The Emotional Rollercoaster of Facebook Ads

Hey everyone, this is Julie hope you guys are doing awesome. Today I want to talk to you about the emotional rollercoaster of Facebook ads.I have a lot of students and clients that are running Facebook ads and it’s so funny because they all talk to me and they all say the same thing and they all think they’re the only one feeling this way. So I thought, you know what? I’m just going to lay this out there and kind of level the playing field because Facebook ads are totally a rollercoaster.

First. I want to preface this by saying it doesn’t really matter how much money you’re spending in Facebook ads. For anyone who is only spending $30 a day or $30,000 a day, it’s still the same emotional response happens. I think the first problem with Facebook ads are there’s almost this mythical magical quality to Facebook ads that people think once they turn a Facebook ad on, everything is going to change in their business. And I’ve actually seen this happen where people turn ads on and then they immediately stop or they sort of kind of get lazy with the organic methods that they’re using because they feel like, oh, well, you know, traffic is running. That’s going to do all the lead generation for me. I can just kind of sit on my butt a little bit.

And the reality is that you should never be dialing down your organic traffic efforts. Never. Because no platform is really… nothing about this business is really as passive as everyone wants to make it out to be. When you start running Facebook ads do not stop any of the organic methods whether you’re doing podcasting, YouTube videos, blogging, Facebook groups, whatever it happens to be. Don’t dial it down because you turn ads on and you think, oh, well now I have ads.

The second misnomer about Facebook ads is that you can just turn an ad on and just let it run, right? And so I find people stressing out when an audience that was working, all of a sudden the cost of that audience, when they’re trying to generate leads goes way high. Or an ad that was doing amazingly well starts to tank and I get these frantic Voxer messages that say “well I had a great lead cost and now it’s so much higher and I don’t know what to do.”

And the reality is that Facebook ads are a full-contact sport. There’s always new audiences, the new ad, creative, new copy, different ads, whether it’s messenger ads or its image ads or canvas ads. The people that you pay when you pay a Facebook ads manager…I know you might hear from other gurus, “oh, this is the best job in the world has become a Facebook ads manager. You just throw up some ads and you push a few buttons and then you let it roll.”

But the reality is the reason that Facebook ad managers get paid as well as they do is that they’re constantly assessing ads, creating new ads, setting up different types of retargeting ads, looking for audiences. It is an active-active game.

So not only is it untrue that once your ads go on, you can just stop doing any organic lead Gen, but it’s also true that when ads go on, you have to actively and consistently manage, update, refresh, and create new ones.

The next thing I wanted to just say is that a lot of people, because Facebook ads are so easy to set up, right, the anybody can just log into their Facebook account and set up an ad in five minutes and throw $100 at something, that doesn’t mean they’re easy to set up. They’re not necessarily easy to be successful at.

I want to paint this analogy for you. Imagine back before ads on the Internet and all that kind of stuff. How did people advertise? Right? Radio and TV commercials. Especially with TV commercials, the barrier to entry was kinda high, right? You needed a well-produced video. We have all seen the horrible commercials, so you needed a highly produced video. You also needed a connection at a TV station you needed, and then you would hand your creative to an expert who would then put it on the channel. Right? But now we’ve been tricked to think that because the barrier of entry went lower, that the skill level to do it well is also lower. And that’s not true because in fact every time you put an ad on Facebook, you are competing with enormous brands like Pepsi, like General Mills, I’m just looking at all the things in my office right now. I keep talking about my deodorant. You are competing with these huge brands that have enormous budgets and entire teams that are working on the Facebook ads.

And so that’s your competition. And so don’t let Facebook fool you into thinking because it’s easy to set up an ad, it’s easy to be very good at ads because it’s not. It takes practice. So I think all of these things kind of play into this emotional roller coaster because we have unrealistic expectations from the start.

I will say that every time I turn on a Facebook ad, I feel a little bit like I’m going 200 miles an hour around a corner with one hand on the wheel. And the more money you spend per day, the more anxiety-producing it is. Because I’ve been spending about $1,500 a day on ads and when I make sales that equal that amount, I feel really happy. If there goes a day where I don’t make sales because not every day is the same, I feel a tremendous amount of anxiety because I feel like I’ve just thrown $1,500 on a blackjack table and I lost it all. Right? And so God forbid you to have two or three days like that, you can, if you are not ready for it, you’re going to panic.

So this is the classic thing that I see with my students and clients. They finish, some sort of sales funnel and they’ve been laboring over the sales funnel. So there’s so much relief and excitement that the funnel is done. There’s also a ton of trepidation at turning on the ads, right? So that’s the first emotion you might feel as like, “Oh God, what if this doesn’t work?” That’s always the fear is after all this time and energy birthing a sales funnel, if this doesn’t work, I’m just going to die. You’re not going to die. But that’s how it feels, right?

If you get over that emotional hump, then you actually set up the ads and then you turn them on and there is a little bit of an adrenaline rush there because they go into pending review and you feel like, okay, all right, here we go. Right? You’re in the car, you’re in the rollercoaster, you’re buckled up, you’re ready.

So then if the ad gets approved, you’re so excited. Right? If the ad doesn’t get approved, but that’s a whole different roller coaster. Maybe we’ll talk about another day. So the ad gets approved. You’re super excited, but you’re also nervous because you’re spending more money than you felt comfortable with because a lot of us thought, oh, I’ll just spend $30 bucks and make $300 until you run into someone like me or other teachers that are like, “no, you actually got to spend a grand here in the first 48 hours to get some good data,” and you’re just like, “oh my God.”

So you’re spending 100 bucks a day, let’s say. So you’re nervous and you’re checking your ads every three minutes. Now you’re forgetting the fact that Facebook doesn’t really know your customer very well, doesn’t really know your funnel, and it’s going to take time to optimize and if you’re not spending enough money to give Facebook the juice in gas, it needs to find your customer, it’s going to be a very, very slow roll. And then you’re going to obsessively…Then this is where the obsession starts to come in where you start to check, check, check, check, check, like every five minutes if you’ve gotten a lead or you know someone has opted in or whatever it is you’re trying to do.

The funniest part is when you do get leads right away or you get a sale right away, the high is so high. It’s like that first lead, that first application, that first sale is just like all the angels in heaven are just pouring down on you and you just feel like you can do anything. And it’s pretty common. It’s happened. You know, I’ve seen it both ways, right? Where people get sales right away or a leads right away. And then people who just kind of drags on and on.

But what happens is usually after that first initial rush, because let’s face it, if you, if you’ve done any kind of organic visibility stuff, people are going to see your ad and know who you are. And I always see, like when I first released a campaign, I get a kind of a rush of, of leads and sales and I’m like, Whoa, it’s amazing. And then silent. And then all of that, initial stuff just kind of slowly, it’s like a slow downhill. And then your anxiety goes up and up and up and up. And it’s like, what do I do? What do I do? How do I change it? Why is that not working? It was working, now is not working. What do I do? You know? And it’s like this frantic panic.

And I see this happening again and again, so many people do not have the stomach for Facebook ads when they start, they have no idea. You know, when you invest in anything like, especially cryptocurrency and everyone’s always like, oh, just you better have a strong stomach. And we’re like, Oh yeah, I’m strong.

You invest in the stock market. Oh yeah, I can ride the lows. It’s fine. I’ll hold. It’s exactly the same with Facebook ads. It’s like you make a when you make a sale, you get a lead, you’re high, and then it starts to, the ad starts to fatigue or the audiences get colder and harder and people are just not converting as well. And you have to figure out what’s wrong with your funnel. And the panic. It’s like I’m spending money. People don’t have the kind of stomach they think they have, even though they promised themselves at the beginning of this that they would spend a thousand dollars just to test their $500 in and they’re panicking.

And it’s, okay, I remind you, you said you were going to spend a thousand dollars just for data and testing. Why are you panicking? And so, the psychological rollercoaster that happens when you invest in the stock market or you invest in cryptocurrency is the same exact psychological response in Facebook ads.

So if you are struggling with Facebook ads and you’re struggling with that high and that low, I would encourage you to read up on some of the psychological mind exercises that people have to do when they invest in the stock market or cryptocurrency or things that are volatile because it’s the exact same mechanism.

It is very normal for you to have good days and bad days. You have to look over the month or maybe at the minimum over the week, not per day. And if you’re on a diet, you watched the scale day by day. It’s like you have a good day. If you’ve lost an ounce, you have a horrible day. If you’ve gained an ounce, it’s the same thing with Facebook ads, don’t look, just walk away.

And my biggest, my biggest piece of advice for people who feel completely thrown by the emotional rollercoaster, that is Facebook ads. I will say to you this, decide what you’re going to do before the ad goes on. How much are you going to spend and what is the stake in the game? And then don’t waver from it because that’s the biggest mistake. It’s like, oh, I’ll see and know how much are you going to use? How much are you going to invest? And then do that and don’t look. And if you really, really struggle, you may just need someone else to manage your ad account a because they’re going to have a stronger stomach with your money, then you will.

So I hope that helps. I hope for any of you who feel like, “gosh, my ads fatigue so faster, my audiences run out. That’s normal. For those of you who feel like, gosh, it was so…I had such a good run at the beginning and then things started to fatigue. That’s normal. For people who are like, oh, I was making a great return on ad spend when I was at $500 a day. Now I’m at a thousand. I’m not making any more profits. That’s normal. That’s called the painful art of scaling Facebook ads. You are normal. This is a full-contact sport. Anybody who tries to tell you that it’s very passive and that you can just sit on the beach and role in millions of dollars while you know you’re one little Facebook ad just churns out money for you is lying. It is not true. All the big people making millions have an entire team and this is their active job constantly. Don’t give up your organic methods when Facebook ads. Don’t get lazy. And just remember, we’re all on the roller coaster together. I’ll talk to you guys soon.