Facebook Ads
Too many people spend good money and time to do Facebook ads and walk away with less-than-stellar results, my self-publishing indie authors. Many frown and say, “Well, that didn’t work. Boy, this authorpreneur thing is a tough business.”
To have success with Facebook ads, it’s kind of like Stephen Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, used to say. Start with the end in mind. Yup. You’re going to want to know your end goals before embarking on this journey that will cost you time and money.
Some good end goals would be leads and conversions.
The leads are people’s emails. We want to get people’s emails so we can have continued contact with them and perhaps get them into our sales funnel.
Our conversations are obviously purchases. We want people to purchase our products because that’s where we make our money. And remember, if no one is sending money our way, then we don’t truly have an authorpreneurship business. Instead, we’re a hobbyist.
Okay, what I’m going to say next might seem a little complicated, but stick with me for a bit, and hopefully, it will make sense to you.
Now, you remember how I’ve said being a successful authorpreneur is not about the sprint, but more about the marathon?
Well, the same can be said about Facebook Ads. I know I said we have to make money. And if we don’t, we don’t really have a business. However, when we use Facebook Ads only to get a sale, it may backfire on us in the long run.
The problem with using Facebook Ads only for sales is that with most people, we just don’t have a strong relationship with them yet. They may have never even heard of us before the ad popped up. So, there isn’t trust without the relationship, which means there probably won’t be a sale either.
These kinds of people who our Facebook Ad reach will be gone forever. We’ve lost out on a life-long relationship with them where they buy from us over and over again throughout the years. We’ve also, in a sense, just threw away good money on a Facebook Ad.
Now, for the people who find us through a Facebook Ad that are intrigued by our offer, maybe they do buy. And if they do buy, that’s great. We just made some money. And that’s what we need to keep our business going, right? However, what happens to them next?
Well, most likely, these one-time buyers are gone forever, too. Like the non-buyers from above, we might never see them again and have lost that life-long income stream forever.
There is another way to use Facebook Ads that may not make sense in the short-term, but could be worth their long-term weight in gold. We authorpreneurs could use our Facebook Ads, as mentioned above, to get leads or emails that could give us life-long customers.
When searching for these life-long customers who buy over and over from us throughout the years, our Facebook Ads could be designed to entice them into our funnel where we offer them something of value for their email address. This will get them into our sales funnel and give us a chance to build that life-long relationship with them because we now know who they are and how to contact them. We have their email address.
This won’t make us much money in the short-term. But, if we’re playing the long game, using Facebook Ads in this way could make a lot of sense.
In addition, once we have their email address, we could get them to enter deeper into our sales funnel using a tripwire. This is a low-ticket item where they don’t have to take too much risk. Perhaps it’s a $0.99 eBook.
Not all will take their next step into our sales funnel and make this $0.99 purchase. But, if our Facebook Ad is done right and sent a lot of people our way. And then our sales copy for our offer os done right, a lot of people will invest in our low-ticket item eBook.
This could be a way of making some money in the short-term. Here, we cultivate the relationships and build trust with these people in our funnel to entice them to travel further and buy the bigger-ticket items that will bring us even bigger profits in the long-term.
The beautiful thing about Facebook Ads is not only can we grab email addresses from our niche, but we don’t even have to make a lot of money through these ads. Think about this for a moment. How much money could those email addresses be worth? A lot right. How much would you pay for them? Well, probably at least the cost of the Facebook Ad, right?
If we just break even, or even lose some money, think of our Facebook Ads as really cheap or even free advertising.
Over time, we can tweak our Facebook Ads as we learn more about what works and what doesn’t.
The bottom line is that there is a lot of upside to Facebook Ads. So, it might be something we authorpreneurs should be spending some time and money on.
Watch the free video lesson on this chapter!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFcGU7acMKs&list=PL_-39bUXJitwL8cHUpiZ5mO0-JJuaPOVl&index=89