Facebook is a powerful way to reach your audience. However, you have to know how to find your audience. Join us in our Mastermind Group as we share some of the audiences that we use and the goals we have for testing our new audiences.
If we’re all being honest, as TpTers running Facebook ads can be a little frustrating because we are limited in what we can do. We can’t run conversion ads and we can’t see all the data that we’d like to see. However, there are still plenty of ways that we can be successful with Facebook ads. The key is creating the right audiences.
We aren’t claiming to be Facebook experts here, but we’re going to share with you what we have found has worked the best for us along with what we look for when creating new audiences for our Facebook marketing efforts.
A few terms to know
Before we jump into our tips we want to address a few terms we’re going to use. This might be stuff that you already know but I want to clear up a few key terms we are going to talk about just in case anyone is unfamiliar with them.
- Cold audience = People that don’t know who you are and have never heard your name.
- Warm audience = People that have heard of you and maybe even interacted with your store or social media accounts.
- Look-alike audience = An audience you create to match a warm or hot audience that you already have. The advantage of this is it creates a cold audience that has a better chance of being interested in what you have to offer.
What to do before focusing on ads
Before focusing on getting people to come to your store make sure your store is ready for an audience. Make sure you have really good descriptions along with quality photos.
How much should we be spending on ads?
Before we jump into the actual dollar amounts of what to spend on an ad I want to address the way you think about this budget. When your budget is tight it can be hard to think about spending $20 on a Facebook ad. But, instead of thinking this as just an expense you need to think about it as an investment. If you spend $20 but end up making $40 then you’re not losing any money. You might not get that money back until the following money, but running ads is an effective way to increase your reach and grow your business.
When I first started running ads, I was doing it for small resources and I would set the budget for the same price as the resource. That way as long as I could sell one product I had made back the money I spent on the ad. Doing this allowed me to start testing out different ad components and audiences to see what worked and what didn’t. Over time, I started to increase my budget a little at a time as I became more confident that I’ll get more sales from the ads and audiences.
You also want to remember that it’s not just about getting people to your store to buy that one resource you’re advertising. Your ads are helping introduce you to a new audience. That means even if they don’t buy the resource the first time, or if you only break even on your ad, that new audience could continue to come to your store, sign up for your email list, or continue interacting with you in other ways. They may keep buying more resources in the future because they were able to find you from that one ad.
By the numbers
When it comes to cost-per-click the number I try to stick to really depends on the audience that I’m targeting. Overall, for a cold audience both April and I try to stay to no more than 15 cents per click. However, if I’m targeting the people that are on my email list, I’m willing to spend a little more because I know they are a warm audience.
Now, it’s also important to know that the amount per click can depend on the day of the week also. For example, on Saturday the price might go up to 25 cents per click but then drop again during the weekdays.
How to tell if you’re reaching the right audience and your ad is working
When I’m looking to see if I have the right audience I look at more than just the UTM codes. While these can be helpful they don’t always work. If someone opens it in the app or saves your resource to come back and buy later you aren’t going to see that data.
Besides UTM codes you can also compare your sales. I like to look at sales over the past 30 days or so and then compare them to the numbers since I started running the ad. If things are working the way they should I will be able to identify an increase in sales that is larger than what I spent on my ads. And, when it comes to more expensive resources like a bundle, I watch the wish list numbers to see if people are saving it. Then I keep these in mind when checking my data. Many times people aren’t going to buy a larger resource the first time they see the ad.
I also watch to see if my follower numbers are going up and if I’m getting more traffic to my store. That’s the main goal—getting people to the store. The more people you have showing up at your store, the better chance you have of selling products.
If my ad isn’t working, the first thing I do is try another audience. If it still doesn’t perform well after that I start looking at the image and copy that I used.
Tips on creating an audience
We recommend creating a look-alike audience from your followers or email list. However, if you don’t have anything to base it on here are some things that I use for cold audiences:
- Job Title – When looking for job titles I make sure to include the grade levels that I’m focused on.
- Age – I’ve found my best age range is to stick with somewhere around 22-55 years old. I discovered this by watching my data and discovering that I pay more per-click outside of this range.
- Interests – Choose people that have interests such as “We are Teachers” or “Teachers Pay Teachers”.
You want to make sure that the audience is specific enough that you are getting people that would be interested in the exact stuff you have to sell. Once you create an audience, keep an eye on how it is performing to further customize it. Watch the age brackets, gender, and interests to see what is performing the best and what you are paying more for. I’ve even noticed sometimes I end up paying more when I include Instagram, so simply removing it from the ad lowers my cost.
Tips on creating ads
When creating your ad you want to make sure you are clearly communicating what your resource is. You don’t want to pay for clicks for people that aren’t really interested in your product. Even if you’re getting a good cost-per-click it doesn’t really matter if they aren’t buying and aren’t really your ideal customer. You want to tell them enough information that they know if they really want to click over to your site.
Our thoughts on Engagement Campaigns
I used to run a lot more Engagement Campaigns but have found recently that they aren’t performing well for me. My preference now is to stick with the cost-per-click. Engagement campaigns are focused on getting people to like or comment on your post. What I’ve found is that a lot of people will see your post but not that many actually engage with it. Your goal is to sell your resource or get them to your store, so if they aren’t doing that you are wasting your money.
Video ads
I have run a few different video ads. There are some resources that I think show better in a video. What I like about the video ads is that you can create an audience based on your video ad views. So, you are able to specifically target people that watched a certain amount of a past video ad. This way you don’t have to target people that only watched 3 seconds of the video. You can choose people that watched for a certain percentage of the video. I don’t recommend choosing 100% because most people won’t watch until the very end. If I have a video that is performing well I go right in and create an audience from the viewers.
When running videos I still recommend that you go in and choose cost-per-click. I used to see more success with per video view but that seems to be costing more now.
As you continue to put out new and similar resources you already have an audience you can target that you know was interested in a similar product.
Tips for the more advanced listeners
April and I found an article on Social Media Examiner that we wanted to bring attention to. It’s called How to Build a Facebook Ads Funnel by Modeling Email Sequences. It goes into detail about how to create an ads funnel instead of an email campaign funnel. The basic concept of it is that you create something free to hook the audience with your ad. Then anyone that engages with it gets retargeted with a 2nd ad to nurture the relationship. If they engage again you hit them with a 3rd ad which might be something like a testimonial ad to show how great a larger product is. Then, the last one is the actual CTA where you flat out sell yourself.
April and I think this is a great idea when selling a larger product like a $100 resource or something similar that you have a freebie you can use to hook them in the beginning. In the article, they give the example of running a conversion ad, which we can’t do. But, April is thinking about testing it like this when selling her upcoming course or membership site.
We’d love to hear your experiences with Facebook ads, audiences, and ad funnels. Let’s keep the conversation going over in the Mastermind Group.
Supporting the podcast
Lately, we’ve had a lot of requests from people wondering how to support the Grow With Us podcast. So, we set up a Patreon page for anyone that wants to help crowdsource the podcast to help with the costs of running it. For anyone that’s interested in donating we will be uploading episodes early, answering questions, and taking priority guest questions there.
We’d also like to thank our current supporters:
- Hinemoa from Top Teaching Tasks
- Sarah from Curiosity and the Hungry Mind
- Bethany from Science with Mrs. Lau
- Brian from Wise Guys
- Nicki from The Sprinkled Top Teacher
- Sarah from Curiosity and the Hungry Mind
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