7 Situations Where Hiring A Facebook Advertising Expert Makes Sense

Facebook Advertising continues to explode with businesses currently spending over $8 billion per quarter. Thousands of entrepreneurs are experiencing amazing returns of $5, $10 and even $100+ per dollar of ad spend invested. But not every business owner is smelling blue roses. Some I've spoken with have written off Facebook Ads as horse-manure luck, or worse, believe it's actually a scam!

Not every business is in a good position to take advantage of expert help. This article will help you clearly figure that out. Whether you are 'crushing it' with Facebook Ads or feel like you're getting crushed, here are 7 situations where you should strongly consider off-loading the whole process to an expert: 

1. You want to grow revenue by AT LEAST $10,000 per month

This is a matter of math. If your business goals aren't big enough, you won't have enough ad spend to fully leverage the power of Facebook ads. Also, this isn't a number you're trying to hit in 1 or 2 years. You want this growth in the next 60-90 days.

Additionally, revenue goals under $10K per month are unlikely to attract the level of expertise needed for Facebook ads to make a meaningful impact for your business. There just isn't enough meat on the bone. If your margins are less than 50%, then closer to $20K should be your minimum monthly growth goal. But before you rule yourself out because you're only trying to grow by $5K, read on to find out if you should up your ante.

2. Your product or service has been validated

If you are a fan of Shark Tank, you know their favorite question is  'How much have you sold?' Why is that? Because it indicates whether there is actually a market for the product and gives them insight as to who and where that market is. Everyone starts somewhere, but if you hire a Facebook Ad agency without prior validation of your product, it's high risk for both parties.

The good news is that even if you have just a handful of sales, that could be enough to make an educated forecast on your Facebook potential. It tells us that there are actually people who want your product. It also tells us what they are willing to pay for your product. Finally, it helps assess what kind of ad budget will be needed and whether that number is attractive given your existing margins.

Also, be careful about making assumptions. You can buy into a proven business model or brand, but if it hasn't been validated for YOUR company and YOUR market on Facebook, it could still turn out to perform poorly.

Even if your product has been validated, there may be some development and set-up needed for your online funnel and ad account if you haven't been selling with Facebook ads. This is a small initial investment compared to the growth that Facebook ads can deliver for your business for years to come!

3. Relevant Facebook benchmarks show strong profit potential

Part of the beauty of Facebook Advertising is all the metrics and benchmarks we have access to. Benchmarks will give you an expected cost per acquisition or sale (CPA). Agencies have the advantage of experience with CPA's for similar clients in your industry. You might be running ads and seeing some results right now. However, what if the data suggests your CPA is double what it should be? That's where it starts making a lot of sense to bring an expert in. The next situation explains further. 

4. You lack expertise needed to lower your CPA and scale your campaigns

This might be what some consider the number one reason to hire a professional. It's not that savvy entrepreneurs aren't smart enough to figure out the technical stuff (although it is kind of a beast if you really want to dig into the platform). However, most of us can only dedicate so much capacity to something that involves a lot of heavy-mental-lifting and time.  As someone crudely (but accurately) said in one of our Facebook marketing groups recently, "Any monkey can put Facebook ads together. However, not any monkey can build SUCCESSFUL ads and do it CONSISTENTLY and SCALE them up to meet sales objectives." 

Enter what we call, the #Facebookadologist. Expertise in Facebook Advertising comes from continuous testing and optimizing with a range of skill-sets. This is very difficult for one person to deliver and have time left for anything else. A Facebook ad agency offers these skills across multiple team members:

5. The cost of your time is too great

There are two ways business owners can figure out the value of their time. The first one is based on the old formula - how much money do you make divided by the number of hours you work = your hourly rate. If you are not at the income you want yet, you can calculate your rate based on your target income.  

The second way is by actually being too busy to do stuff that is not part of your core skill set! Entrepreneurs should know how to market themselves. However, the time-suck, mental drain and sharp learning curve of effective Facebook ads is a losing proposition for most business owners.

Even if you're running a successful eCommerce store generating tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars monthly. It doesn't make sense to keep managing your own ads. Chances are you are working very long-hours. For a small cut, you can completely off load this and probably generate even more profit with a professional team managing it. Wouldn't it be nice knowing you can take off on a 10 day cruise and not have to check your ads 13 times a day?

In other cases we see business owners that are just getting going, spending hours per day trying to figure out Facebook ads, social media, blogging, email etc.   

Think about this situation for moment: You're looking for a dentist. Two ads come across your Facebook feed... they both sound great. However, you somehow find out that one dentist is only working 2 days per week, and spending the other days learning how to use Facebook ads, Google, Email etc,. Sounds a bit ridiculous right? Because most of us would never expect that a dentist needs to create and manage his own Facebook campaigns.

Well, you might not be a dentist. But we presume that you specialize in something, and it's not developing winning Facebook campaigns. Spend your time where it has the most value and let others help you where their time is most valuable. That's a formula for success. 

6. Your industry is very competitive

There are some niche businesses that are absolutely killing it on Facebook. They are selling some patented viral gizmo, fashion piece or toy (imagine if the fidget spinner inventor still had the patent!) and all they did is hit the boost button on a few page posts! However, unless you have a completely novel, highly demanded product or you're the only game in town, this scenario is not applicable. Most of us have competition. Many have FIERCE competition.

In an increasingly competitive ad environment on Facebook, just boosting posts is not going to cut it. Planning, testing and optimizing campaigns will help you find your ideal customers and set your business apart. So if you're not in a position to spend an inordinate amount of time and energy managing this, it makes sense to hire a pro. 

7. You're willing to invest in your business

Some entrepreneurs are surprised that to grow their business by $20,000, $50,000 or $100,000+ per month, they actually need to be prepared to invest in their business. If you're expecting to buy $200-300 of ads to generate $20,000 in sales, you are likely going to be disappointed.

You should be willing to invest 20-30% of your sales goal in ad spend. It may not end up being that much, but when you can invest $6,000 - 9,000 and get back $30,000 in 30 days, most entrepreneurs will jump on that kind of ROI. Yet, when some folks first learn this is the kind of investment needed, they sound as though their dream of hitting the Facebook jackpot has been shattered.

The reason we are such strong advocates of Facebook Advertising however, is the ability to scale. Maybe you can't invest $6,000 in ad spend right this second. But you can start smaller. In fact, we normally wouldn't recommend starting with more more than $1-2K because we first need to 'crack' your funnel, THEN scale it in a way that will preserve its performance. This is more nuanced than other forms of advertising, but that's a good thing. This is why Facebook advertising provides far more control over the consistency and scalability of your growth.