Is your tech ready for ads? Do you know what you’re getting yourself into. Well I’m here to let you know that there’s more to Facebook ads than just hitting publish. Especially so if you want to see real results. Listen on to find out what tech you need!

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Transcript:

Hey, so in this episode, I’d like to talk about getting your tech ready for paid ads and what tech you need. Honestly, I’ve got opinions and experiences that I’d like to share because I don’t want you to fail. I have worked in paid ads for a couple of years now and I’ve done a 10-week intensive course that was run by The Digital Picnic. They are paid ads managers, but teaching paid ads and digital marketing is also their jam, and they do it very well.

The Importance of Preparation

I spend time learning about all this stuff because, as a digital marketing person, I spend time on social media, and every day there are people in Facebook groups complaining that they got shafted by a marketing agency or they tried Facebook ads and it didn’t work. I’m here to say that I wouldn’t have a job as a paid ads manager if Facebook ads didn’t work because clearly, it does work, and I’ve got evidence to prove that. There are countless other people; there are agencies like The Digital Picnic who are well-loved by not only their followers but their clients as well. It’s a testament to the power of Facebook ads, or Meta ads, as they can and do work.

So, I wanted to do this episode because I wanted to let you know what you’re getting yourself into before you start running ads. What sort of tech knowledge is required, in my opinion, but what else is other tech knowledge that is useful to have? You certainly can run Facebook ads without tech knowledge, but the more knowledge that you have and the more preparation that you have before you start, the better. Because if you run ads, if you just boost posts and not track anything, and not have any means to see your results and attribute your sales back to Facebook, to the ads platform, this leads to people saying, “Hey, I did ads, and it did nothing,” or “I don’t know what results I’m getting.”

Understanding the Facebook Pixel

So, what I’m going to do is I’m going to start with explaining one of the bare essentials, and that is your Facebook pixel or your Meta pixel, as it’s called these days. You may or may not have heard of it, but I’m going to just briefly explain what it is. So, the Facebook pixel is a piece of code that goes into your website. It doesn’t create anything that’s visible to your customers. It’s there to serve as a kind of bridge between Facebook or Meta and your website so that information can be sent back to Meta to let you know whether or not people are taking actions after they’ve clicked on an ad. That’s essentially it in a nutshell.

Enhanced Communication and Targeting

The Facebook Pixel lets Facebook and your website talk to one another and helps you confirm that your ads have done something. It also acts as a means to track people in your business ecosystem who are also Facebook or Meta users. This pixel will remember users so long as they continue to use Facebook and Instagram. For instance, if you get someone visiting your website and the pixel is there, it can add them to an audience of people who previously visited your website, and you could create ads that target just those people.

Advanced Uses and Audience Segmentation

There are a few more layers and advanced steps to this. For instance, if you’ve got an e-commerce store, you can create ads for people who went to a product page but didn’t check out. Although that is quite advanced and something that I would only recommend to businesses that have audience numbers of a particular size. When those audience numbers are well below the thousands, it gets really difficult to segment people that way. But yeah, I’m going on a bit of a tangent there. I could probably talk a bit more about audience segmenting another time. Essentially, the pixel is really helpful, and you should have it there if you don’t and you want to use Facebook ads ongoingly in your marketing strategy.

The Importance of Measuring Conversion Rates

Now, another important thing that you need to have some kind of measurement for is your conversion rate. I’ve talked about this in previous episodes. In order to measure the percentage of people who convert, you sort of need a means or a mechanism that can viably track that. Again, with the e-commerce example, we could say that a person who has transacted with you and made their way from a product page to cart to checkout, that’s a conversion action. With our Facebook Pixel and our tracking, we can track all of that back to an ad that they clicked on in Facebook.

Building a Process for Non-E-commerce Websites

Now, if you’re not running an e-commerce website and instead you offer services or maybe something like courses, a great thing to have is a, um, again, a process for people to go through. So, they pop in their name and email address and sign up. It’s very helpful to have a, um, redirect page that that person gets sent to, because generally, if they just fill out a form and don’t go anywhere, that’s, um, a little bit harder to track. It is much clearer and easier to see that someone has filled in a form correctly and then made their way to a new page after that form has been successfully submitted.

Importance of an Email Database

Now, another thing that is not going to stop you from running ads but something I would very, very strongly encourage you to have is an email database, uh, or a mailing list. And why do I suggest this? Well, uh, in case you haven’t heard, there’s some difficulty with, um, tracking people on, um, certain device types.

So, iOS devices, for instance. You may have heard about, oh no, there’s this iOS trouble that’s preventing Google, um, preventing Facebook ads from working as well as they should. And that’s not necessarily something to panic about, uh, because a more reliable source of, um, user data is one that you actually own. So, the cookies and tracking people and this iOS thing, it’s, it’s going to make it harder to track people, um, as individuals, you know, going about their day and using their devices. Whereas if you’ve got an email list, um, that information is yours. If your Facebook page goes away, you’ll still have your email list and you’ll still have a means to reach out to these people.

Leveraging Email Lists for Ad Targeting

And another cool thing that you can do is you can actually create audiences based on your email list. So, for instance, you can upload this list to, uh, Meta, your Meta Business Manager, and you can create ads that target just these people. Or if there’s also enough people in that database, you can create what is called a lookalike audience based on these people, which is also kind of handy.

Moving Users Down the Sales Funnel

I also would encourage you to have an email list just for the sheer fact that it is, um, an easy way to move people down your sales funnel and move people closer to working with you, essentially. Because one of the things that I talk about in my other episode is your sales funnel and getting your audience to take easy steps, um, moving towards working with you.

So, in the early stages of your funnel where people are just being made aware of you, it might be a, it’s definitely too big of an ask for them to give you $500. But if they’ve become aware of you, if maybe they’ve seen a few of your posts and they’ve liked a few of your posts, that’s a sign that maybe, you know, they’re curious and they might want to take another step.

So, when they’re moving from that awareness down into that interest, that consideration stage of the funnel, having an email list is great. And once they’re aware and interested and given some indication that they, they like you and they like your content and they’re interested in what you do, if they’re feeling that with you, then asking for their email address isn’t such a bad thing. And it’s, it’s quite an easy, um, quite an easy thing for them to do if they’ve already decided that they like you. It’s easier to, um, commit to than spending $500 with you. And then, then once, once you’ve got their email address and they’re in your database, um, maybe they don’t buy straight away, but that’s still valuable.

Targeting Email Database Subscribers with Ads

As I said before, you can create ads that target those people who have taken that step to move into your email database.

So, what else is there in terms of tech?

Well, not so much tech, but you also sort of have to be a bit familiar with creative, especially if you don’t have a graphic designer on your team. You are far better off creating assets that fit within the constraints of the platform. Vertical videos work well, and reusing posts from Instagram and Facebook also work well. But there are some instances where you might have something that you need to resize or reshape to fit in the ad constraints. Having some understanding of those graphic editing tools like Canva, for instance, can be pretty helpful.

Understanding and Using Data

Lastly, this is kind of a biggie, one that I really suggest you don’t overlook, is being comfortable with data, statistics, and numbers. I mean, again, another thing that leads people to saying, “I don’t know what my Facebook ads are doing,” is ignoring the whole data part. If you’re not into numbers and if you’re not into looking at your engagement rates to figure out how to move next and what sorts of graphic content to emphasize or deemphasize and all that sort of stuff.

If numbers are not your thing, then maybe you’re better off getting someone else to help you, even if it’s just a VA in the short term who is all about the numbers and can help you make those decisions or just take away some of that brain energy that you feel like you’re burning yourself out on.

Recap and Key Points

Just to recap, it’s very, very important to have a pixel so that, again, you can have website visitors and people who visit your Meta profiles in your ecosystem, and Facebook can follow them around on Facebook and Instagram. It’s also very important to have an email database. In fact, I would call that essential. I would be disinclined to work with a client who didn’t have an email database, let’s put it that way… Because again, if you’ve got a product or service that requires a bit of thought or commitment before the person decides to become a paying customer, getting them on your email list is much more of an easier step than getting them to give you a bunch of money.

Conclusion

There may be some instances where you want to know some things about Canva just so you can get your graphics to fit in the constraints of the platform. And data, yeah, you don’t want to ignore the data. The data can tell you so much, even knowing the rate of conversion, the rate of people who actually show that they’re interested. Like, if you’re interested in knowing those numbers and figuring that stuff out, great. But if you’re not, that’s what paid ads managers do.

Anyway, I hope this was helpful to you. I love answering questions about Facebook ads and helping businesses out because, like I said at the start, I’ve seen what this can do, and with the right amount of understanding and planning, you can make Facebook ads your ally and not your enemy. So, if you’ve got any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out. Otherwise, I look forward to seeing you in the next episode.

➡️ Where Next?

• Contact me to suggest a topic! What would you like to learn about paid ads?
• See more episodes of Lou Kozlevcar’s podcast.