Welcome to episode 337 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris.
Continuing our February theme with Facebook ads, I want to talk today about setting your budget and I want to highlight a couple of expenses that maybe we don’t consider when we’re looking at a Facebook ads budget because sometimes things pop up that we don’t think about. I want to highlight some of those things, and why they need to be factored into your overall budget. One of the most common questions I get is how much should my Facebook ads budget be? We talked a little bit about budgets last week when we talked about should you be using Facebook ads as part of your launch and I want to touch on this briefly. There is no right answer to what your Facebook ads should be. There is no, it has to be XYZ or you won’t be successful. What happens though is your Facebook ads budget is going to dictate the other things you do as far as how many different campaigns you run, or how many different ad sets you run or where you run them or for how long you run them, to what kind of audience you run your ads to and how big the targeting range is for your ads.
There is no magic number as you have a higher budget, you will probably get more results. Not necessarily better results, but more, not because one budget’s better than the other, but because you have more to spend so that you can do it for longer and you can reach more people and things like that. That’s something to consider but there’s not one magic answer to what your Facebook ads budget should be. The biggest thing you need to remember is that when your Facebook ads budget is any size, you have to pay attention to the targeting because no matter how much you’re spending, if you want to be spending smart, you have to be speaking to the right people. You have to be targeting to your audience. That’s where going back to the drawing board and knowing exactly who it is you’re talking to is mission critical. If you’re skipping that step, you’re leaving a lot of money on the table.
Now before I go any further down this rabbit hole of budgets and targeting and things of that nature, I want to highlight a couple of places where you may be spending money that you don’t realize needs to be part of that budget. The big one is graphics. If you’re hiring someone to create graphics or you’re paying for a graphics tool or you’re buying stock photos, all of that needs to be considered because, guess what, your Facebook ads graphic, it matters. It needs to be eye-catching. It needs to be something relevant. It needs to be something that’s going to get me to stop and read that text. Read that copy, because the more text that’s on there, the less the ad is delivered.
Now that used to be actually a hard rule on Facebook where you couldn’t have more than a certain percentage of text. You may remember the 20% rule. However now you can have as much text as you like, however it will impact the delivery rate of your ad. For example, if you have an ad with a lot of text, maybe 50% of the graphic total, it will be delivered less frequently than something with no text at all. I tend to find that I have the most success when my ads have very little to absolutely no text on them. I kind of let the graphics speak for itself and then really take advantage of the copy that’s under the graphic with the headline and that little bit of text and of course the copy in the ad itself. I’ve found the most success with that. Then you don’t have to worry about a delivery issue with too much text. Think about that. It’s something to consider. But if you’re going to use text, you’re going to want to use text in a very smart way and you’re going to want this graphic to look good.
You’re going to be spending money for people to see it, so you might consider hiring a graphic designer. If that’s the case, it needs to be factored into your ads budget, because, guess what? It’s part of the cost of that and so if you have an overall marketing budget, that’s going to be pulling from that budget so pay attention to what that number is. The other unexpected ad expense that isn’t as common as that one is a copywriter. If you have somebody actually writing your ads for you or you would like to have somebody writing your ads for you, you need to factor that into your budget because that’s going to be an investment. Notice I didn’t use the word expense? I did use the word investment especially if you’re hiring a copywriter who has experience writing ads, who is well-versed in this space. Then it’s an investment because it’s going to help, especially if it’s something that you are not particularly skilled at. Absolutely if that’s an investment you want to make, go for it. Find the right person, but go for it, but factor it into your budget.
The third place where you might want to look at making this a part of your budget is if you are going to outsource. Not necessarily just outsourcing from the perspective of actually hiring someone to run the ads. Actually hiring a Facebook ads expert to create and monitor the entire campaign, but also if you’re getting any Facebook ads coaching. This is something I have done a lot with clients, one-on-one, sort of on a one offer, a few off kind of set up, where we talk through creating the ads together. We talk through the targeting, we talk through ad placement. We talk through copy. We talk about how and what audiences and what ads to turn off and what ads to keep going. We do that because they know how to do it but they need a little guidance and they want a second opinion.
That’s a really great way to get the help you need as well. It doesn’t have to be you full on handing it over to somebody, because a lot of times folks that you’ll hire to run an ad campaign will require a certain minimum budget and may be outside of what you are comfortable investing in. Not just from an ad campaign but in actually outsourcing to them. Sometimes finding somebody who you can sit down with and get some one-on-one time, talk through some things, especially if you’re comfortable with the actual execution, can be really helpful and really beneficial. Look at that, but again, that’s got to be part of your budget. That’s three things that could really sneak into your budget and next thing you know you don’t actually don’t have any money left to run ads. Pay attention to that. Again that’s graphic designer, a copywriter, and outsourcing any sort of campaign running. Again all three of those are investments, not expenses. You will likely see dividends from that. You will likely see some increased ad goodness from that. They’re not required but they’re not a bad idea either. They just need to be considered in your budget. Okay?
Let’s talk again about what our budget means for different ways to run ads. If you’re running an ad to just general list build, maybe you want to run ads to a piece of content or to an opt-in and you want to run these ads all the time. Then you’re going to want to have a monthly budget for just that ad. Now if you’re in a launch period where now you’re launching a program and you’re wanting some webinars, you may not necessarily want to be running that other ad all the time unless it feeds to the same end result, the same program. If you are going to run them at the same time, you need to factor in what that monthly cost is and what the promo for the launch budget is.
On the flip side if you are running an ad for retargeting, meaning you are targeting an ad to people who’ve already been to a website or are already on a certain email list, so these are warm leads, that budget can actually be a little bit smaller because you’re speaking to a smaller group of people. However, realize that you may end up paying a little bit more per click for them because you do have a smaller group and you’re asking them to take a specific action. Generally with me for retargeting ads, we’re retargeting straight to a sales page so the conversion amount may be more than when I’m running an ad to say a free opt-in because again, when I’m running an ad to a free opt-in that conversion is when they sign up and get on my list.
When I’m running an ad to a paid program, which again I would only do to a warm audience, so like a retargeting ad or like an ad targeted to my email list. Even my Facebook likes, I don’t tend to run a paid offer to them unless it’s really, really no brainer like, if I’m running a promo for the trial for Hit the Mic Backstage or something like that. Generally if I’m running something to a sales page that’s full on like the membership or a program, like when we had Social Pro last year, something like that. The only ads I’m running are to my email list and even that’s a set section of my email list and people who’ve been to the sales page and haven’t purchased.
Again, the conversion cost may be higher, but it also is more valuable so there’s that. Pay attention to that. That’s one place where you can run with a smaller budget because you’re not going to have as much traffic there as you do when you’re running an ad to an email, opt-in, and a cold audience. That’s something to think about when you’re talking about setting your budget is how is it going to be divvied up for maximum results. You’re going to want to put more in that column for the top of the funnel and where you’re getting people through the middle, sort of towards the end of the funnel you can set that budget a little bit smaller because less people are going to get there.
Now if you have any more questions about this, the best place to be to talk about your budget, your goals, your needs then it’s time for you to join me inside of Hit The Mic Backstage because that is what the private community in there is for. It’s for you to get feedback from me and some real talk. I’m ready for you to join us back there. I hope you’re ready to join us back there, backstage that is. If you are ready and I have a feeling you are, head over to hitthemicbackstage.com. In addition to that private forum where you can get my feedback, we also do have the newly revamped all new videos inside of the Rock Star Guide to Facebook, which lives … It’s a whole six module Facebook program, inside of Hit the Mic Backstage.
Totally, totally part of the membership. Free to our members and totally up to date because I spent all of January recording it. Including an entire module on Facebook ads. Including six new videos. We talk about custom audiences. We talk about boosting posts. Ads manager. Power editor. The pixel. All of that stuff. The pixel’s going to be what helps us with the retargeting so that’s a really important module or really important video. Check that out inside at hitthemicbackstage.com. That is the place to be to get the latest, the greatest and everything you need to know when it comes to social media and content marketing in 2017. I will see you backstage.
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