If you are thinking of starting a Facebook Ads agency, we don’t need to waste time telling you what they are, as you already know. But it is worth looking at the most recent statistics to remind you what a growing industry is Facebook ads and why it’s a great business to get into. The most general statistic that is relevant is that the return on investment is 4:1, as in, for every $1 you spend on an ad, you create $4 in revenue. That’s a good profit margin, but it is a very general stat and stats can be deceiving. Some campaigns will create a much higher margin, and consequently many will have a much lower one. Nevertheless, the signs are that businesses are using Facebook ads more and more and therefore it’s a market with lots of potentials.
The Figures
Here are some figures to back you up, in your sales pitch to clients.
The latest figures show a 25% year-on-year growth for Facebook in terms of advertising revenue, with revenue of $20.7 billion. An obvious growth area, and an area that’s got even bigger with the shift to online sales and marketing due to the pandemic. Advertising revenue like this grows because it is working. Looking at the CPM – Cost per thousand, referring to the cost an advertiser pays per one thousand advertisement impressions on a web page. The most recent figures show it’s tiny $5.30. Basically $5 per 1000 hits.
Add to this the average Cost-per-click of $0.43 and we can see just how effective Facebook ads can be. If these figures don’t persuade potential clients that Facebook ads work then little will.
Then all you have to do is convince them to use you to set up their campaign and increase their traffic. Why you are the agency to manage their campaign and strategy. Oh yes, then you have to fight off the competition from all the other creatives who see this as a winning field of income.
The Decision to Start a Facebook Ads Agency
The decision is not only whether to set up a Facebook Ads agency but also in what way. Are you going to work the actual ads yourself or employ others? Are you going to focus only on Facebook or mix it with other digital advertising?
Experience
Presumably, you’re not coming out of the blue to this business. You do know something about it. So the first thing is to know your stuff, in fact, not just know it but really master it.
You can’t hope to be successful with ads if you don’t know how to create them. Get some experience, lots of it. Take courses, work for another agency…pick up everything you can from everybody you can. Do some for free. Specialize in Facebook ads, focus on this area. There are lots of other niches to online advertising, Google ads, amazon ads, Tok Tok……you can get into that later. Let’s make the Facebook Ads agency a success, so let’s concentrate on building the one fundamental core of the business…first.
The Plan
All good businesses start with a plan. think of the basics, are you going to work on your own, or going to employ others? The best way of starting a business is to start small, limit your outgoings, and grow alongside your income.
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Practicalities – what do you need to start off?
Consider the things that you will need just to get off the ground, such as equipment and physical space. You may already have the tools to begin, great, if not you have to choose what you will need and factor in these costs. Do you actually need office space, or can you adapt and work from home, at least until you build a client base? If so think about the additional overheads, things like extra utilities.
Look at the legal requirements of your business, the accounts you have to produce the taxes, and the fees you have to pay. If you’re going to be serious, you have to get serious from the beginning. all of these extra costs must be factored into your product or service.
Can you manage on your own, do you have to employ others? Such people as a Facebook Ads expert, or even an external accountant -they all cost. If you have to employ others to make sure they are essential to the functioning of the business, you can’t afford waste, especially at the beginning.
Calculate your outgoing costs, use these expenses to work out your revenue needs.
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The market, your niche.
You are starting a Facebook Ads agency and you are not the only one. An obvious growing market is no secret, established agencies want in on the act, plus there are people like you out there who see this as a prime area for their new future agency.
Choose your market, are you going to go general, go global or be more focused. Are you going to try to hit certain types of businesses and boost their traffic or are you prepared to take anything that comes your way? You’re not going to turn down work, of course, but targeting a certain area may be wise. You can focus your own marketing on key areas and search out suitable client opportunities. The point is, you are building your niche market, becoming specialized, the go-to person in that area. Remember similar businesses track each other.
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Your price
Once you’ve worked out your costs, your expenses then you have to realize this is the baseline. You need to more than cover your costs if you are going to succeed. Your time is money, your need to make a salary, you need extra to put back into the business. Bear in mind that if it’s your own business, you cover the unforeseen, the quiet times, the sick days, the unexpected tax bill, the advertising…your price needs to reflect this.
You also need to consider how you are going to offer your service. A set-up fee plus additional management is one common way but there are options.
Test the market, research how much your competition is charging. Pricing yourself out of the game is never good, but in the long term neither is undercutting everybody. your work has value, your price should reflect that.
And remember it’s important that you get paid to, setting up a business account with easy payment, and even considering payment protected files is a good idea. You can’t risk working for nothing, especially at first when every dollar matters.
Winning Clients
It doesn’t matter how good the plan is or the quality of your ads if you don’t get clients.
You need to build up a client base and you need to use all the tricks in the book to do it. Here are some tactics to get clients.
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Free Service
A short-term strategy but one which will get you into some businesses and gain you valuable experience, not only of creating and managing ads but also of dealing with actual clients. And aim for the testimonials. If your ads make a difference -and they will, the client will be happy to start paying.
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Free Audit
Offer to audit a business’s Facebook account for nothing. It’s a foot in the door. You can offer advice, no hard sell, softly,softly…they can take your suggestions and could well ask you to implement them.
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Contacts
Use all the contacts you have you get your business off the ground. Offer friends and family rates to anyone you know. Get people spreading the word for. It’s an old-fashioned way but still very effective.
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Facebook Ads
Running your own campaign is an obvious strategy. If you can do it for yourself, you can do it for others. You are showing yourself off and modeling your abilities for potential clients to see and notice.
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Create How to Youtube videos
People searching for how to create Facebook ads on youtube are already showing an interest. By creating your own videos you are clearly demonstrating your skill and expert knowledge. Yes, some may take what you know and use it -so what? Many others will head in your direction and ask you to do it for them.
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Forums & Helpdesks
Join forums such as Quora, Facebook groups and affiliated marketers groups will help you get a real feel for the market. Comments and answers, get you noticed and build up your status as someone who really knows what they are doing. You are helping but you are also marketing yourself -it’s a great indirect way of establishing your authority in the field.
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Conferences & Business Meetings
Any meeting of business people is a chance for you to advertise yourself. Not directly and certainly not in a pushy way. Offering advice, information, answering questions face-to-face. Explain what they should do if they have a problem, how they can improve things, what you would do in their situation. Like Youtube or forums, they might take your advice and do it, but they might and often will decide that you are the expert so they may as well let you do your magic.
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Websites
You can search for work offers on sites such as Craiglist, Indeed, or Upwork.
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IFTTT
(If this then that) Set up a free account or a paid subscription on the software platform that helps you connect your apps. Set it to track new job listings on numerous sites so you’ve always got the chance of picking something up.
The Sell
Selling is a skill, but it is a skill that can be learned and a skill that improves with practice. It is also much easier if you are confident about what you are selling. Think about it less like a sales pitch and more as offering help people, showing them how they can gain value from your service. It’s a chance for you to demonstrate what you know and how it will improve their business.
- Your Own ads: Showcase
- Case Studies: Here is what we had, here is what we did, here is the result. Clear and simple, a demonstration of the effectiveness of your service. Post them, post them regularly and update. This is the chance for a client to grasp the ultimate practical value of your service.
- Website Content: Your site is important, it is who you are, what you do, and shows the values your business feels are important. An important, although often underused feature of a site is a blog. Blogs drive traffic to your site, and blogs hold traffic on your site. Blogs improve your Search engine ranking and blogs help you convert the traffic to sales. Content needs to be focused on your area and kept up-to-date. It is not an easy task but it is worth it.
- Testimonials & Reviews: Vitally important. Perhaps the best way of establishing your reputation is getting testimonials from satisfied clients. You are not selling yourself, others are selling you. They should be front and center of any website and advertising strategy. It’s even worth offering discounts for testimonials. Testimonials, reviews, quotes from clients show that you are who and what you say you are, they say it loud, they say it clear. And if one business is getting that benefit, you can be sure their competitors want it too.
Retaining Your Clients
Getting clients to take a chance on you is the hard part. Once you’ve hooked them, you don’t want to let them get away.
Retaining clients is all about the service. Not only doing what you say you are going to do and proving it by showing the results, but also by providing that little something extra. You want your clients to enjoy working with you.
- Deliver on quality: Do what you said you would do or do more.
- Communicate: Communication is vital, not only how often but how well. It helps build the long-term partnerships you really want.
- Be organized: How well organized you are, goes a long way to establishing your reputation. Don’t miss messages, don’t miss deadlines. It’s easy at the start but as the clients multiply, make sure you can keep track of all of them, equally. Every client is as valuable as the other.
- Professional: This is now a business, not a hobby, treat it as one. Everything about you from your branding, your communication to invoices and standard represent what you stand for as a business. If you want to be treated seriously, then get serious.
Starting to Grow
From the little acorns of a few clients, the aim is to grow into a giant oak. Standing still is not an option, scale or die.
If your clients are happy, they’ll come back -great news. They’ll also spread the word, it looks good for them if they can recommend a superb business. Things will start to grow organically, plus you’ve got your other irons in the fire.
You need to keep doing what has made the client happy in the first place, but it’s not easy. There is more pressure on your time, there is more pressure on your other systems. Great email communication with a couple of clients, can soon get messy with a couple of hundred. So get your systems and tools in place that means you’ll be able to scale as and when the time comes.
Plus, suddenly you have to employ staff, other creatives, manage a growing business as it is but still keep pushing it onwards and upwards. Well, we’ll cross this bridge when we come to it.
Platforms and Tools
Of course, you are using Facebook and your creative tools to actually create. Facebook tools, like Ads Manager, Power Editor, and Page insights are a given but what about the business side of things.
The good news is there’s plenty of choices, the bad news is that there’s plenty of choices. It’s important to get the tools in place that not only works for now, but also for the future and the expected growth. Especially if you envision a growing team.
Communication and collaboration platforms are going to be a must. Things like Zoom or Skype for online meetings, Slack for internal communication, Google or Microsoft Suites for document sharing and collaboration all are pretty standard and well-known but they are not the only ways. It is absolutely worth spending some time to look at what’s out there and decide which will work best for you and your future team. Gmail for example is great for a few clients, with one manager but Kitchen.co will organize your communication flow much more efficiently with multiple managers, staff, and clients as well as offering other extras such as payment protected files and one-click pay.
Tools are coming out all the time, with different packages and offers. Free is good but it might not be the best long-term strategy if it’s costing you time and losing your clients.
In Conclusion
It’s never been easier to set up a Facebook ads agency, but that is a curse as much as a blessing. The tools are out there, the clients are waiting but the competition is fierce and growing faster than the advertising revenue flying into Facebook’s accounts.
You need to compete, therefore you need an action plan. A definite direction of travel from a small agent to a large agency. There’s a lot to process but an awful lot to be gained.
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