Biggest Question: "Do Facebook Ads Work?"
This is a common question that is asked often. In fact, over the past 30 days, it’s been asked 37 times. That means, on average, people are asking this question 1-2 times per day minimum.
Yes…and no.
The short answer is they do if you want them to, and they fail if you want them to.
The long answer…depends on what you want to do with them.
A Little Background…
I’ve had the pleasure/pain of working with Facebook(™) Ads for half a decade. I was playing around in their system when they were still using Power Manager. I was tinkering with the targeting and interests before the whole Cambridge 2018 BS that went down. Needless to say, the amount of time I’ve invested has been about 3 hours every day, more on the weekends.
I also come from a developer/analytical background so the metrics are the one thing I aimed at for the longest time because it seemed that was something marketers *didn’t* want to deal with. What’s really funny…that’s where all our strong decision making comes from. I should probably share that I spent $15k USD in training on the system AND my own money to pay for the ads to see what it actually would take to make a profit and get into positive ROAS (Return On Ad Spend).
The Idea Facebook Ads Don’t Work
Sadly, the common thought here is, “Why spend money on Facebook Ads if I won’t make money?” The reality of this system is not just about making money. Most marketing is to get the awareness built into people’s minds and sight so they’re thinking about you and seeing you. The advertising piece of that is to get someone to take action on what they see. This comes down to understanding what campaign you’re going to run, why you’re going to run it, and what you want someone to do.
Facebook Ads have been altered often in the past couple of years, counting the name change to Meta and the User Interface design updates that none of us asked for. Because of these updates, the campaign's focus now requires that we are super specific on what we want someone to do. Gone are the days where we’re just having someone type “INFO” to get a free gift or PDF or training or course. What exists today is the “benefit of the benefit” because the general populace, including your ideal clients, are too smart for those old tactics.
Why Facebook Ads Work…if you pay attention
The results of ads working or not is entirely based on a factor that you can control. This determining factor is, and always will be, you. What YOU are saying to the people seeing your ads…what YOU are sharing as your image/media…what YOU are offering to them from your perspective…these shape what works and what doesn’t. There are finer details to it, so I’ll share those a bit here.
Not all ads need to have a button, and if you’re trying to test what people are doing with your copy (are they actually reading it?), a button adds a variable that can skew your data. In connection to this, if you put a link in the copy of your ad, that can affect if people click through your ad to get to whatever the offer is (and may even affect the reach/delivery that the AI is running). At the time of this entry (6/8/23), the AI system has a HUGE focus on the creative being used.
What that means for all of us: it’s not just enough to spew out the golden information that can save their life…we’ve got to stop the scroll and keep their engagement with pictures and/or video. And one of the questions I get often is, “How do I know if my media is good?” It’s really about finding the difference between the impressions and the reach, and with video it’s about the percentage of keeping someone from segment to segment of how much they’re watching.
Before you tune out completely, these are all things I share with my clients more in-depth with their actual campaigns. The reason I don’t break it down here is two-fold and super simple:
1. If I tell you it all, I won’t make any money to feed my family.
2. If I tell you it all without context, you could disable your account and lose money.
Simple, like I said.
To remedy this, I do have a beginner’s guide “Facebook Ads Metrics Mastery” you can use to help get some of these mysteries resolved, if you haven’t gotten it already. You can grab your copy here, free with a valid email address.
And wrapping this entry up by answering the question…
“Do Facebook Ads Work?”
Yes. Yes, they do.