It is no joke that most of the internet is on Facebook and Instagram.
You can use it for a lot of purposes. You can look at funny memes, cat videos, read the news, stalk your ex, catch up with friends, and much more.
But that’s not the reason why you’re reading this article.
You’re reading this because you want to use Meta to get more clients for your business.
Meta allows you to target literally “anyone” you want using their Ad Tools.
And the best part is, it is easy to get started.
How Do You Start?
Many entrepreneurs advertise on Facebook and Instagram by purchasing a ‘boost’ for certain posts.
It's cheap, fast, easy, and sometimes it even yields results.
A boost is Meta’s way of getting you to spend cash to promote your page without any of the technical difficulties.
I mean it sounds simple right? You set a budget and it shows your post to tens of thousands of people.
Now you’d think “100k people saw my ad, I have huge reach now”.
And as each day passes by, you’d see the reach numbers go up, but something feels a bit wrong. You don’t get messages from leads. You don’t get traffic to your website. You don’t get conversions.
Here’s the catch…..
Boosts Are Limited In How You Could Use Them.
If your only goal is to get “views”, “likes” and followers from your posts, then sure…. Boosts are a cheap and simple way to get them
But we aren’t here for that are we? We’re not trying to show off on social media.
We need leads. We need conversions. We need money-in
If you know how Facebook and Instagram work behind the scenes, you can reach the exact target audience with the exact offer needed.
And for this, you don’t post and boost them. You create Ads, in the Meta Ads Manager.
The Ads Manager doesn’t look like your simple boost tool. There are buttons, screens, numbers everywhere…. It’s like flying a plane.
But, before we get into all that juicy, fancy stuff, here’s 2 things we must first sort out.
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The Foundation For Your Ads
For ANY ad you create, there’s 2 things you need to decide on.
The Message - “What are we showing”?
The Audience - “Who are we showing it to”?
This is important, since you get results, only if you write the right message, for the right audience.
So what makes up the right message?
The Headline
The headline is the hook that must FORCE prospects to pay attention. It should make them stop scrolling like a robot, and look at your ad.
Since everyone today has the attention span of a drunk lizard, you only have a split-second to grab their attention.
Check this article to see what makes up a good headline.
The Copy
The ad copy is what comes after the headline. Once you get someone hooked, you need to talk about what’s going on in this ad.
Keep the copy short and simple, and “relevant” to the offer
Two things to avoid here - long, wordy messages an AI generated messages. Why? No one has the time or attention or interest to read an essay on Facebook.
And second, we've developed an innate sense for AI content, which is utterly repelling and makes everyone's skin shrivel.
An easy way to test if your message is good, is to ask yourself if you would say the same thing to a person at a bar, or a cafe, or wherever you go out.
A good copy should lead to the close. It should convince the prospect to click on it.
Creatives
Creatives are videos, photos, photo carousels, etc you add to your ad.
You must keep these relevant to your copy, and use it to show things that you cannot do with just text.
For example, For a web design business, adding images from your portfolio, or showing "before vs. after" pictures would work.
Testing different versions of creatives (video, photo, photo carousel) against each other to see which one performs best is always an option in the future.
The Offer/CTA
The offer is what you want your customers to do after reading the ad.
Depending on your business, it can be a store visit, a consultation call, a form-fill, etc.
For example, an E-Commerce store should take their leads to a store page, and a Digital Marketing Agency should get them on a call.
It is important to make your offer “easy to click” and “reasonable”.
Put yourself in the shoes of the customer and think, “would I take this offer?”. Do you give your prospect a fair reason to click on that? Is there some value for them already?
And second, the “ask” in your offer must be easy to say YES to.
Prospects don’t care at all about your business, so if you ask for something like a 30 minute call to someone whom you've "just" showed an ad to, it doesn’t make ANY sense.
Once you get these 4 points sorted, look at who we’re showing the message to
Your Audience
We can’t just target “everyone”!
It makes no sense. Your ad gets shown to “everyone”, your cost-per-lead is high, and you’ve wasted money on it.
Instead, we figure out who’s most likely to buy our product, figure out their age range, gender, interests, location, and then set up the ad.
An example I love to use is video games.
Sure, everyone loves to play video games. But, if you’re selling a PlayStation, it makes no sense to advertise to everyone.
We may have some examples of a 70-year-old man going rampage on Call of Duty, but let’s face it… 99.99% of console users are men in school and college.
This means, you must set your ad up in a way you reach the “right” audience. By right, I mean the audience who are most likely to buy from you.
If you get this right, your ads are shown to the best possible people who'd buy.
And these are the basics to cover before you write your first ad.
You’ve made it to the end, you now know how to start advertising on Meta.
You can figure this out yourself now, but in our opinion, you should be busy, running your business and fulfilling clients.
If you want to attract more customers and maximise returns from your ad budget, we'd love to help.
It's free of cost, we're not boring and we hate high pressure sales tactics.
Contact us here to talk....
