Ep. 60 Facebook Ads Don’t Work

Facebook Ads Don’t Work

Facebook used to be a great place to market your business, but not anymore. Facebook ads no longer work.

If you believe this, from your own experience, or like us, you’ve heard it again and again, we are here to tell you: Facebook Ads work.

Torie Mathis and her cohost Sean talk about the biggest pitfalls with Facebook Ads and why some think they don’t work.

Facebook Ads work if you know how to work them, and you’ll find it’s not all that difficult.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION –

(transcription is auto-generated)

SAF 60

Torie: [00:00:00] Facebook ads don’t work. How many times do you see that? 

Sean: [00:00:03] All the time? 

Torie: [00:00:04] All the time. Facebook ads suck. Facebook is dead. Facebook doesn’t work.

Hey. Hey. Welcome to Smart AF on your host Torie Mathis. We have got a great show for you today. So let’s get started hey guys welcome to the show. I am your host, Torie Mathis, and I’m sitting here my guy, Sean Mathis. 

How’s it going? 

The owner, the founder of Miles Through Time Automotive Museum. Joining me here today. Every day. 

Sean: [00:00:40] I’m always here. 

Torie: [00:00:40] You’re always here. It’s pretty cool. Thanks for coming again. Except for when you leave, why do you do that? We have lots of clients that we’ve done Facebook ads for, and we do have some people and I see it all the time on Facebook, Facebook ads don’t work. How many times do you see that?

Sean: [00:01:00] All the time. 

Torie: [00:01:01] All the time. Facebook ads suck. Facebook is dead. Facebook doesn’t work lately. 

Sean: [00:01:06] It’s been people like close my Facebook account. Just walk away, completely business owners. 

Torie: [00:01:14] Do you guys, Facebook ads do work just like Google ads work, just like YouTube ads work. They work. The thing is, is that people see what other people are doing and think that that little outside is all that’s going on. Put up a Facebook ad. I’ll sell. Oh my shit. You guys, it doesn’t work that way. 

Sean: [00:01:36] Facebook makes it super easy. To give them money. You know you can boost whatever it is you want, and you can, you can put money behind whatever your little mind wants. And it may not do a damn thing for you. 

Torie: [00:01:53] Man oh my gosh. I wasn’t even going there, but you are so right. I am going to backtrack you guys. You can’t just take some random post and boost it and sell all the things. Most of the time you guys don’t even have a link to what you’re selling. It’s more to that. Like you have to have a little bit of a plan and we talk about this in a lot of our videos about the things that you need to set up prior to getting traffic.

In fact, there’s a Smart AF acronym. That’ll tell you everything that you need, but we’re not going to go into that whole thing this time. The thing is, is that there’s more to the surface on what you’re seeing of other people doing, just because you see that somebody is running an ad, like really, you could go through their whole process rather than just looking at it.

Click the ad. See what the page looks like, see what the followup is going on because generally, that first click is not where the sale happens. A lot of times the sale happens like a week later in follow-up emails or follow up ads. Maybe you see something that you’ve clicked on or you’ve commented on, and then you start seeing ads for it.

That’s not the first ad. It was that first that got you. Seeing those next ads. Like there’s a process going on here and there are all these things that they have lined up. None of this stuff is crazy town difficult, but it does take a little forethought and a little bit of planning in order to set all this stuff up.

And whether it’s Facebook ads or YouTube ads or whatever type of ads, you can’t just send traffic to your website and think that there’s going to buy, they’re going to buy everything. Because that’s not how it works. So stop saying Facebook ads don’t work. 

Sean: [00:03:42] I love seeing the ad that somebody put money behind like they’re spending money on this thing and it’s a picture. Just a picture. It doesn’t send it. It doesn’t say anything. It doesn’t send you to their website. There’s no call to action whatsoever. There is absolutely zero purposes behind this thing. And yet somebody is paying. Facebook doesn’t do that out of the kindness of their heart to say, ah, I like these guys let’s show their picture to a whole lot of people.

It doesn’t work that way. It, it, it blows my mind. And I mean, there’s some of these people I’ve even reached out to, and it was like, look. For all, I care. Just stop spending your money and leave it at that. Just you’re it’s a complete waste of money. 

Torie: [00:04:30] Okay. Without calling anybody out, because I never want to do that. We, you showed me an ad from somebody a couple of weeks ago, and this isn’t a client of ours. This is somebody that we know professionally and. You’re not going to believe this. You’ve got to see this ad and you know what? I am so excited that more people want to advertise on Facebook because of some of these older people. You said like Facebook, you know, you’re never going to make money on Facebook. So I love that they are actually starting to go on there. However, like this ad was going to like the most random, like, so you’d click on the ad and it just went to some random page. There was no way to sign up for anything to buy anything, to find any more information to give an email address so they could contact you more than. It was just like burning money. 

Sean: [00:05:25] It wasn’t even like an appealing picture to like. 

Torie: [00:05:29] Because when you put a link into Facebook, a lot of times it’s going to pull the first picture from that website and it might be something that’s funky, like, oh, and that’s why people say Facebook ads don’t work is because that guy probably would be like, I spent a hundred dollars on Facebook and nobody signed up and I didn’t get anything.

Like in this business is it’s sad too because it totally could work. So you reached out to him and you did say a couple of things. Do you think that he’ll, we even just offered like some advice and things, do you think that they’ll change or do something? 

Sean: [00:06:05] Last I am. I just run out, but he wasn’t real quick to make any adjustments. I can only do so much. 

Torie: [00:06:14] I really don’t want to call people out, but man, it kills me to see business owners wasting money because your money, your time, like th that’s I understand like these are limited resources here that you have. Like you, you’ve got to be smart on them. You’ve got to use your time and your money wisely and just boost in some random post is, is the reason you think that Facebook ads don’t work.  

Sean: [00:06:40] Also that misconception of, you know, likes right versus paying customers like w what is it that you’re trying to accomplish with that ad? Are you wanting just more likes or are you actually wanting them to buy something? 

Torie: [00:06:56] Likes don’t pay the bills. So as long as you realize that, 

Sean: [00:07:02] And then there, there are Facebook campaigns that are specifically just to get you more likes, which there’s a, there’s a spot for that.

Torie: [00:07:11] There is a spot for that, that can fit into a larger campaign. That is, you know like that’s one of those things that when, once you click on something, then you’re re targeted, like that works into a campaign. But just doing that one part is really just it’s, it’s wasting money and it’s making you think that these are tools that don’t work when you’re just using them a little bit wrong.

Sean: [00:07:32] Because those people that are then giving you those likes, they only see the saw the one that you paid for. There’s nothing that guarantees they ever see anything from you again. So if you think, oh, I’ll get the like then, and then I’ll just do my normal posts on my page and all these people that like, and follow the page. They’ll see. They’re not going to see it. Sorry. 

Torie: [00:07:54] So if you do want to use Facebook to make more money to get in front of more people, it is a fantastic tool that you can use, that you have a hundred percent control over your audience, over what your ad is over, how much money you spend.

You can spend a dollar a day, if you want to, like, it’s not going to get you anywhere, but if you wanted to literally. $1 per day on whatever type of Facebook ads like you can, it’s not like other types of avenues where you don’t have a lot of control. You have so much control and Facebook has really made it a lot easier.

And in some ways, like that’s really good that they’ve made it easier so that people can do the ads themselves. The thing is, is that if you just boost a post, that’s super random, like that’s not going to make you money. Like there’s still a strategy and some structure that you need behind it, but you could totally do it all yourself.

Like it doesn’t take some like fancy marketing degree or anything like that. Like knowing your clients, knowing who you’re trying to talk to, having a really good offer, and then having some of these things in place, like following up, that’s really all, you need to have a really successful campaign.

And probably, you know, there is a few things that are just weird to advertise in general, like things that are very hard to explain. So maybe if you have a business that’s super complicated and hard to explain, and very few people want them. It might be a little bit harder, but for most businesses, you can totally do it.

You guys, we advertised for a rest home forever we had rest home clients, you guys like, that’s not fun. But it can be done. Like it can be done. 

Sean: [00:09:41] It’s working that audience, that Facebook is charging you to show whatever it is that year have created to people. I saw I think it was, Honda I got an ad in my newsfeed for Honda, some Honda dealership, which would be fine. I have a total, I fit the algorithm to see that other than it was Hawaii, 

Torie: [00:10:03] Seriously, like is a dealership in Hawaii. 

Sean: [00:10:06] Dealership in Hawaii spending money to show me in Georgia. Their dealership. Like that’s an easy fix that they should not be paying to show me their ads, especially in Hawaii. Like your island is all you need to be showing ads to don’t go off the island.

Torie: [00:10:25] And, and like I said, with the control that you have, like the control on the area that you show is so crazy specific, that there is no reason that Hawaii needs to show an ad to Georgia when Georgia people can’t buy something in person. 

Sean: [00:10:42] Even Miles Through Time, like it’s a little bit. Difficult because people can travel a different, you know a good way to, to visit. And if they’re into automotive history and all that kind of stuff, they might find it appealing to go in there, but then it still, it doesn’t make sense for me to target people in Washington state, like about as far away or all Alaska, you know, like, yeah. They might show interest, but those people may never museum.

Torie: [00:11:12] So Facebook ads with the audiences, though, you can do this way that you say people who have traveled here. So maybe they live somewhere. But they are actually traveling to. So because there’s location services, because they check in places and things like that, you can take people that are outside of your area that have traveled into your area for a certain amount of time.

Like, it’s pretty cool. Once you go into the audiences and the control that, that you have in there. And I know all these people are big on like privacy and, you know, people Facebook knowing what websites or what you’re liking or other things that you’re doing. I can understand that, people are a little weirded out by that or that Facebook’s making money from you.

But at the same time, like what a cool opportunity it is to be able to advertise only to people that might want your stuff, rather than having to show like a commercial during prime time every single person in America that it’s just the shotgun approach that doesn’t work. Whereas because their social media is doing all this different data collection.

Like I think it’s awesome that I’m being shown stuff that I might actually like, rather than a bunch of random stuff that just then you start just ignoring everything. It gets to be like too much. And it also allows for competitors to be shown. So if you look up, I don’t know cars, then other car places are like, oh, this person’s interested in cars.

Maybe they’re interested in mine. And I think that’s a good opportunity, both for businesses and for consumers to be able to find out about other businesses, other companies that are selling. You know you don’t have to always go to the same place. And there’s an opportunity for local businesses to get known and to get in front of a lot more people.

Once somebody shows interest in something yeah, people think that bad thing. And personally, I like the data collection. I think it’s a good thing. I think that it can be used for bad and hopefully it’s not, but like there’s so much good to be used in it. I really.

Facebook ads work. You guys just gotta, you gotta make some adjustments. No, you got to do some planning. You have to kind of realize the power that you have in Facebook ads. A little bit of research and not just boosting a post because it’s probably not gonna 

Sean: [00:13:34] Well in testimony. You know, you, you can, you can test the yeah. See what works

Torie: [00:13:39] And maybe don’t throw know 250 bucks in a day, cause you can. 

Sean: [00:13:44] Pay attention to what that cost per click is. 

Torie: [00:13:46] And just because you’ve tried it and it didn’t give you good results, maybe it just means that you need some tweaks. And sometimes it’s not like a huge thing. Sometimes it’s just, you know, changing your audience to not be Georgia.

When your businesses in Hawaii, you don’t make a whole hell of a lot of difference. Well, so if you liked this episode, that is fantastic. Like this video, subscribe to our channel, subscribe to our podcast. And if you want some good resources, we have all kinds of stuff at Toriemathis.com you want to learn about Facebook ads.

You want to learn about some of the smart marketing so that you don’t go wasting all your time and your money on stuff that just doesn’t work. We don’t want that for you. We want you to grow your business. So we hope that you have a great day. And will see you on the next one.

Smart tools to build your business go to  getsmaftaf.com.