Show Notes

Image ads. Slideshow ads. Dynamic ads. Poll ads… and the list goes on.

There are so many types of Facebook ads, how do you know which one to choose? I’m diving into the details today to explain the pros and cons, and sort out which Facebook ads are right for your business.

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Hey there. Thanks for listening and welcome to the marketing matchmaker podcast. If you're looking to grow your business, increase your revenue and scale your impact all while staying true to who you are and the people you serve. This is the show for you. I'm Jennifer Tamborski, digital marketing strategists, fractional CMO, and founder of Virtual Marketing Experts. My team and I work with six and seven figure coaches, consultants, and online entrepreneurs who are tired of playing the guru game of one size fits all marketing. They're ready to create a business and marketing strategy that actually builds relationships with their ideal clients creates massive shifts in their business and rapidly increases their revenue. As your marketing matchmaker, I'm going to help you find the perfect marketing match for you. This show will teach you how to reach your ideal client, connect with your audience, build that perfect relationship and generate more revenue. All through a process I like to call dating your ideal client. Now let's go have some fun!

Hey there, welcome back to Marketing Matchmaker. I am super excited to continue this breakdown of Facebook ads. So if you missed last week's episode, I would suggest you head over to that episode and give it a quick, listen. It's all about Facebook ads. So I'm taking the next several weeks to really focus on paid traffic, the good, the bad, and the ugly of the different paid traffic pro platforms that people use.

So we're starting with Facebook. The reason we're starting with Facebook is because it is the largest advertiser on the planet. Billions of people use Facebook between Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, they are the three top leading platforms of social media. So the question becomes not why should I use Facebook ads? The question becomes when should I use Facebook ads? And we will dive into that.

So today's episode is really focusing on the types of Facebook ads that are available and why and what you should use. It all depends really on what the purpose is of your Facebook ads. So every ad campaign should have a purpose behind it. Please, please avoid running ads to just a general post that does not have some kind of call to action on it. You're honestly wasting money. Even if the call to action is watch this video, it has to have some kind of call to action. I want to make sure that everybody avoids wasting money on Facebook ads, cuz quite honestly, they are an investment.

Just like all of your marketing is an investment in your business, Facebook ads are an investment in your business and you're going to, at some point in your, the life of your business, most likely want to use them. So always keep in mind that because it is an investment, just like a stock. It doesn't always skyrocket immediately. I really, really don't care what those gurus have said about running ads for just a week. And I got a million dollars in sales and this is how you do it.

Here's the truth on the myth behind that: Yes, you can absolutely run ads for a week. Yes, you can absolutely make a million dollars. Can you do it without any kind of following? That, my friends is debatable. Especially as time goes on and Facebook ads become more and more complicated to use. So I would caution you before you step into the Facebook ads land world, make sure that you at least listen to this entire series of podcasts to get an idea of what you need to do, when you need to do it, and why you need to do it.

So let's start today's episode with the types of Facebook ads. I'm gonna give you a quick rundown on that some of the best types of Facebook ads, and then we'll dive into more of the, when you would wanna use it and why.

So the first type is really promoting your page and it is exactly what it says. It is about getting likes on your business page. Here's the thing about that. You have to be incredibly careful about running that type of ad because you may or may not need it and it may or may not be successful. It could be a waste of money. We will jump into more of that in a little bit.

The second type of ad is boosting your post. This is where you create a post and you want more people to see it and you boost it. I know I've done in a entire episode of boosting a post versus running an ad. However, we'll dive into that again in just a few minutes.

Next increasing conversions on your website. This is really what most people use Facebook ads for; driving traffic to their website to get either email address or purchases. And it's incredibly effective if done correctly.

Sending people to your website. So this is just traffic. Getting people to land on your website, to maybe do something without asking Facebook, to track exactly what they're doing. That's the difference between increasing conversions and just sending traffic to your website. It's really about Facebook, number one- tracking, and number two- targeting people to do exactly that. That I think it's something that people really need to understand is that when you pick an ad type, Facebook actually targets people who are more likely to do that thing. So if you want them to do a specific thing on your website, it's much better to focus on the conversion rather than sending traffic. However, if you just want more eyes on your website to see what happens, traffic campaigns are great.

Get an app. I'm sure we've all seen those and they may or may not have worked. So if you have an app that is absolutely a good ad to run.

Reach people near your business is more about targeting. It is a good way to get people that are within a certain radius of your business. So if you have a local brick and mortar increasing engagement in your app, so again, it's just what it says, right? It is about increasing engagement in your app.

Raising attendance to your event. So you can run events ads to get people, to come to whatever; your webinar, your online live event on Facebook, whatever that might be.

Get video views. We really use this a lot to target and retarget people. So people who watch your video and spend a few minutes on it are more likely to be engaged with you and want to do that next step.

Collecting leads for your business is pretty much the same as increasing conversions, but it's less about dollars and more about getting someone on your email list and getting people to buy your offer, whatever that offer might be.

So those are a couple of different types of ads that you'd wanna use. And then when you're looking at that, it then comes down to what types of the types of ads are you going to run.

An image ad, that's pretty much what it says. It's a static image with copy, headline, sends them someplace, all of that kind of stuff. Are you gonna run a video ad again, same thing. You're putting a video on there. You're having people watch the video. You're asking them to do something.

A carousel ad is a series of images, and this is fun actually. If you're using testimonials in your ads or if you're selling a product where you can give them different images of that item. Testimonial carousels are a lot of fun, cuz you can put multiples on there at the same time and people can see them and get more than just that one person connected to you, right? Like oftentimes when we're running testimonials or we're talking about testimonials, it's one person. If you have a hundred people, it is awesome to have 5, 6, 7 testimonials in a carousel type of ad.

Dynamic ads. So this is something that Facebook released, I wanna say three years ago may have been four. I don't know, time kind of got a little wonky the last two years. I don't know about you, but the slowest and fastest, last two years of my life anyway, dynamic ads are really where you can test a bunch of any images, video and copy you put it all into one ad and then Facebook puts it out based on their algorithms. So they'll, they'll run them. However they see fit, whatever they think is going to work best. And then you can figure out what the winning copy, image, and creative, you know, headline are.

The thing about dynamic ads is, for a little while there they were Facebook's favorite. And of course, whatever Facebook's favorite thing is, you kind of wanna do that. So they were working really well. Then the iOS 14 update happened and dynamic ads stopped working quite as well. I do believe that they are back to working pretty well now. So that still, it's a test, right? A lot of these different things are tests.

You have story ads, which are exactly that, ads that end up in your story or in their story, right. As people are watching stories, an ad will pop up. I know you've seen them. Those are really great. Especially on Instagram where people are really focused on stories. I think Facebook, while it has stories, I don't know how many people actually spend time in the stories. So it is definitely, again, something to test to see what your audience relates to.

You have messenger ads. So these are ads that actually end up in the messenger app. Which is great if someone is using, especially when people use, have you ever noticed that you could use your messenger app as your primary, like texting tool on your phone? It can show ads to people if their primary app on their phone is the messenger app for any kind of communication, ads can go into that.

Then you have lead ads, which is all about using Facebook's form to capture people's information rather than sending them off of site.

Now all of these types of ads have pros and cons and it all depends on what it is that you're trying to do and what it is that you're trying to get Facebook to do. One of my favorite types of ads right now is what they call a messenger bot ad, which is using a platform like many chats to people and start having conversations with them before you ask them to do anything really deep, right?

So you give them something. Then you can ask for the email, then maybe you walk them down a series of questions to get on a call with you. That's a very basic one, but it's how those work. And the, the thing about them is Facebook is an engagement platform. And so they really like to keep people on their site. So the more you can do on their website, on Facebook's website versus taking them off the app onto your website, the longer you can keep them on there, the more Facebook likes it, which means that your leads and conversions may be less expensive. Not always. However, it is one that I love testing with my clients to see how their audiences react.

So how do you determine which of all of these ads are good for you?

That all depends on what the purpose is behind your ads. Always, always, always have a purpose behind ads. The thing about boosting posts is that most people don't have a purpose other than having more people see the post itself. Boosted posts don't get as great of results as actually creating ads in the ad manager. If you're looking to just get more people to like to talk, to engage with that post, then a boosted post can work. I would just caution how, why you would want to boost a post rather than running an ad.

Now here's the thing: you can run an ad off of a post. So the difference being is that you're going into ad manager and you're creating an ad and using a post that, that got a lot of great interaction on your page as the ad itself. How you're targeting people is the really big difference when it comes to these things, you get to decide what option for the ads is going to be better for you, based on what you want the people to do at the end.

So if you want more engagement, a boosted post or running an engagement post to that is a great way to get that. And there's a reason there are reasons to do that, right? Because Facebook does want people engaging with you. They want that interaction. So if you run some really low dollar engagement posts of like a dollar, $2 a day, like really inexpensive, and you have people clicking on the post, commenting, liking, communicating that kind of thing on that post, it does bump up your analytics when it comes to Facebook and you can also retarget all of those people that actually did communicate with you on that post.

So promoting your page, why would you wanna do this? You wanna do this? If you wanna increase your likes. However, my caution to you is this just because somebody likes your page does not mean that they are, are really interested in what you do.

And I say this because Facebook, the way their algorithm works is that they share with people who will do what you're asking to do. So if you're asking people to like your page, they are going to share that with people who are more likely to like your page. That doesn't necessarily mean that they're more likely to buy from you.

If you wanna increase your page likes because it's a vanity metric, or because, let's say you have a publisher. You're trying to publish a book and you have a publisher. And the publisher says you need 50,000 people to like your page. That's the way to do it. You get 50,000 people to like your page. It is definitely possible. You just want to make sure that you're really clear that just because somebody likes your page does not necessarily mean that they want your product, service, or solution.

Sending people to your website. Why do you wanna run traffic ads versus conversion ads? So the whole point behind traffic ads, sending people to your website is to get people onto your site at a lower cost. If they are interested in the ad and they are interested in going to your site, you can then retarget them on a conversion ad that's could cost less.

So there's a reason that people do traffic ads versus conversions ads. If you don't really have a huge audience and a huge following, you wanna get more people onto your site and people that are interested in what you're doing and what you're selling. And they may actually buy, there's nothing that says they don't. It is also a good way to test copy creatives, headlines, videos, whatever type of ad you're running. Traffic ads will tell you pretty quickly at a really low cost what's winning. People like this ad, this type ad, this copy and creative. So those are reasons to use traffic ads. And again, always have a purpose at the end of what you're running ads for.

So increasing convergence on your website, and I'm also going to combine this one with increasing email conversions, because I kind of look at 'em in a similar fashion. Whether you're trying to sell something, maybe you have a $5 product or you have a hundred dollar product or whatever, whether you're e-commerce or you’re a coach, consultant, or online course creator, and you're looking to gather email addresses, the type of ad that you run is pretty similar. And the reason behind it is going to be similar; what you're asking Facebook to track is gonna be different.

It's either going to be a purchase or it's going to be a lead either way, it depends on what it is you're trying to do. And obviously this is where most people spend the majority of their budget, as well they should, because this is what's going to get money in the door in the long run, whether it's building your email list so that you can sell to, or whether you're just going directly to sales, both of these are really important ways to do it.

Then you have things like getting people on your app, or getting people to download your app, or increasing engagement in your app. Those are all things that help if you have an app. I don't really have any clients that have an app. So I don't spend a whole lot of time in this area. If you do have an app, I would suggest how hiring a marketing company that actually specializes in getting people to download your app.

So events. Events can be a big thing for the coaching industry, whether that is a webinar or it's live streaming on your page or in your group, or it's an actual live paid event. You can actually use Facebook ads to generate sales to that. Now there are two ways to do that. You can do the conversion, or you can do the event, like setting up an event on Facebook and running ads to it and getting people to say, yes, they'll come.

When you're doing an event ad, you almost have to take them off of Facebook's site in order to gather the information you need, whether that's their email address or whether that is to get them to buy either way. Right now, it's hard for Facebook to do that. Like they don't, they don't really have a great method of taking event information other than saying, yes, I'll attend, which doesn't really get you anybody's information and whether or not they attend, it's a whole different story.

However, there is a point on the events that when someone registers, you can actually ask them a series of questions and that is a good way to get that information without taking them off of Facebook's site.

So getting video views, why would you want to run ads just to get video views? Here's the reality, just like we're doing this podcast. If someone's going to listen to 2, 5, 10, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, however long your video is, if someone's going to sit there and watch it, they're a little more invested in taking the next step with you and you're able to then retarget them to ask them to the next step with you. So it's a great way to build an audience. Running ads to video views really helps to generate that interest and that connection when it comes to creating audiences that are interested in who you are, what you do, and who you serve.

The last one that we're going to touch base with today is leads. So there are two types of leads we've already discussed. This one was sending them offsite to get their lead generation from, from your website.

The second is a lead gen form on Facebook and Facebook kind of really likes this. You can get a lot of people to give you their information for a pretty low price point when it comes to this type of thing, because you are keeping it all on the Facebook app. So you set it up in their lead gen form. They ask questions, usually it's their name and email address. You capture that info. You send them, you know, an email through that. So it's, you're able to connect that lead gen form to your email service provider. It boots it out that way. And Facebook will capture information on these lead gen forms at a lower price point.

Now, some of the things that I've learned, just like I said earlier, that they target people who will literally do what they ask. The quality of lead from lead gen form, all depends on who you're targeting and what you're offering them in order to capture their information.

Because if you are, let's say you're a real estate agent and you're targeting people for their email address and their information. The quality of information you get may or may not be great if you don't ask the right questions. So just make sure that if you set up this type of ad, that you know who you're targeting, what types of questions you need to ask in order to get the right information from them.

So those are the types of Facebook ads and why you wanna use them, when you wanna use them. I hope that this was a beneficial podcast for you.

We will be continuing this podcast series. The next one in the series is about audiences and how to target, why to target who to target. So that's always exciting. And I will talk to you guys in just a few weeks about that. If you are struggling with your Facebook ads right now, if you're trying to run them yourself, or if you've hired another agency and they're not getting you the results you want, I would love to hop on a 30 minute free consultation call to just see if we might be able to help you to grow your business, increase your revenue, and scale your impact.

Thank You for listening to the Marketing Matchmaker podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, I would love to hear your feedback. Please head over to iTunes and leave a review so we can hear from you. And if you are a coach, consultant, or online course creator who are looking to grow your business, increase your income, and scale your impact connect with me at yourmarketingmatchmaker.com. I look forward to hearing from you.