EP. 5: 5 ways to know if you are ready to run Facebook or Instagram Ad’s (and what to do if you’re not!)
What’s this episode about?
This episode is all about looking at the foundations of your business to see if you are ready to start running Ads.
If your foundations are shaky, your Ads are going to cost more and be less effective, so it’s really worth taking the time to check you have everything in place, before you start Ads.
I run you through the 5 key elements you need to look at, and if you aren’t quite ready, how you can get it sorted so you can get started!
Episode key takeaways:
You need to have a proven product or service. If you don’t. I share way way to start getting sales quickly, before you invest in Ads.
Do you have a warm audience? Should you use Ads to warm up your audience?
A website that converts is KEY. I share the metrics you need to be looking at and some quick wins you can check and improve straight away.
The pixel, cAPI and domain verification… if needs to be done, get help if you can’t/don’t want to do it yourself.
Imagery is key, make sure you have a variety of style to give you options to test.
KEY LINKS:
Still not 100% sure if you are ready to run Ads? Book a 15min Gameplan call where we’ll take a look at these 5 core elements and I can help you see if there are gaps and we can make a plan to fill them before you start running Ads!
Come say hello over on Instagram: The Social Pod
Join my email list and get the ULTIMATE GUIDE TO TARGETING PARENTS WITH YOUR FACEBOOK AD'S
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Read the transcript:
NOTE: This podcast was transcribed by an AI tool. Please forgive any typos or errors.
Hello, and welcome to growing pains. The marketing podcast for parent and baby brands who want to grow and get more consistent sales, but without the overwhelm of feeling like you have to be online 24 7, I'm Sophie, your host, and a Facebook and Instagram ad strategist who specializes in parent and baby brands as well as a mom of two.
Join me each week as I alongside some wonderful guests, she had practical tips and advice about how you can use and combine marketing strategies to get more impact for your effort. A quick warning, before we start, I can get a little bit sweary, so just be careful of any little ears listening along.
Sophie: Hello. Welcome to this week's episode of growing pains. In this episode, we're going to be looking at whether you're ready for ads. And I've got five, two for the things that you can have a look at to see whether you're ready for ads. Now, if all hurts your head a little bit, and [00:01:00] you really prefer talking these things through with someone I do actually offer a free 15 minute game plan calls where we get on a call. I will ask you some questions.
We'll go through the five different things I'm talking about today, and I can kind of help you make that decision about whether you're ready for ads. And if you're not, what is it specifically that we can do where you can go away and do so that you can get ready for ads?
So we've got five things to talk about today, and none of them are actually related ads, which might surprise you. But actually it shouldn't because ads just that amplify. What's already going on. So if your foundations are strong of your business, then your ads are going to be more effective and cost you less.
However, if your foundations are a little bit shaky then your ads are going to be less effective and cost you more. It really is as simple as that. So the stronger foundations, the better your ads are gonna run. And that's why these five things are really important. So the first thing we're going to start with today is.
Do you have a proven product or service? So [00:02:00] do you know what you're selling? Who you're selling it to, why they want it and have you actually sold it to them? Now, this is winning important because in the really early days of running a business, it can feel a little bit like you are talking to nobody. You know, you've got really small social media following and you probably haven't got a big email list.
You've spent ages and ages like either training and whatever service you're offering or, you know, designing products, importing products, sorting it all out. You've. You've got your business. It's that? You've got your website. You've spent ages designing it. And then you're sort of ready to sell, and maybe you're struggling to get in front of people. So you think, oh, I'll use that. And that's not saying you can't use ads and there are definitely some set of ads that will help you with this stage. Bart. If you haven't got a proven product or service, like if you haven't sold it 21, It's going to be really hard to nail your messaging.
Nail your audience and nail the pain points, because actually those are the things that you really need to know when you're writing your ads. If you go back to episode [00:03:00] one and two, I talk all about audience and messaging and you really need to have sold some of your product to understand. Why did they buy the product? What pain point are you solving?
And actually demonstrating that there is a need for your product, because if no one's buying it, then you might need to rethink the product or service. You might need to think of the messaging around it. So you need to, up-sold it. You need to know what you're selling and you need to know why you're selling it.
Now. I know that probably sounds really. Obvious, but you would be surprised how many people come to me and say, well, I haven't actually sold any yet, but that's just because I have not getting in front of enough people. If you are at that point where you've got this product or service and you just can't seem to get anyone to buy it from you, maybe you're just shouting out into the ether on social media and just hoping you land on someone who might be interested.
What I'd really encourage you to do is narrow down your audience. The rather than using ads to expand it, narrow it down. Look at your network who is in your network that might be interested in your [00:04:00] product or service. Make your pool of people smaller. So if you are aiming for a certain type of person, oh, that other people are also aiming for a certain type of person.
For example, if your product targets, mums who are really tired, let's just say are there other practitioners or service providers or products that also target moms who's tired who might recommend your product to their clients? So, say for example other nutritionist might target moms who are tired.
So you could speak to a group of nutritionists who target mums, see if they'll then recommend your product. Like that's the sort of thing you need to be doing because actually nutritionist target mums are a much smaller, more accessible group of people and just going on Instagram and hoping that you reach the people that you're looking for.
So that's what I recommend. But if you have got a proven product, you've had people buy your product. It doesn't have to be hundreds. But just enough that you feel confident that this product or service is needed and necessary. You understand what your target audience, once you understand their pain points [00:05:00] and you know why they want your product in particular. So your USP is, and that's a good sign that you are ready to start ads.
Okay onto the next one. So the next one, number two is have you got a warm audience who are engaged in your business in some way? Now, this is kind of similar to my first point, but just a slightly different issue. So it might be that you have got some people who've bought your products. Maybe you've tapped into a local market, and now you're ready to expand out. And what we need to do when using ads is we need to give Facebook information.
So we need to be able to tell Facebook. These are the type of people that are going to be interested in my product. Now. If we don't have a very large or engaged social media following, if we don't have an email list, if we don't have much data on our website, it's really hard for us to tell Facebook. Who they should be looking for and we're going to spend more money. With Facebook, trying to find them essentially. So Facebook will go and find them for you, but it will take a [00:06:00] lot more money and a lot more time. And the likelihood is you'll probably give up before they actually get there.
So you really need that warm audience. We really need to be moving people into our world by reaching lots of new people all the time. So we want to be getting people on our email list. We want to be getting people into our website. We want to be growing our social media following.
Now we can use ads to support those objectives. So it might be that you're not ready to run purchase ads yet because we can't tell Facebook who you're looking for, but what we can do is use ads to build our social media, to get people on our email list and to get people on our website.
So really it's about investing in those early stages. Of moving people into your warm audience before you then go out for the purchases. Now the next one is if you're going to spend money, sending people to your website. Or a landing page, whatever it is. Really, it has to be one that converts for whatever, kind of action you want them to take. It needs to come back. And so many [00:07:00] times I see businesses who have either built their website themselves because they.
I understand that they need to save money at the beginning of their business. Or they've had a web designer set up who doesn't really understand conversions and maybe it looks really nice, but it's not optimized for people to buy from you. Now there is really no point in sending people to your website. If you want them to buy from you. If your website is not converting them.
Now on average, if in terms of econ. On average, we you're going to get about a two to 3% conversion rate, and that's assuming your product price point isn't above maybe a hundred to 200 pounds. If it is higher than it will be lower. Understandably, just cause people need more time to kind of think about the purchase, but really, yeah. Two to two to 3% is great.
If your conversion rate is under 1%, then that really is something you need to be thinking about before you're sending traffic to a website to convert. Because when it means that you're going to have to send a lot more people to your website before they'll actually convert into paying customers, [00:08:00] which is obviously just going to cost you more money. So the, really the things you need to be looking at are things like.
It needs to be fast loading, so your website needs to be quick so that people don't click off while they're waiting. You need to make sure that all of the all of the buttons work well or the pages work, like really test your website inside and out and get someone else to do it as well. Because sometimes we just become blind to these things.
You know, make sure your add to cart buttons, working, make sure your checkout processes. We really simple, like we don't want people to have to sign up for an account. Look at your postage and packaging costs. Are they proportionate to what you're selling? Like is it going to be a massive jump for people?
If they're buying a five pound product and then your postage and packaging is four pounds, like that might be an issue. Make sure they could see what they need to see right at the top of the page, especially our landing pages. So service-based businesses. If you are looking to collect leads or if you're just looking to grow your email list, we really need the key information right. At the top of the page.
Plenty of buttons to allow people to convert as well. And there's nothing [00:09:00] worse than scrolling and scrolling and scrolling to try and take the action and not finding a button. So those are all things you need to think about. And then really dig into the econ businesses in particular, but also service-based businesses.
How many people are landing on your pages? How many people are abandoning? You know, what are those percentages? What's the abandoned cart rate. And what's your average order amount as well. That's another thing as well. You need to be looking at because there's your average order is lower than about 30 pounds. Then you might struggle with ads to get enough purchases to make the ad spend.
Worth it, essentially, because you're going to be using it quite chunk of your profit margin to get people on that. And to get them converted, especially initially. Lots of those things to think about, and this is the one that often we, when I'm having calls with people in a 15 minute chat,
This is the one that we often spend the most amount of times them because people are, I get really frustrated and they don't really understand how it's changed our website. And I do actually work with some fantastic web sites specialists. Who I'm going to be having on the podcast, students, I'm really looking forward to being able to share those [00:10:00] episodes with you as well.
Okay. Now the pixel. This is something that is like a one-time only job now. It feels really painful at the time. And when I work with clients, this is the one thing that I go in and sought out for them straight away. And it's often a real relief that they know it's just done. There's also something as well called conversion API, which is relatively new. It's about a year old.
You need both. Okay. So I'm just going to tell you that straight up what they are are pieces of code that go on your website and they allow Facebook to track the actions that people on your website are taking. So it allows us to have reporting. It allows us Facebook to learn what people are doing on your website and to go back and find the right people.
Now. It is something that you can get a tech VA to do quite easily. Facebook has a lot of documentation on how to do it, or if you're working with someone like me my upcoming group program is going to be a whole module on sorting out the tech. Getting ads manager set up. You also need to verify your domain as well.
There's [00:11:00] all little snippets of code that actually are relatively simple when you know how but do take a little bit of time if you're trying to work it out on your own, but they're really, really critical and you won't be able to run ads without them, or certainly not ads for purchases anyway. Okay.
Okay. So in the final things and number five, It's really great imagery. Now, interestingly, this doesn't always have to be big product photo shoots. When I run ads for clients, we test lots of different types of imagery. Some of it is big branded photo shoots. So flat lays images of the items on their own.
Other times we'll use more like lifestyle images and they could be they could be professional, like photography that you've paid for. I got a lovely lifestyle. Shoot. It could be user generated content. It could be photos that your customers have sent into you, of them using the products.
It could be influencer content. So if you work with influencers and they create content for you, it could be that. So there's lots of different ways that you can get content. Now, weather service based business. It can be slightly [00:12:00] tricky. Especially if you're reluctant to use your face. But you need to think about what images you're going to use, and I'd really recommend you go back through your organic social media. Like what images have done? Well,
You know, canvas such a fantastic resource for stuff like this. Make sure that you have a look at what's done well what's got, obviously got people's attention and stop them scrolling. And how could you sort of replicate that in an ad? You can using bright colors.
Using eye catching imagery. It doesn't have to be like a hundred percent related to what you're talking about. It just needs to kind of stop the scroll and then you've obviously got the copy to them. Reel them in. So that's the fifth one. So quick overview for you. Number one, you've got, have you got a proven product or service? So you really need to have sold.
So do product or service to know whether you want to then use ads to grow it. Number two.
Have you got a warm audience of people who are engaged in your business in some way. And that could be across social media, email website visits, like maybe you've got a really active blog, that [00:13:00] sort of thing. Number three, your website or landing page needs to convert visitors. So you need to make sure that you are getting some consistent results and you make sure your website is going to convert those customers when they land on it. And then number four is the pixel and conversion API. He needed to make sure those are loaded onto your website and are tracking the right events. And that is something that a tech VA can do. Or you can find lots of documentation on Facebook to help you with that.
Finally, you've got imagery, ad creatives. So just having a think about what images you've got and testing different options. So again, test, test, test, we will try different styles of imagery. So we will try like the flat lays, the lifestyle shoots the user generated content. We'll try videos versus static imagery, all that sort of thing.
You want to be able to test different things and you need like a sort of stock of images that you can use to be able to do that. I hope that has been helpful. Again, if it's something you think yeah. I'm still not a hundred [00:14:00] percent sure if I'm ready to run ads or not making sure you became one of those free calls, you can just go to the social pod.co.uk board slash a book, a call. I'll put the link in the show notes as well to book in one of those slots with me. And I'd love to talk to you about whether your business is ready for ads or not. There's absolutely no selling involved at all. It genuinely is me just chatting through where you are at the moment.
And whether you are ready for ads or not. Thank you so much, and I will see you next time.
Thank you so much for joining me before you go, make sure you subscribe to the podcast so you can receive new episodes, right when they're released. And if you ever enjoyed these podcast episodes, I'd really love to ask you to leave a review in apple podcasts reviews are one of the major ways that apple ranks their podcasts, and it only takes a few seconds, but really does make a massive difference to new people.
Finding me. Thank you again for joining me, Sophie, in this episode of growing pains, see you next time.
