How to Hire a Competent Facebook Ad Consultant (for your online course launch)
Hiring someone to help you with your Facebook ads can be scary.
After all, you’re spending your hard-earned money on the ads in addition to their consulting fee.
You want to make sure they know what they’re doing so you get a return on your investment.
In this post, I will walk you through everything you need to know and questions to ask so you can hire a competent Facebook ad consultant.
But first, let’s talk about the different type of ad consultants.
TYPES OF AD CONSULTANTS
There are basically two types of ad consultants you can hire:
1. The Executor
2. The Funnel Expert
The Executor
The Executor can install the Facebook pixel and set up events and custom conversions so you can track registrations.
They take your ad copy and creative and set up the ad campaign in Facebook. They may be able to read some Facebook reporting and understand the basics of how your ad is performing.
What they can’t do: look at the results and if things aren’t going well know what you should do or try next. The Executor is just doing implementation work and doesn’t really have the skills or knowledge to optimize ads or sales funnels.
However, if you understand Facebook ad and funnel strategy, an executor may be all you need.
The Funnel Expert
The Funnel Expert is someone who you can rely on to come up with a strategy for your ads and sales funnels to help you meet the goals for your online course business. They can give you suggestions on the types of lead magnets to test, what videos to create and can advise when a piece of your funnel needs tweaking.
When your ad starts deteriorating (which happens over time), you’ll need new and updated strategies like testing new audiences or a new lead magnet funnel. A Funnel Expert is more expensive and someone you may need to keep your campaigns fresh and optimized.
Before you start interviewing ad consultants, ask yourself. “What do I really need help with and how much am I willing to spend for this help?”
Am I looking for a partner for my ads and funnels? One that I can ask for help when I don’t know what to do next?
Do I need someone to just set up my ads and not advise on funnel or ad strategies? Or are you looking for someone to do everything for your ad management and strategy?
Once you decide what you need help with and how much you’re willing to spend, here are the questions your Facebook ad consultant should ask YOU during the discovery call.
QUESTIONS YOUR FACEBOOK AD CONSULTANT SHOULD ASK YOU:
What are your goals for your online course business and your ad campaign(s)?
Here, you need to talk about the goals for your online course, the price of your program, and what you want to achieve with your ad campaign and online course sales funnels.
Your Facebook ad consultant should be able to tell you if your goals are feasible and an estimate of how much it would cost to achieve your revenue goals.
I also ask if they tried Facebook ads in the past and, if so, what were their results.
Next, this is where I get out my handy dandy Facebook ad spreadsheet and based on estimated cost per lead and sales funnel conversion rates, we talk about what the anticipated results will be for my client’s campaign.
If you haven’t validated your offer with previous sales, and don’t know your conversion rate, it will be harder for your ad consultant to estimate your results. They definitely should never guarantee you results or promise insanely high conversion rates or low cost per lead numbers when you don’t have any history.
An important part of this discussion is your ROI goal. Are you ok with just list building and not making a return on your ad spend at the moment? Are you trying to just break even with your tripwire and build your email list for a future launch? Or perhaps for every $1 you spend, you want to make $5?
What’s your ad budget for your campaign?
Your Facebook ad consultant will need to know how much you plan to spend on your campaign or your per day budget.
This can be a really hard question for online business owners to answer.
But it’s time to be honest and say your budget even if it’s low. Low budgets can still get results, it’ll just take more time to get the data needed to fully optimize the campaign.
Now, here are the questions YOU should ask your Facebook ad consultant during your initial call.
QUESTIONS YOU SHOULD ASK YOUR FACEBOOK AD CONSULTANT:
How do you troubleshoot poor ad campaigns?
Not all ad campaigns will hit it out of the ball park. In fact, marketing in general requires testing and tweaking. With Facebook ads, you need to be able to troubleshoot poor ad campaigns and redo/tweak. This may include revising a landing page, testing different ad images, or testing different audiences.
It’s important to understand her process for turning around a campaign that’s underperforming.
How would we work together? What is your communication process?
Communication with your Facebook ad consultant is very important. You should get reports on a regular basis and understand how your campaigns are performing. You should be able to contact them and get a response with 24 hours during the business week if not sooner.
Be sure you’re comfortable with the communication guidelines because it an be frustrating to not be able to reach your ad consultant when there are issue with your active ad campaign especially during a critical online course launch.
Who does [fill in the blank]?
Some Facebook ad consultants will prepare your ad copywriting, creative images, email sequences, landing pages, etc. for an additional fee. It’s important to clarify upfront who’s responsible for what so there are no surprises.
What is your experience running ads and what niche(s) have you worked in before?
Just because someone hasn’t worked in your niche previously doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t hire them.
It is good, however, for Facebook ad consultants to understand markets for different types of Facebook ads. For instance, I don’t work on e-commerce Facebook ads. I strictly focus on helping online course creators and their sales funnels. Could I do ads for an e-commerce type business? Probably, but it’s not my area of expertise.
Do you have any testimonials?
Testimonials are important. It will give you an idea of what niches they have ran ads for in the past and their results. If possible, you may want to ask if you could have a conversation with the client to get a feel for how the consultant was to work with. Ask the client if the consultant was responsive, what kind of reporting they received, and if they were happy with their results.
Does your fee include [fill in the blank]?
It’s important to ask if their fee includes the set up of the Facebook pixel code on any landing pages, is there an extra charge for conducting research (e.g. ideal customer avatar research), and fees for reporting or extra meetings.
What’s your fee structure?
Pricing is key factor in determining who you should hire.
It’s important to note the different type of fee structures Facebook ad consultants use:
1. Project based fee (e.g. online course launch)
2. Monthly retainer
3. Monthly retainer plus percentage of ad spend
4. Pay for performance
5. Monthly consulting
Project based fee is when you can hire a Facebook ad consultant for a project like a course launch. With an online course launch, you’re running several different ad campaigns. You may start with a list building campaign to build your email list, then move to a webinar registration campaign where you’re targeting both cold and warm audiences, then when your cart opens, you have a sales campaign to sell your online course. You’ll pay a minimum of $1,500 - $3,000 for a Facebook ad consultant for an online course launch and could possibly pay a percentage of ad spend if your ad spend is high for your launch (e.g. over $10K).
The monthly retainer fee is just that – a monthly retainer where your ads manager work on your ads and do what it takes to get your results. Expect to pay $1,500 - $5,000 per month for retainer fees.
The monthly retainer plus percentage of ad spend fee structure is common for clients who need on going ad management, but also have huge launches during the year where ad spend (and the work involved) increases dramatically.
For example, let’s assume that your ad spend was $20K for a course launch and your monthly retainer is $2K +20% of ad spend over $10K.
Then, you’ll pay $2,000 flat fee plus $2,000 for a total of $4,000.
The pay for performance fee structure is less common because no [good] Facebook ad consultant will guarantee you results.
The reason why these fees are so high is because there’s ton of work that goes into the very beginning of all Facebook ad projects. This includes setting up the campaign in Facebook, setting up the pixel and tracking, troubleshooting to make sure everything is running and tracking properly.
The monthly consulting option is when you have a Facebook ad consultant in your back pocket to help you with strategy not only with your Facebook ads, but with anything related to your online course sales funnel.
You set up your own ads, prepare your own creative and ad copy, but have your own consultant available for questions, guidance and support for creating and troubleshooting your Facebook ads or anything related to your online course sales funnel.
This allows you to have money to pay for your Facebook ads, but get the support you need.
For instance, with the monthly consulting option, in my service, you can get help with….
· Is my pixel and standard events installed correctly?
· Who should I target with my ads (the audience)?
· What type of campaign should I run? Traffic, lead gen, conversion, etc.
· What's a custom audience? A lookalike audience?
· How much should I budget?
· Is my ad placement right?
· What creative works best?
· Is my ad copy perfect?
· Will my landing page convert?
· What to do with my prospect AFTER they sign up for my list?
· What is CBO?
· What is Dynamic Creative?
· How do I set up a tripwire to help pay for my ads?
· How should I set up a retargeting campaign?
· And about 1000 other questions!
Good luck with hiring your Facebook ads manager!
Pin this and save for later
