Facebook Advertising - Ask Me Anything

[testos111]

Time to give back to the place I extract so much from.

Today I just touched Rs.5,00,000 (roughly $10k and PPP equivalent roughly $30k) on the advertising expense on FB. It's taken me around 5 years to do it so of course I'm no big player.

But I believe I have done well for myself as I run a business I truly love all by myself and make as much, if not more than my MBA peers whilst working for 1/4th the number of hours they do. Have made a 6-7 x ROI on my ads expense in the last 3 years alone.

I also teach this subject at various management colleges.

I won't reveal exactly what I do but I'd be more than happy to help out anyone who needs tips on how to run FB ads effectively, something I see so many people wasting and burning their money at due to poor strategies.

And if you're not aware, due to the recent algorithm change implemented by Facebook, organic reach will soon be pretty much dead so advertising is where it'll all be.

Try me!

 

[CleanSlate]

I'm thinking of running a FB ad for my service-based business. I can see how FB ads would be easy to do if you're selling products, but for things like B2B services I'm not so sure.

What are your thoughts on FB ads for service-based B2B vs product-based B2C?

 

[testos111]

I'm thinking of running a FB ad for my service-based business. I can see how FB ads would be easy to do if you're selling products, but for things like B2B services I'm not so sure.

What are your thoughts on FB ads for service-based B2B vs product-based B2C?

In my expereince, FB ads are actually better for services than products. My entire income has come from running ads for my services.

I've sold products (mainly my e-book) through ads also but those ads were also re-targeting ads based on the people who had visited my services landing page or purchased my service.

For products, Google Adwords still dominates mainly because it's a pull based ad as opposed to a push one like FB.

Having said that, FB retargeting is getting as sophisticated, if not better than Google ads, which can change the game for products.

But making a FB product ad for a cold audience is usually a recipe for disaster. Retargeting is what you should be using which obviously means that you will first have to generate some traffic on your website. Remember it takes 6-7 exposures on an average and sometimes more before a customer moves to the bottom of your funnel.

 

[TooFineAPoint]

Questions about your non-retargeting ads (assuming you also run such ads):

1. Do you have an ask to buy in the ad? Or do you offer something free (or very low cost) to get the user to give up an email address or prove themselves a buyer first?

2. What is your experience using Lead Forms vs just sending traffic to your own landing page?

 

[testos111]

Questions about your non-retargeting ads (assuming you also run such ads):

1. Do you have an ask to buy in the ad? Or do you offer something free (or very low cost) to get the user to give up an email address or prove themselves a buyer first?

2. What is your experience using Lead Forms vs just sending traffic to your own landing page?

1. I use both. When it's a direct buying ad, I make sure the service I'm offering is priced at a discount or a very low price. You really need to get your ad spot on for this because obviously the conversion will be less and so will the clicks. Less clicks means a lower CTR (click through ratio) which increases the cost of the ad. More cost and less sales will result in failure. So first make sure your ad has good images and looks professional and more importantly that your targeting is spot on. This will eventually up the CTR and make your CPC (cost per click) low but it takes a fair bit of trial and error. For instance, in the last year or so, after tweaking an ad for my service a lot of times, my CPC went from Rs.15 ( quarter cent) to about Rs. 2. I also made a lot of changes to my landing page, something that a lot of people ignore to increase my conversions. For free stuff ads, they almost always run well because they automatically get a high CTR as people love freebies. But there the key is to make sure you have a proper long term funnel in place to convert those people so it's all worth to you in the end.

2. Lead forms always have higher conversions than website based ads but I always use the latter. Why? Because they are SIMPLE. Lead forms have lot of complications when it comes to integrating them with your e-mail service provider and in the long run, this can prove costly. Till FB doesn't make it a seamless process to integrate the form and e-mail provider, it's better to use the traditional website approach. Havign said that, you can use lead forms if you have a high ticket item (like real estate) and you are ok with a few leads that you are ok with recording manually.

 

[GlobalMan]

CleanSlate, WeekendCasanova talks about using facebook ads for selling his B2B services here:

Ryan's 5-6 Figure/Month Online Money Making Datasheet/Journey

Social media marketing (or service-selling) is my bread and butter right now, and consistently brings in over 5-figures in revenue alone (revenue, not profit). This business model is where you manage the lead generation for a business, preferably a service-selling business. A real estate agents needs leads - using Facebook ads, you generate him/her leads. In return, they pay you either by commission (or my preferred method, a monthly retainer).

It's also a super easy business model to get into. You simply need to understand Facebook ads, and how to build a basic marketing funnel (ad -> landing page).

It's important that for this business model, you specialize though. For example, real estate agents. You would position yourself as an expert within that niche, and market your services to real estate agents.

What is required?

1. An understanding of Facebook ads + funnels
2. A Facebook page (for your brand)
3. A system to attract leads (your niche)

You can get your clients from good old fashioned cold-calling, or launching a Facebook ad targeting your desired niche.

You'll need a calendar booking application as well, in order to schedule meetings with your prospects.

Once you have a client, you can replicate the same process that you used to find your client, to find them clients as well - as you can see, it's a super easy process that can be outsourced eventually.

My process:

1. Create a FB Page (Attracting Wealthy Clients For Realtors, as an example)
2. Set up a leadpage which describes what you can do for your clients, how they can benefit + set up a calendar app
3. Launch a Facebook ad with targeting to your niche 'realtors'
4. Have prospects book calls
5. Close them
6. Repeat process, but for people looking to buy/sell homes, and with a different landing page (listings etc..)

 

[CleanSlate]

Thanks testos and Global, this is giving me a kick in the ass to just do the FB ad.

One more thing. How do you do the targeting? Sometimes when I make a list of traits or characteristics of my target customer, they don't match with the FB audience options so I end up winging it. Needless to say, the results were terrible.

So how do you prepare your target audience before you create the FB ad, and during?

 

[testos111]

Targeting can be a tricky affair. Here's the route I follow:

1. First keep it simple and in the interests section, choose something that generally fits your service. For instance, if you are running a gym, just choose Fitness, nutrition, bodybuilding, etc.

2. Once you start to get some clicks and traffic, you can use a feature called Lookalike audiences to tell Facebook to target people who are similar to the ones who clicked on your ad.

3. From this lookalike ad, you can see go to the Facebook Insights section and check the interests that people who have clicked your ad share. You can then create new ads with those interests.

For my main ad, I did not even have to do the third step as the ad with the lookalike audience just started working like a charm for me.

To explain lookalike audience will be very time consuming for me here but there are tons of YouTube vids out there on how to implement it. It's the most underrated function in FB ads and many businesses (like mine) whose websites don't get too much traffic completely depend on it. In my opinion, this feature, will be the main reason I can foresee FB ads becoming as good if not better than Google ads.

 

[Teep]

Quarter of a penny CPCs? At least there's one pro to living in India.

 

[testos111]

Quarter of a penny CPCs? At least there's one pro to living in India.

No point in a lower CPC if you can't convert well. There isn't a better market than the US/UK for conversions, especially when it comes to purchasing something online or a digital information based product. Hence, it's always easier to scale businesses based on American audiences, a direction which I';ll soon be heading towards.

 

[BallsDeep]

Having said that, FB retargeting is getting as sophisticated, if not better than Google ads, which can change the game for products.

But making a FB product ad for a cold audience is usually a recipe for disaster. Retargeting is what you should be using which obviously means that you will first have to generate some traffic on your website. Remember it takes 6-7 exposures on an average and sometimes more before a customer moves to the bottom of your funnel.

What's your opinion on retargeting via messenger chatbots instead of traditional retargeting? Not only to save on adspend but also to have a more intimate interaction with your customer. Curious to hear your opinion.

 

[TooFineAPoint]

Thanks for the answers Testos.

Would be very helpful to hear you talk in more detail about your landing page structure and testing/changes you did.

Since you're paying to get the prospect from the FB ad to the landing page, it's just as important as any setting on FB, so any thoughts you have on that would be appreciated.

For instance, do you have a go-to layout (or layouts) for specific industries? Do you write a traditional sales letter type landing page (lots of text), or opt for something really simple with a form to collect email right away? Do you use video on the landing page? Do you build your own landing pages, say in Wordpress... or do you use a service like Unbounce or ClickFunnels?

And as to the lookalike audience, I heard a great strategy (haven't tried yet) of uploading your current mailing list of clients, and then letting FB create a lookalike from that.

CleanSlate, ^ that idea might be the best bet for you (since you said you have an existing email list). But maybe Testos has more insight.

 

[testos111]

Having said that, FB retargeting is getting as sophisticated, if not better than Google ads, which can change the game for products.

But making a FB product ad for a cold audience is usually a recipe for disaster. Retargeting is what you should be using which obviously means that you will first have to generate some traffic on your website. Remember it takes 6-7 exposures on an average and sometimes more before a customer moves to the bottom of your funnel.

What's your opinion on retargeting via messenger chatbots instead of traditional retargeting? Not only to save on adspend but also to have a more intimate interaction with your customer. Curious to hear your opinion.

Haven't used them myself but know a friend who did and he did not find them effective. Will ask him again in detail and post here later on.

 

[testos111]

Thanks for the answers Testos.

Would be very helpful to hear you talk in more detail about your landing page structure and testing/changes you did.

Since you're paying to get the prospect from the FB ad to the landing page, it's just as important as any setting on FB, so any thoughts you have on that would be appreciated.

For instance, do you have a go-to layout (or layouts) for specific industries? Do you write a traditional sales letter type landing page (lots of text), or opt for something really simple with a form to collect email right away? Do you use video on the landing page? Do you build your own landing pages, say in Wordpress... or do you use a service like Unbounce or ClickFunnels?

And as to the lookalike audience, I heard a great strategy (haven't tried yet) of uploading your current mailing list of clients, and then letting FB create a lookalike from that.

CleanSlate, ^ that idea might be the best bet for you (since you said you have an existing email list). But maybe Testos has more insight.

I'm very well versed with Wordpress since I've been creating wordpress based sites since last 7 years. But even then a lot depends on the theme design and I always suggest that a serious marketer should invest in a paid theme by buying it from sites like Themeforest.

If you're not good with Wordpress and creating pages on your own, then the obvious choice is Leadpages. Those guys have amazing templates and it's great for beginners. The monthly pricing hurts though. If it was a one time buy, I would probably be using their templates and not creating my own.

The content on the page will depend on what you want the outcome to be. A squeeze page works best when its all precise and short. For a sales page, I find more the content I havem the better it converts. Even adding small sections like a money-back gaurantee makes a HUGE difference to your conversions. THere are lot of other things like how fast it loads, having no menus or outbound links which can distract the visitor, etc.

Lookalike and mailing lists work great. Best part about custom audiences in a FB ad is that you can use multiple lookalike audiences in the same ad. For instance in one ad, I use lookalikes generated from my website traffic, FB video ad traffic and mailing list all together and it works very well for me.

 

[CleanSlate]

Two more questions.

1. What do you do for budgeting? Do you low ball it at say, $5 a day for a week, or do you set a much higher daily budget number, and why?

2. Which is better, Link Clicks or Leads? Automatic or manual bidding?

EDIT: another question... gosh, this FB ad stuff is getting complicated... and we haven't even got into FB pixels and shit like that.

3. Is it better to just collect emails, or send clicks straight to a service consultation page?

 

[testos111]

Two more questions.

1. What do you do for budgeting? Do you low ball it at say, $5 a day for a week, or do you set a much higher daily budget number, and why?

2. Which is better, Link Clicks or Leads? Automatic or manual bidding?

EDIT: another question... gosh, this FB ad stuff is getting complicated... and we haven't even got into FB pixels and shit like that.

3. Is it better to just collect emails, or send clicks straight to a service consultation page?

1. The standard thing is to not go below $10 per day. Most of my ads run for $20 or upwards. In the testing phase, you can go a bit low like $5 but definitely not below that since you won't get sufficient impressions to make sense of any data. It's better to quickly make a mistake and learn from it then wait days. Time is money and all that.

2. I use link clicks with manual bidding and I find it to be the most reliable combination. Auto bidding works fine too but it scarred me once when it charged me around $6/click. Have no idea why that happened but since that day I've never used automatic again though almost all marketers I know have absolutely no issue with using it and it's something that is suggested to beginners. Mnaual isnt tough though. What I usually do is see the sugegsted bid that Facebook shows and then bid higher than the highest suggested bid. So I know for sure that my ads will get impressions. From there on if I'm getting a good CTR, I keep reducing the bid. Many people follow the opposite approach too. Like one of my bosses in adigital company I used to work for would start with the lowest range from the suggested bid and work his way up till he was happy with everything. The downside to that is that sometimes it can mean your impression rate can be a bit slow since most of the clashes for the timeline space are being won by your competitors who are bidding more than you. But the upside is that you don't lose money too fast. I'm more risk pro so I always suggest starting with the aggressive bid.

3. ALWAYS collect e-mails, even if you are leading them to a sales page of a service. You can still have an optin box which leads them to the final purchase button but always collect their info. It'll also help you retarget them via e-mail or by uploading mailing lists to create a retargeted audience for an ad.

Talking about retargeting, the first thing that a FB marketer should do even before starting to make ads is to install the FB pixel. If you don't have a FB pixel on your website, your traffic is being "wasted" in a sense. Remember, people need two things before they buy - reminders and trust. While the latter depends on lot of factors, the former has never been easier to achieve because of retargeting tools like pixels and autoresponders.

 

[CleanSlate]

Ok I just set up 2 ads, with manual bidding and link clicks. I was shocked to see that the suggested bid amount was anywhere between $3 and $6 per click, so I set it at just above $6. :/

Is it not supposed to be that high?

I'll just slap an email opt-in on the service page (where the ad links to) and hopefully that's enough.

If we could take this to PM, that's up to you. I wouldn't want to clog this thread.

 

[testos111]

Ok I just set up 2 ads, with manual bidding and link clicks. I was shocked to see that the suggested bid amount was anywhere between $3 and $6 per click, so I set it at just above $6. :/

Is it not supposed to be that high?

I'll just slap an email opt-in on the service page (where the ad links to) and hopefully that's enough.

If we could take this to PM, that's up to you. I wouldn't want to clog this thread.

The suggested bid depends on the target audience you have chosen. $3- $6 is pretty normal for compettitive niches like fitness, e-commerce, etc. Remember, the bid is highest you are willing to pay. It doesn't mean you'll actually be paying that much. Only in the worst case scenario would you be paying that. Most often the actual price you will be charged will be way below $6 and from there if your ad is good, it'll only get lower. If $6 is too much ot stomach, you can try the lower bid method first and go for $3 and see if you get impressions or not. If not, you can increase the bid a bit. My ad on which I get a CPC of Rs.1 has a bid value of Rs. 60 ($1). The bid value is only a starting point. After that it's all about the CTR you are getting.

 

[Meadowlark]

I'm looking to get more listeners for my radio network, getting the pixel loaded into the player page as we speak so I can track conversions to listeners. Beyond that there's not much I can do.

Is there a way to send people to your apps in the Apple and Google stores? They're already built and published and I cannot change them.

 

[testos111]

I'm looking to get more listeners for my radio network, getting the pixel loaded into the player page as we speak so I can track conversions to listeners. Beyond that there's not much I can do.

Is there a way to send people to your apps in the Apple and Google stores? They're already built and published and I cannot change them.

Yep, in fact Facebook does that amazingly well. You can run mobile app ads which run on phones only and when people click on your ad, they are taken to your app on the playstore.

For the radio page, make sure you install the Google Analytics code to see how well the traffic from FB ads is doing. You can see this from the average time spent on your page for a particular source of traffic.