In fact I’ve heard many photographers dismiss Facebook Ads as something they tried once that either didn’t work, or that spent an overwhelming amount of money in a frighteningly short amount of time. Well, I hate to be like that click bait that you see out there but: “You’re doing it wrong.”

There are lots mistakes that I see photographers making when using paid ads on Facebook, from targeting to messaging and understanding the difference between an ad and a boost; but underneath all of that is a larger issue that has to be addressed: Too many photographers are trying to advertise to people who have never heard of them and are expecting to drive quality leads. Instead, they launch their ads to the sound of crickets, or get a flood of clicks that don’t convert.

Creating ads asking for the sale before you’ve wooed a prospect is the crux of why ads on Facebook fail to perform. So today I want to share some strategies that I employ, both as a photographer and in my role as a digital marketing specialist, to give you a new perspective of how Facebook Ads can help drive a steady stream of valuable leads to your business. My hope is that you’ll feel empowered to create the kinds of killer ads that you need to compete in an increasingly noisy digital space.

Using Facebook Ads to Create the “Know, Like and Trust Factor”

So what exactly is wrong about advertising to new people and asking for a sale? Now before you email me, chastisingly reminding me that, “Jen, finding new leads is kind of the point of advertising” let me explain. Imagine yourself at a big cocktail event filled with all kinds of people that you’d love to work with. What would you think of a person making his way around the room, handing out his business card to people before he’d even been introduced?

Unfortunately that’s what it’s like when you’re running an ad on Facebook, expecting a sale before you’ve been properly introduced. If you haven’t provided value to the people that you’re getting your ad in front of, what is it that’s going to make a potential client want to work with you over someone else?

Now let’s reimagine this cocktail party scenario. You’re participating in the conversation, engaging with your fellow attendees, and someone happens to ask a question that falls into your area of expertise. You light up and provide helpful, relevant answers with no strings attached. Not only is the person who asked the question pretty impressed, but so are a few others who’ve been participating in the conversation.

Then comes the magic question: “Do you have a business card?” You do, in fact, have a few tucked into your wallet. And, you happen to mention, there are a few more helpful resources on your website in case anyone else has any questions on the topic discussed. By providing value you’ve developed, what we call in marketing, the know, like and trust factor!

So, how do you translate this into your Facebook Ads strategy?

The answer is: provide value first. Before creating an ad that asks for the sale, make sure that you’ve wow-ed your potential audience with so much value that they can’t imagine booking with anyone else. In order to do this, you have to do a little bit of reverse engineering, and understand what it is that your prospect is looking for at each stage of their exploration and research prior to booking.

So if you’re a wedding photographer, let’s play this scenario out with your potential bride or groom: When a couple gets engaged, the likelihood is high that they’ll be looking for a wedding photographer. But before you jump in front of them with ads that are akin to that unsolicited business card at a cocktail party, let’s think about what their questions and needs around finding a photographer might be.

If you can identify those needs and questions ahead of time, then you have the edge to get in front of those couples and provide them the with answers to their questions in the form of ads that lead them to great downloads or helpful blog posts.

What is your Customer’s Journey?

If you’re struggling to think about what this looks like in a strategy, let’s use the example of the wedding photographer. If a wedding day is all about love, then a love story is a journey. When a couple gets engaged, you have to be ready to take that couple on a journey to fall in love with your services. In marketing we refer to this as a “Customer Journey.”

Luckily you know the beginning of this journey: a couple get engaged. You also know the end: couple gets married. Your job is to help in fill in the story with an exceptional experience in between. Let’s take a look at what a potential bride’s journey might be in looking for a wedding photographer:

In the above example timeline, we’ve identified that this potential bride has gotten engaged and set a wedding date of about a year out. At this stage, couples tend to be looking for inspiration, so this is a perfect opportunity to offer something of value that addresses the couple’s needs.

Perhaps you could run a “Like” campaign, promising inspiration and planning tips that you share regularly on your Facebook page. Think of how your expertise can lend itself to the needs of your potential client at this stage; and if you run a Facebook Ad at this stage, how to do you offer value?

Running a “Like” campaign isn’t about “buying followers.” We’re not looking to increase the number of likes on your Facebook page as a vanity metric (although Likes are a great way to offer a little bit of social proof). Instead, we’re trying to grow your audience so that you can offer both organic and advertised content in the future. Once a prospect is familiar with you, we can move on to the next step in the timeline.

Example of a Like campaign on Facebook

Research and Reverse Engineering

In our example timeline, we now have a bride that has begun to think about photography, but she could potentially be overwhelmed with choices and questions. It’s time for you to dive deeply into the psyche of your ideal prospects, or give a call to past clients and do some research! What kinds of questions kept your former client up at night, and how were you in the perfect position to have answered those questions? Chances are these are the same questions, and solutions, that you can provide to prospects.

In order to create effective ads, and content/offers that you will be promoting in those ads, make a list of the questions that you’ve determined prospects and past clients had in their journey towards booking. You may have to spend some time working backwards in your memory with past clients to determine what their biggest pain points were in trying to determine their photography needs, but once you do this you’ll have a powerful list of content ideas.

Once you’ve determined the content that provides the dream answers for your prospects, it can live on your website, you blog, be delivered via an email campaign, or exist in a PDF that’s delivered as part of the Facebook Ad Conversion. Feel free to be creative here; you can dream up anything as long as it offers solutions to the problem that your potential client could be facing in their customer journey.

Don’t worry about creating something that delivers all of the answers all at once. Break things up into bite sized pieces so that you don’t overwhelm your prospect, and then deliver that information over your prospect’s journey as they progress through their timeline. By positioning yourself as your prospect’s guide and an expert who is available to give them answers, not only are you consistently providing that value that we talked about before, but you’re also creating that all-important know, like and trust factor.

An example of an ad that could provide value to your prospect.

Introducing Your Brand

Now that prospects are engaging with the content that you’ve provided, it’s time to introduce your brand and services. Yes, technically we’ve been doing this all along by creating branded content that answers your prospect’s questions, but until this point we’ve been pretty mum in terms of the exact services you provide. We’re still not at the point of expecting a sale, but we’re taking that next step towards getting a prospect interested in the services that we offer that meet their needs.

From a Facebook Ads perspective, this could be a boosted post that leads to a blog post showcasing the latest wedding you’ve photographed. Or, if you have a brand video that tells the story of your services, this is the perfect point in your prospect’s timeline to introduce them to it. We want them to begin thinking, “Yes, that’s what I want!” So think about what you can showcase that will get your prospect excited about the idea of working with you.

Asking for the Sale

Once you’ve consistently offered value to your prospects, they know, like and trust you, you’re finally ready to ask for that sale. This is where you can create an ad that offers a promotion that is directly related to your services. If you’ve been promoting content that is helpful and engaging, you should have no trouble converting those prospects into leads.

Create ads that explicitly describe your offer, your value proposition and a strong call to action. You’ll have 90 characters to describe your services and offering, as well as 200 characters in the News Feed Link Description section. Use these wisely and to your advantage to compel your primed prospects to book with you!

Once you have engaged with prospects that are familiar with your value, you’re now ready to utilize the power of Facebook Ads to generate bookings!

Putting it all together

If we think back to that initial timeline, it’s important to remember that your prospects are on a journey of discovery, and if you’re willing to be a part of their journey you will have an amazing opportunity to engage them through Facebook Ads. Now that we’ve walked through a sample journey, we can take the various types of ads that we discussed and overlay them over that previous timeline.

As you can see, getting a couple to book a wedding takes multiple touch points. The same can be said for booking any kind of photographic service. So while you may occasionally get a lead from running a Facebook Ad that is asking for the sale right away, chances are that if you craft your strategy to involve those multiple touch points, developing the know, like and trust factor, you’ll have greater success and more engaged prospects who are excited at the idea of being able to book with you.

Use “Like” campaigns early on to target prospects to introduce them to your brand. Next use Ads that are honed in on the specific pain points that your prospect could be facing that can help remove their barriers to booking. Follow those ads with ones that take a prospect inside your studio and brand and help them fall in love with the services that you offer. Once you’ve done that, you’re finally ready to ask for the sale. And if you’ve done it right, it should be a no-brainer for those prospects to say a very enthusiastic “yes!”

Continue to Part 2: How to Rock Facebook Ads.

Get Perfect Facebook Ads

Our 149-page ebook helps you plan an effective ad strategy to find perfect potential clients at the lowest cost. It goes way beyond what to put in your ad, although we do cover that. You will learn how to attract the right person at the right time with the right ad. Our examples and formulas make it easy.

Your business needs are as unique as your photography. We show you how to use Facebook’s options to create a tailor-made marketing campaign perfect for you!

See What’s Inside Perfect Facebook Ads

So when I see someone doing something right, I mean totally nailing it, I want to shout it from the rooftops and do a little happy dance. And that’s what happened the other day. (Except I was at work and shouting would be rude; plus I reeeally want to avoid the possibilities of my coworking making an embarrassing meme of me dancing.)

I was scrolling through a photography group on Facebook, and a post by Amanda Lacy of Authentic Portrait caught my eye. She had popped into the group to help buoy the spirits of other group members who were struggling with their marketing. Her mention of Facebook Ads piqued my interest because I’ve seen a lot of photographers struggle to use them effectively; but Amanda’s strategy was spot on!

So I decided to reach out to Amanda to ask her about her Facebook Ad strategy, how she went about targeting her ads, and what her ultimate results were. Amanda was kind enough to share a deep look into not only the Facebook Ad that she had been running, but also let me interview her to understand the work that she did before launching her ad, what her exact results were, and what her next steps are.

First let’s take a look at a screenshot of that initial post that caught my eye. I want to dissect what she said that clued me into knowing that she had a solid strategy, and then talk about how you can implement a similar strategy to help you start getting leads who are excited about working with you!

The first thing we know off the bat from this post is that Amanda’s strategy is working. Wahoo indeed! She’s getting the coveted “bums in seats,” so let’s talk about why.

Amanda’s strategy is a holistic, client-focused one. She is thinking about the kinds of things that her clients would be interested in, and provides that content in her social media curation. She has a healthy mix of her business content and outside sources, so that her social media doesn’t seem like she’s on a megaphone preaching about her services. She’s got a regular email newsletter that she grows consistently. Finally she’s using Facebook Ads to help grow her email list by providing something every single client of hers would want, and she’s not trying to sell directly to them in the ad!

If you just heard that record scratch sound effect in your head, hear me out: I’m not telling you that you can’t sell to people using Facebook Ads. I’m not even going to tell you that you can’t get bookings using Facebook Ads. But I will tell you that if you implement a strategy like Amanda’s first, you’ll have a lot more success booking, not only through Facebook Ads, but also through organic Facebook interaction and on your website. And it’s going to be a helluva lot cheaper.

You see, Facebook Ads shouldn’t be your stand alone online marketing strategy. You shouldn’t create a single ad or boosted post and expect to get leads clamouring to book. For something as expensive and non-essential as a photoshoot, you have to expect that the time between someone being interested in having a photoshoot, researching various photographers to find the right fit, and then finally booking is going to be long. Rarely is a photoshoot an impulse buy.

In fact it can take anywhere from 7 to 13+ touch points before a customer is ready to buy! Those touch points can be social posts, blog posts, newsletters, and ads. But none of these should stand alone. They work together to become a part of the larger, integrated strategy that we mentioned. Once you have those various pieces, then you can launch ads to help show potential customers the next piece of content or the next step to help them in the research and decision making process towards booking.

So let’s slice out a piece of Amanda’s strategy and look at it from the Facebook ads perspective (remember: it’s tied to her blog and her email list, so it is integrated into her overall strategy):

Amanda created a free ebook geared towards women, promising them insider secrets on how to look gorgeous in photos. Then she created a blog post to advertise the ebook, offering the download in exchange for an email address. Already, without the added benefit of using Facebook Ads, this is a brilliant piece of marketing. She has identified a concern that her potential market has (looking terrible in photos) and has offered a solution! This helps develop the know, like and trust factor that is so important in both marketing and connecting with your client during a photoshoot.

As a benchmark, she noted that prior to her creating her ad, she had already had 9 organic shares on the blog post. After running her ad that number had jumped up to 273! Prior to launching her ad, she had installed the Facebook pixel on her website and was able to use that to create a Lookalike Audience in Facebook based on female visitors to her site. This means that Facebook was able to match people who were similar to Amanda’s website visitors and serve her ad up to that larger audience.

Then she launched a Website Clicks ad to drive traffic to the blog post offering her download. Here’s a glimpse at the ad she launched:

She ran this ad for a little over a week, with a daily budget of $5 per day, spending a few cents over $38. So how effectively was her money spent? Lucky for us Amanda was nice enough to share her results:

From a screenshot of the Facebook Ads Manager we can see that she was able to reach 3,005 people and get 55 clicks to her website. While Amanda mentioned that she should like to improve her click-through rate, which was 1.83% for the run of the ad, according to a study by Wolfgang Digital this is actually very close to the average click-through rate of 2% for Facebook Newsfeed ads. And considering that these are ads that people are not searching for, like ads we see in the Google search results, anything near a 2% click-through rate is pretty good.

From the 55 clicks through to her website, Amanda received 25 email signups from women interested in downloading her ebook. That’s a whopping 45%!! And, now not only is she able to offer these potential clients value through her e-book but she is able to stay in communication with them via her newsletter. And for $1.52 per person that’s pretty cost-effective!

And as a bonus Amanda was able to get four inquiries out of these ads, because she had provided so much value through her e-book. For an ad that was not designed to drive inquires right away, she is still getting inquiries at a rate of about 7%. If we look at the cost of these four inquires, Amanda paid less than $10 a piece. Will they all book? Maybe not, but they were interested enough to reach out. And if even one books a session, Amanda has more than covered her advertising cost and gotten a return on her investment!

So now let’s review and talk about how you can take cues from Amanda’s strategy and employ them in your own business? We can take Amanda’s initial post in the In Bed with Sue group for inspiration:

1. Get to know who your ideal client is, where they hang out, what their interests are and what their aspirations are.
2. Share content on your blog and social networks that is relevant to them and that provides value.
3. Identify at least one pain point of theirs as it relates to your business, and provide a solution.In Amanda’s case she created an ebook that helps women feel more confident in front of the camera, because their biggest pain point is feeling insecure about how they look in photographs.

   She also broke down the exact things that women would learn in the book – from learning how to get rid of the dreaded double chin to stand to accentuate their shape. She was organically advertising her ebook on her Facebook Page. In this case she used Leadpages to create a Facebook Landing page:

4. Build you ad with laser focus in terms of targeting.Amanda used the Facebook pixel to help her identify who was going to her site, and then find a Lookalike audience that could potentially be interested in her information.

   Notice that I said interested in her information and not necessarily interested in her service. Yes, she did get inquiries from this ad. But that was the cherry on top for having created a killer piece of content for prospective customers.

   Offer your freebie but ask for an email address. You want to be able to continue offering awesome value to these potential customers before offering booking deals.

   Continue to send out great content on your newsletter, blog, and social channels.

5. Repeat.

Yup, marketing is a long term strategy. And you’re in business for the long haul right?

Even Amanda, who had amazing results from her ad, admits that there is a learning curve to Facebook Ads and that you can’t just launch an ad and expect people to come banging down your door. You have to keep testing and see what works.

So don’t get discouraged if your first foray isn’t stellar, and remember to keep testing what works and keep making improvements. In fact Amanda has already launched two new ads for that very same reason! She’s testing ads to compete against each other, varying her messaging, so that she can see what her audience responds to. In each she is focusing her messaging to appeal to her potential clients, helping them alleviate their worries about stepping in front of the camera:

So now that we’ve looked at what a successful Facebook ads strategy looks like, I would love to hear from you! How can you take learnings from the strategy we’ve discussed and employ them in creating Facebook ads that will delight your audience, and make your prospective customers fall in love with you – all before they book.

Get Perfect Facebook Ads

Our 149-page ebook helps you plan an effective ad strategy to find perfect potential clients at the lowest cost. It goes way beyond what to put in your ad, although we do cover that. You will learn how to attract the right person at the right time with the right ad. Our examples and formulas make it easy.

Your business needs are as unique as your photography. We show you how to use Facebook’s options to create a tailor-made marketing campaign perfect for you!

See What’s Inside Perfect Facebook Ads