When you decide to run Facebook ads, you have two options: hire someone to run them for you, or learn them yourself.
It’s a big decision to make: do you spend money on a Facebook ads consultant, in the hope they get you amazing results? Or do you persevere and learn yourself?
In this article, I’m going to cover 5 reasons you SHOULD NOT outsource your Facebook ads.
1. It’s not cost effective for you… just now
A good Facebook ads consultant isn’t going to be cheap. Their fees could cost you thousands every month alone, never mind your advertising spend.
If you’re a business that doesn’t have a huge amount of money to spend on advertising, outsourcing your ads probably isn’t a huge priority. You’ve got more important things to spend money on. It might be a better idea to learn them yourself and save the costs of outsourcing.
It also depends on the product/offer. If you’re selling a product that doesn’t have a high value (ie, a sale is worth hundreds or thousands), it can be very difficult to run ads profitably. Hiring a Facebook ads consultant could make that even harder.
2. They don’t understand your business like you
Your business is like an extra limb to you. You know it better than anyone else. You’ve spoken to lots of customers and you know their struggles and problems.
If you outsource your ads to a consultant, there’s going to be a period of time where the consultant has to learn and understand what you do.
Now, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing… as working with a Facebook ads consultant is a partnership. They (should) know Facebook inside out. You know your business out… so you can come together to create something… beautiful.
But, it’s definitely a potential pitfall. If someone doesn’t know your business, it could lead to problems. Even if it’s something as little as language differences (US vs UK spelling, for example). Small errors can be the difference between a profitable campaign and a campaign that loses money.
3. You’re not ready for an ad consultant
Sometimes you’re just not ready to outsource your ads. If you’re a new start business, for example, outsourcing your ads is just another expense you don’t need.
When we take on new clients, we often look to see what proof they have online of people actually taking them up on their offer. We don’t want to run ads to a product that sucks.
This can get a little heated… everyone is romantic about their offering.
They think they’ve got the best product/service out there. So they think all they need to do is serve some ads to people and they’ll buy it.
It’s not that easy.
It takes time and money to get it right (right copy, creative, audience targeting, price points, etc.)
You can send all the traffic in the world to a landing page, but if the offer isn’t enticing enough, it’s never going to work. This is an example of how a Chiropractor might structure their offers.
4. You don’t understand Facebook ads enough
It’s important to have a basic understanding of Facebook ads and how they work before you outsource to an agency or consultant.
If you don’t know how to communicate with the consultant and ask them the right questions, it’s very easy for them to tell you things are going well… when they’re not.
If you understand Facebook, you’ll have a much better partnership with the consultant and therefore you’ll be more likely to see the results you want, faster.
Also, as with outsourcing anything, there’s a risk that the consultant might go away or get ill. Which makes it vital for you to understand what they’re doing. If your ads suddenly start performing poorly (happens very often!) you’ll be stuck waiting for their return… losing out on potential revenue.
5. You’ll spend valuable time trying to find a good consultant
Finally, it can take you a lot of time to find a consultant or agency that are both great to get along with (on a personal level) but also skilled enough to get amazing results.
You could spend hours and hours speaking to Facebook ad consultants, all of whom will talk a good game. You might then hire one and find that they’re not as good as they said they are…
You could end up repeating that process 10 times!
That’s a lot of time and money wasted when you could have learned how to run the ads yourself.
In fact, learning how to run the ads yourself would help reduce the time in finding the right person, because you’d know what questions to ask them… and therefore you’d be able to spot the goodies vs the baddies.
Final thoughts
I’m definitely not against outsourcing your ads (that’s a huge part of my business), but in a lot of cases, it’s not the best option. If you have an ad budget of £5,000+ then it’s maybe worthwhile finding a partner to manage that budget for you.
But for anything less than that, I’d much rather see you spend your money on learning Facebook ads. I turn away 90% of enquiries to the business, for the reasons above.
It also costs a whole lot less than hiring us to manage your ads for you.
Gavin