Read this before you spend a dollar.
The ads work. Judge them on money.
Not on cost per lead, not on click rate. One question: what did you put in, and what came back?
Set aside $3,000
and expect
to lose it.
It's money you pay to learn, not money you pay to earn. My own B2B ads brought nothing back until about $5,000. Leave emotions out of it.
At the start you need volume. Not quality.
It's a new process, and you've probably never sold to a cold audience before. Only referrals. You need to cut your teeth and do reps. Even if you got the highest quality leads possible right now, you'd fuck it up, because you don't know what you're doing yet.
Volume
Lots of leads, lots of calls. You learn how cold leads talk, what they ask, where they drop.
Quality
Once you know the process, tighten the targeting and the form to filter for the big projects.
Campaign. Ad set. Ad.
Every campaign is built in three levels. Learn what lives where and the rest of Ads Manager stops being scary.
Pick Leads. Move on.
Buying type stays on Auction. Sales is for digital products, not you. Ad set budget gives you control, and on your first campaign you only have one ad set anyway.
Go broad. Let the creative target.
Our best campaigns ran completely broad: your area, 25 and up, English. If you want bigger budgets, test household income plus real-estate interests against it.
Form for volume. Page for quality.
An instant form gets you more leads, faster. A landing page gets you fewer, better ones. First campaign: go with the form.
Instant form
Opens inside Facebook. Three taps and they're a lead.
Landing page
Your own page with your calendar on it. More effort per lead.
This is where it's won or lost.
90% of your result is the ad itself.
When a campaign underperforms, nine times out of ten it's the creative. These are the tools we use, for the ads and for the follow-up.
Simple picture. One clear line.
Real ads from our campaigns, with the real numbers. A photo that looks like your work, a big line saying who it's for, and a named free offer.
Publish. Close the laptop.
No leads on day two is normal.
Spend ramps up and nothing is conclusive yet. Set three reminders and don't open the account between them.
Ads go through review, then learning. Don't edit anything.
Look, don't touch.
An ad Meta actually spent on, 2-3x your target cost per lead, zero leads.
Keep the winners, duplicate, don't touch the original.
Three layers. Start at the top.
If layer one makes sense for you financially, don't even look at the other two. Only go a layer deeper when the one above is broken.
The lead is worthless if nobody calls.
Ideally within 30 seconds. Five minutes is the hard rule. And most people won't pick up the first time, so you keep calling.
From the form to the first call.
You're not annoying them. You're being persistent.