Why Are You Wasting Money On Facebook™ Ads? It's Not What You Think.

The title of this article may imply that I think using Facebook™ Ads is a waste of money, but this is far from accurate. But, I do believe many businesses and brands are wasting their money on Facebook™ Ads because they have no clear structure or goal. It's a loss of epidemic scale. So I am trying my best to help offer any insight I can to help businesses invest effectively in their strategies.

For clarity, I run a Digital Marketing Agency that specializes in Facebook™ advertising, so I guess you could say I'm a bit biased. I truly believe a winning strategy is inclusive on multiple advertising platforms as they all work well in harmony with one another. Depending on your business, product or service you may want to focus on multiple different platforms to scale your business. But for the sake of this discussion, I am going to stick to Facebook™ ads for the time being. Below I will outline a few common mistakes people make when it comes to profitable ad campaigns.

1. Understand Your Customer:

Now, this is about the time when most business owners begin to throw out the "Avatar Worksheet". They have done "extensive" research into the demographics, interests, and personal attributes of their customers. The problem here is, these characteristics are barely even scratching the surface of what you need to understand about your customer. Many times I see business owners create the "Ideal Avatar" of their prospective customer with bullet points like:

• They like products like mine
• They are wealthy
• They like to spend money
• They are highly educated
• etc...

Seriously though, I bet if you take all the characteristics of most peoples "Ideal Customer" they'd be likely 90% similar. That's kind of a problem. If your ideal customer is like that of just about every other business then you can't hope to really differentiate yourself or at least market effectively.

You have to understand more about what makes your customers tick. What motivates them? What inspires them? What frustrates them? Also, you need to know where to find your customer. Not just a platform. Yes, there are more people on Facebook than any other platform, but beyond that where are your "Ideal customers" hanging out. When you can get to that level of understanding then you can truly use the power of a tool like Facebook™ to find them and provide your offer to them.

2. Understand Customer Acquisition:

This is a VERY common roadblock. We always ask new clients what their goals are related to Ad Spend or ROI (Return On Investment) or more specifically ROAS (Return On Ad Spend). It's almost always the same answer, "I want to get customers as cheaply as possible". I mean It makes sense, spend as little as possible to make money. When talking about customer acquisition I always live by the phrase, "those who can spend the most money to acquire a customer will always win". Sure there is a lot to this specific statement but its completely true. When we talk to business owners they don't have clear expectations of how much they can actually spend to gain a customer. Typically, and I know this isn't always the case but usually, a business can sell something to the same person more than once over time. It's called Customer Lifetime Value. This is almost always never really defined. Most businesses operate on the notion that every purchase or transaction is one-off, meaning that's how they build their marketing budget.

I see this so often in my field of marketing. It's so common it's to the point of cliche'. Everyone wants to get 2X, 4X, 10X, or 100X ROI. Realistically, if you're getting that much return you're leaving money on the table. Meaning you're not investing enough in your business. I see this every day. Many successful businesses know, if they can spend $1 and get $1 or $1.20 back it means they can grow their businesses exponentially because they can acquire new customers for free or even a small profit. This is where true growth takes place. If you're content running campaigns and forcing yourself to stick to the high yield results, sure their great but you won't consistently grow. (Truth BOMB)

3. Have A Great Product:

This may be the toughest one. Everyone always thinks that their product is the "Best". I remember a chat with a prospective client, they had a line of supplements. I asked them what makes their product unique, their response was "Its the best on the market". What does that mean? In fact, now that I remember I have had multiple prospects in the same industry tell me exactly the same thing. "Their product is the best". What makes it the best? What about it is different from any other. Now, I'm not bashing supplement businesses, I'm a big fan of the industry, but c'mon there's something that's gotta make your product unique. It doesn't have to just be your product, it could be your community or resources that support the effectiveness of your product. You have to think long and hard about this one. The world is full of competition, so begin to figure out how your product can solve a problem, present a solution to give the customer something new to experience and build a community around that.

Facebook actually rewards this type of business model. Often times I see businesses try and build a following and then just sell niche products to that following. Sure, there are a TON of profitable businesses built that way. But, if you're trying to have staying power and build a business that steadily grows and positions itself in the marketplace as a cornerstone, then this method will not work. This is the type of success story you see in your feed, where a guy builds a million dollar t-shirt business out of his garage. Cool story but that's not how to truly build a lasting business. If you build an engaging community around your product that supports, entertains, and improve the user experience a platform like Facebook™ will reward you. It has proven to help in costs and effectiveness of paid campaigns if you nurture your community of followers, not just slam them with promos and offers.

If you follow these 3 Simple Steps you'll see a marked improvement in the success and scalability of your Facebook™Ads campaigns. Don't short sight yourself, begin to build a strategy that you can scale and grow year in and year out. It's not all about overnight "WINS"it's about building an empire, a legacy. If you have those types of goals then you're on the right track.