Facing The Importance of Facebook Ads
At this point every brand has a presence on Facebook as we all understand how important a social profile is for your business. Creating a consistent strategy for success in your social content is the most important step to making wins in your digital marketing efforts.
But how do you define success in your Facebook advertising and what are you looking to achieve - engagements or (the sought after and more difficult) conversions? In this blog post, Hollywood Branded examines the best practices in Facebook Ads from the advice and expertise of Social Media Traffic School's Sally Hendrick.
A Little Background On Sally
Sally Hendrick is an international keynote speaker, contributor to Social Media Examiner, and founder of Social Media Traffic School, Sally specializes in target market research, marketing funnels, digital courses, and Facebook advertising strategies.
Recently, our CEO Stacy Jones spoke with Sally about how to make Facebook ads work for your brand. From tracking and messaging to retargeting and monitoring results, it can be easy to get lost in the process. We’ll learn what has worked from Sally’s experience, what maybe could be avoided if you are doing this yourself and not working with an agency to represent your brand, and where other brands are missing the mark.
Interview Transcript
Question: Can you tell us a little bit about your background, where you started, and how you got to be the Facebook ads guru that you are today?
Answer: Well, where I started was a completely different industry. I was an actuary, an insurance statistician for 25 years. I started my own business helping people with marketing technology when I was doing a side hustle for awhile in fitness. Then, I decided that I enjoyed doing the marketing piece more than I did the fitness coaching. So, I moved in that direction. The next thing you know, I ended up retiring from my actuarial career to do this full time.
Question: So, what is it about Facebook ads that is so important for brands to utilize it for? Why does a brand need to have Facebook advertising as part of their strategy?
Answer: Well, first of all, it makes sense to be anywhere and everywhere for people on Facebook ads. The beauty about Facebook ads is that you can put them in front of your target market and have it so that they are forced to watch what you've got going, as opposed to a Google search where they're searching already for it. You're actually putting it in front of them before they even start searching.
Question: Do you think most brands actually incorporate Facebook advertising right now, or is it just a matter of the life stage of the brand? Who do you think uses it the most?
Answer: Right now, it's still small businesses that are using it the most. You've got larger businesses that are starting to get into the swing of things, but larger businesses typically go with the methods where they can really measure their return on investment. That is something that's being done in Facebook ads over the last couple of years, and unless they have a handle on it, they don't put their money towards that. They don't necessarily have the funnels necessary for the digital marketing piece.
Question: Why is it so great for smaller businesses to be using Facebook ads?
Answer: Because you can compete with the big dogs with the same amount of money. It's amazing that digital marketing allows us to get in front of our audiences so much easier and faster than traditional marketing avenues.
Question: How should a brand get started? Let's just say a company has not done any Facebook advertising before. What is it they need to know, and how do they actually get this in gear and get going? It sounds really complex if you're from the outside saying, "I'm just going to do Facebook advertising." I bet there's a lot of things you can teach us that will simplify this to make it something that anyone could actually do.
Answer: Well, I think that it's good to break things down into three phases. You've got the "Why" phase, which is the story behind your brand. You've got the "How" phase, which shares valuable content to help your clients and people who are having potential problems.
Last, you've got the "What" phase, which is your offer that is the solution to help. So, if you can put those three types of content pieces together, then you can reach your audience in the proper format.
Question: What is the very first step to that? You've broken it into three stages, what do you need to do to start off?
Answer: Well, if you already have warm audiences, such as people who visit your website or people who are on your email list, go ahead and set up some content to get them interested in what you're doing first. Provide value, that free content that just puts you in front of them.
Then go ahead and try to sell something like a trip wire or something that moves into an up-sell, just to tempt your audience and see if your offer is actually working.
If you don't have a warm audience and you're starting with cold traffic, then you need to create your brand story. Start with that and get some brand awareness going about who you are and why you do what you do.
Question: How do you know when you have that audience? How do you know what it is about engagement? Is it about people liking and commenting on your videos? Or is it just you've been doing it awhile and you think it's time to go?
Answer: It's a combination of things. If you know how to read your metrics, you can know what the sizes are of your audiences. If you've got at least 1,000 people in your audiences, such as people who visit your website over the last few months or the people who are on your email list, or the people who are engaging with your page, Facebook will tell you how many you have and then you start advertising to those people to get in front of them.
Question: Are these all people that have to be following you? So, for example, you already have to have 1,000 followers on your Facebook account?
Answer: No, it has nothing to do with your follower count on your page. It just has to do with how many have actually engaged with your content or how many have visited your website. As long as you have the tracking pixels on your website, then you'll be able to measure and calculate those statistics.
Want to learn more strategy tips from Sally's expertise? Check out the full interview on our Podcast!
The Next Steps
Want to further your knowledge about best marketing practices for digital marketing? We've written plenty of other blog posts on the topics as well for you to check out!
- Decoding The Illusion Of Bots In Influencer Marketing
- Marketing From An Influencer's Perspective
- Effective Digital Media Marketing With Sharifah Hardie
- Digital Marketing Strategies With Naresh Vissa
- 3 Content Marketing Tools You Should Be Using Right Now
Interested in learning more from experts across various walks of the marketing landscape? Subscribe to our Marketing Mistakes Podcast and learn tips, strategies and suggestions from the pros!
