As a small-business owner, investing money in your own business can be scary, particularly when it comes to building a Facebook advertising strategy from scratch.
And the default for many business owners is to spend a small budget and hit the “boost” button – because it seems like the easiest and fastest thing to do when time is of the essence.
But, a little word of warning – this can be a big waste of your hard-earned investment. And here’s why – but more importantly, what you need to do instead to optimise every dollar invested into this great marketing tool.
Learn, learn and then learn some more…
Just when you think you know a target audience, they’ll change on you.
At Cali Social, we never stop learning about our target audience — each piece of insightful information means we’ll need to adjust our strategy to fit.
It’s time to look further than just age, gender and location. Right down to the shoes they wear, what they eat for dinner and where they go on holiday, you really do have to know your ideal customer inside and out to be able to tap into their purchasing behaviours, their motivations, then tailor your strategy to fit.
Patience is key, especially with smaller budgets
In my opinion, small budgets are harder to work with, but this does not mean they’re impossible.
The key to mastering a small budget is having patience and time to test different methods.
If you’ve just opened your business or online presence, don’t expect to see a massive influx of sales, or conversions.
Testing your ads strategy and building brand awareness and credibility will take up the first few months before you see a positive return on ad spend.
Become a trackstar
I can not stress this one enough (and no, you don’t need to start doing laps of around the school oval),
It means ensuring you have all your r tracking measures in place before you do ANYTHING.
After all, what’s the point of splashing cash if you can’t see where it’s ending up?
To measure the success of your campaigns, tracking must be set up correctly.
From seeing where people are clicking most on your website, to whether they are adding something to cart before abandoning, it’s all valuable data and helps you to tweak your strategy accordingly.
Yes, you may be thinking “I’m receiving heaps of enquiries from the ad”, but, can you back up this with actual data from the advertisement?
Don’t juggle everything
Time and money are precious commodities for small business owners, so don’t try to spread yourself too thin.
You absolutely don’t have to be on every online platform – in fact, this is a sure-fire way to set yourself up for little to no results!
Instead, choose one platform, one goal, and one audience and go all-in on that.
It’s the same concept as audience targeting – you wouldn’t target women from 18-60! This is far too broad and you wouldn’t be able to resonate with them all!
I’ve got your back
And last but not least, one of the aspects contributing to Cali Social winning this award was our ability to work together, have each other’s back and stay focused on our goals, rather than trying to outshine each other.
We are a fully female-focused team and brand, meaning we love working with other female-based businesses to help them reach their own goals too.
It hasn’t always been like this though, I come from the world of economics in London, so I’ve had my fair share of run-ins with male-dominant teams, misogyny and feelings of frustration and isolation.
So when I founded Cali Social, I knew it had to be different.
Now, I lead a team of four empowered females who work together brilliantly, while fostering a space to let each other shine in our own respects.
