An Intro To Facebook Ads For Course And Workshop Creators

One of the reasons why course creators or workshop providers block out using Facebook Ads in their business is because they think it’s expensive and it’s complicated. 

Does that sound about right to you? 

Let me address the complicated part first. With every solution, there is a learning curve. 

When I started with Facebook ads, it was overwhelming, but what I did to beat that overwhelm was learn how to use it, launch campaigns, see what worked and what didn’t and get results. 

If you think of anything new that you try, is it easy at first? 

Think about when you first tried to ride a bike. You probably fell a few times before you were able to master pedalling without a tumble right? 

Well it’s the same thing with Facebook ads. At first it might be complicated, but as you learn how to use it, you can literally change your business, just like how it has changed my own and my client’s. 

Now let’s talk about expense. 

It’s only expensive when you don’t know how to use it. 

But if you were able to put $100 in and get $500 back would you still say it’s expensive? 

If you were able to generate consistent leads that converted into sales and get predictable results every single time would you consider it expensive? 

Well this is the power of Facebook ads and how other course creators or workshop providers are tapping into this brilliant machine to increase their revenue ten fold. 

The problem that course creators and workshop providers have, is that at some point, they have exhausted their warm audience.

They’ve gotten excellent reviews about their program and they know it can help so many more people but they don’t know how to find those people. 

The solution to finding more people, is advertising. 

And one of the best advertising solutions in the market is Facebook Ads. 

If you ask many marketers and business owners, what they consider to be the best place to advertise their offers, Facebook Ads is always mentioned. 

With over one billion users and the ability to target your customer avatar using granular targeting, it is an effective means of getting the word out about your program, so that you can wow new people who want what you have. 

In return, you increase your audience size, your brand name and revenue. 

Isn’t that what you want? 

Yes?

Well before you get excited and go out and try Facebook ads on your own, let me introduce you to the Facebook Ads platform and share with you an ads strategy that you can take and implement in your business right away, to start generating leads and sales to your courses and workshops. 

The Facebook Ads Platform

Facebook Ads consists of campaigns, adsets and ads. 

Campaign

A campaign is where you set the objective and tell Facebook what you are trying to achieve. 

For example, you can create a campaign that helps you build awareness, gets likes to your fan page, generates leads to your course or workshop, sends visitors to your website or generates conversions whether it is a sale, registration or lead to your business. 

Your campaign holds your adsets and ads. 

Adset

Next is your adset which is found in your campaign, but holds your ads. At the adset level, you are able to define your targeting. It is here where you tell Facebook who your customer avatar is. 

The great thing about Facebook’s targeting options, is that you are able to specifically define whether you would like to target men and/or women, specific age groups, what they should be interested in. You can also exclude groups of people from seeing your ad. 

Ad

Next is your ad which is found in your adset. It is here where you can build your ad and add the content that people will see. 

Your ad will therefore include your images, videos, ad content, website links and tracking set up.  

When you have created all of those elements, you have your first campaign. This campaign can actually comprise a number of different adsets targeting a number of different audiences. It can also comprise a number of different variations of ads. 

You want to start any campaign by creating different adsets and ads to start testing which group of audiences and ads resonate with your targeted audience and give you the best and cheapest results. 

The Sales Funnel Strategy

As with any marketing and I’m sure you do this in your own business, you should have a series of steps in place that introduces your audience to your brand and offer, nurtures them and provides value then converts them into a sale. 

The same is with Facebook Ads. 

Your strategy should not be to place ads that say “buy my course now” or “attend my workshop now”. 

What will happen when you do this, you will likely have an increased advertising cost as people on Facebook are likely to ignore you, especially if it is the first time they are seeing your brand. 

Remember that Facebook isn’t a place where people go to buy the next course or workshop. They go there to socialise with their friends and see what they’re up to. 

So you have to approach your selling process differently. 

If you know about social selling then you will get this. 

You must be able to go out into the marketplace and provide value first, before you expect your audience to take you seriously enough to take out their credit card and buy. 

Ad Campaign 1 – Awareness or Traffic

In that regard, you should start your ad campaign as either an awareness campaign or traffic campaign that sends people to a piece of valuable content, such as a blog post or video. 

Once you have set up these campaigns, you will be able to see which group of people are taking the action you desire, and you can then save this pool of people as a custom audience for retargeting later. 

The concept here with starting awareness or traffic campaigns, is that you are able to identify people in the marketplace who are interested in what you have to say and at a cheaper cost. 

If people have watched your video for a period of time, lets say 15 minutes or they have clicked on your blog post to read your content, you can safely assume they are interested in it right? 

Yes I am sure you will agree here. 

So when you know exactly who is interested in your content, you can then save this group of people for re-targeting, thereby making it easier for Facebook to deliver the results you want. 

Ad Campaign 2 – Conversion

For your next campaign, you can now use a conversion campaign and retarget the audience that you previously saved and send them to your course or workshop offer to take them through your sales funnel. 

When you do this, you find that your lead cost is cheaper, because you have now told Facebook that you know the group of people who are interested in your offer and so they are more likely to accept it. 

That’s the strategy that I would recommend you use, in a nutshell, when marketing your workshop or course with Facebook ads. 

Things To Know Before You Start

Whilst I am recommending that you use this strategy in your next campaign, keep in mind that I do not know what your course or workshop is, pricing, landing page etc. 

These things do matter and it is important that you use my strategy as a guide and something you can test to see if it works for you. 

The strategy I am recommending does not promise that it will be successful.

Facebook Ads is great for course creators and workshop providers who have a new product or offer they’d like to present to the marketplace and it’s also great for course creators and workshop providers who have already sold some of their products but would now like to scale and reach more people to increase their revenue. 

When deciding how to use Facebook ads, put yourself in one of two categories and that will tell you generally how long your sales funnel should be. 

If you have a new offer or product that has not yet been sold, you have no reviews or testimonials for social proof or you don’t know who your ideal customer is, then it will take longer to sell your offer because you must first focus on building relationships and community. 

If however your offer is already validated in the marketplace, people know about your brand, you have sold your courses and have testimonials and reviews for social proof, the sales funnel will be shorter. 

Keep this in mind. 

If you have a course, workshop or signature program that you feel needs more reach and you know it will do well, Facebook Ads is it. 

Building out a highly convertible sales funnel for your course or workshop and sending traffic to it using Facebook ads is where you need to start. 

I go a little deeper into selling courses and workshops with sales funnels and Facebook Ads in my case study below.

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