Facebook Ads Won’t Fix Your Business

I’ve talked to a good amount of business owners over the years whose businesses had stalled and believed Facebook ads would fix it.

That’s because there’s a fundamental misunderstanding in what Facebook ads can do.

Let’s start here:

There are two key things to understand in marketing.

Traffic.

and

Conversion

That’s all marketing really is.

Get the attention and interest of your target market (traffic).

Whether that’s foot traffic through a city. Or someone thumbing through the Facebook news feed.

You need to grab their attention and get them interested in what you have.

Then, you turn that interest into desire and action in the form of time and/or money (conversion).

But too many times, I see people talk about Facebook ads like they’re this full A-Z selling system.

Nope.

Like most things, online marketing just takes pre-existing concepts from the offline world and applies them to the internet.

For example…

Let’s say you want to fill an online workshop.

The real life corralary is an in-person workshop.

Now how would we fill an in-person workshop using real world methods, WITHOUT an existing list (i.e. mailing addresses).

You might start by putting flyers around town.

And that’ll work well if what your workshop offers is desirable and priced well.

But if it’s something no one wants that badly and it’s sold for an exorbitant fee… even the best flyer ever created couldn’t salvage that.

Facebook ads are basically like handing out flyers on the internet.

But instead of blanketing every surface in town with your ad, you have someone on the street handing out your flyers only to people who fit certain demographic and psychographic characteristics.

Facebook ads are just a more efficient way to get attention and interest than offline methods.

So if you have an excellent offer but just need to get more attention, Facebook ads are great.

But if your business is broken, then no flyer — however well-targeted — has the power to fix that.