Are Facebook ads effective for startups?

I read recently that 40% of all Investment cash for startups is spent on Facebook advertising.

They say spending money is the easiest part of any undertaking. People find it easier to lend you 20 U.S.D. than help you all day move your home!

People are putting a lot of faith in Facebook’s algorithms and targeting but do you really believe they know how many people are interested in, say, ‘Home furnishings’ in the Hong Kong area?

Personally I believe more in chaos theory. The fact that if you ‘tell the internet’ by Googling or following any link anywhere anytime, and click the ‘I’m okay with cookies buttons’, that you are a supporter of just one team and then if you get nothing but information and news about your team on the internet, then you would not know who you were playing in the next game and about the team who you love to hate. (Man. U. If you are asking!!)

We only learn about new things by having a random world presented to us.

Point is, we say we like this or that but really many of us don’t know what we like until we see it.

Facebook ads are not enough on their own to tell a story, and in this day and age if you are not presenting the emotional narrative behind your product or service, in other words what your offering that makes people ‘feel’ or what is the problem you are solving, or making life easier for someone, or relieving pain or a burden (Smile marketing, we call it), then you may be in for a shock at the advert’s success rate.

The best designed ads on Facebook are a great hook to make you curious to click to a blog post that tells an emotional story and gets you interested from the first paragraph.

I feel sorry for kitchen sales people, for example, who pay a lot to advertise a kitchen, unless of course you have a really cool new gimmick that saves money or just cooks dinner for 5 whilst you sleep on the couch, but a plain picture of a Kitchen with the line ‘40% off kitchens this month only’ is such and such an area, you may as well put you cash in the oven on Mark 9 for 2 hours!

The people that told Facebook they are interested in kitchens and live in the area you need, may be interested in ‘soup kitchens’ as an NGO, or they may be looking for ‘work in a kitchen,’ not someone you can do business with regardless of the numbers they tell you. There are many people who give such false information to Facebook as part of the paranoid civil libertarians who are petrified of how much Facebook knows, you only have to look at the numbers of people leaving WhatsApp to see this paranoia in action.

if you did a poll on how much people get back from Facebook ads you may be shocked at how bad Facebook’s knowledge of the members spending habits truly is. The average click-through rate (CTR) for Facebook ads across all industries is 0.90%, compared to 3% for email marketing.

You are better off creating a blog website and uploading all your knowledge and shared stories about your business that demonstrates your passion and knowledge. If you can’t do this, not because of time, but because you cannot really find that much to write about, you are in the wrong career!  

If you work for yourself and you chose an industry, I pray for you that you love what you do, because passion is the only ally you have in the startup world.

It’s actually very difficult to craft lovely, heartwarming, endearing stories that show your expertise and experience and do it consistently over months and months. You need to share each blog you do to all your social media each time and this is where paying Facebook may get you a decent return on investment.

Remember, when blogging that there are 2 motivating factors to remember when creating headlines. One is ‘What will I lose if I do not read this,

Example ‘5 vegetables that destroy kitchen surfaces’

The other is ‘What will I gain if I read this’

Example: ‘3 Simple ways to a better healthier life in your kitchen’

Or the last, failing this, just go for straight emotion:

Example: ‘Why did this lady cry when we fitted her kitchen?

Blogging is a lonely life, especially during the time when you think nobody is even reading your work, and the times when people don’t comment or like. Rest assured, they are watching you. Don’t give up!

Eventually you will get a reply one day and it can be a very profitable reply that pays you back for all the time when blogging for free or as it at first appears when you are self-employed.

The one thing startups have more than cash is time, so find your passion and get writing. Like most things, it is cause and effect. It does work ,I promise you. The first time someone said to me at a networking event, “oh you are Alan from leads4biz, I read your blogs and I have been meaning to get in touch with you to help us with our marketing and lead generation” I was overjoyed. 

Proud was an understatement, and that feeling has lasted me years, and the monetary cost was tiny, less than the cost of one advert on Facebook.

The point of today’s blog is that you are better off starting to write about your business and then sharing that on Facebook than just going for a plain old in your face ‘Buy my stuff now’ type of advert.

If you don’t have a blog on your website and you want us to publish a post about your business to our 30,000 monthly traffic and our 300,000 social media reach, with licensed images and follow links to your offers, we are happy to assist you, as long as its punchy, emotional, relatable and our mainly B2B audience learn something or feel something after reading it. 

There’s a small charge for this ($35) but the gains could be substantial, then Contact us