Facebook Advertising For Accountants

As we begin a new year, I have found myself looking back to all of the wonderful sessions I attended at QuickBooks® Connect 2016. I have never been to such a powerful event in my career, and I loved it.

I also have been thinking about the session I gave about Facebook (FB) advertising and wanted to stress a few points, as many of the attendees and others have wanted some clarification on how to use this medium successfully.

1. You must have a conversion funnel that works before you ever turn on FB ads. In order to profit from FB, you must have a process that converts prospects into clients. Too often, I see accountants turn on their ads before they have tested if their funnel converts. Let’s say you are starting with a blog post you want a prospect to read. The first question you should be asking is, “What do I want this prospect to do after they read this?” Then ask, “How do I guide the prospect to do that in this blog?”

Then, you must test this idea to see if it works. I mean you have to get traffic to your blog, see if they read it and see if they do what you want them to. If you turn on your ads before you test all this, you will simply waste money on an untested funnel.

2. Audience is everything. Let’s say you do have a funnel that brings in the conversions. If you show that funnel to prospects who have no use for your service, then all is lost. You must spend time making sure that the audience that sees your ads is one that will also have a need for your service.

This means building an email list of customers, prospects, people who have read your blog and any other groups that you know need your work, and creating a custom audience of those users in FB. Then, FB will find other users like them for you. But, junk in means junk out, and if you don’t show FB the type of folks that need you, their efforts will be a waste of time when they send you even more people, like the junk you put in.

3. You must be very patient and test everything. Advertising is hard. As accountants, we think our job is hard, but let me tell you, I would rather have my life depend on a tax return than if a campaign works or converts. I have never done anything so hard in my career, honestly.

This means you must be vigilant, and you must stay patient. The best FB gurus I have talked to and researched are very patient with their work and run into roadblocks at every corner. You must also stay focused and keep moving forward. If a tactic is not working, don’t just keep wasting time on it; change it and try something new. Find what works.

In the end, you will see that your hard work pays off and you will get those prospects converting and making you money. DO NOT QUIT … Quitters will never find wealth; instead, they will make excuses their whole life about how this is not fair, or that was not their fault. Quitters are failure.

So, keep working, keep pushing, keep making things better and better, and one day, you will look back and say, “Wow, that FB thing was hard, but just look at my bank account now!”

Editor’s note: Download the slides from Christopher Ragain’s QuickBooks Connect session here. This article was originally published on www.firmofthefuture.com.