Episode 7: Facebook Ads 101

Hey, thank you so much for joining. I am your marketing coach, and today I’m talking all about Facebook ads. There have never been tools out there like Facebook ads that allow you to speak directly to your target client. Did you know that using Facebook ads you can speak to married men in a 10 mile radius of your office who like the same TV shows you do and are interested in exactly what your business offers?

We’re going to dive in and talk about Facebook ads. What I want to show you first is what is possible with Facebook ads. Then I’m going to share my recommended strategy that you keep in mind as you’re creating ads and I’m going to close this show out by sharing with you three ads that I recommend that you launch today.

Here we go. Number one, what is possible with Facebook ads? What can you do with Facebook ads? Facebook ads, for those of you who don’t know, they show up on your Facebook newsfeed. You can use Facebook ads to also bring up an ad within the Messenger app. You may have started seeing those pop up lately. You have ads show up on the Messenger when people open up their phone, which is a great way to reach a mobile audience, and you can use ads to follow people around as they browse the web. Facebook has spots on very popular website such as The New York Times and others. One of the things to do, and I’ll share it with you in a little bit, is to make sure that the people who get in touch with you see your face everywhere and Facebook gives you a lot of cool ways to do that.

Now, you know where the Facebook ad show up. Now, how do you find new clients? As I teased when I first started the podcast, you can hone in on an audience that is just absolutely perfect and ideal for you. You don’t have to take the shotgun approach that you would have to take using radio ads or newspapers. In other words, your ads are not going to be seen by somebody unless you have designated them as an ideal client for you.

Here’s what I’m talking about. You can target your audience on Facebook using the location, in other words, where they are right now. You can target them based on their interests. In other words, if they like the TV show Friends and they have a pet, you can show a Facebook ad to them marketing a free grooming or a discounted grooming and you can use a funny Friends’ joke in your ad copy because you know they like the show. It’s a really powerful way to talk directly to your audience.

Other things that you can do, you can upload a file of your customers and Facebook will find their Facebook profiles and you can use that as a custom audience. Let me give you an example of how we do that at the Branning Group. I’m very active on LinkedIn. I have thousands of people that I’m connected to and I can download that list of people that I talk to in LinkedIn and I can upload them to my Facebook ads audiences as a custom audience. Then I can make an ad that only shows up to the people that I’m connected to on LinkedIn. Isn’t that cool? It makes it easy for me to stay connected in the conversation with the people that I’m talking to on LinkedIn. It’s a great way for me to continue to follow them around, especially if they’re an ideal prospect of mine.

Other things that you can do on Facebook ads besides targeting people based on interests and custom audiences is you can re-target people who have been to your website. If you ever go to my website, alexbranning.com, I’d love for you to go there and check it out. You can actually listen to this episode, alexbranning.com/episode7, and grab some really cool tools for Facebook ads. When you go to my website, I have a Facebook pixel. Now the pixel is a way for Facebook to track where you go when you are browsing the web. When you go on my website, my Facebook pixel reports back to Facebook that you have gone to my website alexbranning.com.

Now, I have the option of creating a custom audience using people who have been to any web page that has my pixel on it or I can create a custom audience based on people who have been to a very specific page on my website. For example, I can include you in one of my Facebook audiences if you have been to any website that I own or manage. At the Branning Group, we have about 60. If you go to any of those 60 websites that we own or manage, you will get a pixel that tells Facebook that you have visited one of the websites that I own. Now, if you go to my page for the Alex Branning Podcast or if you go to alexbranning.com/episode7, then you are in a custom audience that I have just for people who listen to my podcast. Now, I have specific messages that I could use and I could show them just to you. How cool is that?

Let’s say, for example, at the end of this episode, I’ll share with you how I can help you set up your Facebook ad. If you went to my website and downloaded some of the free stuff that I’m going to give you at the end of this podcast, you will start seeing an ad where I am giving you an invitation to set up a phone call with me. That ad is only going to show up to people who have listened to my podcast because I’m going to make an offer at the end for a free consultation and you will see in my ad where it says, “Hey, I saw that you listened to my podcast episode. I love to set up that consultation with you.” How cool is that? Now, that only works if you go to my podcast web page. If you’re listening right now on iTunes, Google Play or SoundCloud, Facebook won’t know that you listened to this podcast. That’s what possible. Isn’t that fun?

All right. Here’s my recommended strategy. The number one thing is figuring out an overarching goal and I break it down into three different campaigns. One is awareness, which is introducing yourself to your ideal client with an ad, a video, something. The second campaign strategy that I recommend is the offer. I will make an offer until they’ve seen an awareness ad. Then the third thing is my retargeting. I want to make sure that I follow my people around while they’re in the process of making a decision.

Let me give you a very clear idea of what this looks like. Awareness ad. I have a webinar that I’m launching called the 2018 Facebook Playbook. You will see an ad for that. If you do not sign up or if you do not click it, you’ll see it a couple more times. That’s an awareness ad making you aware that I have a webinar that you can take part in. Now if you click on that ad and you do not sign up for the webinar, I will be following you around with an offer campaign where I’m making you an offer to come back and finish registering for the webinar.

Last but not least, it is the offer. It is the retargeting offer where I follow you around. If you watch the webinar and do not buy the offer that I’m giving you, my Facebook Playbook, then I follow you around and I make sure that you have seen the offer that I’m making you and I offer you a couple of other things that are a little bit cheaper. That way there’s an opportunity for me to win your business. It is the awareness, the offer campaign and then the retargeting. The retargeting, you can actually follow people around for up to 180 days after they have entered into a custom audience where it’s a pixel triggered thing. You may have noticed that when you start going to websites, all of a sudden, you start seeing ads for those same websites pop up all over your newsfeed and that is because they have pixel view.

Now there are three ads that I recommend that you launch today no matter what business you’re in whether you have an eCommerce store or you have a professional service of some kind. It doesn’t matter. There are three ads that I recommend. Number one, the free ad. Give away something for free. Now, that could be a free consultation. It could be a free webinar. It could be a free thing that people download. It doesn’t matter what the free thing is. What I want is I want people to engage with your Facebook page. Give them something for free. Make that offer.

Number two, install a pixel on your website and follow those people around offering, giving them some kind of an offer to do business. I want Facebook to turn into a revenue generating opportunity for you and I want it to happen right away. How do we do that? We set up an ad that goes out to people who are already familiar with you and we give them an opportunity to get some sort of a discount.

Number three, the third ad that I want you to run is an ad that just goes out to your audience, the people that have liked your page and I want you to ask them for a referral. Make it easy for them to send you somebody. Now, the referral ads are something I turn on and off on a regular basis. I give ideas of different people that I’m looking for. The reason we ask for referrals and we do it using a Facebook ad is because our audience, our friends, our customers, they like us, they trust us and they want to support us, they just don’t know how. In the referral ad, I tell them exactly how they can refer me. I tell them exactly who I want to talk to and I make it super easy for them to share my information with their friends. Those are the three ads: the free offer, the loyal customer discount so people spend money with you and the referral ad. Those are the three ads that I would launch today.

Now, I really want to see you succeed in this and I have a really cool offer. If there’s somebody on this call right now going, “Man, I want to start my own business running Facebook ads.” If that’s you right now, if you are listening to this podcast and going, “Man, I really want to learn how to run my own Facebook ad business,” go to my website, alexbranning.com/episode7, which is the landing page for this episode. I have a program that’s done by a guy named Dan Henry. It’s phenomenal. His webinar is great. It’s going to give you a whole bunch of eye-opening ideas and, in his program, he’s got a lot of cool stuff. He basically gives you a Facebook ads business in a box. It’s way cool.

The second thing that I want to make you an offer for, I have actually created a digital home study course called Facebook Ads 101. In this course, I show you how to use the Facebook ads manager. I go over in detail ads that you can run. I show you how to set them up. I give you some copy and paste ads that you can use. It’s packed full of stuff. There’s a link to it. You go to alexbranning.com/episode7. There’s a link to Facebook Ads 101 so you can check it out because I really want you to understand how Facebook ads work, especially if you’re a business owner and I’ve given you just a killer deal on this. Normally we sell it for 500 bucks. It’s less than $75 right now. For you who have watched the podcast, that deal is only available if you go to alexbranning.com/episode7. That’s a lifetime skill. We update that Facebook ads course on a regular basis as things come out so you’ll always be up to date on what’s going on. Check it out, alexbranning.com/episode7.

If you’re listening to this and going, “Alex, I just want you to do it. I just want you to handle it for me.” No problem. I’d love to do that. Alexbranning.com/call. Go there and let’s set up a time to chat about what it is that you’re looking to do and I love to help you get set up. The great thing about ad campaigns is once they’re set up, you just turn them on and off. You make small tweaks to it. You just run things when you need business. You turn it off when you’re too busy and then you just keep doing that. Facebook ads are an ATM machine for your business. I mean they work so well. Really my business has blossomed because of Facebook ads and I would want to see that same success happen for you. Go to alexbranning.com/episode7.

I’m also going to put some free videos on there as well for you to download. That way you can have some great resources. Check those out. If you would, please share this episode with somebody who needs to learn Facebook ads. Share it by going to iTunes and you can actually share it. There’s a little share icon there at the bottom. I want them to hear my strategy and I want them to execute the retargeting thing. That’s really the easiest way to make money on Facebook ads, to use the retargeting tools that Facebook has available.

Thank you so much for listening to my podcast. I appreciate you and I would love the opportunity to work with you. Go to alexbranning.com/call to set up a free consultation. Have a great day.

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