If you’re trying to make Facebook ads work for your business… I’ve got good and bad news for you.

The bad news is that I know for a fact that these self-titled “gurus” (who claim to know all there is to know about Facebook ads) have actually got it wrong!

Controversial? Maybe a little bit. 🙂

The good news is, if you flip it around and do the exact opposite of what they want you to do, Facebook ads actually become a lot easier!

Let me break it down in a short video:

In this post, I’m going to break down the 3-step process that will help you learn and master Facebook ads.

This isn’t just because I think it works, but because I’ve been there too and know this works!

I’ve been in the trenches; I’ve followed all the gurus and did exactly what they told me to do– and it didn’t help.

Then I did the exact opposite and went through these same 3 steps… and that’s when things changed for the better!

This 3-step process is going to take you from being a complete beginner to running Facebook ads that are actually profitable– without breaking the bank.

I’m happy to say that Facebook ads drive my business well at the moment, but things haven’t always been this way! It actually took me a long time, maybe longer than most, to get things rolling. I gave it a try for a couple of months and was met with disappointment. 🙁

So when I went through all the courses, I was given a whole barrage of information. They teach you how to reach new people and what to do to make your ads work. The problem is, there’s so much stuff you need to know.

Here’s a short list:

-What ads to run?

-What targeting to use?

-Is your offer any good?

-Is the thing you’re selling in demand?

-How do you write copy?

-How do you create a sales page?

-How do you make it look good?

As you can see, there’s a lot to begin with, but there’s even more than what I’ve listed. So what do you do?

We’re looking at Facebook traffic. People in the outermost circle are your cold audience– people who haven’t heard of you before. Then you have people in the middle who have sort of heard of you before, probably visited your website. Lastly, in the middle of the circle are your existing customers (if you have them) who know you and have purchased products from you in the past.

The gist of it is, the more towards the center of the circle you go, the more familiar the audience is with you, and the easier it will be to convert them.

Now, here’s a problem. If you’re brand new, which all of us have been at some point, you won’t have any customers or any traffic. This means you have to start from the outside.

A lot of the gurus target people who don’t have a business yet, and in turn focus on getting cold traffic–people who have never heard of you before– and turn them into customers in a profitable way.

This is like going out on the street and trying to sell your product or service to passers-by, none of whom know who you are.

As you can tell, it’s not easy.

No matter what the gurus say, getting cold traffic to convert is hard! This is especially true if you’re new and haven’t figured out the other parts of your business yet.

So read on if you’d like to find out how to get Facebook ads working for you. 🙂

1. Start from the inside (your hottest audience)

When I started with my Facebook ads, I started out the same way. I started with the outermost circle because that’s what everyone told me to do, and I wanted to reach out to a new audience.

I attempted a few times and spent a few months trying things out, only to quit later on because it didn’t work.

At some point, since I had traffic from other sources as well, I wanted to retarget people who visit my sales page. So these were people (not from Facebook) from other traffic sources, and I wanted to show them Facebook ads.

Now, these people? They are SO MUCH EASIER to convert! And since I use ConnectRetarget, I was able to get to the crème de la crème of my audience– those who have scrolled down to a certain point, those who have spent at least 1 minute on the page, those who have gone through at least 10 pages, et cetera!

The ads I created targeted towards those people were profitable right away.

“…Huh,” right?

It wasn’t just about the profit, though. For me, a lot of it was about the confidence. I’ve seen so many people brag about how Facebook ads have been working for them, which made me think it was possible, but I could never fully believe it.

When I started running my own retargeting ads, I thought, “Hey, this stuff actually works! This is awesome!”

This gave me more inspiration and motivation to keep on going, so I did more of these retargeting ads.

2. Move your way to the middle

After a while, I thought, “Cool, what’s next?”

I sell multiple products. If people visit one sales page and didn’t purchase anything, that would be an opportunity to retarget them with ads to another product. This is serving the exact same audience that already knows who I am. The only thing that is different is the product that I show them. So if the first product wasn’t a good fit, maybe product 2 would be! In other words, “cross selling”.

So it wasn’t just about retargeting anymore. It wasn’t about reminding them of the product they’d already seen and giving them more reasons to check it out, but about showing them a new product that might be something they’d more likely purchase. Again, this was to people who have already seen me, visited my site multiple times, and trust me.

This experiment went well, too!

3. And Finally… Target cold Audiences.

Only then did I start focusing on the cold traffic.

All the gurus tell you to target a new audience, and once you get that audience, you’ll need to retarget them and do all this other stuff…

If you do this, chances are, you’re not going to succeed right away, and you won’t be happy. This will make you lose motivation, and thus make it difficult to be the best version of yourself.

The 3-Step Process

This is what I recommend to everyone running Facebook ads:

Start with retargeting, and make those ads work– that they’re profitable. If you can’t make your retargeting ads profitable, there’s no point in going to the next phase. Familiarize yourself with the platform, tweak your ads, and go for your retargeting audience.

Once you finish that and things are actually profitable, then it’s time to cross-sell. If someone has visited product 1, then show them ads about product 2, assuming they’re for the same audience. If you aren’t selling more than one product, maybe show your audience a page with a new pricing option, or some other different angle.

Only after that is profitable, move onto the outside layer– the cold audience– because this is the hardest to convert.

Don’t go outside-in, but inside-out.

“Wait, What If I Don’t Have Traffic Yet?

But what if you’re somebody who doesn’t have any traffic at all?

Guess what? There are other ways to get traffic!

You could start a blog. Get content out there. Post your content on various social media groups. Do whatever you have to do to generate that traffic. Once they see your brand, then you can start retargeting.

So, to recap, start from the people who already know you. Show your existing customers new products. After that, retarget the ones who didn’t buy anything, and cross-sell them something else. Only then should you try to convert your cold audience.

Do the opposite of what you’ve been hearing from all those gurus. Go inside-out and see the changes!

Do you have any questions about this post? Or maybe stories about your own success going inside-out? Let me know in the comments below!