You might have heard that Facebook ads are a good strategy to grow your business.

But if you’re like most business owners, most don’t know enough about Facebook ads! If you’re planning to DIY your ads then you must at least know the basics.

Let’s first break it down into a simple concept here where you have cold and warm traffic. The cold traffic is people that don’t know you yet. The warm traffic is people that are already following you on social media. Maybe they’re already subscribed to your email list. They’ve known you for at least a month or two.

In a Facebook ad, you’re sending your cold traffic to a landing page with an opt-in or sales page. So the traffic is coming from the Facebook ad which is a sponsored post on your feed.

They see your ad in their Facebook (or Instagram) feed and if they’re interested they’ll click. And then they land on your landing page or a sales page depending on what type of ad campaign you have going on.

Here are the first steps you need to do in your first ad.

1. Have a Plan. – It’s strategic to figure out a plan before you go and dump hundreds of dollars within a week on Facebook ads. You want to have some sort of a funnel in place because once someone leaves your ad then what happens?

2. Create a Lead Magnet/Freebie. – Creating some kind of free guide, free checklist or free workbook to get them to subscribe to your email list. It doesn’t have to be a huge mini-course or something that you have to make up for free. 

3. Determine how much your ad spend will be. – This would depend on your sales goal for selling one particular course or offer.  An average cost per lead for freebies is anywhere from $1 to $3. It all depends on the offer and the industry. But for the nutrition and wellness field, it’s definitely on the lower side.

4. Test. –  If you are going to run ads and you want to bring in just anybody on your list; make sure that in your targeting you are typing one interest per ad set. Instead of lumping all these interests together and hoping they all work.

These are just simple steps you can do for your first ad. Listen to the podcast here. If you want a more detailed walkthrough on the different steps that you need to do before you run your ad, download this free Facebook ads checklist.

If you want to be more confident in doing Facebook ads on your own, you need to be in the Conversion Class University, which is my Facebook Ad course. We’re opening up enrollment soon but you can sign up for the waitlist now.

Related Blog Posts: The 5 Steps to a High Converting Funnel, How Paid Traffic can Take Your Business to the Next Level, Campaign Objectives: Which Ones Should You Use, Why Ads can Boost What’s Working Instead of Fixing What’s Not, How to Write Compelling Ad Copy

Melissa from Litchfield Media writes about all the tips and tricks to run successful and profitable ads for your online business.