Cat Howell

I’m ready.

Cat Howell

Yeah.

There is nothing else like Facebook ads out there. Clearly, as a bit of a disclaimer, I am obviously highly biased here because I have built all of my businesses off the back of Facebook. When you look at it, there is no other marketing channel like Facebook.

Cat Howell

It’s listening to you through messenger. Its ability to target you and to follow you across different devices, which is something that Google struggles with as well.

There’s just so many facets of Facebook ads that allow you to hyper-target your ideal customer based on their demographics, their behaviors, what they’re talking about, what they’re emailing.

There’s just no other marketing platform out there that can compare. When you pull in the tracking, the ability to track those results even through offline tracking, there’s nothing else that can compete with it in the marketplace.

If you’re a business in the online space or a local business where you are brick and mortar trying to drive people into a shop, many things can be done with Facebook ads. That is regarding generating leads right through direct sales, and it’s possible to make money posting ads on Facebook.

Cat Howell

Yeah. Good question.

Cat Howell

Typically, there are a couple of big mistakes that new Facebook marketers and entrepreneurs make when they decide to go into the Facebook ad space. The most obvious one is the lack of a sales funnel. That means the process where you can go out there, generate a lead, and then turn that lead into a customer. I think maybe this stems from the radio or television background of marketing style.

But a lot of people are just putting a product ad on Facebook, and then directing traffic to their landing page, and expecting that to convert into sales. That only works when you have kingpin products. Kingpin products are products the market is desperate for, and will almost sell themselves. Those are very rare, so most people need sales funnels.

Different industries have different verticals. Whether you’re a dentist or you’ve got a podcast, or you’ve got an online course you’re trying to sell or e-commerce, or whatever space, they’re all going to require different funnels for that.

Cat Howell

When you have a funnel in place, some of the big mistakes we see beyond that after that is tracking, or lack thereof. That means not feeding up your event tracking or your conversion tracking properly.

Cat Howell

It’s optimizing and getting Facebook to optimize for the result that you want. It has one of the most powerful algorithms out there.

If you’re not tracking results correctly and you’re not telling Facebook to optimize for that result, you’re missing out massively.

So that’s one of the big reasons we see a lot of people not finding success with trying to make money posting ads on Facebook or burning money as you said.

Then, beyond that, there are a lot of different things.

Cat Howell

Your ads are not keeping what we call “keeping the sense.” It makes sense to you. You’re running an ad, and the ad looks pretty, but people are clicking through, and it’s sending them to the home page of your website where everyone just bounces out because the user experience is entirely jolted.

Not spending enough money is a big reason people fail.

They’ll spend $20-30, and forget that when you launch new ads, typically, your cost per conversion is going to come in quite a bit higher for a new funnel than what it will fiddle into once it optimizes.

Cat Howell

The fastest way to success is finding mentors or coaches who are successful themselves.

If you’re bootstrapping and you’re a DIYing this yourself, there are a lot of free resources out there.

For example, Facebook even has its free course called Facebook Blueprint. There are thousands and hundreds of thousands of YouTube videos.

I think the biggest advice I can give here if that’s the approach you’re using is to make sure you’re consuming content that is relevant to the space or the industry or the type of funnel that you are working with. An e-commerce campaign is fundamentally different to a lead gen campaign or an online course campaign.

Just making sure that whatever content or resources you tap into out there, it’s relevant to the space that you’re in.

Cat Howell

There are a lot of discussions around, and it’s been interesting because when I first got started out in Facebook ads, I remember I struggled even to pitch $100. This was maybe four years ago, and the market didn’t value Facebook ads. It wasn’t what it was now.

Retargeting didn’t even exist back then. It wasn’t the platform it is now, and it was hard. I spent many years in my business and even as an agency, completely falling to the market perceptions of the amount of work that is required to run successful ads. It is a very time-intensive activity.

Cat Howell

I think there are some problems with both sides in the sense that it’s a highly saturated market at the market because it’s very sought after. A lot of businesses have of caught none to this marketing channel, and now want a piece of the pie, and this is growing rapidly in the last of two years.

There are one million new advertisers on Facebook every single year, so it’s growing extremely quickly. It was just like the SEO space quite a few years ago. You’re going to get a lot of skilled contractors that hop into that space.

Now, regarding whether or not you are knowing or having the confidence that you’re working with someone that has those skills, I think that’s just like any other recruitment or outsourcing that you’re doing in your business. You do your due diligence, and you try to find out if they’ve worked with other clients and the results that they’ve had. It’s no different to hiring a website builder or an SEO expert or even a salesperson. You have to do due diligence there and make sure that all checks out for you.

Cat Howell

Yeah, it sounds like I should run your ads for you.

Absolutely. There have been a lot of people that have been left burned.

If you’re working as an e-commerce Facebook marketer, you could be the best e-commerce marketer in the space, and there are a couple of things that can happen.

For example, if the freelancer is not charging themselves out correctly, what typically tends to occur in that situation is they’ll take on, or they need to take on quite a few clients to pay for their personal expenses. Anytime that happens, it doesn’t matter if you are Russell Brunson or Jon Loomer or the best damn marketer out there. If you’ve got too much on your plate, you’re going to drop the ball. There’s that on the side of the spectrum.

There’s obviously the other side where there are people pitching services, and they are accepting the payments, and then trying to deliver it and going on learning curves, which is a little bit out of integrity for the clients. That’s why the client doesn’t get results.

Cat Howell

Then, there’s also to add to that, another element where, “Hey, you know what? This is Facebook, and it’s never black and white. And unfortunately, you will always have instances where you could have run 50 dental funnels or e-commerce campaigns, highly successful campaigns, and you’ll have one or two that no matter what you do, it’s just not going to crack it.

There are a lot of elements that go into a campaign; the funnel, the client’s landing page, the product to market fit, the USP, the direct response. Even with all of the right elements, even if you hire the best person on the planet, even those guys will always have failed campaigns up their sleeves because Facebook, unfortunately, relies on a lot of variables, and it’s not always black and white. In many ways, it’s like everything else in the business.

When you pay for radio ads or TV ads or a salesperson, you don’t know if that’s going to work out. There’s always a chance that it may not, that it’s not going to be a right fit.

Cat Howell

Yeah.

The fastest way to make money posting ads on Facebook is to tap into people that have done it. Ideally, if you can afford it, hire those people and shadow them, and discover what they’re doing. As you grow your own business that might even be an internal rule that you have.

Cat Howell

There are only very few types of industries that it doesn’t work that well for. Otherwise, pretty much everyone on this podcast, you can get some great results from it.