Guest: Laura Ball

Facebook Ads Expert

Laura shared her secrets including:

Why Facebook ads are so powerful
The best way to get started
The definitive answer about boosting posts
Why retargeting (and the pixel) will help you be successful
Look alike audiences and how they can help you expand your reach
How to be a targeting Ninja
Why a great email list helps with ads/targeting and successful campaigns
The best way to test your ads
Long ad copy or short ad copy explained
Business manager yes or no

Connect with Laura:

LauraBall.co http://lauraball.co/

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/HelloLauraBall/

Minute 1:10 I love Facebook ads because they are so powerful. They give you the ability to put my ad in front of the perfect person. It’s a great way to use your ad dollars wisely too because you don’t pay to advertise to people who aren’t part of your target market.

And for $10 a day you can run ad tests and figure out what’s going to work. That’s a huge value that you can’t do on other advertising platforms.

Minute 5:17 What is your advice for people who are just starting out and thinking about trying Facebook ads?

If they have a limited budget, the first thing you should do is learn about it. Reach out to someone who is willing to teach you for free or for a low cost or take a class so that you can understand the basics.

Take a basic Facebook ads course and invest $300 for a basic campaign with a bit of strategy and test and see what works. Let Facebook give you some data so you can learn about how is and who isn’t responding to your ads. It’s the best way to figure it out.

Successful ads are a combination of targeting the right audience, a great image and good copy. It’s all those things.

Minute 8:23 The boosted post conversation. Boosting posts isn’t a strategy. Facebook uses boosts to increase engagement which is likes, shares and comments and reactions. That’s it. Not conversions so be mindful that boosting will not get opt-ins. If you need to increase engagement, then boosting can work well, but be sure it fits your overall strategy.

Minute 11:23 Let’s talk about retargeting. The Facebook pixel is html code that you put on your site or landing pages. Facebook tracks who visits and then provides you with some that data. Facebook can tell you who watched a video or who clicked on a specific page. You can use this data to create a new ad to further engage with that same group of people who liked the first video or went to your landing page for info. It’s a great way to keep serving up more value to people who are consuming your content.

It’s also a great use of your ad budget because you can run an ad to only those who raised their hand by hitting your page and saying yes, I want to know more.

Minute 14:00 Facebook ads are not a way to sell something to your audience. It’s a way to create traffic – usually to a website or page so that you can further engage by getting them on an email list, or to a webinar or off line, into your business location.

Driving traffic to pages that don’t convert is not a good use of your ad dollars or energy so be mindful of your sales process and how well you can convert Facebook ads traffic into paying clients.

Minute 14:44 What are you excited about now? I know there’s always something new going on. Right now, I’m going straight to look alike audiences. That starts with a seed audience (your email list, list of clients etc.) and Facebook will analyze that and helps you find other people who are similar to your seed/warm audience.

Minute 23:30 Why can some people boost their scheduled Facebook live? Facebook rolls out tools to small segments of the market and page to see how it will work. It doesn’t always show up at the same time for everyone and sometimes it shows up and then disappears.

Minute 25:00 What if you have a Facebook ad that’s going great. It’s a target audience of people who are following Amy Porterfield (for example) and then after a couple of weeks it just stops working – what should we do?

I look to see if the click through rate is low. If it is, then sometimes I’ll change out the image or the copy and freshen it up. If you think the ad is really good it can help to restart it as a new ad and maybe ad a little bit more money to see if Facebook will start showing it again.

Worth noting to be mindful when you are using audiences like that (Marie Forleo, Amy Porterfield) that you are also competing with everyone else who is using that as part of their audience too.

It’s worth taking some time to get a bit more creative and think about other areas that appeal to your audience that might not be so competitive.

Minute 29:29 If you have created audiences and used interest fields, Facebook is now removing some of them. If that’s affecting an audience you’ve created then you’ll get a message in your ads manager that tells you it’s no longer part of that audience.

Minute 30:25 Facebook is removing the partner audiences, so we can’t target behaviors anymore. It’s not completely removed now, but it is changing and over the next six months they are going to be removing that information.

That’s why it is so important to get your email list developed and have visitors from your site so you can trget them and build look alines. That’s what Facebook wants us to do.

That’s why it is so important post regularly, create good content and share value so hou can build an audience and see what they respond to and what they like and then do more of that.

Minute 33:33 Duplicating ads and the strategy that works. I do the same ad with different target audiences (maybe as many as 20) and then watch to see which ones do the best. I stop the ones that aren’t doing well and keep an eye on it. Is that a good way to do it?

It depends a little bit. If you don’t know who to target, then testing the audience first is a good idea – so an add with all the same elements except audience is a good way to figure that out.

Once you know that, then you can run the same ad copy with a different image to the same audience and see if you get better results. It’s a good way to keep getting better results, and it lowers your cost as you do. Make sure you only test one element at a time so you know what moved the needle.

Minute 35:47 I’ve heard lots of things about copy – some say long copy works best but I don’t like to read long copy, so I don’t do that. What’s the real answer there?

Technically we know that long copy works best, especially if it’s to a cold audience that doesn’t know you as well. A long text ad will provide more information and that allows your audience with the opportunity to get to know you and that can work well. If it’s a warm audience who already knows you then shorter copy might work best because you aren’t trying to educate or connect as much. Bottom line if you aren’t sure test both and see which one works best for your ad and your audience.

Minute 37:45 Business manager yes or no? If you manage ads for clients, then business manager is a must. It’s a bit clunky but if you are managing multiple clients and pages and ads then you start getting tons of notifications. Business manager eliminates all of that. If you use business manager you can still get into the ads editor the way you do now, so you aren’t prevented from that. Just know it’s always available to you.

"Red Hot Facebook Ad Strategies You Need To Know About Today" with Laura Ball