considerable investment in advertising. I had no reason to believe that we wouldn’t get a great result.
And I waited and waited and waited.
After a couple of months of lukewarm results (and thousands of dollars), I realized that I was NOT going to get the promised results.
The mistake he made was promising too much.
A different story
“We needed more time,” was what they told me.
“But you told me that we would get results from the beginning,” I told him.
“Well, it seems that this is not a receptive market,” he insisted.
Talk about disappointed. They had promised me one thing and delivered something completely different.
Close analysis
After the impact of my results wore off, I decided to try again with someone else. Before signing an agreement, we had several conversations in which I expressed my concern based on my previous experience. What I liked about the gentleman I was about to hire is his overly cautious approach.
“It will take a careful analysis of every dollar invested before increasing our advertising budget. We will start with $ 5- $ 10 a day, analyze your results, and when we get the kind of results we are looking for, we will increase our daily budget,” he advised.
This time, my results have been very, very different.
Lesson well learned
Before I put money into a campaign, I wanted to have a very clear understanding of what to do, what my investment in daily ad spend would be, and what I could expect from a return on investment.
The process involved more, much more, than simply leading people to an offer. I already knew that driving people to a sales page was not going to result in anything. What I came to find out is that even an outright free offer will not result in anything.
Rather, to get the best result, there are steps that need to be taken first. One is to clearly determine who is the ideal candidate to view my offers. This allows us to see who is even remotely interested in my information.
Our goal is to build engagement, familiarity, and trust before asking for anything like a name and email address.
By determining who is most likely to be interested in my information, we can increase ad spend.
This allows for a great ROI (return on investment).
Flow
By directing visitors to my blog first, we can re-target Facebook ads to a similar demographic.
The conversion will be much higher if you do it this way. This ensures a higher conversion rate to my subscriber list.
Once on my list, I can engage subscribers with pre-programmed autoresponder messages. I also continue to create value and build trust.
Is this a longer process than submitting directly to my sales page? Yes!
Is it more effective? Absolutely.
If you think Facebook ads are not working, it may not be that they are not working, but how you are doing them.
It could also be that ad execution is not in your wheelhouse of expertise.
Too often, authors try to do everything themselves. This can be very, very counterproductive.
You may need to consider hiring an expert. But before you take their word for how great they are, do your homework and check with the people they’ve worked with.
And, if you are promised the moon in an unrealistic time frame, reconsider your decision. I know I have.