We all know that lead generation is the lifeblood of business.
And gone are the days you could pop up a billboard or put your cute face on a park bench and have a viable business.
Have you ever watched Alone, the outdoor survival show? One of the participants on Alone said, “my goal is for these lines to bring me food while I do other things.”
Humans have been automating a food source since we were hunter/gatherers.
Automating your lead generation is the same thing.
Creating a solid lead generating system is a vital piece of your business that without – you couldn’t survive.
Facebook™ and Instagram™ ads are an incredible way to buy back your time!
Often when you are a company of one (or two or three) it makes the most sense to use your funds to keep yourself visible!
You don’t have to wait to hit an arbitrary goal.
The one you think you should hit.
What your business coach told you to hit.
What your mom, husband, brother, uncle, neighbor..
Whoever told you to hit.
Much like all of our other business decisions, the decision to begin running paid ads is personal.
This blog post will guide you through the 5 steps that will get you started running ads on Facebook™ and Instagram™.
The first step to getting started with Facebook™ advertising is to get all of your tech in place!
This is often the piece that feels the most overwhelming
The step where you decide…
Maybe this is too tough for me to tackle myself
Maybe this isn’t worth the effort
Maybe I’ll just make 8000 more Instagram™ reels
Let me offer a reframe – You only have to do this once! Once it’s set up you will be rockin’ and rollin’
Here is a list of the technical pieces you’ll need in place
- Facebook Business Manager
You’ll want to set up your Facebook™ business manager so that you have all your technical pieces connected and are working within the platform in the most effective way. The business manager is where the ads manager, audiences, pixel, and your pages are housed and connected. You register for one at business.facebook.com
- Ads Manager
This is housed inside of the Facebook business manager and is where you physically set up your ads. Facebook Ads Manager allows you to create, track, edit, and review results from your paid ads.
- Meta™ Pixel
You’ll need this before you begin advertising. The pixel is a piece of code that is installed on your website to track activity. After you set up your pixel, you’ll need to install it on your website along with event codes.
- Event Codes
Event codes are a portion of your pixel code that allows Meta™ to differentiate which actions are taking place on your website.
- Events Manager
You can find your event codes inside of the Events Manager portion of the Business Manager that allows you to set up, test events and to measure the conversions on your pixel and its events.
- Verifying your Domain
You’ll do this once you have your pixel and events installed. The process of verifying your domain allows Meta™ to track the activity on your domain.
Once you have your Facebook Business Manager set up, your pixel created and installed, and your domain verified, you’ll need to connect all of your assets inside the Business Manager and add yourself to them!
- Add to your Page to your Business Manager
- Add your Instagram to your Business Manager
- Add your Ad Account to your Business Manager
- Add your Domain to your Business Manager
- Add your Page to your Ad Account
- Add your pixel to your Ad Account
The 2nd step to getting started with Facebook™ advertising is to set your goals and budget
There are so many unique strategies you can use with paid advertising!
In order to determine your budget you need to know what you are looking for paid advertising to do for you:
- Get more eyeballs on your business?
- More foot traffic to your establishment?
- More appointments?
- More leads?
Once you have a set of goals you can begin to advertise in a way that will help you achieve them!
There are a few questions to ask yourself when considering what budget you should set for ads.
It’s important to understand ads cannot save a business – they amplify, so you don’t want to lean on ads when you’re in a pinch and you need to make sales.
- What do you want to accomplish with your ads?
- What can you afford to spend?
Here are a few industry averages that might help you to determine where you will set your budget.
When looking at these you’ll need to do some calculations:
- How many leads do you need?
- How much might you spend on leads?
Potential Cost per lead:
Free guide: $2-$7
Webinar $5-$15
Challenge: $5-$15
*Note the nuance here, these are averages. If you are in a highly competitive market your lead cost can be relative to the cost of your product/services.
I always recommend starting out with a testing budget – a set amount of dollars you understand you may not get results from, but that can inform your next set of tests.
The 3rd step to getting started with Facebook™ advertising is you creative and copy
Creative and copy are what you’ll use to communicate with your audience.
Testing is crucial with both creative and copy!
You want to create eye-catching images that encourage people to pause and learn more about what you are doing in your business.
Use your copy to encourage the people that pause to learn more about how to take the next step with you.
You don’t know what will stop the scroll or encourage the next step until you run measured experiments.
One of the things I do, almost every day is screenshot ads that make me stop *my* scroll. If it catches my attention I screenshot it.
I like to pull these all together and try to draw patterns
Why did these images make me stop my scroll, and how can I use these patterns to inform my design creation?
I do the same thing with copy, although not as often.
The fourth step to getting started with Facebook™ advertising is to determine your offer specifics
What are you going to offer your audience?
Remember when I said there are so many directions you can take with ads?
Well, it’s true.
And what you choose to offer to capture leads is a big part of how you choose your strategy.
- You can offer a micro product – send people straight to your sales page.
- You can provide tons of valuable content via video – and then retarget your video watchers and offer them the option to book a call with you.
- You can offer humans something of value for free so that they can get to know you, your expertise, and get a win for themselves
Just like creative and copy – sometimes your offer takes some testing too!
Even if you have an offer that converts well organically – cold audiences often convert differently.
If you aren’t sure what makes the most sense for your business, pop over to the Facebook™ Ads Library and seek some inspiration.
Check out what others in your niche or in a niche-adjacent business are offering and use that knowledge to come up with something original for your business!
Remember, testing is key! You might not shake out an excellent offer at first!
The last step to getting started with Facebook™ advertising is to determine how you’ll collect information from your leads
There are so many ways to collect information, but if you are running ads you want to make sure you have a solid way to do so!
You can:
- Use a form on your website
- Use a call tracking software
- Use Facebook™ lead forms if you don’t yet have a website.
- Use the messenger campaign so that you are engaging directly with clients
Often this decision is based on what technology you currently use, and what technology you’d like to use.
The rad thing about this piece is that it’s really up to you! You get to make the decision.
Some things to think about are:
- How quickly do you want to get started?
- Do you want to leverage some of the advantages you might get from Facebook and Instagram by leaving people on the platforms?
- Do you like being on the platforms to communicate?
- What tech platforms do I currently use?
- Do they integrate well with the Facebook and IG platforms?
- Do you have the technical abilities to connect platforms, if that is necessary.
Shew! If you made it all the way here you might have felt like you got a little bit firehosed. I know there are lots of things to think about when it comes to paid advertising, and I hope that the 5 steps outlined in this blog post helped you see what next steps you might need to take!
Want to take this blog post on the go with you so that you can listen again? I gotcha!
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