“Post ads!
“Facebook is the way to go!
“Drive traffic to your offer and you won’t have to sell a day in your life!”
Not so fast!
Posting Facebook ads is not for everyone. Especially if you have no idea what you’re doing. You can lose a small fortune if you don’t understand the strategy behind the advertising.
You also need to find someone who has a clear understanding of analytics for your ad campaigns. It takes more, much more, than putting up an ad with “Get mine!” or “Buy mine!”
Case in point…
I recently received a message from an author who spent a small fortune on Facebook advertising. He was very 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 is not. Simply taking complete strangers to buy anything is a waste of money. It is NOT a good use of your advertising investment.
How to get the most out of your ad spend
To get the most out of your ad dollars, you need to test the waters first. You absolutely need to know that your ads are showing in front of people who are interested in what you have to offer. Also, 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 achieve a great result under his careful guidance. According to her, it got great 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 a large advertising investment. I had no reason to believe that we would not 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 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 we’d get results from the start,” I told him.
“Well, it seems that this is not a receptive market,” he insisted.
Talk about disappointed. I had been promised one thing and delivered something completely different.
Close analysis
After the shock of my results wore off, I decided to give it another try 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 to him.
“It will take careful analysis of every dollar spent before we increase our ad budget. We’ll start with $5-$10 a day, look at its results, and when we get the kind of results we’re looking for, we’ll increase our daily budget.” The advertisement.
This time, my results have been very, very different.
lesson well learned
Before I put any money into a campaign, I wanted to have a very clear understanding of what was going to be done, what my investment in daily ad spend would be, and what I could expect as a return on investment.
The process involved more, much more, than simply bringing people to an offer. He already knew that driving people to a sales page would not result in anything. What I found out is that even a free offer straight from the door won’t do 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 see my offers. This allows us to see who is 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 retarget ads on Facebook to a similar demographic.
The conversion will be much higher if you do it this way. This ensures a higher conversion rate to my list of subscribers.
Once on my list, I can engage subscribers with pre-programmed auto-reply 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 FB ads don’t work, it’s not that they don’t work, but how you’re doing them.
It could also be that posting ads isn’t 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 you’ve worked with.
And, if you are promised the moon in an unrealistic time frame, reconsider your decision. I know what I have
