If you’re anything like me, you’ll have started planning for 2021 and that’s why I want to talk about how Facebook advertising fits in with your bigger marketing picture.

Creating a plan for the year ahead is incredibly important, but you probably know that already.

What I want to talk about today is how Facebook advertising fits in with your bigger marketing picture.

What I’m going to share with you might work for you or only parts of it may work for you. Take what you need from this episode and make it your own to suit your business.

I’ll be sharing my thoughts and process of how I use and plan Facebook ads into my business.

Connect with me

Website: www.newschoolofmarketing.com
Facebook: @newschoolofmarketing
Facebook group: @newschoolofmarketing
Instagram: @bianca_mckenzie

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Transcript

Welcome back to the podcast. How are you?

Wow where did the year go? I almost can’t believe it’s December and the end of the year is so close.

If you’re anything like me, you’ll have started planning for 2021 and that’s why I want to talk about how Facebook advertising fits in with your bigger marketing picture.

In episode 14 I talked about the importance of creating a marketing plan and strategy. Listen back to that episode if you haven’t already listened to it as it goes hand in hand with this episode.

Creating a plan for the year ahead is incredibly important, but you probably know that already.

What I want to talk about today is how Facebook advertising fits in with your bigger marketing picture.

So if you’re planning for the year ahead, you’ll probably be thinking about things like:

When your launches are
What your content calendar will look like roughly
What your social media calendar will look like roughly
Which new products or services you will add to your suite of offers
How many clients you want to work with and can realistically work with

Everyone has their own take on planning, and that’s totally ok. It’s great really.

What I’m going to share with you might work for you or only parts of it may work for you. Take what you need from this episode and make it your own to suit your business.

I’ll be sharing my thoughts and process of how I use and plan Facebook ads into my business.

First up, I do my overall plan for the year which highlights what particular activity I’ll be doing in a particular month of the year.

It’s important to have some plan in place for your year and then you can use Facebook ads to support this plan.

For example, I’m planning to launch my signature Facebook ads program twice next year and will be using Facebook ads to support list growth for my launch.

My first launch will be in March, which means that I have planned my pre-launch for January and February.

Pre-launching to me means all the activities I need to do before opening the cart. In this case list building is one of them so I plan my Facebook ads for January/February.

I break down my ads into categories:
Pre-launch list building
Open cart re-targeting
Cart closing re-targeting

There are a few more layers in each of these categories, but for the sake of this episode I’m keeping it simple.

Using these categories, I then carefully plan which dates I will be advertising a free opt-in and/or webinar to build my list and then use this data to re-target once my cart is open.

Re-targeting is a method of showing your ads to those who are already familiar with you because they’ve clicked on your site where they may or may not have signed up, they might be on your list or have visited one of your pages in the past.

So I sit down with my calendar on which I’ve planned all my launches out and determine how I’m going to support my launches with Facebook ads.

I then look at my pre-launch period and set dates for running Facebook ads to grow my list. Most of the time this is a minimum 4-6 week period in which first I run ads to a free download or video series for 4-5 weeks and then ads to a live webinar for approximately 10 days. Both methods are geared towards list building.

I’m using examples here and don’t want you to feel like you must run a video series or a webinar. You’ll need to find out what kind of lead magnet works for your audience.

As I mentioned earlier, I’m planning two launches for my Facebook ads for launches program so I’ll be duplicating what I have done for my first launch to the second launch.

I will always review what went well or not so well during my first launch and then adjust my strategy for the second launch, but I want to have something in the calendar at the start of the year.

But what do you do when you run evergreen courses or products?

My FB Ads for Online Stores course is an evergreen course which means that people don’t need to wait for a cart to open during launches. They can buy it anytime, any day.

To grow my list for FB Ads for Online Stores I simply look at my numbers from the year before to decide on my budget and then I run the ads continuously.

Because the two courses have a different audience and don’t compete against each other I can run them side by side.

If you have offers that compete against each other you can pair back advertising for one while you focus on the other.

Sales for my courses are driven by the number of people who sign up to my list and are then nurtured to purchase so it’s important to focus on growing my list and the fastest way to do this is to run Facebook and Instagram ads.

I also pay attention to what other advertisers are doing during the year so that I’m not spending more than I have to because I don’t want to ‘compete’ against businesses with large advertising budgets right now.

For example, Marie Forleo promotes her B-school program in February/March so I try to avoid running Facebook ads around this time or I adjust my targeting.

In the end though, it’s important to keep an eye on all of your numbers. It might seem obvious, but the main goal of using advertising is to make more sales. Whether that’s immediately because that’s how your funnel performs, or whether it’s later because your audience needs a longer period of time before they purchase from you.

So keep an eye on your numbers at all times.

The method I described works for me but it might not work for you and that’s ok. Take what you need from my methods and focus on your own. I simply wanted to share my method with you and highlight some of the things to look out for (such as peak advertising times for your industry).

If you have an e-commerce business, your plans may look a little different.

You’ll most likely focus on seasons and when certain stock comes in, so you need to plan around your stock levels.

As an e-commerce business you can pretty much advertise all year round and then put extra focus and budget into peak sales periods such as Black Friday, Christmas, Mother’s day etc.

On top of that you can run awareness or consideration campaigns to build a stronger relationship with your audience. This is especially important if your price-point is higher because your customer needs to be able to relate and see themselves in the story. For higher price points you will almost always need to build a relationship first, which you can do with ads, organic social media and email marketing.

So start planning your ads for next year just like you would plan your social media calendar, your launches and your other marketing activities. Then put a marketing budget towards your ads and know that you can always change things along the way.

If you have any questions about planning your Facebook ads for 2021, get in touch with me via DM on instagram. You can find me at @newschoolofmarketing.