Ads for Small Businesses

For small businesses, marketing is essential to driving up sales, expanding your consumer base, and setting up your business venture for long-term success. Social media marketing is particularly popular in this day and age for its enormous relevance and influence. But unfortunately, it has proven to be a tricky field to master. According to Weebly, 62% of small business owners report struggling with their Facebook ads, particularly stating that they miss their targets.

This is highly costly: the time and resources invested into advertising are invaluable, especially for a small business with less of each to spare. Therefore, it’s crucial that small business owners learn how to create content that people actually want to consume as soon as they can. 

With this in mind, we’ve decided to invite marketing experts to share their tips for starting and running effective ad campaigns. Pro panelists Amanda Robinson @thedigitalgal and Monica Louie @MonicaRLouie are joining us to help you on the path toward marketing success for your small business.

Missed the Tweet Chat? Here’s a recap:

Q1. Most people’s first experience with paying to promote their business on social media is the boosted post. What is the purpose of boosting your post? What posts are the most effective to boost? What simple tips should be kept in mind when using the boost feature?

Amanda Robinson: Tip: Start by boosting posts that are already getting good engagement. Avoid boosting posts that are not getting any engagement. Add fuel to an already ignited fire. Boosting Posts are a great way to get comfortable with starting to use Facebook or IG Ads. If you're boosting $250+/month, think about learning Ads Manager instead. Boosting posts is not bad, but it is a band-aid. Learn how to properly use Facebook's Ads Manager so you can get the most out of your budget.

Monica Louie: I’m not a fan of boosting posts. For one, we have limited options when we boost posts as opposed to creating campaigns in the Ads Manager. For two, because Facebook makes it so darn easy to boost, the strategy behind it can easily get lost. The way I look at it is that boosting posts is Facebook’s low hanging fruit. “Wow! Your post is getting 95% more engagement than other posts on your page. Don’t you want to put $10 or $20 behind it to get more engagement?” My thought is that I would prefer business owners be more strategic when using their advertising dollars. Create a campaign in the Ads Manager where you can test various audiences and ads.

Bernie Fussenegger @B2the7: This is a fun one. A boost can help your reach with limited options around targeting. Many times I would recommend a campaign in which you can be more targeted and have better results than just a boosted post. Test and learn.

Q2. Have you used ads (via FB, Insta, etc.) to promote your business? What was your experience? What beginner ad tips do you wish you knew when you started using ads for your business?

Monica Louie: Absolutely! Early on, I figured out that there are only 3 key elements to a successful ad campaign  — the offer, the audience, and the ad. When you're not getting the results you're looking for, start by tweaking one of those key elements! Keeps it simple!

Amanda Robinson: I am hands-on inside Facebook's ads manager daily for myself and for my clients. I feel like I live on FB. Brand new & starting out with FB or IG Ads? Make audience building and engagement your goal to measure success, not sales - yet. Let your other marketing do the rest of the heavy lifting for now. Anticipate 3 months of consistent advertising, learning, and trying multiple different campaigns before you finally start seeing results coming from FB & IG Ads.

Bernie Fussenegger: My recommendations before starting.

- What are your goals of the campaign

- Who is the target audience

- What is the message

- What is the customer experience

- How are you going to measure/KPIs

Q3. 📣 Hurry, hurry! Step right up & start a new ad campaign! How do you determine the goal(s) of the campaign? Why is defining your goals important? How do you decide what to promote?

Monica Louie: The goal of your campaign must align with your business goals. Do you have a paid product that converts well organically? Then you may want to test a conversion campaign going straight to the offer. Do you need to grow your email list to get people into your funnel and build a relationship? Then you may want to start with promoting your lead magnet.

Amanda Robinson: Putting out a video with a video views objective then complaining you didn't get clicks isn't the way to go. Choose an objective that meets the actual goal of what you want the ad to achieve. Promote what your audiences want to engage with, not what you think they want. Make it about them. Limit your "I", "Me", "Ours" statements.

Q4.  Campaigns, ads, and ad sets, oh my!! What is the difference between the campaigns, ad sets, and ads options? How do you know which ad path is the best for you? How can you use these tools to optimize your ROI depending on your ad goals? 

Amanda Robinson: FB Ads: Think like an org chart: Campaign is like a CEO. Makes overall business goal decisions. Ad set is like a Department Manager. Ads are like Employees. Campaign: choose your objective and budget. Ad Set: Choose your audiences/targeting and placement. Ad: images, videos, at text, call to action (CTA). Use more than one ad set in a Facebook campaign to test different audiences to see which one performs best for you. Example: Website visitors vs Email list.

Beth Staub @AdventureGlass: You need to know what your call to action is first - then decide, around that, what you need.  Don't fall for the fancy trappings of all things marketing - who has time for that - do what you need, need what you do.

works for you? How much do you really need to spend to get results? Any tips on getting the biggest bang for your buck?

Monica Louie: I love this question!! The truth is you DON'T need to spend a ton of money to see amazing results! In fact, I suggest starting small and then scale up as you're getting the results you want! My rule of thumb is to start with $5 per day per test (ad/audience combination) for traffic campaigns and video views campaigns. For conversion campaigns to a free offer (i.e. to grow your email list), then we start at $10 per day per test.

Amanda Robinson: Aim to spend $300-500/mo to start seeing consistent results. Not all objectives cost the same $$. Leads are pricey but video views are cheap & cheerful. Balance your budget between Cold Audiences & Warm Audiences. Use this free budget spreadsheet to help view your ads budget differently: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dON-ozlFlmZXat1Ifz-eyXIe5-0_FhS2ubR7pQuQeVQ/edit?usp=sharing…

Q6.  Facebook ads brought in bots & fake accounts?! 😱  Questions have been raised about the quality of accounts brought in by Facebook ads. Is there any way to ensure the quality of accounts? What do you do if your campaign is getting a lot of impressions, but no conversion? 

Amanda Robinson: Retargeting is key. Start with a wide net cold audience to attract people with your content, then retarget your warm audiences. Retarget Video viewers, Engaged with FB Page, Engaged with IG Profile, Website Visitors, Email Subscribers. In Ads Manager, use the Breakdowns menu. Look at your results broken down by age, gender, placement, region, and device. Your mind will be blown! Rebalance your spend where it makes sense. 

Q7. Everybody makes mistakes. What are the biggest mistakes you see marketers make when using Facebook / Instagram Ads? How can these mistakes be prevented? If the mistakes have been made, how can they be rectified?

Monica Louie: There are a lot of mistakes, which can of course lead to frustration with Facebook ads! But the three biggest that I see are:

1. Lack of commitment — A lot of people are nervous when getting started, which is completely understandable. No one wants to waste their money and their energy on ads that don’t convert. But a lack of commitment can prevent you from doing the necessary testing and tweaking to improve your results over time. My most successful clients and students are the ones that are COMMITTED to figuring out how to make Facebook and Instagram ads work for them. When you walk away before you figure that out, THAT’S when you’re leaving the most money on the table.

Amanda Robinson: FB Ads mistake #1: NOT ENOUGH TESTING. FB Ads mistake #2: Having no strategy and tossing money at a failing campaign. FB Ads Mistake #3: Being afraid of getting started. Download this FB Ads Glossary of ad terms to get a head start on understanding FB Ads lingo: https://m.me/thedigitalgal?ref=glossary

It’s clear that there are many ways for businesses to improve their approach to initiating social media ads. A great deal of it involves trial and error— testing directly to see what is the right fit for your business given your resources and capacity. However, our panelists have also shared some universal need-to-knows, like the importance of setting goals and the “overratedness” of boosted posts. 

We hope that their advice was able to teach you something new and valuable about how to approach marketing on social media. Now, try to use what you’ve learned to rethink those Facebook ads!

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