How to Start With Facebook Ads and More Expert Advice From The Digital Gal

 

Find the world of Facebook Ads overwhelming? Many social media managers do. Fortunately, Facebook expert Amanda Robinson can help you get started (and stay focused).

Digital Gal Amanda Robinson recently went live on Social Pulse Weekly and answered some questions about the top issues about Facebook Advertising that social media managers wrestle with.

Q: What should someone new to Facebook Ads do before they even think of throwing money in its direction?

Amanda Robinson: Step one: Make sure that you have your Facebook tracking pixel on your website. Like, drop everything and go get your Pixel installed on your site. Even if you’re not ready to do these crazy heavy-handed ninja skills with ads, you need to start collecting that data because it will come in handy down the road. [Your skills will grow], so you need to make sure that you’re collecting that information for when you’re ready to leverage it.

And then I want you to pay attention to your Page insights. I know we’re talking Facebook Ads … but if you go to your page, you click on the Insights tab, and it’ll give you a little summary overview. They’ll show you some numbers that are going to talk about your video views and your page engagements and your reach.

So those are the three metrics I want you to start paying attention to.

Those are the numbers that we need to start increasing and moving for you. We need to see that coming up.

But if you have nobody watching any videos, no engagement happening with your page, then you have nothing to work with there. So, much like putting your Pixel on your page to collect that data, we want to start getting activity going on your page so that we have data to remarket with. And that will increase your reach over time as well.

Q: So, how do we do that?

Amanda Robinson: Number one, you’re putting out amazing content. But number two, you are going to have to start spending some ad dollars promoting your posts, whether it’s through boost or doing your ads through ads manager.

You want to start spending some ad dollars to help you get more video views and to get more engagement on your content, so that’s the focus. That’s where I want you to start.

So don’t go trying to get as many sales as you can and as many leads as you can right away. We’re not going to the end goal right away. This is the slow game.

Facebook ads are more like your pillar of stability. You need it, and you need to grow on that platform.

You need to have a really good solid foundation. How do we build that foundation? Amazing content.

And then once you have amazing content happening, put some ad dollars behind that amazing content and watch your views grow.

Q: What’s the average ad budget that a small or midsize company needs to be successful with their Facebook Ads?

Amanda Robinson: That’s a great question, and what I get asked, literally, every day.

I would want you to be spending somewhere between $500 to $1,000 a month on Facebook ads. And if you’re a solopreneur or a really, really small business that doesn’t have much in the way of a marketing budget, then spend $50 a week if you can and just focus on getting more engagement.

If you have to go as small as you can, I say $50 a week just to get you started. But I’d really like to see you comfortably operating about $1,000 a week.

If you’re spending about $1,000 a month and you’re breaking up budget up and then starting to do some for attracting new audiences that don’t know you then putting some of that towards audiences that are warmer that aren’t familiar with you and just fostering those audiences, then over time, you’re going to be growing your entire digital footprint.

So your social impact is going to grow over time. It starts like a snowball. It may start really small—like you’re not getting a lot of traction—but over month over month over month, the traction you’re going to get is going to grow.

I’d love to see you spending that thousand to be able to realize that that is contributing to increasing your entire social footprint, not necessarily leading from an ad impression to an immediate sale. But over time, that fills the audiences that need to be able to go out and do that.

Q: How can you set up your ads and target them when you are putting on an event?

Amanda Robinson: It’s going to change from business to business depending on what the nature of your business is.

I wouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket on one single ad or one ad type. What I would be doing is putting out lots of pieces of content.

If you have an event, there are different reasons why people attend. There are so many different angles for you to be able to put out different pieces of content.

Get some attention going on those and then put ad dollars behind the pieces of content that are performing best. Get lots of video views and get that engagement, and then you’re going to reach the target.

You don’t want to go right from zero to 100 and say, “Sign up for this now” unless you’re going direct to a complete warm audience that is already your raving fans and they’re hungry for things like, “Yeah, let’s get signed up for this right now,” that’s fine.

But generally, when you’re trying to build awareness on an event of this nature, you need to start with really good pieces of content and focusing on which piece of content is performing well. And when I say “performing well,” that means getting the most likes, comments, shares video views. That’s what you want to focus on.

It’s not all about doing one spectacular ad. It’s about trying several different types of ads and paying attention when you first start running the ad dollars through and moving those ad dollars around, based on which ones are performing best for you.

Don’t start advertising about the week before it happens.

Q: How do you feel about ad boosting on Facebook?

Amanda Robinson: So I have a little bit of a different opinion when it comes to boosting posts and it might be a little bit unconventional to what other ad managers or other ads.

I say, honey, you go right on ahead if you want to boost the post. You go ahead and boost a post because that means you’re spending money on Facebook, and you’re figuring it out.

I call [boosting] the training wheels of Facebook advertising. So it’s a great place to start.

But if you’ve been using those training wheels and you’ve been boosting every post for a year now or your boost every single post on your page, then we’ve got a little bit of work to do.

We have lots of room to grow to get you moving from boosting posts into using Facebook Ads Manager to put paid spend on that existing post. So, we have the opportunity to transition you into that. And then we also have the opportunities to optimize what you’re doing in transitioning away from just boosting everything.

We don’t want you to be boosting everything because that tells me that you’re not producing high enough quality content consistently on your page.

So if you have to boost every single post, you need to do more work on creating very compelling content that your audience really does want to consume and have that living organically on your page as well, so you need a mix.

If you’re boosting every single post, you’re not helping yourself with Facebook’s algorithm that you should be putting all of that attention on the posts that really are performing very very well. So when you get that little notification … from Facebook saying, “This post is performing better than 95% of the posts on your page, you should boost it,” that doesn’t mean you have to go and hit the boost button.

But that is an indicator that Facebook is reading that this post, in particular, is getting way more activity than the other posts that you have.

What they’re trying to say is, “Hey, it’s getting engagement. People are clicking like commenting, sharing, and it’s time for you to put some paid advertising dollars.”

I agree with that method. So if you have a stand-up post that is performing better than the rest, absolutely go put money on it. I call this adding fuel to the fire. So if you’re pouring fuel over something that doesn’t have any spark, then you’re wasting your money. You’re wasting that fuel.

If you’re pouring fuel over something that already has a flame going, you are going to just explode this into something so big. And that’s what we want to see. We want to leverage that organic reach, and we want to leverage that attention span that it’s acquiring the attention that it’s getting. We want to put more paid spend behind it.

If your skill level is only at boost, that’s OK. So don’t let people tell you it’s not OK if that’s your comfort zone and that’s where you’re happy right now.

I don’t want anybody to ever make you feel like you’re doing as wrong. We all start somewhere, and we all have to start with our comfort zone and Ads can be very confusing if you just dive into the deep end.

So I want you to start with something that gives build your own personal confidence when doing ads. Build your own confidence with the platform and how your ad dollars being used, but then it’s time for us to transition over to using Ads Manager.

I just want you to build your confidence; I don’t want you getting overwhelmed one step at a time. But as you build your confidence building ads with ads manager, you’re able to actually take all that budget that you have and hyper-focus it into a more effective area for you, whether that’s involved with your placements, whether that’s your targeting, whether that’s testing different targeting different audiences against each other to see which one is performing better for you.

You can’t do that when you’re running a boost.

So when you start using Ads Manager, it just opens up your world, so that’s what I want to see for you. That’s what I do for a living is I inspire people to build their confidence when it comes to creating Facebook ads and not getting completely overwhelmed.

So to sum it up, boosting is not bad. Boosting is an OK place to start.

Additional Information

In addition to busting myths in the live show, Facebook expert Amanda Robinson share insights about:

• Different kinds of Facebook audiences
• How to engage your audience
• Free AdReports tool for Facebook Ads

If you didn’t catch the live show with guest Amanda Robinson, you can still watch the show recording at your leisure:

Social Pulse Weekly brings you incredible marketing experts and today’s latest social media news and developments. Tune in every Friday at 2PM ET to keep your finger on the pulse of social media.

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