3 x key elements for a successful facebook and instagram ads campaign

If you have been running your online business for a while now, you have probably realised that traffic, or website visitors, are the lifeblood of any eCommerce store. Because, from all the website visitors that come past your store each day, only 1-2% will actually go ahead and buy. In other words, for every 100 website visitors you get each day, you might only make one sale. That is a very normal conversion rate. So the more eyes on your site, the higher your sales will be.

See we are in a numbers game in the eCommerce business model. If your conversion rate is 1% and you need to make 10 sales a day to hit your sales targets, then you are going to need 1000 website visitors a day (check out my handy traffic calculator here to find out how many people you need to send to your website). So how do you find this kind of traffic? The easiest answer is: Facebook Instagram Ads. Paid social media ads are one of the quickest ways to increase your sales fast. Most of your target audience are already on Facebook or Instagram so you can target them right where they are.

Why I Love Facebook Ads:

I want to show you why I love Facebook Ads so much by sharing the experience of one of my clients. This student started with my $97 One-Ad-Wonder program. When she first came to my program, she was making $1,400 in sales per month and was having to make up the difference each weekend at market stalls. Using One-Ad-Wonder she learned how to repurpose her existing content into an advertising campaign that boosted her sales to almost $12,000 per month. After four months of ads she grew to $90,000 a month. And now, nine months into Facebook Ads she is making $116,000 each month. The only thing that has changed in her business is implementing Facebook Ads.

You can take your $30,000 a year business to a $1million a year business if you harness the power of social media advertising. You can absolutely DIY your paid ads once you have learned the ropes. In fact, this is exactly what I encourage. Facebook Ads have the potential to contribute 70%+ of your sales traffic so shouldn’t you have control over that operation? If you outsource to a marketing agency, not only will the expense be enormous, but you have to blindly trust their strategies, analysis and reports. I always recommend you invest in yourself and your business by developing the skills to understand Facebook Instagram Ads so you will know what is going on whether you choose to outsource or do them yourself. Join the waitlist for my next round of eComm Ads Academy and learn how to master Facebook and Instagram Ads yourself.

Are You Ready for Paid Meta Ads?

Before getting started with Facebook and Instagram Ads, it's vital to assess your readiness. It might be obvious to say, but paid social media ads cost money! So it’s important you have a high enough profit margin to justify the expense of your advertising campaign. If your product price does not cover the cost per sale on your campaign, you are not going to build a successful strategy that will grow your business. So you need to think about your underlying profit margins before you get started.

Next, you need to install your Facebook pixel. I have worked with countless clients who have come to me saying “Jodie! My Facebook campaign is not working!” And when I have logged in to their Ads Account I have found their pixel is not even up and running. You won’t see any data without that pixel working properly. There are plenty of tutorials online that you can follow to help you set up your pixel correctly so jump onto Google or Youtube and make sure your account is set up right.

Profit Margins for Sustainable Advertising:

You also need to have adequate funds for testing. Success won’t happen overnight, you need to be prepared for optimising. You will see what works and what doesn’t and make tweaks to get the lowest cost per sale the longer you are using Facebook Ads. If you are down to the end of your business funds, Facebook Ads might not be the best investment for you right now.

Finally, you need to get your offer and website right before you start sending Facebook Ads money toward them. If your audience is not willing to pay your advertised price for your product or service, no amount of ad spend will change that reality. Make sure your expectations are in line with reality. Additionally, if you invest in Facebook Ads to send traffic to your website, but the pages are poorly designed or broken. This poor user experience will put off your buyers. So as well as your offer, make sure your website is up to standard before you start sending buyers there.

How and when to use Facebook Ads

To continually prospect for new customers. You want to be generating new traffic each and every day. I like to call these Evergreen Ads and these ads generally send traffic to your ongoing products so they will attract new audiences to your brand.
To share promotions or special offers. If you have a time sensitive sale or offer to promote you could use Facebook Ads to reach a cold or a warm audience to promote your product.
Build your list with Facebook Ads with a lead generation style campaign. You might offer a freebie, or a discount, or some kind of offer to encourage users to get onto your mailing list.

3 Key issues for a successful campaign

1. Choosing the right Objective

Always align your ad objective with your business goals. You will be more likely to use Sale or Purchase as your primary objective for an eCommerce store. Leads can be valuable, but this is a slightly more advanced strategy, so get started with Sales first. What is the difference between Sales and Traffic objectives? When you select Sales, Facebook uses its algorithm to identify users who are actively online shopping and buying things. Whereas Traffic is the equivalent of window-shoppers. Traffic will send people who click links, but don’t buy products. That is why Sales is the preferred option for eCommerce stores.

2. Selecting your Audience:

You can choose the audience you want to put your ads in front of. A cold audience is someone who hasn’t interacted with your business before, whereas a warm audience already knows your brand and has a degree of awareness of you. The best way to find your ideal audience is to use a broad audience and let the Facebook algorithm learn who the best people are for your brand. From there, use your results to optimise your campaign.

3. Compelling Ad and Landing Page

Think of a hook or a headline, how you can overcome objections inside your ad, talk about the transformations your customer will experience with your brand. Spend your time writing and testing different types of creatives. Talk about why the customer should stop the scroll, click your link, and buy your thing. If you need help with this, download my 7 Steps for Ad Success. As well as the copy, you need to have a great visual to capture your audience. If you are using video, make sure the thumbnail is eye-catching and will grab your viewer’s attention motivating them to click on your link. It is important you test a variety of creatives to see which works best with your audience.

Compare videos, long form text, short and snappy text, carousels, slide shows, and offer ads and identify the best option for you.

And finally, don’t forget to stay on top of the comments on your ads: get in there and delete and hate or spam to keep things clean.

What to do if you’re stuck

Google “The Facebook Ad Library” and take inspiration from all the other brands using Facebook Ads. You can even look for your competitors and see what they are doing! Don’t get caught down the rabbit hole, just use this for inspiration and then use your own results to optimise your campaigns.

Getting Started

Now it’s over to you to get started on your own Facebook instagram Ads journey. If you want some inspiration to improve your copy and strategy, download 7 Steps for Ad Success to get started crafting a successful ad campaign of your own.