How to tell a Facebook Ads expert from a novice

[drooza]

I need to hire someone, but how do I know how good they are at giving me the best chance to convert my ad spend into sales?

What does an expert know more than a novice?

And, should I spend the extra money on someone who's more qualified or will most average-to-expert-level FB specialists give me the same bang for my buck?

[adrianmisak]

Hi,

My subjective opinion: look at their answers. If they give short and generic answers, they probably don't know what they're talking about, or are just trying to tell you the "keywords" so they sound good. Experts will know what they are talking about, so will give detailed answer, without confusing you.

And be aware of someone who claims they know what will work. No one knows, and every company/campaign is different. Experts are the ones who know that the performance may drop anytime, and what to do when it does. 

If you need some interview questions:

- what is the biggest account you managed?

- what actions would you optimize the campaigns for?

- do they recommend optimizing for "landing page views"? (they shouldn't)

- ask them why Facebook and Google Analytics show different number of transactions for Facebook channel (they use different attribution models)

Depends on the size of the store. To start running the campaigns, it good enough to have someone with some experience with FB, to set everything up. You need experts when the budget gets high enough (you decide what "high" is), so you don't lose your money.

What I would to if I was starting a business and didn't know FB, I would hire someone with medium knowledge to set everything up, and maybe have a weekly call with a true expert from upwork/toptal/fiverr to audit the account for major mistakes. Hopefully that helps.

Good luck!

[drooza]

Thanks for your thorough answer!

Can you please explain this part?

- what actions would you optimize the campaigns for?

[adrianmisak]

When you're creating ads in Facebook, at one point Facebook will ask you what is your end goal with the ad. Are you trying to drive traffic to the website, sell a product, drive brand awareness, get app installs...

If you are running an ecommerce shop, you should only be running campaigns optimized for conversions, where conversions are related to commerce (like purchases). Some people (even FB account managers) would suggest running "traffic" or "landing page views" campaigns to drive up traffic on your website. The idea would be to increase traffic on your website. And these campaign work in the sense that you get a lot of cheap traffic. But this traffic is of low quality usually, as people don't spend a lot of time on the website and they don't purchase. When you optimize for conversions, then Facebook knows it needs to find someone who will actually buy something. With "traffic" campaigns, it only needs to worry about bringing someone to the web, it doesn't care about the quality.

[takers-novadigi]

The above is true to an extent and depends on what data your store has. If you have a brand new store with no data, running a conversion ad doesn't help because fb doesn't know what a conversion looks like to attract for your store. You have to have roughly 50 conversions a week to be able to optimize effectively.

If you have existing data and existing purchases then yes, running conversion ads will be the best option once you have that data. Building an audience off of conversions is your best bet and creating look a like audiences from your recent conversions or existing customer list.

But back to knowing who to hire. The best thing is to ask for details and prior experience in relation to e-commerce advertising. It does have a lot to do with what you are selling. Example being, if you are selling dog and cat toys, that is easy to do with FB advertising as the interest volumes are so high. If you are trying to sell a product to other business owners than FB advertising may not be the best option as it is much harder to do. 

If you are going to look for someone pick someone that isn't trying to sell you as soon as you get on the phone with them. The good marketers will listen and understand what your problems are before pitching prices as soon as you get on the phone.

[drooza]

Thanks for your insightful answer.

I am a brand new store selling furniture. How do you recommend I go about it? 

I understand that there will be some money spent on 'testing' for 2-3 months but I want that money to be used as effectively as possible.

[takers-novadigi]

My recommendation is to see what 3 competitors are and research what they do. Do they do google ad words or shopping campaigns, do they do Facebook and Instagram ads, do they do YouTube ads, do they do SEO. etc.. Do a chart of what your competitors are doing and compare them out and it will give you an idea of what you need to do as well as well. Any good marketer you speak with will ask who your competitors are so they can do analysis on what needs to happen to get you in the same category.