Are Facebook Ads Worth It?

Hey, everyone, it's Mike with landscapebusinesscourse.com today we're going to be talking about Facebook ads. The pros, the cons, if I think it's going up or I think it's going down. And kind of my two cents on it based upon a lot of your questions in regards to Facebook ads. Before we get into that, though, a big reminder about the upcoming conference. If you have signed up for the conference, you need to make sure you go ahead and book your hotel nights. And the reason I say that is because they have given us a special discount and that discount ends at the end of December. So if you go to the conference link, landscapebusinesscourse.com conference, go to the link that allows you to book those nights for the hotel, use that promo code. And that is going to end at the end of December. So make sure you get in, book your conference tickets, but then also book the nights at the hotel to, to make sure you take advantage of that offer that they're giving to us as conference members. So check that out. So today we're talking about Facebook ads. Are they good, are they not? Et cetera. And I need to clarify because I talk so much about Facebook ads in webinars, on the podcast, in the course, etc. And I need to kind of bring some clarification, bring it back to really what my thoughts are about it and what has changed and what's different about Facebook now. And so, first of all, as many of you have probably seen in the news in the past year, Facebook has gone through a lot of scrutiny when it comes to targeting and the ways that they target individuals based upon the data that is collected from that user. And so because of that, the tools that have in the past been used for Facebook targeting, some of those are disappearing. So you used to be able to use them for certain target users based on certain things, for example, net worth or income levels. Those things are gone now. And so there's different methods now. Excuse me, there's different methods to marketing on Facebook now. And there has to be some workarounds for some of the different targeting methods that are no longer used or we're no longer allowed to take advantage of. And so number one, is Facebook ads dead? The answer to that is no. I still think Facebook ads is very, very, very important to your marketing strategy. Still one of the best bang for your buck products. And to be honest, that's what I built Augusta Lawn care on is Facebook ads. At the end of the day, I built my lawn care and Landscaping business. And the reason we grew so quickly was Facebook ads. That's the bottom line. But the thing with it's too blank of a statement to say that everyone should do Facebook ads. And it's too blank of a statement to even say that it's the best.

Marketing vehicle at this time. Because.

When I say that, when I say that Facebook ad has helped us grow our business or really been the enzyme that has allowed our company to grow so quickly, so many people interpret that as that's what they should be doing. And whether or not they should, it has nothing to do with that. The thing is this. Facebook ads are only as good as you as the marketer make them. So that means what is your text say? What is your picture indicate? What are the emotions and feelings around the brand? Are you branding? Are you selling? What is that click? When they click on that link, what does it go to? Is it a sales page? Is there a call to action? Is it just a contact page? Like, there's so many different variables. It's very difficult for me to say without a lot of fine print saying that Facebook ads is the best bang for your buck right now. The reason for that is because most people that are in the landscaping industry, lawn care business owners, have never ran Facebook ads. They've never ran Instagram ads, they've Never ran Google AdWords. They've thought about it, they've talked about it, maybe they ran some, but they haven't done it enough to where they tested it out, figure out what works and what doesn't. They don't know what the impressions mean versus the relevant score versus.

Not just impressions versus actual engagement with the audience, seeing the shareability of content, what works, what doesn't.

Why certain pieces work more than others, etc. And so what I find is so many people listen to people like me say that Facebook ads are so great and so amazing and so cheap and they go do it themselves and they don't get any results. And the reason for that is because they haven't tested it out, they haven't educated themselves on what works. They haven't seen what text works, what links work, what images work, what doesn't work. And then be humble enough to realize that you're going to do these enough and you're still going to do bad pieces of marketing. I still do ads that don't convert very well, don't have a great relevance score, don't get shared very much, don't get liked very much, and just learn from those. Okay, that didn't Work. Okay, now I'm going to have to do something different. And then you find something that works, something that's very shareable, viral, something that kind of gets a lot of people talking, and then you just double down on that and pound it. And so I feel like I really do not want to be the guy that says, go get Facebook ads. Go Facebook ads. Just go boost all your posts because literally, it could be the worst money you've ever spent in your entire life. Literally, I've seen people spend a thousand, $2,000 on campaigns that did not generate a single penny in income for them. And the amount of awareness that they got was absolutely inconsequential. And. And so my stand on Facebook ads is this. If you know what you're doing and you know how to put copy and you know how to take the pictures and where to put them. Either you know how to do it, and you've educated yourself and spent several days looking at YouTube videos and how to do it, and you set up account, that's one way to do it. Or B, you have a bunch of money to burn and you can literally just go test it out yourself. You know, if you're like, hey, Look, I got five grand, I'm gonna do 20 different campaigns and I'm gonna see what works, what doesn't work, what does work, and then just split test a, b, test a whole bunch of things and figure out what works and what doesn't. That's one way to do it. So my take on Facebook ads is this. They work. They absolutely work. The reason I built landscape business course, Facebook ads. The reason I built Augusta lawn care, Facebook ads. The reason I built the gym that I own, Facebook ads. That's where the money's at. But so many people, even in the course, will look at the content or even just briefly glance over and hear the things I say about Facebook ads and say, oh, I gotta jump in, I gotta do that, I gotta boost a post, or I gotta get on Facebook.

But they don't take any time into thinking creatively, thinking strategically about what sorts of pictures they use, what sort of text, what are the offers, are they doing giveaways, are they doing sales promotions? Are. Are the promotions that they're making relevant to the time of year during leaf cleanup, you should not be trying to sell people lawn care services and mowing. Focus on mowing during March, April, May, when there's the most productive, when everyone's thinking about it and when you make that sale, you're going to have them for the Longest period of time during that year, once you make the sale, some of the people's mowing services in August, September, October is not super interesting because you're only going to have them for a couple months before you gotta go into a winter cycle. And so it's much the bang for your buck is gonna be much better spent in the spring. People are thinking about it. And when you do make the sale, there's a longer lifetime value to that customer within that first year. So are Facebook ads great? Yes, they're amazing. Great targeting, great functionality, great way to spread your brand. But I guarantee you that print marketing will will outperform Facebook ads if Facebook ads are not done correctly. Now, do I think print is expensive? Do I think it is a lot of waste? Yes, 99% of those pieces of mail are gonna get thrown away if done incorrectly. But the same thing is true with Facebook ads. Like, just because you put a Facebook ad on someone's feed does not mean they're going to stop and read it. I don't care if you have a thousand impressions on that. It does not mean they read it. It means that it was on their feedback. And so if it's not content that is useful to them, if it's not content that's going to entertain them, it's not content that's going to educate them, if it's not content that is going to give them value, you really are flushing money down the toilet. The same as putting a print marketing campaign out, doing a whole bunch of postcards, 10,000 of them and 9,500 of them ending up in the garbage before they're even looked at. That is what people are doing to Facebook ads. So, so what should you be doing on Facebook ads? That's the question everyone's asking. Like, okay, you kind of give them the pros and the cons and you say basically, don't do it if you don't know what you're doing. Okay, we got that far. But now what do we actually do? So here are a few of the things we do with Facebook ads. I look at Facebook ads as a way to use social media for its highest. For the thing that it's known for. The reason social media is great is because it's shareable content. Now, what I do not like about Facebook ads is that people do not come to Facebook looking for lawn care services. They do not come to Facebook.

And you do not know that they are looking for Facebook ads. As they go through.

Their feed, they are not actively in their mind thinking about Landscaping in terms of needing those services or the products that you're offering. And so the challenge is that it's not intent based. They're not coming to Google and searching lawn care and landscaping services and then a Google adword popping up, which when you do that, you might have way less impressions because not very many people are looking for that. But when those people are looking for that and that little adword does pop up, you know that the person that ad is in front of is looking for your services. It's intent based marketing. It's intent based advertising, which means they have an intent to buy. And now you're slotting yourself in instead of Facebook, that's passive, which means they're just going about their regular day looking at their pictures of their friends and their family and then you're just in there. And so there's pros and there's cons to both. But realize from a sales perspective, Google AdWords, yes, it costs far, far more. But when people see that ad, they are intending to buy that product or service. And so you should be willing to pay more per click when they're intending to buy your product or service, if that makes sense. When it comes to Facebook though, that doesn't mean that during a certain spring that a lot of people are thinking about that. If you target it correctly and target a 55 plus year old demographic that's around close to your shop, already knows about you heard about your company, if you do that, you might be paying $0.10 per click versus A$15 per click on Google. So then the throw up is okay, well If I get 100 of these, will it outweigh the one that I get from Google? And so that's the question you have to figure out. That's something that you gotta play with. But realize that you're gonna pay less per click with Facebook. But people are not intending, they do not come to Facebook to buy your services and products. They come to Facebook to do a whole bunch of other things. And you are interrupting them when you advertise. And so be very careful to realize the difference between intent based versus passive marketing. And realize that when people are seeing you on Facebook, you are interrupting their life. So how do you get around this? You create content that does not interrupt them. You create content, yes, it's in their stream. Yes, they weren't really specifically intending to look at that material. But if you target it correctly, an older demographic perhaps with interest of landscape, and you target them correctly on Facebook, you can make it where the content that you Create for them is relevant to what they want to see. That is what I mean by that, is that not just sales, not just like, you know, get your first mowing free or it's that time of year again, time to get on this nine step fertilization package and you have a nice little picture like that will work sometimes. But the problem with that marketing is you are interrupting them as they go through their news feed. You are interrupting their life for a split second and taking time out of their day by seeing your ad go through their newsfeed. And what you can do is they'll create that content that is going to be valuable for them. For example, what if you did instead of buy one, get one free lawn care service, why not do something along the lines of five ways to keep your lawn care looking fresh this entire year or five economical ways to make your lawn care look better for under $100. Things like that. As long as you know that person you're targeting is going to have interest in lawn care, landscaping, home improvement. So you might want to target homeowners versus renters, et cetera. When you make that piece of material, it's something that they click on because they want value from it. And then they're going to associate your brand with someone that's expert in the field, that knows what they're talking about. So when they do want a big project done or something they can't get done themselves, they will come to you. And so this entire thing that we're talking about is called content marketing. But you can use it with your Facebook ads, where instead of trying to pitch people sales, you give them content and then that builds brand value with them and you. So they associate you as the expert, you as a landscaping professional, and they tell their friends, their family, or they might even use your services in the future when they get older or when they can't do the services or they move out of town or they're too busy and they'll just have you do it because you're the one that gave them valuable content. And so you've heard me talk about before, the three different types of marketing you Number one is promotional. It's the most overused. It's the buy one, get one free thing. It's the discounting thing. Then there's relationships. You can create a relationship with that person, get them so they know you, your business, what you're all about, share your values. The third one is educating that person, educating them about lawn care, educating them about tree trimming, educating them about lawn Care landscaping practices and best what we do in our industry and really educating the customer, creating that content, making it something that's relevant to them on Facebook and having them click to that. We are creating our company an actual public facility where we will be able to teach members of the community about lawn care, teach them about landscaping. And people are like, that's crazy. Why would you teach people how to build a retaining wall? When you build retaining walls for your business and the reason that is because that individual that's going to come to that class is a do it yourself person. They're going to get it done no matter what. But if they come to us and learn from us and go build that wall, when all their friends and their family come and see their wall and they see how great it is, that person's gonna brag about how wonderful they built their wall and all that. But then when that friend or family member is like I want a wall like that, who should I go to? Guess what that person's gonna recommend us. And if their friend or family member cannot do it themselves, doesn't have the time, too old, whatever it might be, doesn't have the, you know, they're back and forth between different houses, they are going to come to us. And so becoming that authority, building the brand and having content marketing is a long term strategy that will absolutely, absolutely stand the test of time over things like Facebook ads, Google AdWords, whatever type of marketing you use right now, content marketing and building a brand will far outweigh the longevity of that platform. Facebook ads is getting more expensive, it's getting crowded. Bigger brands are getting into the game. The same thing that Happened to Google AdWords is happening to Facebook. As the bigger players come in, as the Coca Cola's and the apples start spending more and more money on Facebook ads, the cost per click, the cost per impression goes up for us as small business owners and the news feed gets more and more full of ads, less and less attention. Consumers get smart and start blanking out your ads like this is just the truth that's happening to Facebook. And so, so many people are like what platform should I advertise on? Where should I go? The problem with that is you're going to constantly jumping from platform to platform, chasing the next shiny thing in terms of what's advertising platform to go after. When what you should be doing is using these platforms as a way to promote the material that your brand stands behind. Whether that be educational content, whether it be funny content, whatever your brand stands for. And in our lawn care Landscaping industry. We should be teaching them about the industry, teaching them about how to do it themselves. Best practice way to save money on their lawn care landscaping. Become the authority in your marketplace so that when they do think of something they need, they will come to you. And then it doesn't matter if you're selling on Facebook ads, Instagram or whatever thing that comes up next, whatever platform, Google, whatever it is you're trying to use, it is going to funnel towards your brand. Not a platform, not Google and AdWords and Facebook ads. Arbitrage and trying to figure out the metrics and algorithm of what works and what doesn't as much as getting the content out there, using these platforms as a way to distribute that content, that content then being the anchor to your brand that will keep people coming back time and time again for years and years to come with or without Facebook, Google or all the other platforms. So I really push you toward doing this. You can check out our website, augustalawncareservices.com you can see the blog that we've created. You can see the articles we've created about pricing, being very open and transparent about that. And it'll give you a good idea of what types of tactics you want to use in creating content. You can see the videos that we're creating. Again, content, content, content, build brand. With the classes that we're going to be starting for the public. Like these are all things that we are trying to do to create our brand. Create that long term game that's going to outlast Facebook ads. It's going to outlast, outlast Google, AdWords. Any other marketing platform is the brand that you create. So I hope that helps a little bit when it comes to what you should be doing on Facebook. And I'd love to hear from you what works and what doesn't. And I can't wait till we talk about all of this stuff at Landscape Business course conference, the Landscape Summit conference. Go to landscapednesscourse.com Sign up for the conference and make sure you book those rooms before the end of December. Thanks so much. I'm Mike Andes, landscapebusinesscourse.com.