2 | FAQ: "Am I ready?" (A Readiness Checklist for Facebook Ads)

Facebook ads, like all social media ads, have proven time and again to be extremely successful in generating sales and they can be an important part of a targeted marketing plan to grow and scale your online teacher business. But how do you know when you're ready to start running them?

In this week's strategy session, we discuss the five question litmus test that will help you decide if running Facebook ads is the right choice for your business. And if not, what your next marketing steps should be…

Before running Facebook ads, I encourage you to be able to answer the following questions with confidence and certainty.

1. How well do you know your "elevator pitch"?

   This is a 1-2 sentences summary of who you help, how you help and the benefits to your customers/clients.

2. Do you know your ideal client inside and out?

   Be sure to go beyond the basic demographic information (age, gender, location, etc.) and really dive into their hopes, dreams, fears and obstacles.

3. Are you crystal-clear on what you offer?

   You need to be sure that anyone who finds you know instantaneously what you do. So be sure to talk about your content pillars on repeat!

4. Do you have a long-form content strategy that includes repurposing?

   Pick one platform (blog, podcast or video) where you can create content. Over time, you can repurpose the content across other platforms such as email marketing and social media.

5. Have you established organic marketing success that can be amplified by the ads?

   Since ads are just a traffic generation tool, it’s important to have found organic success first before putting ad spend behind it.

For more information, be sure to listen to the entire episode. And if you've enjoyed this episode, don't forget to take a screenshot and share it on Instagram and tag me at @heyitsjenzaia.

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Episode Transcript

Hey there, I'm Jenzaia and this is Market Scale Grow. A podcast created for ambitious teacherpreneurs looking to have a bigger impact on the world, achieve freedom, flexibility, and ultimately make more money with weekly strategy sessions and inspiring stories from fellow teachers, just like you. My goal here is to help you create a customized marketing strategy so you can grow your teacher business beyond your wildest dreams.

Okay. Before we get started, I'm really excited because I created a free quiz just for you. You can head to marketscalegrow.com/quiz to find out if Facebook ads are right for you and your business. This two minute quiz has a couple of questions that you can answer to find out if Facebook ads or something else is the next marketing strategy that you should be implementing in your business. So head to marketscalegrow.com/quiz to find out today.

Hello, and welcome to this week's strategy session today. We're going to be talking about deciding if you are ready to start running Facebook ads. I have a five question litmus test that is going to help you decide if running Facebook ads is the right choice for your business. So I'm going to go through all five of them in detail. And then I'll quickly recap afterwards.

So question number one, “Do you know your elevator pitch?” This is 30 to 60 seconds long. One to two sentences long. It's going to tell who you help, what you do and the benefit to your ideal audience. So for example, I help teacher business owners. I help them with Facebook ads to grow their business. And the benefits are that they will have a bigger impact on the world, find freedom, flexibility, and ultimately make more money.

So when I put that all together into my elevator pitch, it sounds a bit like this, “I help ambitious teacherpreneurs run Facebook and Instagram ads to grow their business so that they have a bigger impact on the world, find freedom, flexibility, and ultimately make more money.” Before you start running ads, you need to be able to say those sentences almost without thinking about it when somebody asks what you do.

Question number two, “Do you know your ideal audience inside and out?” You need to go beyond the demographics that you would initially be thinking of their age, location, occupation, education. Those are important, but you really need to dig deeper and connect with them. Knowing their hopes and their dreams is really important. So is knowing their fears and their obstacles, and being able to use words that will resonate with your audience is also really important. How would they talk about this in a more casual setting? The best way to do that is to talk to your ideal audience before you're running Facebook ads, you need to know these things so that you can use them in your messaging. The more your message resonates with your ideal audience, the better the ads will run.

Question number three “Is what you offer crystal clear?” When people find you do they know instantly what you do and who you help? This is going to come out in your brand pillars. You can have three, four, or five different pillars. It just depends on your brand and what you're talking about and how you're helping people. But those should be instantaneously recognizable. Whether somebody comes across your blog or your Instagram or Facebook. Wherever you're showing up, these are the things that you talk about on repeat.

Number four, “Do you have a long-form content strategy?” So, long-form content is blogging, podcasting or video content. I am not saying you need all three. In fact, I highly recommend that you start with just one of them. Your strategy will have you creating long form content on a regular basis, and then repurposing that content for whatever platforms that you are currently on. Under no circumstances, should you be coming up with something to post on Facebook and a different thing to post on Instagram and a different thing to blog about and a different thing to email your list about. You need to be strategically using your long-form content to create posts for Facebook and for Instagram and for your email list and wherever else you're showing up so that your message is getting out there multiple times and then it will start to resonate more with your audience. It also helps people to get to know you like you and trust you more.

And the final question is, “Are your organic marketing efforts successful?” This is really important because ads are going to amplify whatever you're doing organically, whether it's positive or negative. Running ads to something is just adding more traffic. It's a traffic generation, so if you're running ads to a TPT product, for example, that doesn’t convert very well running ads to it is not going to help it convert better. You need to be selecting products that are converting well. Any courses or memberships or programs that you're running ads to should have had organic success with first before you start running ads.

Now the five questions that you need to ask yourself before running Facebook ads for your business are,

1. Do you know your elevator pitch?

2. Do you know your ideal audience inside and out?

3. Is what you offer crystal clear to people?

4. Do you have a long form content strategy that includes repurposing?

5. Are your organic marketing efforts successful?

As a little bit of a bonus, I have two points that I want to add for hiring marketing support. So I'm a Facebook ad strategist, and I help people run their Facebook ads. Before you come to a Facebook ad strategist for marketing help, you need to number one, make sure that your sales funnel is working really, really, really well. So that kind of builds on point number five of organic marketing success. You want to have all of the pieces of your funnel working well because if you're going to run ads to a sales funnel that isn't performing really well, then you're going to spend the first month or two filling up those holes like a leaking bucket. You're going to be trying to find the spots that aren't working and you're going to be losing money. So the first thing that you need to do before you hire support is to make sure, first of all, that you have a sales funnel and second of all, that it's working really, really well.

Then my second point for hiring a Facebook ads manager is about your budget. Hiring a Facebook ads strategist can be expensive. They generally have either a per project fee or a monthly retainer fee that you need to pay. And on top of that, an ad spend amount that you're going to be spending. So before you consider hiring marketing support, consider can you in your business afford to be spending this money. For your ad spend, generally, I wouldn't recommend that you hire marketing support before you can afford to spend $500-100 on ads each month. And that does not include the fee that would be placed on top of the monthly ad spend.

So before you consider hiring marketing support, considering if your funnel is ready and also your budget, if you think that you're ready to run ads, but you're not quite ready to hire someone, then I really encourage you to look and to consume all the information that you can through Facebook's Blueprint. There is so much amazing information in that program that is going to help you to really, really understand how Facebook ads work, and the ins and outs of it. I will make sure that the Facebook Blueprint is linked in the show notes below so that you can go there and check out that amazing resource.

Those are my tips for you to figure out if you are ready for Facebook ads. If you've enjoyed this episode, don't forget to take a screenshot and share it on Instagram and tag me, I'm at @heyitsjenzaia.

Thank you for listening to today's episode today was brought to you by Dubsado my absolute favourite customer management tool. If you're looking to streamline and systematize your service-based business, I highly recommend Dubsado for 20% off of your first month. Head to marketscalegrow.com/dubsado D U B S A D O. And use the code Jenzaia at checkout. And don't forget to head to our community at marketscalegrow.com/community where you'll find inspiring ambitious teacherpreneurs who are looking to grow and scale their businesses, just like you!

See you soon.