Facebook ads are highly targeted, fit any budget and can be changed on the fly. You can use them to increase your “likes”, build your email list and even, yes, sell goods outright.
1) Think through your goal. You’ll need to be more specific than “get more customers or clients through Facebook” to see the success you want.
If you’re a services based business like a business coach or a graphics designer, 5-7 new leads a month might be a fantastic ROI for you. Or, maybe you want 50. Either is possible, it all depends on the resources you apply toward it.
Let’s say you’re a business coach and you want to build your email list by 20% over the next 3-4 months. You want to reach self-employed, college educated women between 35 and 60 who live in the Philadelphia area who’ve indicated they’re small business owners.
2) You’ll need to set up a mechanism to showcase to sign up for your email list. You can use an program like North Social or Offer pop to create a “fangate” app for your Facebook page. (That’s the page where people land and need to “like” your page to see what’s behind it.)
3) Then, you’ll need to offer them an incentive to sign up (contests are popular or you can use a free report.)
4) Once the “app” is in place you can create your Facebook ads
To Create an Ad
Go to “Build Audience” and click “Create an Ad”. If you don’t know where that is, look at the picture with this blog post.
Then, follow the prompts and fill in the areas for your ideal client. Decide how much you’ll spend each day and how long you want it to run. I recommend creating more than one ad, 2-3 minimum will give you the opportunity to see which is performing better.
The key to success is setting clear goals at the start and tracking and testing to see which is working best.
Of course, you could just run some ads without the “fangating” option. That can be useful for boosting your “likes” if you need to build your audience.
Have you had success with Facebook Ads? Please share in the comments below.
