The missing link for so many life coaches in their social media marketing is Facebook Ads.
The average Facebook user clicks on 12 ads a month and there are 2.7 billion daily users, so you can do the math on the potential coaching clients you could be reaching with Facebook ads.
I’ve been running Facebook Ads for myself and my coaching clients for a decade now, and I’ve learned some things along the way. The biggest of which is that you don’t need a huge budget or a complicated marketing funnel to start using Facebook Ads.
That’s why I want to share with you, the foolproof steps to get started with Facebook Ads, to grow your life coaching business and create an endless stream of clients.
Why You Should Consider Using Facebook Ads for Your Coaching Business
Many life coaches are already using Facebook to share their services by posting and commenting, but you can supercharge your efforts beyond inspirational quotes, and posts to get your coaching business noticed.
And when you harness the power of Facebook Ads, you get to dramatically increase the opportunity for more clients and more revenue coming into your coaching business.
Facebook literally has billions of daily users worldwide, and that’s why it’s the perfect place for you to start attracting more life coaching clients without leaving home.
Facebook Ads will dramatically boost your social media efforts while getting you known as the go-to coach in your market, which will help you leap ahead of the competition and fast-track your results.
And the best part is, you don’t have to spend a fortune to get started (or be some kind of tech genius to make it all work).
The Different Types of Facebook Ads You Need as a Coach
The key to making Facebook ads work for you, is choosing the type of ads that are best suited to the coaching industry and your own business and to basically ignore the rest. (Facebook ads reporting tools can help you know the performance of your ads.)
This helps you get focused on the ads that can bring in quality leads and practice getting good at those, so you can get results faster, without the overwhelm.
There are only 4 different types of ads I would recommend you use as a life coach, so let’s take a look at those.
1. Engagement Ad
An engagement ad gives you the opportunity to show up in the Facebook feed of a prospective client, with a post that looks like it could be from one of their friends or a brand or business they already follow.
It is positively received and creates a connection that leads to action, and in this instance, that is to click on the ad and take the next step to uncover more about you and your services.
Engagement ads should lead to clicks, likes, comments and shares, and you can even use one of your popular Facebook Page posts or Lives.
They can be a video or a written post, depending on how you most like to show up.
These ads not only validate your connection with your audience, but also bring the cost of your ads right down too, while allowing you to reconnect with ad viewers with more offers down the track, even if they don’t take action immediately.
2. Lead Ad
A lead ad gives you the best chance to collect online leads that you can follow up with, either by email or phone, and can be used even if you don’t have a fancy marketing funnel.
In fact, you can get started with a single ad, even if you don’t have a website, and Facebook will collect email addresses for you.
All the ad viewers need to do, is click on the ad, and it will auto-fill their details so they can sign up for more information or your freebie.
And this is what it can look like to auto-fill your details:
3. Video Ad
The Facebook Ads that get clicked on the most, are video ads.
Why?
Basically because we are so lazy, that most of us would rather watch than read, and videos are the most popular part of Facebook’s feed.
As a Life Coach, you can take advantage of that, by using the power of video to connect with your ideal clients, and you don’t even need to pay to have a video professionally created.
Just get started with a selfie-video you can take on your phone, and turn it into an ad that inspires and gets your potential clients to pay attention.
4. Messaging Ad
The rise of Facebook Messenger has given coaches an amazing opportunity to create highly personalized communication with new prospects.
You can create an ad that asks for a comment and then have the opportunity to directly message with those who comment.
This is the perfect way to start a personalized dialogue with your audience and move them forward to invest with you.
Examples of How You Can Use Facebook Ads for Your Coaching Business
The Facebook ads you will choose to use, to get in front of potential coaching clients will depend on your objectives.
If you’re looking to drive more awareness for who you help with your coaching, you can get started with a simple Page Post ad which takes what you have already been posting on your page and shares it with those who are yet to follow your page.
You could use this to share your free group, or even a giveaway to get some traction, or like my client Hayley did, combine the two and fill your free Facebook group, so you can then show up and start sharing value.
Hayley was able to get 15 x 6-month coaching clients from her free group alone.
The advantage of a Page Post ad is that you don’t need anything other than a Facebook Business Page (this is separate to your Page Profile) and your ads account to get started reaching more people.
First you have to set up your Facebook Business Page, which you can do when logged in to Facebook at the top of the menu, as shown here:
Want to get more subscribers on your email list? Then perhaps you could share a free goals guide, a vision board starter kit or a manifesting kit, that could be claimed in exchange for an email address.
Then you set up your ad to your freebie and start growing your subscribers each and every day at any budget you choose – it can be as little as $5 a day!
If you’re looking for a chance to showcase your expertise and go deeper with your audience, why not try running your Facebook ads to a webinar or a video series – or even one of your Facebook Lives?
Even though this can feel a little intimidating, you can keep it really simple and think about it as a mini online workshop that introduces the wonderful benefits your coaching can bring, and help your viewers imagine how you could help them transform.
Best of all, you then get to make an offer that would then lead to a sale. Yep, it really is possible to do this, even if you stop someone scrolling Facebook who has never even heard of you.
How to Setup Facebook Ads for Your Coaching Business
It’s easy to get overwhelmed when it comes to setting up your Facebook Ads, but there’s no need to rush to hire someone to do it for you, as the steps can be quite simple, and Facebook also has some built-in features to help take the pain out of this process.
With the click of a few buttons, you can get started, but you need to know the best way to set up your ads, to make the most of your spend and ensure you get in front of those most likely to buy.
Facebook Ads break your ads down into three levels – Campaign, Ad Set and Ads. Like you can see below when you are in Facebook Ads Manager, where you set up your ads.
At the Campaign level, you will get to choose your objective, and you only need to worry about two.
When getting started with simple ads, you will use Traffic or Engagement.
Traffic is perfect for most ads, including those to freebies, webinars and videos – basically anytime you want to direct people away from Facebook, to a landing page or a website.
A landing page is a specific page you create for the purposes of lead capture, and it’s simpler than a website and focused on your audience taking just one simple action – usually to enter their email, register for a webinar or video, or apply for a call with you to explore your coaching.
It’s not recommended to send ads directly to a payment page for your coaching, if it’s likely those clicking on your ad haven’t yet heard of you.
Instead, you can warm them up first, establish your credibility and authority, and build that all-important trust factor that will inevitably lead to a new coaching client.
The Engagement objective should be selected for your campaign, where you want to keep your traffic on Facebook and share your posts and videos to reach a wider audience.
This will still serve to build a relationship with your coaching prospects over time, but it may not be the fastest path to get them to take action, but you can be sure when they are ready to hire a coach you’ll be top of mind.
Mistakes to Avoid When Running Facebooks Ads for Your Coaching Business
I’m here to encourage you to get started using Facebook Ads yourself and to stop putting them off. Dip your toe in the water and GO!
BUT, there are a few things I want you to avoid, before I let you loose into the wilds of Facebook!
Having run Facebook ads for a decade, I’ve seen many coaches use Facebook Ads with amazing success.
Think $3,000 coaching clients from scratch, $7,000 mastermind clients and $497 workshop sales which have really just been the tip of the iceberg.
Never mind the rising costs and privacy concerns, one thing has held true over the past decade – Facebook Ads work.
And they work even better when you avoid the big mistakes I see time and time again, that lead to so many coaches walking away from Facebook Ads.
So, let’s call out the top 3 mistakes I see coaches making with their Facebook Ads.
Targeting
It’s easy to get clicks on your Facebook ads, but you want to get the right kind of clicks, particularly seeing as you’re paying for them.
Facebook does an amazing job at getting into the hearts and minds of its users, and as an advertiser, you get the opportunity to access all of this to find your perfect people.
Not only can you target your audience based on demographics like age, education and family status, but you can also target who your ads are shown to, based on their likes, interests and behaviors.
Many people try to keep their targeting general, thinking they’ll get more people clicking and taking action.
But the bigger your audience, generally the more you’ll end up paying for your ad as the Facebook algorithm will have to work even harder to get to the right people who will take action.
So, try and think beyond the general and broad, and think of terms to add in Detailed Interests, such as authors, thought leaders, therapies and modalities, which are perfect for coaches to use in their ads.
Specifically, some great targets to use for life coaches can be found on this go-to list:
Images
When you’re looking for images to use, many coaches think they’ll need super-professional shots to use. But this is a mistake. The best images are images that look like they would be a regular snap from one of your friends in your feed, or eye-catching images, or colors that stop the scroll.
If you would like to use pictures of yourself in your ads (and why not?) some natural snaps of you are perfect, and feel free to take some selfies too, just make sure you’re looking at the camera.
Budgets
Now, I know you might be tentative about throwing your cash into the money pit that Facebook ads can seem to be…
So rather than start high, start with $20 a day for each ad set and scale up 10% of that budget, as long as your ads hold firm. That way, you keep on track and adjust slowly, rather than burning through your cash (and your confidence) quickly.
Keep an eye on your Cost Per Click (CPC), especially if it creeps above $2, and your Click Through Rate (CTR) should sit above 1.5%, at least. Pay attention to those stats and you can’t go too far wrong.
This image shows you where to find those:
Of course, there are other metrics to look at and ways to set up your ads, but the aim of this post is to keep it simple, so you’re not afraid to DIY.
If I can leave you feeling like it’s possible, then this post has succeeded.
Sustainable success with Facebook Ads, require you to start with a clean mindset, think of them as an investment rather than a cost, and accept that there is a learning curve, and they can take a bit of regular tweaking to keep them on track.
It’s a small price to pay, given the ongoing rewards you get from connecting with more clients, allowing you the opportunity to share your coaching on a much bigger stage.
