The GROWisdom for this post is one you’ve almost certainly heard before, or even suggested to yourself: “Go Hard or Go Home!”

As entrepreneurs starting or growing your businesses, you’re probably living and breathing this motto every day. After all, running a business isn’t exactly a 9-5 job. Like nurturing a newborn baby, setting up and scaling a company is a 24/7 affair.

‘Go hard or go home’ is also the sentiment you need to bring to the globe’s biggest advertising platform: Facebook.

There’s some rhetoric out there that Facebook is dead or dying. That people have moved on and it’s not what it used to be. I’m here to tell you, this is FALSE.

There’s also a belief that social media is a great form of ‘free’ advertising. To this, I simply say LOL. We all know there’s no such thing as a free lunch, and marketing your business is no different.  The truth is, recruiting consumers through Facebook takes a much bigger commitment than you possibly ever expected.

I challenge you to find me a person who has not heard of Facebook. It’s part of everyday life for many and the majority of your customers will be on it and influenced by it. Like it or lump it, if you’re a business looking to grow, Facebook (including Messenger and Instagram) more than ever, is where it’s at.

So much so that, alongside Google, Facebook has become the largest advertising platform in the world, thanks to the sheer number of consumers it can place you in front of. It really is your best bet for growing your business.

But (and you knew there’d be a but right?!) its proven success and popularity comes with a catch for advertisers. The huge demand for advertising space has created an intensely competitive environment in which only the committed win.

If you want that to be you, read on for a few ‘musts’ for converting customers and maximising ROI through Facebook.

1. Find your audience.

Start with what you know. Tidy up your email list and customer database and load these into Facebook. Facebook can take your data and help you identify like-minded consumers, helping you tap into those coveted ‘cold’ audiences, that is, consumers who haven’t heard of you before – the real goldmine for scalability.

2. Splash the cash.

There’s no room for T-Rex arms here. The cold hard truth is you need to go hard early to fully optimise your ROI with Facebook, Messenger and Instagram. Every business and every target audience is different, but if you don’t spend enough early on, your Facebook spend will always end up being a wasted investment. The environment is simply too competitive and you won’t be able to feed the Facebook algorithm enough data to do what it needs to do.

3. Think 50

Facebook’s algorithm requires you to hit 50 conversions in a 7-day period. If your ad can do that, it will feed the algorithm enough data to go out and hunt for like-minded consumers. Any less, and it’s not quite sure what to do with itself. The more money you spend on your ad, the larger the catchment group you attract, increasing your conversion chances and rates.

4. Don’t be shy

The average consumer needs to see an ad 7-9 times before he or she will convert. So, when someone clicks on your ad for the first time it means you now have to reach them up to 8 more times before a purchase happens. This is where retargeting comes in, via remarketing campaigns and the use of email campaigns. Remember what we said previously about playing the long game? Don’t rush to bombard your potential customer with 8 ads in a week. You’ll turn them off. Opt to drip feed the message, once a week over the course of 6-8 weeks.

5. Financial planning

If you’re doing your math right, this means you should expect to wait 2-3 months from your initial ad posting to start to see conversions come through. We recommend you buy your accountant a drink and convince her/him that it’s going to take this amount of time to start seeing new sales come in from your Facebook investments. And that it’ll be worth it, because you are all over the ROI and you understand how sustainable marketing works.

6. Don’t wait.

If this all feels doable for you DO IT. NOW. Facebook and Google are the two biggest players in the market and the best way to target the audience you are trying to reach. So if you can afford to do it properly, there’s no better way to get known. The sooner you do it, the sooner you’ll scale your business, particularly with the big seasonal peaks just around the corner…

Not sure what do next or exactly how much to spend?

Good news! One of our partners has the expertise of Aaron Bloodworth on its team. Aaron has executed literally thousands of high returning Facebook and Instagram campaigns and, we believe, he is the only kiwi to have been trained by the legendary Molly Pittman, widely recognised as a world-renowned expert of Facebook marketing.

If you need any further help or information with Facebook/Instagram marketing, please reach out to Aaron at aaron@growdigitalmarketing.co.nz.