The first question is, what are some tips for making effective Facebook Ads?
Now there are two main parts, I would say, if you’re going to just generalise and that is the traffic itself, so the PPC marketing activity. The sending of the traffic, if you like, and then what that traffic does when it gets to that page. The answer to the question is sending the right person, and that comes back to your targeting and also what you’re saying to that person. So, are you getting in front of the right person with your ad, and then what are you saying in order to get them to that page? And then the second part of it is what’s on that page? If you get in front of the wrong person, meaning someone who’s not a prospect, and they go to your page, then there are two scenarios. One, you’re not going to actually get that many clicks or your click-through rate is going to be quite low because you’re not getting in front of the right person. Or if you do get clicks because of what you’re saying in your copy, then when they get to the page, they’re not a good prospect and therefore you’re not going to get any conversions, whether that would be sales or enquiries. Now, if you get in front of the right person and, let’s say, you use the wrong creative, then most likely you won’t get a high click-through rate. I would say that’s better than the former, so getting in front of the right person with an inefficient ad is still better than getting in front of the wrong person. But really, you want to get in front of the right person and then you want to provide them with the right message, a message that resonates with them. And then if you can get that first part done then that leaves you with essentially two scenarios, which is the message that they get on the page is inefficient or efficient.
If you get the right person and give them the right creative in your ad it can still work even if you’re messaging on your site, let’s say, your copy or your offer isn’t that compelling, then it can still work. But the thing that you want to think of in terms of the most effective way to do Facebook Ads is get in front of the right person, give them the right message, and then when they get to your website you want to reiterate what you said in your ad, so it needs to be consistent, and what is said on that page that they view or pages that they view is compelling to them. I would look at it as two main parts, which is the traffic and then also what happens when they get to the page. I run a digital marketing agency and so I want to get in front of business owners. So, if I get in front of someone who’s an employee, that’s the wrong audience for me and it’s not going to be very compelling. Now, let’s say with my creative, if I get them to click anyway when they get to that landing page or the website it’s still not going to work for me because they’re the wrong prospect. If I were to have bad creative then they wouldn’t click anyway, whereas if I were to get in front of the business owner, I would want the best creative possible. I want to get them to click as much as I possibly can providing they’re a relevant prospect. If I can get those first two things right, which is getting in front of the right person for my digital marketing agency it would be a business owner, and then the next part of that is getting the right creative that’s compelling to them, so whatever offer I might have or whatever is interesting to them, what matters to them, in the creative then the rest is done on the website. And so again, I would need to speak to what it is that they’re interested in, so the message of growing your business is, let’s say, compelling to most businesses, and then how I would go about doing that or what offer I would make to them would be on the landing page. And they would need to essentially see that I have a convincing proposition for them and that in order for them to continue I need to make them a great offer. So, how you go about making your Facebook Ads more effective, to answer the question, in summary, is to get in front of the right person, have the right creative, and then when they come to the site you need to make sure that it’s relevant to them and you have a great offer because if you don’t have those things then most likely it’s not going to be that effective for you.
How do you improve click-through rate on Facebook Ads?
If you get in front of the wrong person then your click-through rate is most likely not going to be that great, unless you say something which resonates with most people, in which case you don’t really want a great click-through rate because you’re not in front of the right person anyway. But if we take the hypothetical that you are getting in front of the right person and you want more clicks from those people, then you improve the click-through rate first by testing your messaging. So, you might want to think about four or five things which are highly compelling for your market or the ideal prospect that you target, and you might test four or five different ads and see which one gets the best click-through rate. Then once you find out that particular message resonates with your market, then you can start by improving that particular message either with, let’s say, more compelling ads, more relevant images, that go along with that copy, or you can vary what you’ve already said. So, to be specific I use the grow your business example. I run a digital marketing agency and I’m trying to get in front of business owners and I want to improve the click-through rate on Facebook Ads. I test the message I can grow your business and I have a satisfaction guarantee in order to do that. Let’s say that one is most compelling to my market, so I might test variations of that so it might be how to grow your business. It might be, do you want to grow your business? Looking to grow your business? It might be how this person grew their business or, you know, some sort of case study on growing your business. So, I would test those variations and find out which one is most compelling to the market and then I would test images alongside that. In some instances, images can be great to grab people’s attention. If you can get in front of people by using interesting images, they might be funny images that grab people’s attention, they might be if you use your imagination about all the various different images that you could use in order to grab people’s attention. And providing you’re getting in front of the right person with the right message, images can be used and it may not even be relevant to the particular message. And then you might test the various different images, maybe they’d be relevant, maybe they wouldn’t be relevant, and you’ve got the same message but basically, you’re testing one thing at a time in order to improve the response from your ad. And that is how you improve the click-through rate on Facebook Ads.
How effective are Facebook Ads in generating actual sales?
Facebook Ads can boom, so I think the best return on ad spend that I’ve seen from Facebook Ads has been something along the lines of 62 to 1, or something. So, it wasn’t a massive spending account but it wasn’t small either. Typically when you see that sort of return it tends to be quite a small amount of spend, but in this instance, it wasn’t small, it wasn’t a massive spending account, but for every pound that was being spent on this Facebook Ads account they were getting, on average about 55-60 to 1, something like that, and the top end of that was 62 to 1. So, if you imagine for every time they spent a pound on Facebook Ads they got something like 60 back in return, I mean, it’s such an amazing return. In a lot of instances, especially for e-commerce, the return on sales for Facebook Ads can be absolutely phenomenal but it really depends. There are also examples, in the exact opposite of what I just said, where it hasn’t worked. And so it depends on you, depends on your website, depends on your offer, depends on the targeting within Facebook because some targeting is great, works really well, and some targeting doesn’t work at all because the way that they target people, the accuracy of that targeting isn’t good in certain instances. Now, I would argue that if you’re skilled at getting in front of people, if you’re skilled at using that particular platform, you can still make it work but it will still vary in its performance based on the targeting. In the example I used where I said that the return on ad spend was 60 to 1, if you get an example where the targeting isn’t great, you’re never going to get that return. And there are plenty of businesses that don’t need anywhere near that return and they’ll still do well. In answer to the question, Facebook Ads is brilliant at generating actual sales, but it depends on the targeting, your creative, the industry you’re in, and then the website that the traffic is going to.
Is there a tool for spying on the Facebook Ads of competitors?
I wouldn’t refer to it as a tool, but I think the reason why I’m answering the question with this is because it’s not well known, but when you actually go into it, it’s pretty interesting that you can actually see every ad that a business is running just using Facebook. So – feel free to do this whilst the video is playing – if you go to Facebook and go to a particular business page, on the right-hand side – at least at the moment at the time of making this video – there is a section called page transparency. I think it says see more, and if you go to see more there’s a section which allows you to view all of the ads that are being run by that particular business. And if you click on that then it just shows you every single ad that is live. Now, in terms of transparency, as it’s said, that is pretty amazing compared to, I think, every other platform that runs ads. I don’t know of any other advertising platform that does that, shows you all of the ads that are being run by that company. And if you’re looking to improve your advertising by looking at your competitors’ ads, then it’s the first thing that I would do. That being said, there is a lot of unnecessary copying from one business to the next, and I would argue that there are not that many businesses that are really purposeful about their advertising. A lot of the time people just copy other people about what they’re doing. Earl Nightingale used to refer to it as “follow the follower”. It would be okay if you were following the leader, but what people do is they follow people who they think know what they’re doing, but in reality, they’re just following the follower. And if you really want to improve your advertising account, one way to do it is to outsource to experts. I have a digital marketing agency. Another way to do it is to spend that time and learn about how to get a better response yourself. So, rather than quote/unquote following the follower, you be the expert and you decide that you’re going to, not necessarily copy other people, but find out yourself the best way that you can improve the response for your advertising account because it’s rarely the case that your competitors have all the answers.
If you are looking to run an advertising campaign, would you invest in Google ads or Facebook Ads and why?
By now, I have a pretty good idea about which businesses will work better on either platform, but if for some reason I didn’t know, what I’d do is I’d split the budget in two. I’d test which gets a better response. You will know based on the response which one you should be doing going forward or at least which one has the highest probability of working. Now, if you don’t have a high enough budget to determine quickly whether or not the results of that test are going to be conclusive, then I would look at the metrics within analytics, for example, bounce rate. If it’s the case that Google Ads is generating a 99 per cent bounce rate with not much time on the site and hardly any pages visited, whereas Facebook Ads is generating, let’s say, 50 per cent bounce rate and a fairly good amount of time on the site with lots of different pages visited, even though you may not have conclusive data you can still get a probability about what’s going to work better for you going forward. Most performance related questions between one media and another are almost always going to be answered with, you test what works and the results give you the answers that you’re looking for. Feel free to get in touch and ask me about which businesses have the probability of working on the various different platforms. I’m happy to give you my advice on that, but I would also add that most businesses have the possibility of working on both those platforms, it just depends on what your offer is, how good your marketing is, and how good your targeting is using those platforms.
How can I create Facebook Ads that convert well?
I’ve done a lot of videos on marketing strategy in general, so I would go and look at the strategy that goes behind marketing, and it’s all for free on all of the social media platforms that I’m on because if you want a good conversion rate it is possible to do that without having a really good marketing strategy. But in terms of probability for you, if you want Facebook Ads that convert well it is really important that you have a great offer, the copy is compelling, both on the site and within the ads. If you’re making an offer it should be congruent from the ad to the landing page, and you’re getting in front of the right people in the first place.
Are Facebook Ads cheaper than Google Ads?
I would imagine that cheaper means the cost per click. Really what you want to be thinking about is not all about cost per click, it’s about what is going to be the most effective way to get clients for your business? So, let’s say for a second that Facebook Ads has a cost per click of 25p but Google Ads has a cost per click of £1, then based on that question the answer would be Facebook Ads is cheaper than Google Ads. But if you look at the conversion data, and let’s say the conversion data were to tell you that Google Ads is generating a cost per conversion of, let’s say, £10 and Facebook Ads is generating a cost per conversion of £25, then really you would want to put as much of your budget towards Google Ads as you can. So, it’s really more about the conversion data than it is about the cost per click, but if you can get clients at a beneficial cost to you then you should do both the platforms anyway.
Will Facebook Ads help me as a business owner?
I would imagine help me is defined as getting clients at a profitable amount. So, can you get customers for your business within your target cost? And it depends on your industry, depends on your marketing, it depends on your offer, and it depends on your creative. The answer to the question, in summary, is it can help you generate clients but whether it will is dependent on the factors that I alluded to.
What is a good conversion rate for Facebook Ads?
I would say a good conversion rate for any platform is going to be 5 per cent and up. It’s a bit of a generalisation because it really depends on what you’re offering and also the cost of what you’re offering. If you are offering a high-ticket item and you’re getting, for example, 3 or 4 per cent conversion rate but you’re selling stuff which is thousands of pounds, for example, then that’s very different from selling a book for £10. But generally speaking, what’s defined as a good conversion rate is typically 5 per cent and up. I wouldn’t think about it specifically in relation to Facebook Ads, I would just think of it generally speaking for websites what’s a good conversion rate, but it’s highly dependent on what you’re doing and also what you’re offering. Conversions can be defined as sales, enquiries, free giveaways, so I would need to know a little bit more about that business before I could give you a concrete answer, but typically 5 per cent and up is often considered good for a website.
How do I become good at Facebook Ads?
I would answer the question with a question which is, how do I become good at anything? And it’s about time, your time invested in knowing how to use the technical side of Facebook Ads, and then how good your marketing knowledge is. If you’re willing to put the time and the effort in then that’s great. There are plenty of resources out there if you’re willing to learn. If you’d rather not put the time in and just leverage other people’s experience then I would outsource that activity, but it all depends on what your circumstances are, how far along your business is, and what’s important to you. But it’s much like any skill, you get good at something by learning about it, by doing it, by making mistakes, and failing forward.
Why is my Facebook Ad not working well?
I have summarised what the main components are of Facebook Ads and you need to go through those and at least attempt to think about what part of those categories that I alluded to, which parts of those are not working. So, is it your targeting? Is it your creative? Is it your marketing principles or what you’re offering? Or is it the website that they’re going to? And I would attempt to address every one of those additional things until it starts to work well for you. If I had to guess, and in terms of the most probable reason why it’s not working, I would say the targeting because, as I said previously, you can have creative which is not that great, you can have average marketing and you can have an average website, and still do okay from Facebook providing you’re getting in front of the right people because the reality is that most businesses’ creative isn’t that great. Most websites are not that compelling and most people’s marketing knowledge isn’t that high, but providing you’re getting in front of the right people you can get clicks and you can get customers doing that. Now, I would still strongly encourage you to address all of those things, so I would definitely encourage you to test your creative. I would encourage you to improve your marketing knowledge, and I definitely encourage you to improve your website and improve on your offer, but the main reason why people don’t do that well at Facebook Ads is because they’re not getting in front of the right people in the first place. So, that’s a summary of why Facebook Ads may not be working that well.
How important is frequency in Facebook Ads?
There’s a term which you may or may not know, and it’s referred to as Facebook fatigue. What it means is that if you see an ad too many times, it means that you’re less receptive to it. You essentially become immune to that ad because you’ve seen it too many times. Now, you’ve probably had the experience of seeing an ad too many times, and if you’re not annoyed by that then it would be the case that it’s almost invisible to you because you’ve seen it too many times. And the frequency in Facebook Ads is the number of times that a person has been exposed to the same ad. And so, one principle that you can use in order to combat Facebook fatigue is to create new ads, variations of those ads so that people who are receiving those ads or viewing those ads don’t get bored of them. And so, frequency is very important in Facebook Ads, but if your ads are working, I wouldn’t worry too much about that. I would only start tackling it if you see a drop in response, and you can look at the metric of frequency and see if you can tally up, as frequency is going up does that see a drop in performance? And then I would perhaps regularly create new ads. It is also the case that if it’s not the individuals who are getting tired of those ads, Facebook will actually start to show the ads less and less based on the frequency, and that’s just for the user experience, their users, they don’t want to show the ads too many times. If you are concerned about frequency in Facebook Ads, then I would perhaps diarise it so you are creating new ads on a fortnightly basis or something like that
Do Facebook Ads go on Instagram?
The answer is, yes. It’s placement so you can elect to include or exclude either Facebook or Instagram as a placement. So, if you only want to show ads on Facebook then you can deselect the Instagram placement and then it won’t show on Instagram anymore. Or if you only want to show ads on Instagram then you can deselect all of the Facebook placements. And in order to show ads on Instagram, it is all through Facebook Ads. So, a summary of the answer to that question is, yes.
What are the most important Facebook Ad hacks?
If you have followed my content for a bit you will know that the term hacks is not something that I am fond of or that I particularly encourage you to do. And the way I respond to that is by saying, “In order for things to get better for you, you have to be better”, as a Jim Rohn, quote. I would stop looking for hacks and I would improve yourself rather than looking for quick wins. So, there is such a thing as optimisation, so you can make small improvements in order to get a better response for your advertising account, but I certainly wouldn’t position that as a hack. I would position it as you improving your knowledge, educating yourself, and applying that education. The more I think people look for the shortcut, I think the worse things will get for you. Be sure to recognise that in order for things to get better for you, you have to be better.
Who will win Google AdWords or Facebook Ads?
I would probably ask for a definition in terms of what win means, but I would imagine what that means is who’s going to be the most successful advertising platform? And obviously, there’s no way to know in advance, but I would perhaps assess what both platforms are doing well and then where they can improve. Google Ads are innovating, so they are constantly finding new ways and improved ways to show ads, which I think is great. What they could do to improve, I think that their help centre, when you ring and call someone, is awful. It’s almost so bad that it would almost be better if they didn’t have it at all. It is to their detriment in a big way. Regarding Facebook Ads, in general, Facebook had so many links on the page at once that they really had to simplify the interface. Although I think that social media is marginalising the need for search in general, I think each social media platform is going to just take a little bit away from search here or there, and I think over time search will start to be less dominant. That’s just an opinion. I don’t think they’ve done as much innovation but I do think that they have, for example, acquired Instagram which was a great move. I think that they’re doing the right things. And if I had to guess in terms of which one was going to “win” out of the two, I think it would be Facebook Ads. But at the same time outside Google Ads, Google is basically acquiring so many different types of services. So, whether it be Gmail or Google Drive, there are so many ways in which they’re becoming dominant that I think they’re also doing very well there. So, there’s no way for me to know. Those are my thoughts on that question.
Is it worth it to advertise on Facebook?
There’s no way to know whether it will work for you in advance but I certainly think it’s worth it to test advertising on Facebook. When you consider the fact that Facebook has been accused of influencing elections and overthrowing governments, if you think that Facebook can’t work for your business then I think you’re underestimating the power that Facebook can potentially have. But in terms of whether it would work is dependent on the things which I’ve already talked about, which is the accuracy of the targeting, the creative that you pick, how good your marketing principles are, and then where that traffic goes.
I’m running Facebook Ads but no-one is signing up on my website. What do I do?
Other than what I have alluded to, which was the targeting, the creative, the marketing strategy and the website that they’re going to, improving those things, the one thing which I would perhaps look at if you’re not going to do those things, is I would look at how good your offer is. Now, I have said that it’s contingent on you getting in front of the right people which are the audiences, and that’s just one of those things that you really need to prioritise. Outside that, how good your offer is, is very important because that can have a big impact on the response that you’re going to get. So, when someone comes from an ad and they are visiting your website, what have you got to offer them or is it just we do this service? I would think about how compelling your offer is to the person who is coming from Facebook to your website, what are you offering them, basically.
Is it worth getting a Facebook specialist for my Facebook Ads?
I would ask what the definition of a Facebook specialist is there. Sometimes when you’re running Facebook Ads it can come up as a notification in your Facebook Ads account with, like, a Facebook marketing expert wants to speak to you and it’s someone from the Facebook team. Now, I had one of those calls just out of interest because I wanted to see what it was like, and rather than being able to answer the questions, what happens much in the way that Google does things as well, is that they’ve got a particular agenda and they want you to use particular tools even though you may have a different idea in mind. Now, if you’re referring to that then I would say take the call but ensure that you do what’s right for you, and make sure you test the performance of anything they encourage because often it’s the case that they’re not trying to get you the best possible return for the Facebook Ads, they’re incentivised to get you to use particular features because that’s what they get bonuses for. If you’re referring to outsourcing to a freelancer or an agency, then if it’s worth it for you is dependent on a few things. It’s dependent on your budget, so can you afford to pay that person? And if you have a good freelancer or a good agency, it means that the fee is fairly immaterial because the increase in performance should make the fee superfluous, and it also depends on what kind of Facebook specialist you pick. So, if you’re interested in that type of service, go to ethicalmarketingservice.com and set up a time with the team and maybe we can help talk you through what’s important to you.
How do I get the most out of my Facebook advertising?
I’ve mentioned the USP many times. Other than targeting, which I’ve mentioned already, I’d think about what makes you different from any other business offering the same thing because you do have to have a reason why someone should do business with you over any other option that they can have. If you want to get the most out of it, think about what your client needs or what your potential prospect wants and needs and then work back from there.
Are TikTok Ads better than Facebook Ads?
I am testing TikTok Ads at the moment and whilst I am open to being proven wrong, there are many, many instances of people getting great results from Facebook Ads, but TikTok Ads doesn’t have that. What TikTok has is a large number of users, but at the moment I don’t see that many examples of people being able to use TikTok as a customer acquisition tool. That may change but at the moment, whilst I think that you should be on TikTok, especially if your target market is a younger demographic, and you should be acquiring a following on TikTok, I wouldn’t use it at the moment as a way to acquire clients because I don’t think it’s set up for that just yet. It’s still very early days. But I am open to being wrong on that and, like I said, I’m testing the ad platform and as I get a response from it, as I get examples that I can share with you, I will of course share that, and ask me any questions if you have questions about TikTok ads.
I hope that’s been beneficial to you and that you know a little bit about Facebook Ads, and more than you did when you started the video. If you have any questions feel free to put them in the comments. If you need help with your Facebook Ads, feel free to visit us at ethicalmarketingservice.com and I’ll speak to you soon.