There was one time I decided to use Facebook ads to drive traffic to my blog, to see how the platform worked, and to drive sales.

See I had an online shop and I was selling an ebook in the store and other services such as content writing & WordPress services.

So I decided that I wanted to test Facebook’s ad platform to see what would happen if I drove traffic to some of my blog posts and the ebook product page in my online store.

The idea was to get traffic from Facebook, bring visitors to the different web pages and then use a live chat tool on my site to chat with some of the people that visited my site – to see if I could help them with anything.

So, in Facebook, I did the following:

I created an ad campaign to my ebook page using some of the stock photos provided by Facebook. Then I chose ‘website traffic’ as my objective and entered the URL to the ebook’s page.

I wrote the ad copy, some lines of text to get people’s attention and targeted audience of a certain age living within the US.

I entered my debit card details and submitted my ad for approval.

I did this with some two or three blog posts as well and submitted them for approval.

Then when my ads got approved, Facebook started sending me traffic.

In my WordPress dashboard I had installed Live Chat software, so I could see from another tab on my web browser, every time someone came to the site. I could see their location, operating system, their referrer, the pages they were checking my site and how much time they spent.

Lessons learnt from my Facebook ads experiment

Starting with Facebook ads is easy and if you are not careful you can just jump on it, spend some money, get some traffic and page likes but not achieve the goals you are after (sales for example) especially if you run the ads for just a few days.

So, you will need to have a good strategy before you deploy a campaign. What I could have done looking back is that:

I could have limited the number of URLs where I sent traffic. So, instead of the link to my ebook and the other links (ads) to my blog posts, I could have just used the entire budget on just 1 link or two at the most.

This way, I could test a lot more things (especially on converting Facebook traffic to an online shop into sales) and i could have had my ad campaign running a few more days, giving me more times to optimize things on my site and on Facebook’s end.

I could have tried offering people a lead magnet, a coupon or a sample chapter of my ebook to capture their contact information so I could email, text or call them later.

This would have worked well for those who were interested in my product (I could see some visiting the web page more than once) but just needed a gentle nudge to start entering their information (name, email, phone, address and payment details).

I could have stopped the ads sending traffic to my blog posts since they never led people to any product of my mine (or an affiliate product). The posts just had ads, Google AdSense.

They were really good, but that was it. I could have concentrated on sending and converting traffic to a paid product – and then used some of the money I could have made to keep my ads (especially to the ebook) running for longer.

I could have added a live chat window specific to the ebook URL and used language that touched specifically on the needs of those who were checking that page.

Like many things, you might not get it right on your first try, especially if you have not read a lot about best strategies for Facebook ads or read about the optimization techniques ad managers swear by.

Instead of focusing on numbers such as unique visitors, pageviews and page likes, I could have just concentrated on spending my money on ads and finding a way to make it back as soon as possible.

So, I could have created an email sequence / sales funnel and tried to use that to get more people to my ebook or offers from other merchants that could pay me a commission for each successful sale I referred to them.

What Facebook ads related tasks can you outsource to freelancers on Niabusiness

You can hire freelancers to do the following for you.

Write the copy for your ad. There are people who are just good with words. You can hire someone to create advertisements that are catchy and persuasive.

Ads that talk to somebody’s needs. Ads that show people what is waiting for them on the other end when they click / tap on your link or Learn More button on your ad. So, this is the first thing you can outsource.

Design a graphic. You can hire someone to create a great looking image that will be shown to people viewing your ads on Facebook and Instagram.

If you don’t want to use the free stock images Facebook provides advertisers, you can get a freelancer to design a banner / graphic that you will use to accompany the text in your ad.

Ad targeting. You can also get help with targeting various audiences, professionals, age groups, genders – men and women, interests and locations.

Optimizing your ad budget. So, the person you hire can help you get more bang for your money by helping you optimize your ads for cheaper clicks.

Someone who has run ads on Facebook and learnt a bit about how it operates can help you test different ads to the same offer (using different settings) so that you can pause ads that are not doing well and keep the ones that are working for you running.

Other things that you can get help include:

Optimizing the page where you will send the traffic before you even begin a campaign. So, you can hire someone to make a great looking sales page or landing page – using the right language to help you convert as many visitors as possible into customers / email subscribers.

Manning your live chat tool. Yes, live chat tools help a lot of small businesses convert of their website visitors into customers.

But if you are going to be available in the duration your ad is running to answer prospects questions via chat, you can hire someone to help you in that area. Or hire someone that can get on the phone with people who leave their contact information after seeing your Facebook ad.

Creating videos. If you are going to run video ads on Facebook, you can hire a freelance video producer and editor to make a few clips you can use when you start your campaign.

Hiring a Facebook ads freelancer on Niabusiness

To hire freelancers on Niabusiness for your Facebook ad campaigns, check the listings in the Ad Management (Facebook, Google, PPC ads & Others) category.

Browse through the various ad listings to find someone you can outsource your Facebook ad tasks to. Click on the listings you like and reply to them.

Once a freelancer messages you back, just give them details about what you need help with, tell them about your budget and your objective and see if they can help you.

Ask them about their experience and how much they charge for their work and then if you are confident you want to work with them, you can send them over details about the debit card they will use to fund your ad campaign. Ensure you only have money on there that you want to use for your ads.

Once they create an ad, you can take a look at and request changes as the days go by.

If you don’t find what you are looking for in the Ad Management category, place your own ad with details about what you need help with on Niabusiness Classifieds. Placing ads on this site is free.

To hire content writers, video producers and graphic designers ,check the other categories on Niabusiness Classifieds.