So you think you’re ready to outsource your Facebook and Instagram ads? But want to know if you’re in the right position to do so?
A lot of people outsource their ads when they are desperate, they need new traffic urgently, and they need sales. Now. But this isn’t the best strategy. Realistically if you’re business isn’t doing so well as is – sending more people to it isn’t always the answer. At the end of the day, Facebook ads aren’t a magic solution, they’ll help a good business grow but they aren’t magic.
So how can you get your business in a prime position to outsource your Facebook and Instagram ads to get the best results?
Good Organic Sales
Firstly, getting good organic sales already is a big win. Facebook’s data comes from the Pixel, the Pixel learns the more people visit and buy from your site. If you’re spending a lot of money to run ads and that pixel doesn’t know a lot it can get pretty expensive pretty quickly. Having Facebook already have a good idea of who your ideal customer is before paying an agency is always a good idea.
The other advantage to having good organic sales is that it means your product is tried and tested, there is nothing worse for us as an agency than trying to explain to a customer that there are issues with their products and their website when they’ve spent thousands on ads and agency fees.
It’s even less fun for you.
Knowing your site converts well and people like your product before outsourcing is a great idea.
Existing Facebook Ads
Now I’m not saying you have to be nailing your ads, but before you go spend money on an agency, even a boutique agency like ourselves, having some data, some testing and some ads is a good way to ensure success.
If you’ve never run an ad before, whoever comes in is doing absolutely everything from scratch, it can be done, we do it often, but it really does help to have some existing current data to use as a benchmark for what will work and what won’t.
It’ll also help us to give you an idea of what returns are possible, if you’re getting a 2x ROAS on your own with no testing, it’s a lot easier for us to work out whether we can help you to improve that, than if you have nothing running – then we are flying blind as to the potential returns you may be able to achieve through Facebook.
Build a community
Yes, I know, half the point of Facebook Ads is to reach more people, and to help you build that community, but if you can do this before you reach out to an agency, you’ll be in a much better position.
Not only can you harness that community spirit for copy inspiration and UGC, but you can also use them to help add social proof to your ads quickly.
Have an email list that converts
“But Dahna, Email is dead…” I hear you say… much to your disbelief, it’s not. Email marketing is still one of the single biggest drivers of sales for eCommerce. You might not open your emails anymore, but your customers do.
Think about it, you probably get a lot of B2B sales pitch emails, and scammy marketers, but not me, you love my emails 😜 – your customers get fun emails from their favourite eCommerce brands.
At the end of the day, out of all the marketing platforms you use, even if you don’t like it, email is the only one you own. The rest can kick you off, go bust, or disappear into the ether like MySpace… it’s vital that you work on optimising your email campaigns and flows.
It is something that you can use Facebook ads to grow down the line, so it’s good to have it make you money before you spend the money growing that list.
Have other successful marketing strategies in place
On the note of email marketing, having other marketing strategies or platforms in place prior to outsourcing Facebook advertising is another great way to set yourself up for success.
While we LOVE Facebook ads, duh, it’s not the be-all and end-all, and god forbid you to end up like one of our clients whose account went down for 3 months straight, you want to make sure you have other ways of driving traffic and sales before you spend your entire marketing budget on Facebook ads. This might be influencers, TikTok, Google Ads, SEO, PR, the list is endless – you don’t have to do it all, but having some extra baskets goes a long way to shoring up your business.
I don’t believe in spreading yourself too thin, but I do always recommend having at least another one or two mediums that can send you traffic and sales outside of your ads. Influencers and relationship building/PR are my two favourites for those on smaller budgets, and Google ads are always a winner!
Great Content Creation
Whether done in-house, or outsourced, something you need to have, and have a lot of before outsourcing and scaling your Facebook ads is a bucket tonne (the official unit of measurement) of great content and the ability to create more – quickly.
Picture this, your agency (hopefully us) comes to you and says ‘this ad is working amazingly well, but it’s starting to get stale, people have seen it and we need more content like it’ – and then it takes you 6 weeks to produce that content. By that time that ad has well and truly died, the agency has had to make something else, that’s likely good but not as good as the fresh content. And you’ve missed an opportunity.
If you’re going to spend good money on ads, you need to have the resources to back it up and create great fresh content as you go.
UGC from customers or paid from influencers
One of our clients spent $10k on a professional shoot, and got some slightly blurry photos from a customer… the blurry photos outperformed 10 fold. She still needed those professional shots for the site and her wholesalers, but don’t discredit the blurry shots with bad lighting – they sometimes drive the best sales.
While professional images and video are amazing, and 100% needed for your website and socials, UGC is where it’s at coming into 2023. People love your polished images, but they resonate the most with the real people using or wearing your product, even if it’s blurry, not the best lighting and shot on an old iPhone.
You don’t necessarily have to have ALL these in place to outsource your ads, but they certainly go a long way to helping the success of your ads when you do make the decision to outsource.
The only exception to these points is if you have a lot of money ready to invest and the patience to make it work and a team ready to work on these things with you. You can be successful with Facebook ads without these things but it can take much more time, and that means a lot more dollars invested.
If you’ve got the patience and time, I highly recommend getting these pieces of the puzzle in place before reaching out to an agency.
Are you ready to work with an agency? Book in a free strategy session with us here to learn more about how we work, and what we see as improvements that can be made to your existing ads.
Or not ready yet, but want to start working on your ads? Join the waitlist for our course Small Budgets, Big Results opening in early February 2023.
