Authors: Are Facebook Ads For You?

“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!

Running 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 clearly understands the analysis of 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 the sales page of your book?” I asked.

“Yes. That should have been enough for them to buy,” he replied.

Wrong! It’s not. Just taking complete strangers to buy anything is a waste of money. It is NOT a good use of your ad spend.

How to get the most out of your ad spend

To get the most out of your advertising dollars, you first need to test the waters. You absolutely need to know that your ads are showing 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 advertising specialist who said I would achieve great results 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 their substantial fee and huge ad spend. 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 that I was NOT going to get the promised results.

The mistake you made was overpromising.

A different story

“We needed more time,” was what they told me.

“But you told me that we would get results from the beginning,” 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 where 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 a careful analysis of every dollar spent before we increase our ad budget. We’ll start with $5-$10 per day, analyze your 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 invested money in 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 return on investment.

The process involved more, much more, than simply leading people to an offer. He already knew that driving people to a sales page would get nowhere. What I’ve found is that even a free offer straight out the door won’t get you anywhere.

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 view 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 advertising spend.

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

Flow

By first directing visitors to my blog, we are able to 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 subscriber list.

Once on my list, I can engage subscribers with pre-programmed autoresponder 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’s not that they don’t work, it’s how you’re doing them.

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

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