“Facebook Ads don’t work and they’re expensive and complicated.”
This is the single most common thing I hear from business owners whenever I bring Facebook ads up.
Stop and think about this for a moment: If that was true, Facebook revenue wouldn’t be going up every single year. From 2019 to 2020 alone, it went up from USD67.9 billion to USD84.2 billion. That’s a 21% increase! Keep in mind that almost all of that money was ad revenue in both 2019 and 2020.
You would think they MUST be working because they seem to get more and more popular in leaps and bounds every single year.
Helmond, Nieborg, & van der Vlist (2019), describe this as the social media platform evolving into everyday business infrastructure which has entrenched itself into the digital advertising and marketing industries of today.
Really, what all that means is that Facebook looks like a cool way to connect with old schoolmates on the outside. But over the years, they’ve turned into a marketing behemoth boasting a population of 2.7 billion users (that’s more than two Chinas!) that businesses simply cannot afford to ignore.
Ok. Well, then it’s obviously because only the biggest companies with the most ad dollars are spending enough to get results from Facebook ads.
Wrong again.
Facebook actually has 8 million advertisers. Those big brands like Starbucks and Coca-Cola do spend big. There’s no denying that. However, while they make up the top 100 big spenders, that’s only 6% of that $84.2 billion.
The rest, as reported by CNN, comes from small and medium businesses. In Australia, that means businesses with under 100 employees, and yearly revenue of under $50 million. Businesses like you and me. It’s those little guys who rely on Facebook ads to build up their brands, attract customers, rake in those sales, and rack up that profit.
Ok great, so now we know that Facebook works and a majority of their customers aren’t big businesses.
So, why the negative sentiment?
Website builders Weebly explain this through surveying 2600 small businesses. They found that 62% of small business owners fail at Facebook Ads.
When you talk to the business owners, common complaints (some of which you may have already experienced first-hand) range from “Facebook gives me lots of clicks but no conversions,” to “It’s all bots and fake accounts!”
But marketers have a different story.
97% of B2C marketers, that is, marketers that advertise directly to end users, reported using Facebook as an integral part of their routine strategy.
Of this group, 9/10 of the most successful marketers reported Facebook as being the most successful! At the same time 7/10 of the least successful marketers also found Facebook to be the most successful.
Great. So, we know Facebook actually works. You just need to know what you’re doing.
So, what’s going on with the small business owners then? Why the FB strife?
One word: Understanding.
When you’re a small business owner, you’re a wearer of many hats. You’re sourcing, you’re creating, you’re advertising. You might be overseeing packing, hiring and firing, even organizing the cleaning and closing.
In between getting next month’s email campaign out and arguing with your distributor over who damaged the suspiciously damaged water-damaged stock; there has to be a point you realize that you can’t specialize in everything.
You wouldn’t hire an electrician to do your plumbing, or a chef to landscape your garden, or a rocket scientist to do a lobotomy right?
There are a myriad of things you need to understand in order to make Facebook ads work for your business:
Content Marketing. Social marketing. How sales funnels work. You’d have to find the time to learn all that. Find more time to strategize and plan. Then track where your ad dollars are going. Analyze that spend so you can maximize it for profitable results.
The long and short of it is that small business owners are overwhelmed by the amount of work needed to scale their Facebook Ads. They’re ridiculously busy people.
I know that a great product or service is just half the battle. That’s your specialty area.
Mine is helping local business owners make more money by running high-converting Facebook Ads.
If you’re struggling with your ad spend and return on investment, I want to show you how I can help turn things around. If you’ve never tried Facebook Ads, I want to show you how I can surprise you with how effective they can be!
