Authors: Are Facebook ads for you?

“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 isn’t 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 advertising.

You also have to find someone who clearly understands the analytics of your ad campaigns. It takes more, much more, than putting up an ad with, “Get my thing!” or “Buy my thing!”

Case in point…

Recently, I received a message from an author who spent a small fortune on Facebook advertising. He was extremely disappointed with the results.

“I didn't sell one single book from the ads,” he complained.

“Did you send people directly to the sales page for your book?” I asked.

“Yes. That should have been enough to get them to buy,” he responded.

Wrong! It's not. To simply drive complete strangers to buy anything is a waste of money. It’s NOT a good use of your ad spend.

Getting the Most Out of Your ad Spend

To get the most out of your ad dollars, you have to test the waters first. You absolutely need to know your ads are showing up in front of people who are interested in what you have to offer. In addition, you have to build trust.

My experience has cost me dearly

A few years ago, I hired an ad specialist who claimed I would get a great result under her careful guidance. According to her, she got great results for other well-known experts in my industry. I did my homework and it seemed all she said was true.

With complete confidence, I invested in her substantial fee and a hefty ad spend. I had no reason to believe 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 I was NOT going to get the promised results.

The mistake she made was to over promise.

A different story

“We needed more time,” was what I was told.

“But you told me we would get results from the beginning,” I said.

“Well, it seems this is not a responsive market,” she 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 shot 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 ready to contract is his overly cautious approach.

“It will take careful analysis of every dollar invested before we increase our ad budget. We will start with $5 – $10 a day, analyze your results and when we get the type of results we are looking for, we increase our daily budget,” he advised.

This time, my results have been very, very different.

Lesson Well Learned

Before putting any money into a campaign, I wanted to have a very clear understanding of what was to be done, what my investment in the daily ad spend would be and what I could expect for a return on investment.

The process involved more, much more, than simply driving people to an offer. I already knew taking people to a sales page was not going to result in much of anything.

What I came to find out is even a free offer straight out the gate won’t result in much of anything.

Rather, to get the best result, there are steps that need to be taken first. One is to clearly determine who the ideal candidate is to see 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.
Upon determining who is most likely to be interested in my information, we can increase the ad spend.

This allows for a great ROI (return on investment).

Flow

By first driving visitors to my blog, we can re-target the ads on Facebook to a similar demographic.

The conversion will be a heck of a lot higher by doing it this way. This assures a higher conversion rate to my subscriber list.

Once on my list, I can engage subscribers with pre-programmed auto responder messages. I also continue to create value and build trust.

Is this a longer process than sending directly to my sales page? Yes!

Is it more effective? Absolutely.

If you think FB ads don't work, it could be it's not that they don't work, it could be how you are doing them.

It could also be that running ads is not in your wheelhouse of expertise.

Far too often, authors try to do everything themselves.

This can be very, very counterproductive.

You may need to consider hiring an expert. But before taking their word for how great they are, do your homework and check with people they've worked with.

And, if they promise you the moon in an unrealistic time frame, rethink your decision. I know I have.