The Facebook Strategy Step By Step Plan

What I'd like to give you today is a good starter step-by-step plan for Facebook ads. I use this method with almost all of my clients. Especially those who are starting out on a small budget. I recommend you follow these steps if you are trying to gain followers to your Facebook page. 

If you try to shortcut this method you'll often end up paying much more per click than you should.

 You'll also start to see your results drop off over time; this means you'll need to pay more and more each week to try and sustain the same level of growth.

*** One thing I do want to say for those of you in the service industry. Some businesses like real estate or car detailing or probably a hundred other types of service businesses, can often go straight to creating lead ads to generate traffic for the business. Lead ads can be a bit expensive, but generate great leads in just a few hours or days for a business.  

So, if you're trying to generate leads for your business there might be a shorter path to success, but if you're trying to sell a product or grow your following over time I recommend trying out the strategy below.

 One last thing I'll say to you drop shippers out there. many of you are trying to sell with ads, right off the bat; without growing your following or gaining engagement. This will cost you more and, often, get you penalized by Facebook; usually they won't even tell you you're penalized.

 Facebook wants you to run more than one objective with ads. In fact, the more objectives you're running the higher quality Facebook gives your page and your ad account. This does not mean go out and try to run ads for each objective; and waste thousands of dollars in the process. What I'm telling you is running just conversion ads and trying to sell right off the bat is going to cost you more than it should. While you might be successful at first, Facebook will limit your reach over time; and will be very suspicious of all of your future activity; they'll send review requests to many of your past customers; as well as anyone who's viewed your ads. 

If you get any bad reviews they could penalize your account even further; this means limiting your reach even further. And they do this all without ever telling you your ad account is limited. I suggest you try the strategy below; and spend some money and time on engagement and creating a following. You'll have a lot better time selling your products; especially drop shipped products that have a very small margin. Good luck out there!

 Now Let's Dive Into The Facebook Ads Strategy I Use Daily

Decide what you are trying to sell.  (what experience)

 This point may seem pretty obvious, but it is one of the largest stumbling blocks I see for anyone who comes to me asking, ‘how do I grow a Facebook page?’.  You have to understand the experience the customer wants to have when purchasing your service or product. 

1. Example 1 → You might be selling solar panel cleaning, but really, what you're selling is a lower monthly bill and a better all-around presentation of the home, because it now has nice clean solar panels on its roof.

1.  Example 2 → If you're selling fitness equipment what you're really selling is empowerment and the belief that change can happen. 

1. Try to understand and develop the story and experience you want to give your customers; more importantly what is the experience they want to receive from your product or service.

Start posting daily organically

1.  Now that you have an idea of what experience your customers are trying to get out of you you can start cultivating posts for your social media that they ACTUALLY might read.
2.  I'd recommend you start posting at least once a day and as many as five times a day; but don't stress yourself out when you're starting out; pages with no likes will get almost no organic following in the beginning. What this means is no one will see your posts when you're starting out, so it is okay to start with just one post a day.  However, when you do start to generate likes and traffic people are going to want to see more posts. that means, had you taken the time to develop more than one post a day when you were first starting out you'd have more content for them to view. It is a bit of a double-edged sword. 

1. What I recommend is, start off with one to two posts a day; even if one of those posts is not your own content, but rather, a link to a blog on another website or Facebook page. As you start to get a few likes, start to post more.  

Start paying at least $5 a day in Engagement ads (boosting posts)

1.  You now know what you're selling and you're starting to post organic content each day. Now we need to showcase that content to the world. If you're on Instagram or Pinterest  you'll probably already noticed traffic rolling into your organic posts; what I mean by this is you have probably already noticed likes and shares of your posts without having to pay for ads; that is great! On Facebook this is a different story. 

1. With Facebook you'll need to start paying to boost your posts otherwise you will have to really work hard to grow your page likes. Boosted posts will start to get engagement and likes to your page;  That is of course, if you're posting great content that people really like.

1. **** A lot of marketers say don't boost posts; I'm here to tell you after 15 years in the game you definitely want to boost posts. It is a great way to gain engagement, a great way to gain followers, and that post will live on as a billboard forever; always driving traffic back to your page and your website; even when you stop spending money on it. 

Starting out, boosting posts is the best method for gaining new followers.

Add manychat to your page

1. Now that you're boosting posts and plugging along you'll start to see engagement on these boosted posts; you might even start to get a few messages in through Messenger. I recommend setting up manychat or another chatbot so you can start cultivating these messages and turning them into subscribers. Manychat as well as many other chatbots, allow you to send text message blasts and set up ads right through the bot. They can be extremely powerful to increase engagement, website traffic and eventually, sales. And most chatbots are free or very low-cost.

Invite people who like your post to like your page

1.  Now that your boosted posts are rolling along you'll want to go back to these boosted posts each day to invite people who engaged with the post to like your page. I recommend doing this manually and not with a bot or extension. Facebook is getting extremely powerful at picking up on Bots versus regular human traffic. For some reason, they really want you, a real person, to invite people to your page. It's extremely tedious, but it will get you a lot more likes than if you just let people naturally like your page. Invite them and they will be much more likely to like your page and follow your page.

Start conversations in comments and chat

1.  If you get lucky enough to start getting comments likes and messenger conversations on your boosted posts you need to start engaging with people right away. The faster you reply to the conversation the higher quality score your page will get from Facebook. It wants people and pages to interact in real time.  Do not pester people; just stay engaged and answer their questions promptly.

 

 

Start running retargeting ads (Level 1)

1. The next step is to expand your ad budget if you have the means. If you don't, stick with your engagement ads and grow your following. Once you're following gets to a certain point you can start to monetize it by putting up offer ads.

1.  If you do have the budget though it is a good idea to retarget anyone who engaged with your ad or visited your website recently. People who have engaged with you or gone to your website are much more likely to take a next step with you.

These retargeting ads might be ads that ask a person to join your blog; or they might show someone a video or a blog article you created… Just make sure it is something longer form and further down your sales funnel. 

More Help →  If you simply can't think of content to show in this next step of ads think about simply answering some of the common questions customers ask in a video or blog post; or tell them more about your product or services in a video. People just want to learn more about you and your service. Hearing you talk builds confidence. What you say is secondary.

Start running offer ads (level 2)

1. All the way down here at step 8 we finally get to selling a product or service. All of the steps above are necessary to help our offer ads stay as cheap as possible and as relevant as possible for as long as possible. These offer ads will be the actual sales ads for your product or service. They might be a promotional video or simply a slideshow showcase of your products. Whatever you put here this is the bread-and-butter post for all of the hard work above. You want to make sure you put a call to action and ask people to take the next step in these offer ads, so don’t forget to add a button and a link to your website (or wherever you sell your product/service).

Start running last chance offer ads (level 3)

1.  Now, for anyone who did not purchase because they either went to the website and abandoned their cart or they simply did not take a further step beyond viewing your offer ad,  I recommend starting a last-chance offer ad. Usually this is going to be a discount or maybe a bundle offer.  These offers/bundles will further incentivize the customer. OR the ad might tell the customer a bit more about the product or service then add a bit of urgency by letting them know that you are booking appointments fast so they better hurry, etc etc. be creative and test different last chance offers until you find one that works best. 

 Duplication, revamping creative and continuation

1. Now you'll need to review your ads every 4 to 5 days. Most adsets in Facebook will start to underperform  after 4 to 5 days. You might want to duplicate the adsets and run the same ads if they were doing good in the first few days or you might want to try a new creative on your engagement ads, your offer rides or maybe your last chance offer to improve performance.

1.  How will you know which ads to change out and which ones to keep going? 
1. Take a look at which ones are doing what you want and which are not.
2. Ask yourself:
1. Are my engagement ads getting engagement at .05 cents or less per engagement?
2. Are my retargeting ads bringing people back to my page and my website?
3. Are my offer ads selling product or at least getting people to add to cart?
4. Are My Offer ads getting a CTR of at least 5%?
5. Are my last chance offer ads getting good sales? 
6. Are my ads returning more sales than I am spending?  (** side not here → Not all products will be profitable with the first sale.  Some companies only break even or lose a bit on the firs sale; they do this because they know the customer will return to buy again.)

***Once you get about 100 orders start a LLA (lookalike audience) and rake in that money! ( we can cover LLA’s in a different post. They are a bit more advanced).

Good luck out there! 

As always, send me a shout directly if you have a question you'd like me to answer more in-depth or if you have a question about this article. 

Thanks again! 

Sincerely,

Marshall Garth