How can you use Facebook ads for promoting your online course

  What is the reason for Facebook ads?  

For starters, because of the sheer amount of users on the site. There are so many users of Facebook that for the majority of categories, you will not need to look for any alternative sources of traffic since the ability to find your ideal customers using Facebook is amazing. Just imagine: 1.71 billion users on the internet each month and we'll only select the ones that are perfect for your company.

Also, it is important to remember that the advertising capabilities of Facebook are highly robust. Therefore, it is very easy to be overwhelmed with the things you are able to do. I know I did when I first started using Facebook.

But, as I've discovered that it's not all about the things you can do. It's all about knowing what the best option is and particularly what you DON'T need to be concerned about. For me, that was huge comfort. Knowing what I didn't need to think about felt like I could actually figure it out without years of practicing.

In this article, I'll show you how to set things up efficiently and show some of the items you'll need to know in order to work efficiently with Facebook ads. We'll also provide suggestions on how to handle your Facebook advertising for just one hour each day (less once you're used to it) and allow you to concentrate on helping your students, and developing more classes.

  Retargeting website visitors  

First, we need to be discussing retargeting.

Retargeting refers to showing an advertisement to those who have already visited your site. Do you know the advertisements which follow you around on the web? They're advertisements that are retargeted. They're effective very effectively.

They are so effective they actually, in one example I generated a 1547% ROI on one of my ads:

Out of the 18 who initiated the checkout process, 16 purchased. It's pretty cool. Retargeting is a great way to get more email subscribers and get more revenue from your list of email subscribers. We'll walk you through both. Once you've set it up It's incredibly simple to automate.

  How do you set it up? Facebook Retargeting Ads  

To get started with Retargeting advertising, you'll need get the awesome Facebook pixel that helps you keep track of every aspect.

First, you'll need to register for to get a no-cost Facebook account for business. Facebook is making it easy however, if you're looking for a screenshot-guide, I've made one for you here. It should take between 5 and 10 to complete.

Following that, Facebook will ask you to set up an ad account as well as a payment method. When you've established your account for business, Facebook should direct you to this account automatically. My screenshot-guide covers this process too. It should take between 5 and 10 minutes.

If you have a website that is running WordPress it is easy to go through this step-bystep process for setting up your pixel

  Installation of the Faceb00k Pixel on your WordPress website:  

1. Sign in to your WordPress dashboard
2. Click PLUGINS > ADD NEW > look for the Tracking Code Manager Install > activate
3. Go to SETTINGS > TRACKING CODE MANAGER >ADD NEW > insert a title for the tracking code you're about to create
4. Log in to your Facebook Ads Manager. Click Tools > PIXELS > CREATE A PIXEL Click Copy the pixel's code
5. Back to The WordPress Tracking Code Manager and copy in the code. Click BEFORE/HEAD > SAVE
6. Click edit to edit the tracking code that you have just saved > click "In all of our websites (pages post and archives)" Save the tracking code.
7. Open CHROME browser > install extension FACEBOOK PICEL HELPER
8. Open your website in Chrome and check whether your Facebook Pixel helper confirms that the pixel is in place and running.
9. Return to the Facebook's Advertising Manager Tools > PIXELS > CUSTOM Audience PIXEL > CREATE AUDIENCE > and select up to 180 days. (This creates the custom audience that you can use in your Facebook Ads.)

(credit is given (credit goes to Townsville Social Media Marketing which also provides an instructional video)

  Who should you display your ad to?  

We now need to include those we'd like to show our ad to. As I mentioned earlier, a popular way for this is to target people who've visited your website however did not register to your online class.

In any case, the initial task we'll have to complete is make a list of users on Facebook whom we'd like focus on. On Facebook this is known as the Custom Audience.

Let me begin by showing how to retarget visitors to your site but did not sign up for your mailing list. Then, I'll explore the two other tactics in the following steps.

  How to create an individual audience in Facebook:  

1. First, open Audiences
2. Click CREATE Audience (blue button) > CUSTOM AUDIENCE > WEBSITE TRAFFIC
3. We target those who aren't registered by only choosing individuals who have viewed your website but have not signed up on the signup page.
4. In 'Website Traffic' select PEOPLE VISITING SPECIFIC WEB PAGES However, do not select OTHERS
5. Input your web address in the first box and your signup URL in the second box.
6. Enter 180 days below (the maximum permitted)
7. Give a title for your audience
8. You're done. Click CREATE AUDIENCE. It should look as follows:

The only thing you'll need to do is import the emails of people who didn't buy from your email service provider (e.g. Aweber) Change step 2 (in the steps above) to CUSTOMER FILE like so:

If not yet have an audience, you'll need to build a new audience in the exact same way as before and instead select those who have visited your sign-up confirmation page. You should also exclude anyone who visited the URL that allows access to the course. During it this way you might catch some who have not subscribed, which isn't optimal.

Another option to do it is to take your whole email list and then retarget them all by displaying your advertisement, but do that will show your ad to people who purchased too. Again, not ideal.

It's a good thing that what you've learned up to now is something that you just need to complete one time. Once the dull and overwhelming stuff is taken care of and we're ready to create the first advertisement.

  Creating your first ad  

1. Start the the Ad Manager and select the option to INCREASE CONVERSIONS FOR YOUR WEBSITE

2. Select the PURCHASE pixel (this should be green in front of it, not the red light)

3. Go to the section for audience and select the box beside CUSTOM Audiences. Choose the audience you'd like to show your advertisement to.

4. If you're looking to focus on a specific segment of your target audience, you could accomplish this by layering the alternatives below (ie. just target women). After, scroll down to PLACEMENTS.

5. Choose your options and select only the newsfeeds for desktop and mobile.

6. Set your budget and go on. A daily budget of $5-10 is an ideal starting point. It is possible to increase this after a day or two after you've determined what number of people you'll manage to reach - I like to reach fewer per day, so that I can keep it running without doing any work. Don't worry about the different settings. You can modify them as you gain experience.

7. Facebook has many types of ads available but an excellent place to start is using just one picture. Click AD in the left-hand right-hand corner and choose a single image or VIDEO IN YOUR ADS (as shown below).

8. Once you have uploaded the photo Scroll down until you select your Facebook fan-page Add the URL to your page's landing page, and add your headline and description.

  Tip: Most users will be on mobile, so make sure you look over the preview and make sure that it's looking good for desktop as well as mobile.  

9. That's it! Hit the green PLACE ORDER button and then you're done.

  What will my ad be in?  

There's a lot you can tweak as you go along but it is important to get established and continue to improve from there.

Don't make your copy perfection, try at making it as good as you can and then improve as you go along. Once you've achieved your goals, you'll be amazed at what's working better! Be sure to clearly state what the person will get by accepting your offer.

Image is crucial and can increase your conversion rate as you test different designs. When you are creating your first advertisement, do like the copy, make sure that the image makes it clear what the product is all concerning.

At the moment, you shouldn't include words in the image. It is possible to play using it as you become more familiar with adverts. The only scenario that you might make use of text it is when you're advertising a product, and it is a product with a name on it.

I like to get inspiration from other advertisements before I create my own (that does not mean steal!).  This is an amazing advertising library that is free.

I've gathered a few ideas that you can use to start. They are designed to get sign-ups to your email list. Below are some examples of the sales.

Two examples of how your advertisement can look like if are selling your course or up-selling to your students:

This is where the fun begins to increase your student population through Facebook advertisements. Since we've already done all the work you'll be amazed at how easy this is!

  Utilizing lookalike audiences to increase the size of audiences  

Facebook provides this incredible feature that lets you show their machine what (minimum) 100 ideal students appear like. It can identify the commonalities between those and find more users like the same as them. It's pretty amazing, isn't it? Of course, the more people are on Facebook, the more Facebook can optimize since there are many more information points to analyze, but the 100-person audience is the starting point.

Compared to the standard kind of Facebook campaign where you'll have spent time searching in order to find and test different methods of targeting This is the ideal way to scale your courses. This is much more efficient and you'll have a much lower amount of knowledge you'll require to get started.

It takes away what, in my experience is the most difficult for online and coach instructors as well as coaches in the field: target. The software basically handles it for the user. It's also incredibly easy to automate. We'll walk you through the process within a matter of minutes. First, let's set this up.

  How to create a lookalike audience in Facebook:  

1. Create Open Audiences and click CREATE AUDIENCE (blue button) and select LOOKALIKE AUDIENCE

2. Enter one of your audiences in SOURCE and the country that you'd like to focus on in COUNTRY.

3. Select the audience size. It is recommended to try at 1percent since the lower the number, the closer they be able to match the audience you started with. If you're satisfied with your results, you may think about testing different audiences against the one you have already.

4. Click on CREATE AUDIENCE (blue button). The final result may look something like:

  Making the advertisement  

Make the advertisement by following the steps of the retargeting section. However, this time, you select the Lookalike audience into the custom audience box.

Another cool thing that you can do is to add additional options on top of the commonalities that Facebook will discover (ie. you can select to target only women by a certain age or add additional interests or behaviors).

There's a lot to explore, I generally attempt to keep my audiences size at 200.000 for non-retargeting audiences.

  Methods to organize the process into an hour a day  

Retargeting advertisements are a great way to advertise, and once you've set things up they will require minimal effort on a daily basis.

What you need to look at every day is whether ads aren't becoming too high (it means people have seen your ad more than they should have). How much they'll see it is contingent on the budget you set for your day and your audience size.

When you observe a decline in the performance over a period of days it usually means it's time to modify the ad or pause the campaign for a while.

Every day the only thing you have to do is take 5-10 minutes checking that things are running as they should.

To test the appeal of lookalike audiences I suggest that you try two different campaigns in comparison to one another at first, in order to observe the differences and see how beneficial it is to test the different concepts.

Because the target audience is what matters most, I'll suggest you test two targeting strategies against one another.

The options for targeting are all that is related to your target and audience. For simplicity, it is possible to begin by testing the exact lookalike group of people on males vs females or with different hobbies, such as COOKING and COOKING CHANNEL, as shown below.

Each will offer the audience a distinct experience and any of them can beat the other.

As you become comfortable working with the interface, and you are comfortable running ads, you'll be able to complete all of this in a matter of minutes.

If you're optimizing each day it is important to take a take a look at your conversions, as well as the cost per conversion, and stop the one that is not performing as well.

I suggest you leave your Facebook account inactive for three days before doing anything else to allow Facebook the chance to improve its own performance. Typically, at least 3000 impressions is required before you make the final decision.

  Principal takeaways  

1. Retargeting advertisements almost always perform better than different types of advertisements. It's a great way to get more customers and subscribers.

2. The biggest issues that arise that arise with Facebook ads are with the targeting. This can be avoided through the use of lookalike audiences.

3. Lookalike audiences is a simple method to locate additional people that are like your current students.

      Aske Christiansen is a consultant who helps creators of online courses grow their email lists by using Facebook advertisements at Scaling Your Business. The author will show you how acquiring low-cost email subscribers using Facebook ads is simple enjoyable, simple and fun!