As of late there has been a lot of noise surrounding Facebook advertising and how much money online marketers are making. You will have probably come across forums posts, blog articles and even eBooks with people telling you that they are making thousands of dollars per month with Facebook.
And they are telling the truth.
Facebook advertising is quickly becoming the king of online advertising because of what you can achieve for as little as a few dollars.
After reading this article, you too will have a basic understanding of how you can leverage Facebook advertising to generate leads and drive sales for your niche business, and how you can start your very own Facebook business.
In this article you will learn:
- How Facebook advertising works
- How to target niche markets
- The different pricing models
- Why you will fail trying to make money with Facebook ads
- Four actionable business ideas that you can start instantly on Facebook with next to no startup costs
Lets go!
How does Facebook advertising work?
Before you start to use Facebook advertising to make $$$ it would be a good idea to learn how it works. Facebook generates the lion’s share of their revenue from people advertising on their platform.
Source: Quka
From the graph above, it’s in Facebook’s interest to keep their advertisers happy.
And that they do.
Facebook allows you to place several different types of adverts that will best help you reach your objective. Whether that is gaining new followers, lead generation, driving sales or getting mobile app installs.
You simply select your objective, target your audience, place your budget and you’re off to the races.
Targeting users on Facebook
What makes Facebook the number one online advertising medium is their targeting options. Whether you’re a nursery in Chicago who is looking to find more young children, or run an online business selling travel products, with Facebook advertising you can target any niche.
To use the example above, let’s say I have just opened up a new nursery in Chicago, Burbank, and want to find parents who would consider bringing their children to my nursery.
I could use printed media which costs a lot, takes up too much time and doesn’t really yield a great ROI. Or I could use Facebook advertising and market to my exact target market without leaving my computer or paying ad agencies.
Okay, so I want to find people within a 20km from Burbank, adults aged between 27-45 who speak English, are either in a relationship, engaged or married and have children aged between 0-3 or will be expecting soon.
That is a highly targeted market. But with Facebook nothing is impossible. Click To TweetUsing Facebook targeting it estimates that there are around 44,000 people that fit the criteria for my perfect customer.
WOW! 44,000 juicy leads just waiting to be told how amazing awesome my imagery nursery would be for their children.
This is why I love Facebook.
When I am not spending hours on there looking at stupid meme fan pages, I can find thousands of targeted leads to market my products and services without leaving my room or putting on my pants.
Facebook Remarketing
But wait, there’s more.
Have you ever visited an online website then a few seconds later seen their adverts on YouTube, Facebook or the Google Display Network? This is because they are using remarketing.
Remarketing is a tactic businesses use to advertise to people who have previously visited their website. Facebook remarketing is a common method used by online marketers to boost their conversion rates while keeping costs low.
If you’re selling to someone who already knows your brand they are one step closer to purchasing than someone who doesn’t.
The Facebook remarketing tool is something that many online and offline advertising methods cannot complete with. You can have a smaller budget but gain greater ROI with Facebook remarketing… if done right.
Lookalike audience
Facebook lookalike audience is an option that allows you to find new targeted leads.
Whereas remarketing reaches out to past users who have visited your site, lookalike audiences focuses on finding new prospects who match your current audience profile but have never interacted with your Facebook Page or website.
This is basically an untapped source of high quality leads. It requires no effort on your part as Facebook does all the hard work for you.
Is it a gimmick or does it really work?
Well Country Road is a popular Australian retailer who increased their sales by 2.56x and increased their new website visitors by 19.4% using lookalike audiences.
How much does it cost to advertise on Facebook?
Let’s get down to brass tax, how much do you have to pay to advertise on Facebook?
The answer is not a lot when you break down the potential ROI. Going back to the previous example about targeting parents in Burbank, how much would you expect to pay per 1,000 impressions?
$15? $50? $100.
Well the answer is anywhere between $0.90 to $4.
I am based in Bangkok so the figures above are shown in Thai baht, but converted to dollars Facebook suggests targeting that demographic will cost me on average around $2.50 per 1,000 impressions.
That’s insanely cheap.
If you’re selling online products at $100 a pop, even if you manage a 1% conversion rate you will be generating $97.50 in pure profit.
The cost of advertising on Facebook comes down to your competition. The more people there are marketing to your demographic the higher your costs will be. Facebook uses an auction pricing model and ads that are priced more competitively will be shown.
Ads that convert cost less
Not many people know this but the better your ads convert the cheaper they cost. If people are clicking, commenting, liking or sharing your ads this will all affect your Facebook relevance score.
Facebook relevance score establishes how appropriate your ad is to Facebook users. If people don’t engage your Facebook ads, costs will rise, if users are engaging then your costs are lowered.
This is straight from Facebook’s mouth:
“Put simply, the higher an ad’s relevance score is, the less it will cost to be delivered. This is because our ad delivery system is designed to show the right content to the right people, and a high relevance score is seen by the system as a positive signal.”
Source: Facebook
To find the relevance score of your Facebook ad, go to your Facebook Advert Manager and select any ad on your dashboard.
Facebook’s pricing models – Which Should You Use?
Facebook has three main pricing models you can use to pay for your ads. They are:
- Cost per thousand mille (CPM)
- Optimized cost per mille (oCPM)
- Cost per click (CPC)
There is no go to method when selecting your bidding model but each one does have its own pros and cons.
Cost Per Thousand Mille
This basically allows you to set the maximum amount you’re willing to pay for every 1,000 ad impressions. An impressions is anytime someone views your ad. Beware that an impression is not a unique view and it’s quite possible for someone to view your ad several times in a single day.
If you only want to target unique views, then you must select the daily unique reach option in the Facebook Advert Manager.
The CPM method is ideal for online marketers who know a thing or two about Facebook ads. How accurately you target your market, how engaging your copies are and where they are placed will have a massive impact on your ROI.
The average click through rate per 1,000 impressions is usually less than 1%.
Source: MediaMind
To get the best ROI using CPM you need to understand what which copies work best with your target market. If you don’t then I suggest you use oCPM.
Optimized cost per mille
oCPM works very much like CPM but has one major difference: you cannot select your maximum bid per 1,000 impressions. Instead you will be asked to set a maximum budget for the ad and Facebook will place dynamic bids to ensure your ads get viewed by the right people.
oCPM is great for newbie Facebook marketers as it takes out a lot of guesswork. Facebook will place competitive bids on your behalf to users who are most likely going to engage with your ad.
The benefit to using oCPM is that you usually gain better results but you also end up spending most of your marketing budget. When running any kind of Facebook advertising campaign don’t focus on money spent, instead concrete on ROI when gauging its success.
Jon Loomer ran a small experiment testing CPM and oCPM to figure out which pricing model was more optimal. He found that that while oCPM ate up all his advertising budget, his cost per click was $0.01 cheaper using oCPM while gaining 300% more clicks.
oCPM does bring results but also requires a larger budget.
Cost per click
As the name would suggest, CPC is a model in where you select the maximum amount you’re willing to pay for each action. An action can be anything from a like, share, comment, URL click or even clicking the picture or video displayed.
You’re not charged a cent if nobody clicks your ads.
The greatest advantage of CPC is you know your ROI before you start your Facebook advertising campaign. For example, if you set your cost per click at a maximum $1 bid with a $500 budget, at the end of your Facebook campaign you know that for 500 post interactions you will never pay more than $500.
Your maximum bid is the most you’re willing to pay per action, unless in a highly competitive space you will usually end up paying less than your set bid.
Facebook Ain’t Easy – I Failed And So Will You
So far I have mentioned how great Facebook is but that’s not to say it’s easy to use. Sure you can create your very own ad in minutes but that doesn’t mean you’re going to get epic results.
I have lost over $1,000 advertising on Facebook and got terrible results. At first I blamed Facebook, I thought the platform was horrible to advertise on and it just a total gimmick.
Then I started learning about how to write engaging copies, the importance of ad psychology, the Facebook Power Editor, pixels, custom audiences and found that I actually knew nothing.
I knew less than nothing.
You really need to invest time understating how Facebook ads work, read books, test things yourself before you can start making thousands of dollars each month. Once you do that then the sky’s the limit, if you don’t then prepare to fail.
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How You Can Use Facebook to Make Money Online
There are many ways to make money each month with Facebook, today I am going to show you 4 clever methods that you can start with very little investment.
1. Start A Facebook Consulting Business
How many gyms, independent retail stores, bars, nightclubs and businesses working in the professional services sector are in your local area? How many of them know about Facebook advertising and the leads and sales it can bring their business?
Chances are they don’t know a fat lot. Check their social media profiles to see how little engagement they receive with most Facebook Fan Pages being left idle.
All you need to do after reading this article is to start a Facebook consulting business offering your services to other businesses in the local area. Voice to them how you will generate more leads and sales than they know what to do with by simply managing their Facebook account.
Have you ever heard the term digital agency? Many are online businesses who are experts at online marketing. Be that SEO, content creation, link building or social media marketing.
This article isn’t going to make you a Facebook guru, but after going through our Facebook Essentials Ad you will be.
Once you complete the course and feel ready, email hundreds of local businesses in your area and tell them what you can do for them. For example, email locals gyms and tell them you can find hundreds of targeted leads to join up to their gym – then charge them a premium for it when you do.
The great thing about a Facebook consulting business is that it’s totally scalable. You can start with businesses in your local area and as you build up reviews and get some experience under your belt, you can expand your services city or even state wide.
2. F*** eBay – Start Your Own Drop Shipping Facebook Business
eBay used to be awesome when it first started and was a huge goldmine for me when I was a kid. Nowadays after fees and PayPal costs you end up paying around 10-20% in fees making it hardly worthwhile.
You may also have come across people selling USBs, mobile phone cases and other generic items from China and Hong Kong. Most of these accounts are actually drop shippers.
Drop shippers who are doing it very wrong in my opinion.
What is drop shipping? Drop shopping is a method of selling products that you don’t actually hold. Each time you make a sale you forward the sales order to the wholesaler who ships the item on your behalf and you take a margin of the sale. A bit like affalite marketing.
Instead of using eBay as the platform for selling, use a Facebook Page and save yourself 20% in fees. There are two ways you can setup your Facebook store and take orders.
The first way is to create an online website that lists your drop shipping products and advertise them via Facebook ads. You promote individual product pages of your website on Facebook to drive prospects to purchase.
This is what I recommended as having a website, a proper checkout process and an about us page really adds to your credibility and trustworthiness.
The other option is to sell directly via Facebook. As of yet Facebook does not allow people to buy directly of Facebook but they are testing their new “Buy” call-to-action which will be a game changer.
Taking orders via Facebook private messaging or advancing communications to emails is a bit unprofessional and could stop people from buying.
Whichever method you choose, you will first need to find your product, brand your page correctly, get thousands of legitimate likes to build credibility, run a few prizes to create buzz and then you will be golden.
3. Start An In-home Business
What is the biggest obstacle entrepreneurs face when selling physical products?
- If they want to sell them in the real world rental space is just too expensive
- If they start an online business the competition is so fierce and they cannot get targeted to traffic to their site via SEO or find targeted leads using free mediums.
The solution: Facebook advertising.
We’ve all had the idea at least once of importing products from Asia and selling them in the west for a huge profit, but there was never a viable outlet until now.
Once you become a Facebook Guru there is nothing stopping you from selling absolutely anything from your computer.
All you need to do is find the right product and know how to market to your audience on Facebook.
4. Create Your Own Digital Products
Got an amazing eBook, information product, online course or training videos to sell? You could use Udemy or Amazon to sell your digital products and giveaway as much as 75% of profits …or you could use Facebook advertising and do it all yourself.
Speaking of drop shipping, Anton Kraly does exactly this and uses Facebook advertising to promote his Drop Ship Lifestyle course. A major part of his lead generation campaign is via Facebook advertising.
He’s not the only one doing it, thousands of people are leveraging Facebook to sell all kinds of products and services that were before either too difficult or impractical.
Summary
After reading this article please don’t go and follow through with any of the ideas I mentioned just yet, as you will only be setting yourself up for failure.
While Facebook advertising is fairly simple to use and super easy to play with, don’t end up like me with more than a $1,000 out of pocket and nothing to show for it.
You need to start small with Facebook ads and find out what converts, understand the power editor, pixels and how to create engaging copies. This can take months or even years if you do it alone, or you can speed up the process by subscribing to our Facebook Ad course.
The limits with Facebook advertising are as big as your imagination, thousands of people are making big bucks every month, will you be next?