Tip 3: Within and Outside of Your Control

Hey, {NAME}. This is the third email in my 10 Tips from 10 Years series, where I explore the most important lessons I've learned about Facebook advertising while in business. Thanks for joining me! In the second email, we talked about knowing the rules. Some of the rules are obvious and straightforward. If you always take an ethical approach, these rules won't be an issue. But there are others that are much less obvious. Save yourself some frustration and get to know what the rules are. It will save you time and also prevent the catastrophic scenario of getting your account shut down. Today, let's talk about understanding what's within and outside of our control when it comes to advertising. There's a lot to worry about, but we can simplify things by expending a lot less energy on things we can't do much of anything about. When advertisers discuss things like benchmarks and expected results, context is necessary. There isn't one target Cost Per Lead, Cost Per Click, or Cost Per Purchase. Every scenario is different. The expectations are different. Some things are outside or mostly outside of your control -- at least when isolating your role as an advertiser (let's forget that you may have a role that can impact some of these things that fall outside of advertising). As an advertiser, you have very little control over these things: - Industry - Product - Competition - Brand recognition - Built-in audience (website traffic, email list, social followers) - Landing page and website performance - Budget (if controlled by others) Some industries are much more difficult than others. The entertainment industry is going to get much more natural engagement on content than will content for a plumber. As an advertiser, you can't simply change the industry. You may be tasked with promoting a bad product. You can get creative with your copy and imagery, but your potential is limited if the product is simply bad or the pricing is out of line. If you're advertising in a high-competition space, industry, time, or location, other advertisers will be targeting your same audience. It will be more expensive simply to reach people, which will make profitable advertising more difficult. If no one knows or trusts your brand, you're at a huge disadvantage compared to established and known brands. Why would someone choose your product over the known commodity? This may fall outside of your job and more within the product managers. If you are taking on a new client who is starting from scratch related to a built-in audience (they haven't put any investment behind their website, email list, or social channels), your initial focus will primarily be on cold audiences. Expectations should be adjusted accordingly. You could do everything within your power to create a great ad, but if the website or landing page are unprofessional or don't function properly, your results will be impacted. And finally, a tight budget can make it very difficult for you to generate the volume that is necessary to make any noticeable impact. Hopefully, you have very few of these negative strikes against you that will make your advertising more difficult. Mitigate these issues the best that you can. Set appropriate expectations. And focus on what you can control. Here are some of the things that you can control: - Copy - Creative - Ad format - Bidding - Frequency - Optimization - Placements - Targeting - Waste - STRATEGY You control what the ad looks like and what it says. You choose whether you go with video, links, instant experience, or images. You determine whether to roll with Facebook's default bidding or to manually adjust it. You choose whether you optimize for traffic or conversions or something else. You choose the placements. You create the custom audiences and lookalike audiences and decide what is used. You're in charge of noticing when something isn't working and turning it off, just as you're responsible for riding something when it's working. Bottom line is that you control the strategy. Within these decisions, a wide range of results are possible. Focus on these things. Of course, you can't micromanage every little thing all of the time. Be focused and concise. Make incremental adjustments and learn from the results that you get. Knowing how to balance what is within and outside of your control is a characteristic of a good advertiser. I hope this helps! Let me know if you have any questions. Cheers, Jon [Unsubscribe]( Jon Loomer Digital 17503 Ruxton Ct Parker, Colorado 80134 United States