5 Things Every Business Should Have Before They Hire A Facebook Ads Manager
You know Facebook advertising is the obvious solution to help quickly grow your business and get more qualified eyeballs on your products and services.
However, if you're like most business owners, the thought of spending all your time creating and managing ads on top of everything else that comes with running your business sounds like a complete nightmare.
In that case, the next and only solution would be to invest in hiring an agency or expert to take care of your Facebook ad management.
But is your business really ready to start using ads on a larger scale?
Here are 5 things (as mentioned on my Entrepreneur on Fire podcast interview) I recommend having in place before you seek out an expert or spend a lot of money on any Facebook Ads campaigns:
1. A crystal clear idea of who your ideal customer is
Before you even think about running ads, you need to be clear about EXACTLY who you want to target and attract. Think of it like of game of darts. The more you aim for the bullseye, the better chance you have of hitting the target. But if you were to aim all over, the more likely you would be to miss.
This is why even though you might be able to help a lot of different people with your product or service, it 'doesn’t mean you should. You need to get specific.
More specific than “I want to target business owners in the United States between the ages of 25-45.”
There are over 31.7 million small businesses in the US! That’s a lot of business owners and not all of them are going to be interested in your product or service.
Also, a newer business owner is going to have very different wants/needs/interests than someone who has already scaled into the 6 or 7-figure range.
Having a clear idea of your ideal customer will make it easier to target them and write copy that truly speaks to them.
2. An offer that has been validated by your market
This one is pretty straightforward. You should either currently have sales coming in regularly or if you have a new product you have validated your offer through social media, pre-selling or another means.
I've seen first-hand after managing over half a million dollars in ad spend that you can throw all the money in the world towards ads, and even have the best written and designed ad, but your campaigns will always fail if people don't truly want what it is you're offering.
3. A sales funnel or system in place to convert your potential customers and leads into sales
Once someone sees your ad on Facebook, that's only the first step to getting to the point of a sale. It's important you also have a funnel or follow-up system in place that is helping to build trust and convert your leads. Otherwise, you'll end up spending money on Facebook ads that just drain your wallet instead of bringing in measurable results.
This funnel might look as simple as....
Facebook Ad > opt-in landing page > thank you page > welcome email sequence
The idea is that by outlining each stage of the customer journey you're more likely to convert prospects into leads and can easily track and optimize your results from your campaigns.
4. A budget to support your business goals
One common thing I've seen over the years is I'll come across a business owners that is selling a product for $1000, but then they'll only have $100 to spend on Facebook ads.
I always say that this is the absolute wrong way to approach paid traffic.
In order to know how much you should spend you must first become aware of two extremely valuable metrics within your business:
CPL - Cost Per Lead. How much it costs for you to acquire a name, email, or phone number.
Sales Conversion Rate. How many leads you need to acquire in order to make a sale.
Let’s say for example you pay $5/lead and your sales conversion rate is 2%. Going back to the example above, that means if you were to spend $500 on ads you would generate 100 leads and get 2 sales. That would be $2000 in sales and a 4x ROI. I don’t know about you but I would spend $1 to make $4 any day and every day!
Once you know these numbers it becomes a lot easier to spend money on Facebook Ads with confidence because now have you a baseline of what you can and can’t afford in order to be successful and profitable.
5. Valuable content that your target market will love
Facebook Ads will not sell your products or services alone, but by continually adding value and nurturing your audience through helpful content you can use ads to build trust with more of your audience and convert more of them into leads.