If you have a business online then I’m sure you’ve heard how amazing Facebook advertising is for small service based businesses and solopreneurs (here are 4 great reasons you should be using them in your biz).
But with any great thing, if you are not careful, it can become a very, very bad thing!
The Facebook advertising platform makes it SUPER easy for anyone to get started running an ad. But just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should. At least not until you’ve learned a few things.
The big reason? While you can get great results with Facebook ads, you can also lose a LOT of money too.
So the question becomes how do you as a small service based business run Facebook ads without breaking the bank?
Here are three tips to help you out:
Targeting
Targeting is the key to creating Facebook ads that rock! You must understand who you are targeting with your ads and how to find them with the targeting tool inside of the Power Editor. You want to get super specific if you are targeting a cold audience (people who are not familiar with you or your brand).
You want to determine age, gender, location. You want to avoid targeting broadly like using common interests like ‘cats’. Inside the Power Editor, you have the ability to drill down and narrow your audience.
Getting specific will lower your ad cost because your ad will appeal to those it is served to. A very relevant ad will cause people to click like, share, and comment and that will drive up your relevance score – all of which generates lower ad costs.
Ad Copy and Images
Your ad copy must be compelling enough for a person to click through on the ad and sign up to your email (or take whatever action the ad wants the person to take). The ad copy should speak directly to the person…make them feel like you are speaking to them. I like to start off my ad copy with a short sentence that speaks to their pain point.
For example, I’ll use something like…
- Are you tired of….
- Are you looking for…
- Do you wish you…
- Ready to stop x and start xyz
Note: always be mindful of the words you use and that you follow Facebook’s TOS. You don’t want to get your account disabled.
The copy should let them know exactly what you want them to do. The best copy is clear copy.
Ad images are very important because this is usually the first thing people notice. You can think of the image flagging people down and the ad copy pulling people through the ad to your goal.
It’s important to stand out against the look and feel of Facebook (blue and black in color) so that people take notice of your ad. Using bold colors and images will help. I try to use images that provoke the underlying emotions of what my ideal clients want – freedom, laptop lifestyle, money, success, etc.
If you are targeting an audience that already knows who you are and you’re a personal brand then you’ll do well to use a professional picture of yourself.
All that said, the absolute way to run Facebook ads without breaking the bank is to…
Test, Test, Test
What works for one person most likely will not work for another person or business. You must test your audiences, ad copy and images to see which ads perform the best (read this article on the 5 things to test).
You have to start some where so here’s what I do when starting a new list building campaign:
I start with testing my images and audiences first. I will create one campaign, 3-5 ad sets targeting different audiences, and 3 images for each ad. Then I run them all and let Facebook do the split testing. After about 5 days I look at which ads have the lower cost per lead. I’ll then pause the high ones and up the budget on the ones that are performing well.
Simple? Maybe. Maybe not.
Necessary? YES!
Think about if I only did one ad set and one ad and my cost per lead was $10. I would freak out and never use Facebook again. But if I test then I’ll see that not every lead will be that high (as long as I’ve done my audience research and I have a great offer – I’m assuming this in the example above).
It probably goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway, that you do need to have an idea of what ‘breaking the bank’ means to your business. For some businesses, $10 per lead is NOT expensive. It’s all relative.
The bottom line is – if you want to get a great ROI using Facebook ads then it’s important to understand how to target, use compelling copy and images and be sure to test, test, test!
Let me know how your ads perform!
Lisa
PS – Need help with your ads? Learn more about my services here.