What makes the Facebook Ads agency the best? That one is pretty simple, can they hit your ROAS metric at a cost that provides you a ROI. I see a lot of small business owners who don't actually have clear goals when trying to find the best facebook ads agency.
They merely just know they need traffic to their store to be successful. The best way to hire a digital marketing agency is to be clear on your KPIs and ideally, you should know how to run facebook ad campaigns yourself and truly understand what makes profitable facebook ads.
Facebook ads are not social media marketing
One thing to clear us is that Social Media and Social Media Marketing Services can be very different. For example: I pay a social media agency to create content for my Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok and Twitter accounts. They do NOT make or optimize the Facebook and Google ads. The Goal of Google and Facebook Ads is to drive the highest return on ad spend possible. Any other goal would be unclear and a waste of your money. Unfortunately, organic Social Media is less effective than it once was at driving revenue. Some social media experts may argue that you can still drive revenue with Social Media and even the newest player, Tik Tok.
For Facebook, they updated the algorithm in 2016 I believe and in doing so throttled reach for most business pages. Mine included...
Also the goal of Social Media is to engage with your potential audience. Its difficult to post a link direct to your website via social media now. Facebook did this so you have to pay for ads to drive significant website traffic and revenue.
Hopefully this adds some clarity on what a social media agency versus a facebook advertising agencies.
So what do you need for your business? Do you want to reach more people or do you want to increase your revenue and sales?
For reach = invest in more content and social media
For revenue = invest in Facebook and Google ads
The bigger challenge is finding the Best Facebook Ads Agency.
Paid traffic and specifically Facebook ads are crucial to scaling your e-commerce brand. I do encourage organic efforts but you truly don’t have a business until you can make Facebook ads profitable.
So…how do you find the elusive best facebook ads agency that can drive profitable ads at scale? There are so many agencies and so called experts that truly aren’t experts and simply can’t perform. I want you to be empowered to be able to hire and fire a facebook ad agency with confidence.
Most Facebook ad agencies want you to sign up for a monthly retainer or even a longer contract with no proof they can actual outperform your current paid strategies. They may have some impressive case studies and some mind blowing ROAS stats that they pulled from a specific day during a launch or when numbers look good. But this doesn’t mean anything for your business. We need to put them to the test, expand your expertise and find someone capable and fast.
What type of Facebook Advertising Services exist?
Because there are so many agencies that offer Facebook ads the service level can vary greatly. I have 2 Best Facebook Ad Agencies that send referrals to. My current agency is my preferred resource because they make the creative in house and edit is as they need. This was a huge bottleneck previous as I would make content in house then would try to understand which creative was effective or was not effective. Now that the ad agency makes all the creative content in house it makes the ad optimization more full circle with no previous bottlenecks.
The ad agency would certainly know which facebook advertising campaign would be effective and what ad creative they would need to do so. I know merely approve content for Facebook marketing campaigns and often I don't need to approve it at all because we have been working together for so long. The Facebook business page is also in their wheelhouse but not much is needed to be updated outside the ads themself.
You certainly would consider Facebook to be a part of an overall social media advertising management. There are other ad channels you can add into social media advertising such as Tik Tok, Twitter, Pinterest, but Facebook and YouTube (which I consider part of Google Ads) are by far the most effective for my industry.
Here is how I hired the best Facebook ad agency, who I have been working with for 3 plus years.
First, let me say that I screwed up. A few years ago things were going great, sales were growing every month and it looked like we could literally fly over the moon. I had great facebook ads management previously.
Then, January happened, as it should. It was an off season month for my e-commerce brand which means sales will be slower, there isn’t a ton I could do to combat seasonality…but I blamed my ads guy because candidly I didn’t know enough about ads to be able to hire or fire an ad agency. So, I fired an amazing agency that was performing because I felt like they could do more but the reality was it was just the off season and more we spend would be just wasted regardless of the creative, copy or offer.
After making the worse fire of my career, I struggled to find someone to replace him…I hired, fired, hired fired for 11 months! I heard excuse after excuse for why they couldn’t perform.
During those 11 months I was forced to learn how to run Facebook ads myself! I had some experience from a couple years prior but as you may know, Facebook changes all the time. I bought multiple courses, hired a Facebook coach and got my skills up to a level where I understood how to run ads and truly if an agency was performing or not.
After my 4th cup of coffee and months of running ads myself…it hit me…offer to pay them for one hour of their time via a screenshare, exactly the same way my ads coach would teach me. I figured, worse case I waste a few hundred bucks and hour of my time. Best case, I learn something and find someone who can outperform me!
I formally invited I think 15 or more agencies/experts and some declined because they knew they couldn’t perform. For the ones that took on the challenge, we jumped into my actually Facebook ads platform and I asked them to talk me through what to do and build an actual ad campaign with me. They were not allowed to click any buttons! I wanted to be the one who did it so I actually would know how to replicate this if it was successful. I’m more of a learner by doing then listening…
11 screenshares later, I found someone that actually beat me and I truly understand the strategy of how they would operate. Which also gave me more confidence in them, therefore I wouldn’t just keep pinging them when ROAS was down for a day, which if you don’t know how ads work can be your default as a founder.
My to do list use to be.
“Ping Facebook ads agency and ask about roas….been 5 minutes… do it again”
That created an unhealthy relationship for everyone involved!
They have been my ads agency since that moment! Wish it didn’t take me 11 months and 11 screenshares! Weird how that worked out.
Now I’m often asked who I use. Please hit me up and I would love to introduce you.
Oh and one last thing I forgot to talk about.
How much does a Facebook ad agency charge?
This one can be tough to answer because it really depends on what services they offer. I measure our ROAS and overall ROI instead of worry about their specific costs to run Facebook ads. You can certainly find a facebook ads expert that can provide no marketing strategy but simply build a targeted audience and use your own creative to get started.
But, I prefer a more hands-off approach and pay more for it. I prefer to pay on a variable cost model, which means that the facebook ad agency will charge me a percent of our ad spend. I pay a higher percentage of ad spend if they hit a specific targeted ROAS metric. If they are below it they are paid a smaller percentage of ad spend.
The last thing...I swear. I use to pay for Facebook ad consulting which is more like a coach. I would build ads along side the Facebook ad consultant and then he would review them. That was a good way to get a baseline to really understand how Facebook ads agencies optimize and think about setting up Facebook Ads and the same can be done with Google ads.