Facebook Ads can be a great way to reach new customers and grow your business, but many myths about them can hold businesses back or give them false hope. Often, marketing agencies or "marketing gurus" fool businesses into running Facebook and Instagram Ads before they are ready.
In this Marketing Counts podcast episode, Shreya Banerjee and Paul Counts dispel some of the most common myths about Facebook Ads and discuss how can run them effectively for your business.
You’ll know the truth about Facebook ads and how to create an effective campaign that reaches new customers and grows your business.
Want to grow your business? Visit us at www.marketingcounts.com and grab the free gift that we put together for you.
Facebook Ads can be a great way to reach new customers and grow your business, but many myths about them can hold businesses back or give them false hope. Often, marketing agencies or "marketing gurus" fool businesses into running Facebook and Instagram Ads before they are ready.
In this Marketing Counts podcast episode, Shreya Banerjee and Paul Counts dispel some of the most common myths about Facebook Ads and discuss how can run them effectively for your business.
You’ll know the truth about Facebook ads and how to create an effective campaign that reaches new customers and grows your business.
Want to grow your business? Visit us at www.marketingcounts.com and grab the free gift that we put together for you.
Today we're going to talk about the number one thing that business owner's assume about Facebook ads. Wouldn't you like to know it? Well stick around and we'll talk about it more. Hello and welcome here to the Marketing Counts podcast. I'm Paul Counts, alongside with. Shreya Banerjee. And we are so excited here. Now, Shreya, you mentioned Facebook ads, what we're gonna be talking about today. So, um, but before we dive into the question you have, um, we just wanna let you know that, uh, we have a great report available for you at www.marketingcounts.com that's going to give you some great marketing strategies. So just go to www.marketingcounts.com, and check out the free gift we have waiting for you at the top of our website. I would give you a specific gift, but sometimes it changes, but we are always giving away something for free there. So go to marketing counts.com and get your marketing right. All right, Shreya. Let's dive in and talk about this question. I'm excited. Yeah, so we're talking about the number one thing that business owners think or assume about Facebook ads. Now we each have one, right? Like my, um, first number one thing is business owners think that they need to have Facebook ads <laugh>, and they don't. Right? Whenever you think I'm gonna go online, they say, okay, I need to go on Facebook and I'm running like a majority of the time. So many clients that we talk to, they say, Hey, I'm running Ads on Facebook and I'm not getting any, any value out of it. I'm not seeing any results out of it. So first thing they assumed when they thought that they were gonna go online was that they needed to go run ads on Facebook <laugh>. Right? Right. That's like the first thing they do. And you know, every time, you know, we hear this, um, you know, this idea, like it's the number one mistake, right? The, the statement you were saying, right? The number one mistake businesses think about Facebook ads and like you said, that it's easy. And to that, all we have to say is <laugh>. You know? Cause it's not easy at all. Facebook ads are absolutely not easy. Um, we actually laugh at that. I don't know that's goofy. But we do laugh at the fact that, that when people say they're easy cuz they're not. And, and it, but it's the first thing everybody wants to transition to. Now, I'll tell you guys right now, there's people eating people's lunch on Google right now because the ads are way cheaper because everybody and their dog decided that they're gonna go advertise on Facebook and Instagram. Cause that's what was cool, right? The problem is, it is not as easy as it used to be. The costs are much higher targeting as much more difficult. Um, so the, so get, get it outta your head that it's easy and that you're gonna start a campaign and make a ton of money. Like, again, we're not saying don't do it, but we're saying get it outta your head that it's extremely easy because it is not okay. So it does take a little bit of time to work with the right people. So that's number one. Treya, what is the other, um, mistake or I guess myth about Facebook? Well, I wanted to highlight the fact that, you know, just like everything else we teach and, you know, do in our own business, our F T E model, focusing on the foundation first and thinking logically about where your traffic's coming from. So yes, just because the marketing agency or the person that you hired said Facebook ads or just because it's hot and everybody else is there, you know, doesn't mean that your audience is hanging out there. You gotta think logically, where is your audience hanging out? If it's not a Facebook, if it's Google, well first of all, it's not a problem solving platform, right? We always talk about problem, problem solving platform. And Facebook is more of a, uh, social connection platform than a problem solving one. So if you're not there, you should be actually optimizing your problem solving platform traffic first. And if you haven't done that, why are you on Facebook? And then secondly, if you are there, is your audience there? Cuz what's the point of advertising there? If you're, uh, people, if your tribe, if you're, you know, the people that you're trying to connect with are on Pinterest, what's the point of advertising to them on Facebook? Yeah, absolutely agree. I'm getting a little standing ovation there. Cause that is fantastic <laugh>, um, inside there. No, it's so true. Like if your audience is not there, why are you there? And you know, the other thing that happens, I think where, where the allure of Facebook and Instagram ads, cause everybody went there, but if again, we, we talk about this often, the focusing on problem solving platforms oftentimes leads to the best conversions. Now, in a minute, we're gonna tell you how to make Facebook ads work. We're not completely anti-Facebook ads. We use 'em, we love 'em. They have their place. The problem is everybody thinks it's the first thing they should be doing. But with Facebook ads, even now with targeting me harder than ever, you're literally throwing money after somebody in hopes that they stumble into your business. Like literally like you hope that they go to Facebook and say, you know, let, like, let's say they need a chiropractor, right? They're looking for a chiropractor. They're looking for that. I can tell you right now, not a single person in the world goes to Facebook and says, boy, I hope I see a chiropractor ad you know, they don't, they're gonna go to Google, they're gonna go to YouTube, they're gonna type in, you know, chiropractor most likely do that on Google, even to look for the chiropractor or look for back pain relief tips on Pinterest or on uh, YouTube. That's where they're gonna go. And then, you know, on Facebook, they're gonna go hang out. They might chat with their friends about their back pain. But then guess what might happen though is Facebook then may show an ad, right? But why are we spending money on ads? Unless we know a thousand percent they want what we offer. And if they're typing in, I need a chiropractor or chiropractor near me, we a hundred percent know they need a chiropractor. You have a very minuscule chance that the money you're spending on Facebook ads are actually gonna reach the person that wants what you have to offer. So that's a very important point to get and understand. Yeah. So stop assuming that it's easy. Yes. Uh, Facebook is, that's not easy, uh, because it does require, I mean, first of all, they change their platform like every day. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, right? Oh yeah. Uh, so just because you bought a Facebook ad course, you think that, okay, now I'm an expert. I'm gonna just follow along and create this beautiful ad for my business. They're not easy. They again, change their stuff every day. So you kind of have to be professional within and like run ads for people or for yourself. You need to know and live it every day because things change. Um, yes. And you can lose a lot of money because if you're not up to it, right? If you're not, uh, looking at the conversions, if<affirmative> what's working and who you're targeting and all that, if you're not tweaking stuff, then you could lose a lot of money with it. So stop assuming that it's easy and stop assuming that your audience is hanging out on Facebook. Yeah. And, and I'll tell you one of the best ways to use Facebook ads, and this is something to tell the agency that you've hired to do your work. And this is just us sharing the truth with you as as marketing counts. Um, we're an agency. We do consulting, we do advising to people all the time. And we do not wanna see our clients get into this pickle. We also never wanna lead them down a path that's not gonna work for them. Cause it makes us look bad, right? If they don't get the results. We also don't price our packages unlike other agencies that will actually price their packages based on the percentage of ad spend, which is act absolutely disgusting to me. Cuz when they do that, they actually have no, no motivation to make your ads convert. Their motivation is get you to spend as much money as humanly possible on the ads. That's it. Because if they do that, then they make more money cause it's percentage of ads spend, right? And that's just wrong. So, um, definitely don't do that. And then, um, the other thing that, you know, we really wanna focus on with, with running ads though, the way two run ads correctly is to do, is to plant the, the remarketing pixel. Facebook has a marketing pixel. That means, you know, it's that typical thing Treya, right? If somebody is looking for, um, a shoe or something, right? And, and what happens, that shoe follows you around the. Web, right? Yes. That's a classic example. I always use that shoe that you, you know, doesn't leave you for three weeks cuz it follows you around everywhere because you clicked on it once. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>. And that's great. It's a great point because you want Facebook to do retargeting ads, not necessarily to get the initial lead. So get your initial lead somewhere else and then retarget them so you're reengaging with the people, right? Versus uh, trying to find a fresh lead. Yeah, absolutely. So, and that allows you to re-engage with them. So now you're running ads to people that actually visited your page or they visited a particular page on your website. So if you're an e-commerce store owner, they land on that particular shoe. Or if you're sell selling, um, you know, whatever it is you're selling in your e-commerce store, maybe it's supplements and they land on that particular supplement, you're gonna follow them around for an ad for that supplement and it's gonna be a much better conversion rate because they've already visited your website, they've already shown an interest in what you have to offer. So that's one of the ways to make Facebook ads work more effectively is use it as a remarketing tool. Because if they found your website by searching for what you offer, they're already interested. So they came across a Google ad, they came across Google, they came across Google Shopping, they came from YouTube, they came from Bing, they came from some other platform where they searched for you. Maybe they landed on your website via an email that you sent out to your list, right? You engaged with email marketing no matter how they got to your website, whether it was a referral or whatever the case is, they were interested enough to visit your site. Now is the time to retarget those people. It's so much harder to try to get fresh blood off of Facebook ads these days than it used to be. So if you're starting out with ads, do the retargeting. Again, we're not saying I don't want to sure somebody's gonna ride into the show and tell us like, you guys are wrong. You can get new leads, da da. Yes you can. Okay, but we're, we're here to help. Is that 90% of business owners that are not in the place, um, where they're just saying, Hey, I wanna do Facebook ads cuz they sound cooler or My agency told me to do it. And so we wanna help you, the 90% of you that need our help. And majority of the time you don't hear the whole picture from those people that say that, Hey, I scale my business up to, you know, multiple millions, uh, to, you know, 2 million my business because of Facebook ad. Well how much ad spend did you spend <laugh>, right? Right. Uh, how much money did you spend in order to grow it that much? It could be that you made certain amount mm-hmm <affirmative>, but you spend about 85% on ad revenue. So what did you actually make? Right? You only made that 25%. So gotta think about it that way. And just because they say that Facebook ads are the fantastic and the best thing, you gotta think about, okay, what are the conversions? Like, what are, what is gonna be my ad spent? Can I afford this <laugh>? Like you gotta think about all those things. Right? And start small too. I mean, with any ad campaign, I mean start five to $10 a day. Um, I know there's gonna be other people that say, oh, I always start at 20 or I always start at 200 to trigger the algorithm whatever. Start small, you know, start small because you're not gonna lose your shirt if you start small. Um, it does take time too. You know, there's statistics that have shown, we've shown this ourselves with accounts we work and manage with. It takes time. It's not an overnight process. Facebook does not give you the optimal clicks within the first week. So you have to be willing to lose a little money and you have to be patient. And it could take three to six months before the ad fully gets, you know, streamlined and working the way it should. So that's again, another thing I would say fast is another mistake or, or you know, another lesson from Facebook ads people need to realize is it's not fast, right? Even though the agency or your clients or people are gonna tell you Facebook ads are fast, we need to run Facebook ads. They're not fast. You have to be very particular. Not to optimize, at least. Not to optimize it. Optimization, you can get traffic quick, but yeah. Right? But so, so can you on Google ads, right? So like, unless your problem solving methods or traffic is dialed in, don't move on unless you're doing re-engagement type ads. Mm-hmm <affirmative>, like don't move on to social connection platforms and. Yeah, that's a great way to go. The other way to use Facebook ads, you can do, uh, list match with your audience. That means, and again, these are terms, this podcast is not intended to show you how to do these things cuz that'd be a whole nother show. But, um, we do offer a lot of trainings and, and courses. You can learn more about us and marketing counts.com. Get whatever freebie we have available to you, um, at the top of our website. And then, you know, we can introduce you to some of these trainings down the line. But the reality is, is that, um, the list matching is great because that's where you can upload your email list and then they will do a list match. Typically 40 to 50%, sometimes a little higher will end up list matching. So that means, let's say you have an email list of 5,000 people, then you upload that to Facebook and they say about 50% of them. So 2,500 people end up list matching. That means their email matched up with their Facebook profile and then Facebook will actually show your ads to those 2,500 people. And then that's a way to expand your audience and then These are terms to share with your agency if you're gonna hire somebody or to talk about amongst yourself or to research further, that's what the show's about. Now the other thing you can do is do what's called a um, a you can do a expand the audience, right? So you can expand the audience and do a lookalike audience. That's the term I was looking for, lookalike audience. So it's a lookalike audience off the 2,500 people from your list. So that means you're creating an audience of people that are like those on your email list. That means the likelihood that they convert is much stronger and it's much stronger cuz they've already shown an interest in what you have by joining your email list or buying your products or anything like that. So you're, you're really setting yourself up for success. But to go blindly out there and try the generic targeting out there on Facebook ads is just not the approach. And it's not gonna suit you on Instagram or Facebook cuz Facebook ads also show up on Instagram. Keep that in mind. They're not separate platforms. It's used the same ad platform. Um, even though Instagram has boosted posts, that's a whole nother topic of conversation. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, um, Facebook ads are their own entities. Keep that in mind. All right, so now, you know, don't assume these things, right? Yep. Don't assume these things. And the most important tip of of everything that we your foundation is set. Make sure your landing page is set. Make sure you know your avatar. No thy audience. That's probably the most important thing we could say. So, yep. Know thy audience know who you're targeting. Cuz if your messaging's off your ads really won't convert cuz you're paying every time your ads shows on, on Facebook. The reason we like Google Ads is cuz on the search ads. And we like those for people starting out because you're only gonna pay when they click, right? As long as you're not doing display ads, that's a whole nother thing too. So just make sure that you're only gonna pay when they click. Whereas with Facebook ads, yes your cost per click goes low, but you are still paying every time that ad shows. So if your copy does not convert, your copy does not hook your audience cuz you don't know who your audience is or you haven't done the avatar exercise, then your ads just, they won't work. You're gonna lose money. And if you're not targeting the right people, and that's why it's so important. So keep these things in mind, go out there, make things happen. And we're excited to work with you all here at Marketing Counts. Thank you everybody.