Just like any tool, Facebook Ads can really help the right project move forward. But it can also be the wrong tool depending on what your goals are.

I recently asked on Instagram for your biggest questions about what FB ads can do, and their goals, and turned it into a super fun game show!

So with that – let’s play “Can Facebook Ads Do That??”

#1 – Can Facebook Ads Grow My List?

Yes!  This is actually what Facebook ads are perfect for. I love two strategies for Facebook ads when it comes to growing your email list. One is an easy retargeting strategy where you can actually set up to track people who engage with you on social media or come to your website or follow you in any capacity, and you can re-target them with an ad to make sure that they are not only just getting your content online but also part of your email list.

And the second great strategy that Facebook ads can help you with for growing your list is cold traffic Facebook ads. So getting in front of other people’s audiences who have similar interest in having them opt-in.

But the best thing to use in this case is some type of e-book, PDF, quick download lead magnet for testing and finding your Facebook ads.

They tend to be the easiest ads to get up and running, versus figuring out the minute marketing details of different webinars and challenges and video series. If you’ve got a PDF download, that is a great thing to give out to your list and to use Facebook ads for growing it.

#2 – Can Facebook Ads Get Me In Front Of My Ideal Audience?

While it can help get you in front of people’s audiences, I’m gonna say no. Because if your goal is just kind of visibility, which I think is the heart of this question, it costs a lot of money to be visible on Facebook with no tangible goal.

Unlike growing your email list, where that’s something you can directly track in Facebook, just being visible, there are billions of free strategies you can use to get in front of your ideal audience.

One would be speaking, so finding local events that they’re at. Podcasts that your ideal audiences are listening to. Getting on local TV. Hosting some type of summit, if you don’t have the ability to go speak for someone else, give yourself a platform to speak. Those are way better and free ways that you can start to get in front of your ideal audience.

To just get visible and just get in front of your ideal audience in a Facebook ad would be a really expensive investment without a lot of proven ROI.

#3 – Can Facebook Ads Help Me Sell Out My Airbnb?

Yes! This is such a cool way, and an interesting thing to use Facebook ads for. So I actually had to do a little bit of research, but Facebook ads would be perfect for selling an Airbnb. Here’s two strategies I would suggest for using in this case.

One of the really cool things about Facebook is all the crazy targeting you can do, and so I would recommend that you do target people within a certain location area of your actual Airbnb and run some ads as a staycation or an event space, or a great place to house your wedding guests. Things like that that you can really target and customize to people already in your local area. Maybe they have guests coming in and yours is the perfect place to put your in-laws if you don’t want them booking with you, an ad like that would be so highly customizable and targeted, it will be a no brainer.

The other thing you can target is actually people who have visited your area before, or you can also target people who have been researching it or maybe people who just like to travel in general, and you can say why your Airbnb is a location destination, what it’s close to, so run a Facebook ad that’s like, “Perfect Airbnb for two, walking distance to museums, restaurants, nightlife, only X, Y, Z a night.” That would be an amazing ad to run. So Facebook ads would be perfect for an Airbnb.

#4 – Can Facebook Ads Help Me Sell To Cold Audiences?

No, never run traffic sales ads to a cold audience unless you are willing to give away the farm for free. Cold audiences are only moved by one thing, and that’s massive discounts. So when you see ads from clothing ads that are like 50% or get this thing for $7, like those things can work to get people into your funnel if you know you’re upselling them things into the future, but if we’re talking about your signature course or program, or we’re talking about things that are $100 and up, it’s going to be very tough to take someone who has never heard of you and has no relationship to you, and convince them to buy.

However, this wasn’t a question anyone asked, but I do always always always recommend that you actually use Facebook ads to sell to warm and hot audiences. So once your cart is open during your launch or if you have a Black Friday promotion going on, or if you have anything you wanna sell, you can upload your existing email list to Facebook, you can target people who follow you on social media, and get this special offer in front of them. It’s so important to do when we all have 20-30% email open rates. You’re missing out on that 80-70% of your list who would totally buy your thing, just they didn’t get your emails or see your emails or whatever. So get in front of them with a Facebook ad all the time.

Cold audiences, no, not really unless you’re building a unique $1 trial funnel and then something like that, that kind of can work, but if we’re talking about more of my area and where I work with clients with the signature one to one programs, only run traffic ads to the warm people. All right, so those were all the questions that I got from Instagram, if you guys have anymore unique scenarios, please leave them in the comments below, but I did have two other ways of kind of a yes/no that I wanna share with you about using Facebook ads for your business.

#5 – Can Facebook Ads Help Me Get Clients?

The answer is no. You cannot use Facebook ads if you are trying to drive people to an application or high-end coaching program, or anything like that. Because you are running Facebook ads, you are getting millions of people seeing your ads that aren’t necessarily a good fit, either for you or for your program. And even if you have an application, someone who’s never heard of you running a cold ad to like a 20 question application, they’re not gonna fill that out. They’re not invested in working with you.

While you might get some, you’re going to end up paying 20, 30, 100 dollars for that lead, then you have to get on the phone call and they might not even be a good fit. The best place to get clients is from relationships and referrals and just being of service on social media and putting great content out there or inviting your email list to apply and using Facebook ads like we talked about in the beginning to grow that email list, but don’t ever run Facebook ads saying, “Hey, two spots open for clients, come fill out this application,” that’s gonna be a huge waste of your time, effort, and money, when you could just reach out personally to a couple people, hop on two discovery calls, and close at 50%.

#6 – Can Facebook Ads Work For Live Events/ Workshops?

The answer is yes. I know we talked about not selling to cold traffic, but events are experiences. You will always see Ticketmaster running Facebook ads for their concerts in local areas, you’ll always see sporting teams running ads for their local area, because you need the visibility and the power of Facebook ads for reaching highly targeted people.

If you’re running a one day workshop or even just a one hour workshop in person, there aren’t gonna be a lot of people out there who want to travel in and stay somewhere and deal with the hassle of traveling to get there for one day and be gone. So, Facebook ads are perfect for finding a hyper-local audience that you can target with based on a geographic location and maybe they are within 100 miles, so it’s an easy car trip, and maybe they also have interests in entrepreneurship, wealth building, financial management, etc. You can really really target specifically the people that you want to come to your one day event.

Even then if you are doing a two or three day event, or a big retreat, Facebook ads can be a great opportunity to one, re-target your email list about it or two, serve it up to cold audiences who are interested in traveling to Mexico and are also interested in health and wellness, and they wanna come to your Mexican Health and Wellness Retreat. So when you have something that’s super specific like that that you can sell as a destination, or if you’re doing a short little mini-in person workshop, Facebook ads are perfect for you.

If this game show has made you confident that you want to learn more about Facebook ads, I’d love for you to join me for the Stress-Free Facebook Ads Live Workshop!

We’ll work together for 90 minutes on March 19th, and another 90 minutes on March 20th oto make sure you know everything you need to know about how to use ads manager, setting up the pixel, and on the second day of our workshop, we will actually work on putting up three of the campaigns I told you about in this video together.

Your Turn

Please leave any comments below if you would like to play this game and know if Facebook ads are right for your goal.