37: How to Hire a Facebook Ad Consultant

Welcome to the Course Creators MBA Podcast. I'm your host, Destiny Kopp, and in this podcast we're covering actionable tips to grow your online course business. But before I begin, I want to let you know that this episode is sponsored by my free Facebook and Instagram Ad Mini Workshop series which helps you launch a high converting ad campaign in five short dates. You can sign up for the free workshop series by going to destinycop.com and I will make sure that this link is in the show Notes and Today we're talking about how to hire a Facebook Ad Consultant and hiring somebody to help you with your Facebook ads can be scary. After all, you're spending your hard earned money on the ads in addition to their consulting fee. You want to make sure that they know what they're doing so that you will get a return on your investment. In this podcast episode, I'm going to walk you through everything you need to know and questions to ask so that you can hire your Facebook Ad consultant with ease. But first, let's talk about the different types of ad consultants. And there are basically two types of ad consultants you can hire. The first is the executor. And the executor can install install the Facebook pixel. They can set up events, they can set up custom conversions so you can track registrations. They can take your ad copy and the created that you give them and set up the ad campaign in Facebook. They may be able to read some Facebook reporting and understand the basics of how your ad is performing. But what they can't do, they cannot look at the results. And if things aren't going well, know what you should do or what you should try next. The executor is just doing implementation work and they really don't have the skills or knowledge to optimize the ads or your online course sales funnel. But if you understand ad and funnel strategy, you just may need somebody just to put the stuff in the ads manager and do what they're told. The other type of ad consultant is the funnel ad expert. And the funnel expert is someone who you can rely on to come up with a strategy for your ads and your sales funnels to help you meet the goals for your online course business. They can give you suggestions on the type of lead magnets to test what videos to create and they can also advise when a piece of your funnel needs tweaking. When your ad starts deteriorating, which almost always happens over time, you are going to need new and updated strategies like testing new audiences or a new lead magnet funnel. A funnel expert. They can be more expensive, but it could be somebody that you need to keep your campaigns fresh and optimized. So before you start interviewing ad consultants, I want you to ask yourself what do I really need help with and how much am I willing to spend for for this help? Am I looking for a partner for my ads and funnels, one that I could ask for help when I don't know what to do next? Or do I just need somebody to set up my ads and not advise on funnel or ad strategies? So once you decide what you need help with and how much you're willing to spend, here are the questions your Facebook ad consultant should ask you for when you have your first discovery call with them, they need to ask you what are your goals for your online course business and your ad campaign. So and then you're going to need to talk about the goals for your online course, the price of your program, what you want to achieve with your ad campaign and your online course sales funnel. And your Facebook ad consultant should be able to tell you if your goals are feasible and an estimate of how how much it would cost to achieve your revenue goals. I also ask my clients if they have tried Facebook ads in the past and if so what were their results and that will give me an idea of what their conversion rates have been in the past. And this is when I get out my handy dandy Facebook ad spreadsheet and based on the estimated cost per lead and their sales funnel conversion rates, we have a conversation about their anticipated results will be for their campaign. And if you haven't validated your offers with previous sales and you really don't know what your conversion rate will be, it will be harder for your ad consultant to estimate your results. And also keep in mind they should definitely never guarantee you results or promise you in some insanely high conversion rates or low cost per lead numbers when you don't have any history. An important part of this discussion is your RO ROI goal, your return on investment goal. Are you okay with just list building and not making a return on your ad spend at the at the moment are you trying to break even with your tripwire and just build your email list for a future launch? Or or Perhaps for every $1 you spend you want to make five? So it's very important to understand what your goals are. Your Facebook ad consultant also needs to ask you what's your ad budget for your campaign. So they will need to know how much you plan to spend on your campaign or your per day budget. This can be a really hard question for online business owners to answer, but it's really time to be honest and say what your budget is. Even if it's really low, low budgets can still get results. It just may take more time to get the data needed to fully optimize that particular campaign. And here are some other questions. Well, these are the questions I want you to ask your Facebook ad consultant during your initial call with them. And one question I want you to ask them is how do you troubleshoot poor ad campaigns? So not all ad campaigns will hit it out of the ballpark. In fact, with marketing in general, it requires testing. It requires tweaking. And with Facebook ads, you need to be able to troubleshoot poor ad campaigns and then redo and tweak them. This may include revising a landing page or testing different ad images, or testing different audiences. It's important to understand her process for turning around a campaign that is underperforming. The other question I want you to ask them is how would we work together? What is your communication process? So communication with your Facebook ad consultant is very, very important. You should get results on reports on a regular basis and understand how your campaigns are performing. You should be able to content them and get a re, you know, get a response from them with a minimum 24 hours during the business week, if not sooner. And be sure you are comfortable with the communication guidelines because it can be frustrating to not be able to reach your ad consultant when there are issues with your ad active ad campaigns, especially during a critical online course launch. The other question I want you to ask them is basically who does? And then fill in the blank. So some Facebook ad consultants will prepare your ad copywriting. They'll do your they will do your creative images, your email sequences, tweaking your landing page or you know, for an additional fee. So it is important to clarify upfront who is responsible for what so there are no surprises. The other question I want you to ask her or him is what is your experience running ads and what niches have you worked in in the past? So just because someone hasn't worked in your niche previously doesn't mean that you shouldn't hire them. However, it is good for Facebook ad consultants to understand markets for different type of Facebook ads. For instance, I do not work on E commerce Facebook ads. I strictly focus on helping online course creators and their sales funnels. Could I do ads for an E commerce type business? Probably, but it's not my area of expertise. I also want you to ask them do they have testimonials? So testimonials are important. It will give you an idea of what niches they have ran ads for in the past and their results. If possible, you may want to ask if you could have a conversation with one of their previous clients to get a feel for how they were to work with, you know, and then if you're able to do that, ask them, was the consultant responsive, what kind of reporting did they receive, and if they were happy with their results. The other question is, is to ask them what does your fee include? So it's important to ask if their fee includes the setup of the Facebook pixel code on the landing pages. Is there an extra charge for conducting research, like research on your ideal customer and any extra fees for reporting or meetings? And then I want you to ask them what is their fee structure structure. So pricing is a key factor in determining who you should hire. And there's a lot of different types of fee structures that Facebook ad consultants use. One is a project based fee. And a project based fee is when you hire a Facebook ad consultant for a project like a course launch. So with an online course launch, you are running several different ad campaigns. You may start with a list building campaign to build your email list and then move to a webinar registration campaign where you're targeting both cold, warm and cold and warm audiences. Then when your cart opens, you have a sales campaign to sell your online course. For these type of services, you're going to pay a minimum of around 1500-3000 for a Facebook ad consultant for an online course launch. And then in addition to that, you could possibly pay a percentage of ad spend if your ad spend is high for your launch. The other type of fee is like a monthly retainer fee and it's really just just that it's a monthly retainer. When your ads manager, when they work on your ads and do what it takes to get your results in for something like that, you could pay anywhere from 1500 to $5000 per month for a monthly retainer fee. Another one is a monthly retainer plus a percentage of ad spend. So this particular type of fee structure is very common for clients who need ongoing ads management. But they also have huge launches during the year where their ad spend and also the work you know ad spend goes with the work increases dramatically. So let's assume that your ad spend was $20,000 for a course launch and your monthly retainer is 2000 plus 20% of ad spend over 10k. That means that you're going to pay the 2000 flat fee. Your monthly retainer fee plus another 2000 for that month for a total of four because you had ad spend over 10,000. Another type of structure for, you know, hiring Facebook ad consultants is a pay for performance fee structure. And this is less common because really no good Facebook ad consultant will guarantee you results. And the reason why these fees are so high that I've talked about here is because there's a ton, ton of work that goes into the very beginning of all Facebook ad projects which includes setting up the campaign and Facebook setting up the pixel, setting up the tracking, troubleshooting to make everything is running and tracking properly. Another option is a monthly consulting option and this is when you have a Facebook ads consultant really in your back pocket to help you with strategy, not only with your Facebook ads but but anything related to your online course sales funnel. So in this model you set up your own ads, you prepare your own creative and ad copy, but you have your own consultant available for questions, available for guidance and support for creating and troubleshooting your Facebook ads or anything related to your online course sales funnel. The beauty of this is that this allows you to have money to pay for your Facebook ads, but also get the support you need. For instance, with this type of option and in the service that I personally offer, you can get help with, you know, asking questions like is my pixel and standard events installed correctly? Who should I target with my ads? Help me with the audiences? What type of campaign should I run? Should I do a traffic one, a legion, a conversion one? You know, help me with my custom audiences? How much should I budget? Is my ad placement right? What creative works best? Is my ad copy perfect? Will my landing page convert? You know, and there's just so many questions that you can get help for course graders. Thank you so much for joining us today. If you are ready to interview a Facebook ad consultant, I would love to love to chat with you and I will make sure that that link is in the show notes or if you have any questions about Facebook or Instagram ads or your online course sales funnel in general, please reach out to me on LinkedIn or DM me on Facebook or Instagram. I hope you enjoyed this episode today. Would love for you to rate and review the podcast on itunes or your favorite podcast platform and show us some love there. Have a great rest of your day. Bye for now.