5 Easy Peasy Steps to Prep you For Facebook and Instagram Ads

You know, you should be running Facebook™and Instagram,™ ads to bring new leads into your business and create the ability to scale. But you don't know WHAT you need to have in place so that you don't waste any money.

There are actually five things that you absolutely must have in place before you ever spend a single dime on any Meta™ ads. And that goes for any type of paid advertising. 

You may even have some or all of these in check, but they are definitely the foundations to look at before you even get into the back end of Facebook Ads manager. 

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Knowing Your Human Beyond Basic Demographics

If you've been in the online business space (or any kind of business for that matter) for a while you’ve probably have done about 172 ideal client avatar exercises. Knowing who you serve is the very core of creating a successful business.

Unfortunately, a lot of the exercises are a little generic when it comes to actually getting up close and personal with your ideal person.

Most exercises in this area will have you give your ICA a name, define her age, her income bracket. List out what TV shows she likes to watch. Determine her hobbies. But unless these facts are actually relevant to the offer you are trying to get in front of this person. They are a little pointless.

When it comes to really going in depth about your ideal client, you need to go way beyond the basic demographics.

What do you know about this person’s actual priorities in life? What do they value? What kind of things do they enjoy/or not enjoy having to do?

Even more important to know is their level of awareness as it pertains to what you offer. Are they completely unaware that they have a problem? Do they know they have a problem but not even sure that there is an answer?

Start thinking like your ideal customer and how they relate to your actually offer instead of at a very high level of who they actually are in real life. A lot of the things you “know” about them are usually just speculation in an effort to create this ideal avatar.

Get Your Messaging Down Tight

The second thing to have in place goes right along with knowing your ideal client, and that is having your target audience messaging down TIGHT.

Having your copywriting and messaging to speak to that one ideal person is key when it comes to being able to relay what it is you do and how you can help.

Doing market research and actually talking to your current audience is the number way to get your messaging dialed in. The key is to get out of your own expert head of what you think they are saying, and start to learn the words and phrases that they are actually using when it comes to the problem that you solve.

Sell Them What They Want

When it comes to creating an offer, you need to have something that the market actually wants. Not something that you think they want because you're the expert. It can be so easy to think we know what they want (especially if you don’t have step two dialed in). But sometimes we can be too close to the solution to actually come up with the right offer.

YOU ARE THE EXPERT. You know what your ideal clients' problems are and how to solve them. So when it comes to creating a sexy AF offer you need to create something that combines what you KNOW they need, with what they THINK they need.

Having a sexy offer is important whether you are trying to sell a $5,000 program or just get someone to give you their email address in return for a free lead magnet.

Provide a Smooth User Experience

The next thing to have is place is a smooth user experience. This is where your funnel and back end things come into play.

It can be easy to feel overwhelmed with the thought of having a sales funnel, but they don’t have to be complicated or fancy in order to give your customers a great user experience.

Start by thinking of your funnel as the journey that someone takes from the moment they discover you to the point where they become a customer of yours. Any type of customer journey where there are certain steps they go through can be considered a funnel.

And if you want people to take that journey with you then you need to make it EASY for them.

Imagine clicking from an ad and ending up on a busy crowded website full of more ads. You are overwhelmed, you have no idea where to click to even get the thing you came to see.

You would back out of there faster than you can say freebie. Most consumers have attention spans that last a fraction of a second. Everything has to be easy and as little effort as possible for them to get to the next step.

Have An Ad Budget That Supports Your Goals

Last, but definitely not least at all is that you absolutely must have an ad budget that supports your actual strategy and goals.

A lot of people will come in ready to start running ads, and they aren’t really aware of what their budget can accomplish. Or they may have unrealistic expectations for the budget that they have.

Facebook ads have changed in the way that you can no longer expect to spend $100 and make $10,000 in just a few days. But that doesn’t mean that ads are broken or dead. It just means that you need to be realistic about what you home to accomplish with what you have.

Once you have a budget in mind that you want to just spend and know what you can realistically get out of it, it will do a few very important things.

It will allow you to actually have the patience to run your ads and invest in the data you need to determine exactly what is working. In the long run this will allow you to create a robust paid ad strategy that can help fuel your business for a long time to come.

It will pull you out of that mindset of “I'm going to spend $10 a day on Facebook ads and get really rich” and yes, I know there are “experts” out there who are still pretending like this is possible.

The great news is that you CAN get results with ANY size budget, once you have a great foundation and the right ad strategies in place.