Episode 59: Can You Profitably Run Facebook Ads?
Welcome to Episode 59: Can You Profitably Run Facebook Ads?
I’m sharing a clip directly from a coaching call with one of my Inspired Organizer students for the podcast today, because well, sometimes the best aha moments come completely unscripted! What I loved about this conversation is that you can REALLY hear the huge change in her mindset from the beginning of this segment to the end, and if you can relate to having any hangups about spending money on growing your business, I hope you’ll get a major lightbulb moment out of this, too.
Resources mentioned:
Profit First
Related Links:
How to take your pro organizing business online
Streamlining Your Workflows with Kate Jones
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FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Intro: I’m sharing a clip directly from a coaching call with one of my Inspired Organizer students for the podcast today, because well, sometimes the best aha moments come completely unscripted! What I loved about this conversation is that you can REALLY hear the huge change in her mindset from the beginning of this segment to the end, and if you can relate to having any hangups about spending money on growing your business, I hope you’ll get a major lightbulb moment out of this, too.
Client:
Facebook ads kind of scare me. Not going to lie.
Jen:
Well, let's dive into that. The difference for me between when we're talking about SEO and Google ads and Facebook ads is obviously it's awesome to be, you want to be found by the people who are looking for you because they're actively looking. With Facebook ads you do have, you have a much larger group of people who are sort of in that stage of awareness where they're not yet actively looking but if somebody were to sort of bring it to the forefront of their attention and they're like, "Oh yeah." You know what I'm saying?
Client:
Yeah.
Jen:
You can sort of nurture them from this stage of not, maybe even not being aware that a professional organizer is a thing or not having yet really made a decision about what they're going to do about whatever their problem is so it's a bigger pool of people that you can start pulling from and nurturing. Again, that also doesn't have to be an expensive endeavor. It is so... This is really where you start to grow and scale your business though because you're turning strangers into customers, not just people who found you and heard about you and were referred. I understand the fear and then also I think that you would be among the elite group of people who have decided, I am going to figure this out because it doesn't have to be super complicated. I do want to ask you, you said that you're nervous about doing it. Have you watched the content that is in the course about it? About the basic setup of it and is it the interface that seems kind of intimidating or is it the idea of just spending the money and not being exactly sure what's going to happen, that part?
Client:
I think the latter. That's what I'm like, "Ugh, do I want to spend money on Facebook ads right now?" Is that the wise thing to do. That's kind of where I am with that. I don't even really know how much it's going to cost me.
Jen:
I was going to say, I was going to say. When you have an expense that has to do with marketing there is definitely a difference with where you don't consider it an expense that just goes out the door like your software costs. It's something that is meant to specifically drive leads into your funnel and your funnel being like your website, nurture, services, all that stuff. So, when you know that you put $5 into a Facebook ad per day or let's say $100 in a month. When you're clear on the numbers of how many clicks am I getting through to my website from that? How many of those people do submit an inquiry and ultimately become a client? When you sort of have your measure of what happens with your ads and sorry I'm kind of... I don't want to overcomplicate this. I'm sort of just trying to illustrate it. Once you have a clear understanding of I'm putting $100 in and I'm getting $1,000 out or I'm getting $10,000 out then you'll be much more confident about continuing to spend the money on ads. The key though is you're going to have to spend the money to get the data. Does that make sense?
Client:
Yes.
Jen:
I think right now how you should see it is this is a test period where you don't have to spend very much money because the great thing about Facebook is it's not like committing to advertising in a magazine. It's like if you can see your results pretty clearly immediately. Is my cost per click acceptable? Cost per click through to my website acceptable and I can give you guidance on that but once you... and I tell people, don't run a Facebook ad if you don't think your website is going to do the job from there because all the Facebook ad is going to do is get the person on your website and if your website is like, it's unclear, you don't know what to do but we fixed a lot of those problems now which is awesome and you are established in your business which is great. It's not like people are still clicking around going, "Is this person really legit?" You've got the team, you've got the Google reviews. That part, it should not be a question. It's just a matter of are they ready right now, what are you doing to sort of move them along the nurture cycle which if you've been through Inspired Organizer the middle modules, four and five.
Jen:
I don't know if you heard me say this in one of the modules. I'm kind of like, "People are kind of like, 'Oh, that's the flyover country with Inspired Organizer,'" but it's so critical. That's so critical because that's where you take somebody who's sort of interested. You have to make sure. Here's the process. Here's how we're going to solve your problem. Once they can see it and they understand the value of the service and they can see how it applies to them and they trust that you're the person to do it, that's what turns them into an inquiry and then a client. It's like you can't skip over that part.
Jen:
I think that you are at a place, and I'm telling you, you are ready to be in that testing phase with Facebook ads where you're putting an ad out there that is again, right now designed to take somebody who is in your area. Obviously they got to be qualified by area first. Take somebody that's in your area and pique their interest. In each phase with your ad the way I describe it is like each part of your ad only has one job to do. Your picture has to catch their attention. That's its one job. Your caption has to stir up their desire. That's its one job or your caption or whatever text you put along with the ad. It doesn't have to sell anything. That's the point is your Facebook ad does not have to sell the entire service. It just has to sort of confirm that they’re experiencing a problem that they are now clicking through to learn more about how the possibility that it could be solved or just the... Again, if their interest is high enough that they're going to click through. That's all your ad has to do is confirm that there's the interest and then get them to click through, and not everybody will but that's okay.
Jen:
If you're getting a cost per click that is reasonable and you know that if you're sending 100 leads to your website that one of those is going to turn into a $2,000 job, then that's when you can say, "I know that I can afford to continue running this particular ad and possibly even up my ad spend because now if I know that I'm putting a dollar in and getting this result then it's profitable. As long as it's profitable and this is what every guru that I have ever learned from is like as long as it's profitable you should be running an ad because that is what is going to continue to bring the fresh source of leads to your website that doesn't rely on you going out and hustling all the time. I mean really.
Client:
Yeah, yeah.
Jen:
Think about that.
Client:
I know.
Jen:
When you put all that together and then you become confident about it it really becomes you're really... you're in real business land you know? You are already but you know what I'm saying. You're like, "I'm never going to have to worry again about how I'm going to get customers because I know that I'm driving the traffic.
Client:
It sounds like you're describing this cost, this ad cost, it's an acquisition cost. It's the cost of acquiring a real customer.
Jen:
I would say too or I would even say that your... I would even say even more specific than that it's the cost of acquiring traffic. Your website is the one, is the thing that really converts them into an interested lead-
Client:
True.
Jen:
Then you or whoever does the phone and then the consultation is the one that really does the selling process.
Client:
True, okay.
Jen:
All along the way each piece only has one job to do. Absolutely what people will say is the most direct way to build a business is to buy the traffic because it has a clear, you have a clear outcome because everything else is already established.
Client:
Okay, okay.
Jen:
Does that feel good?
Client:
Yeah, yeah.
Jen:
I love this stuff but I know not everybody is ready. They're not ready to sort of embrace this is now my job. They're really into organizing and then the building of the business but you're sort of like, "Okay, now I'm the..." you're the company's CEO and so you've got to be the one to say, "This is the clear formula for what we are doing and then we've got Profit First that is helping me sort of manage all the money that you do get in the door which is amazing.
Client:
Yeah.
Jen:
You're never going to be a struggling business owner if it is very clear to you how... Where your traffic comes from and then how they move to become a customer.
Client:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jen:
That felt really good for me to say that. I hope that that made sense.
Jen:
I want to share, okay because I'm so... I'm a huge fan of Mike Michalowicz that wrote the book. I haven't even implemented everything about Profit First because I'm extremely stubborn and keep thinking that I can figure out a better way and that's not true. I'm just saying, I'm kind of 80% there but he wrote another book that literally just came out last month called Fix This Next. I bought it, I pre ordered it because I wanted to be one of his best fans so the minute that it came out it was downloaded to my Kindle. I started it just this past week. One thing that he talks about is he said one reason why he wrote that book was because people... All of his other books are so good. They're like, "Should I start with Profit First? Should I start with Clockwork is another one about systems and efficiency and I love that one.
Jen:
In fact, me and Brie went through the course that they did for Clockwork. It was awesome. He has another one called The Pumpkin Plan which is about focusing on the one thing that your business does really well. People came to him and they were like, "So which book should I start with?" He wrote this book so that it could be the book that they start with. He wants people to now start with Fix This Next and then you can assess for your business. It's framework is like you know Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs for personal... It's like a psychology thing about safety, security, and then-
Client:
Yeah.
Jen:
Growth or whatever. He sort of based his business hierarchy of needs, it's very similar. You have to make sure at the bottom that you have the sales to support everything else. He's like, "If there's an issue there you start there. Then you move into maximizing profit and that kind of thing." He sort of has you go through an assessment of just answer these questions and you fix the problem that's at the lowest level of need and then you move your way up. He said it turns out for most people... for anybody who is having an issue at the sales level which does have to do with acquiring customers and having a clear framework for like here's how much we need to spend on advertising to get the traffic that will turn into the customers that we need to support the business. That's on the sales level at the bottom and then the next level up he said is like the Profit First level where you're like now we're making sure that... He's like, so reading Profit First might not actually be the first thing you should focus on if you haven't figured out some of these more like basic customer... Knowing where the customers are and then turning them into clients.
Jen:
Sorry, that was a long winded way of saying but that makes me believe that spending, even if you spent $400 and even if you spend $400 on advertising and you didn't make the money back that day that now you'll have the data that you can use to make decisions about advertising in the future. Whereas if you spend $400 on the booth, it's like, it's just a cute way to spend a Saturday and it's like a photo opportunity. That makes it so clear. It's very refreshing to see somebody else say, "This is priority one, then priority two. Priority three can be later." I would say the booth is more of a networking. It's more of like a community building thing and that's further up on the hierarchy of needs. It's not as critical for business stability. Gosh, I love the way his brain works.
Jen:
I was going to say too, I kind of leapt right over this as sort of maybe also not an obvious thing but you can not only be... I was really taught when I was talking about Facebook ads, I was kind of talking about looking in this cold audience of new people but you also have... You can test retargeting ads for people who visit your website. It's sort of like it's a nurture sort of follow up where you're just, again you're not saying, "Hey, come back and spend money," you're just giving them more education, more sort of moving them along that path so that they don't forget that... Imagine somebody who's just like, "I've had it. I'm going to search for a professional organizer." They Google you, they find you, they come to your website and then life distracts them because hello, they're disorganized. They weren't ready to take the action, whatever. It wasn't a reflection on you or your content or anything. They just needed some prodding and some follow up and not poking but you know what I'm saying, continuing to nurture them. Hey, here's the benefits. Here's what you may be experiencing right now and here's what life could look like.
Jen:
All of those not teaching but just again it sort of is like a, you're just helping shift their mindset about what it means to ask for help and here's how we can come and perform this service for you. Then it helps remind them that oh yeah this was important to me. Then they come back and then they submit the inquiry. It's like if people are not retargeting their visitors who found them in the first place and Facebook ads can be a very effective way to do that because usually you don't have their email address and even if you do they're not going to open their freaking email.
Client:
They don't read it, yeah.
Jen:
That's the other magic about Facebook is that you're not losing the attention that you have worked hard to build with SEO. That's huge.
Client:
Yes, okay. I'm getting this now. Yeah.
Jen:
Yeah. One I guess rule of thumb down the road, not immediately is that you should always have a cold audience like new leads ad running and then you should always have one retargeting ad running. Now you don't want to set it up to where they're going to see you in Facebook for years and years. You would set it up to where you're just showing it to people who are more recent visitors. You're not hassling them for years. If you always have one ad that is designed to bring new leads and one ad that is designed to follow up gently with people with a little bit more information that's like, it's becoming what should be a basic for any business. The majority of people do not do this.
Client:
Two ads kind of running at all time targeting those two different groups.
Jen:
That's essentially is sort of the best practice and of course it can become more complex or more-
Client:
Yeah.
Jen:
You know but a video, one thing I tell people is that if a really simple way to sort of reach out on the retargeting with your warm audience is to do sort of like a personal video that doesn't feel too formal or polished where you're just kind of saying, and you're not like trying to be overly... You're not coming at it from a salesy approach. It just feels like you're talking to a friend but they're seeing you and they're like, "Oh," because here's something about you know video really makes people feel connected like they know you. It's the instant brain switch where they're like, "Oh, I've seen her before on her website but now that I've heard her talk," it's a whole different level of feeling like they have met you.
Jen:
Then getting on the phone doesn't feel as intimidating and they're like, "Oh she's really not going to judge me and I can just sense that." It just sort of helps. I just think that especially for people who aren't comfortable being on a video to a cold audience I'm like, "Try doing it with the people who already know who you are because that's a little less difficult."
Jen:
I know it's out of the comfort zone. Oh my gosh I know but once you see... Here's something effective a business consultant once told me. I was just like, "Well I don't know if I want to do that or I don't know if I'll be bored when I do that." He's like, "You won't be uncomfortable or bored when you're making all the money." He's like, "Then you'll understand that this really isn't about you, it's about the business and it's about what your customers need to see and hear and feel to feel that trust because we are, we are in a very interesting industry where it is... It's about trusting somebody to come into your house. That's a major difference for most every other type of service or whatever. It's like you're not just bringing them in one time, they're going to spend time in your home and in your life so it's that much more important to get over that video hurdle because they need to feel like it's somebody that they can see themselves spending time with and letting see, okay here's some of the things that I don't let the rest of the world know about.