The Art of Online Business

DIY Facebook and Instagram Ads or Hire It Out? Here’s How to Decide

• Kwadwo [QUĀY.jo] Sampany-Kessie

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You're probably wondering, when is it a good idea to manage your own Facebook and Instagram ads and when it's better to bring in a pro? 

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Jamie and I talk about the real costs—both in money and time—of handling ads yourself and how to know if your business is ready for an ad manager. It’s all about making the best use of your time and focusing on where you can add the most value. 

We break down the signs that tell you whether to go DIY with ads or hand them off to a professional, so you’re not just running ads but using them to grow your business the smart way.




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Kwadwo [QUĀY.jo] Sampany-Kessie’s Links:




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Speaker 1:

Not everyone needs a Facebook and Instagram ad manager. But you're probably wondering hey, kwejo, I went through the criteria, I can run ads now, but how long do I have to run my own ads? Versus when is it a good time to hire out ads management to somebody like you me, or you Me, you Me, either of us, either of us. She has her clients who love her. I have my clients who love me either of us.

Speaker 1:

She has her clients who love her, I have my clients who love me. So we're going to break it down in this episode. Talk about the phases, like you kind of go through, where you're running your own ads and that's great, plus how to do so without spending so much time on ads, and then at what point in your business it makes sense to hire out for a Facebook and Instagram ad manager.

Speaker 2:

Right. So there's two different things you want to look at here so to determine if you are actually ready for an ads manager. So number one, obviously, your revenue and your profit. So can your business comfortably afford that ad manager monthly fee? Hiring an expert usually starts at $1,500 to $2,500 a month, somewhere in that range. If that is a stretch for you, then you're better off learning how to run your own ads, at least for right now, right, right. And then the second thing you want to ask yourself is okay, I can afford it, but also, what's the value of my time, what is your time worth? If your business is pulling in 125 to 150K per year, then you might just be at that tipping point where running your own ads is just really taking away from your zone of genius, right, those higher value tasks that only you can do creating offers, partnerships, selling, all those things that you do best in your business and running ads is kind of like that nitty gritty thing that's pulling you away from doing those higher level.

Speaker 1:

Sure, and we all struggle with this as business owners because we came up or brought the business up, wearing all of the hats right now, from copywriting to email strategy to connecting all the things in our business, you know. So, all the systems, and plus marketing and plus for video editors, and we're Instagram marketers and YouTube video creators, and get tired.

Speaker 1:

You know it's like I can keep doing it, but listen, it doesn't make sense once you hit a certain threshold and I tend to see in my clients that, like that lowest threshold is like 125k to 150k a year in gross annual revenue.

Speaker 2:

Right, yeah Right. We did have a client once that was making over 600k a year and just couldn't let go of her ads.

Speaker 1:

He may have been over a million a year actually, oh yeah, but yeah, she.

Speaker 1:

So this is the perfect example of somebody who does their ads too long and thus is taking up brain power right when you could be applying it to an area of your business that only you can do. That would grow. That you could grow much more quickly. So, yeah, she just really wanted to keep doing her ads or hired me, but then was still giving me advice or asking you know kind of it was like are you also managing ads? Are you right working with me?

Speaker 2:

Like free up your mind. No, really, because that's like let's say you have.

Speaker 1:

And the context here, dear listener, is that, like, your offer is already selling, your business is already profitable. I would never advise you to go find well, to come to me to manage your ads. As like a Hail Mary, I pray to God, this works, sort of thing. As like a Hail Mary, I pray to God, this works, sort of thing. I do believe in praying to Jesus, but that is not a valid ads strategy. And so you want to come, you know finding an ads manager, because your business is doing well, you've grown it, it's working organically and you're adding that so-called fuel to an already burning fire.

Speaker 1:

So how do you not spend so much time managing your own ads? If you are still managing your own ads and you want to grow, and the key here is you need to? Well, okay, what kind of time does it take to manage ads? Like, if you're going to do it right, you could be spending daily anywhere from, like, I would say, 30 minutes on the low end if everything's going well up to like two and a half hours on the high end in your account, especially if you have a large budget which requires you to actively manage more. I'm thinking of one of my clients. She's at like $575 of ad spend per day. You know, and I recently have had clients like we're testing ads, as in just started managing ads relatively recently for a client, and wasn't she? I think it's supposed to be at like 1200 a day or something like this. Right, she wants to scale up to that yeah because her funnel's converting.

Speaker 1:

But that requires a lot of active ads management and it also depends too on like how easy the listeners ad account is, because some people they just have a much easier go at ads and in some niches the ads are just harder. It depends like how good, how good their messaging is, how good their landing page is, how good their offer is like. If the offer sucks, it's going to be difficult to run ads to it successfully.

Speaker 2:

Right.

Speaker 1:

And if the lead magnet also is not the best quality, or should I say most aligned with their ideal leads needs frustrations, then that lead magnet won't perform as well, so their ads will take a lot more work to test. Now would be a good time to say before I give you some practical ways to make your running ad simpler. Obviously, if you're having a high cost per lead and you want to lower that as low as possible, using the same framework that I use to lower cost per lead for my clients while still getting high quality leads, you will need to go click in the show notes below and get the course the ad testing cheat code. So so you stop wasting money on ads that don't work and quickly get to the kind of ads that do work. That's like normally $37, only $17 for you, everyone, including you you've got you deserve low leads at a high quality. So all right If your ads are getting complicated, these aren't things that I usually do because I'm more hands-on testing in client accounts, but you can do certain things, like set up an ad campaign that has campaign budget level optimization, like they're running the budget at the campaign level and they have, you know, an ad set or two, maybe two ad sets inside that campaign. Like in each ad set has like five ads running.

Speaker 1:

And then what happens in the beauty of this is that you know you pick two audiences that have a high percentage chance of working pretty well for you. That would be a lookalike building like a lookalike audience of a custom audience that you have. That's pretty valuable. Ie, if you have a big email list, upload your email list and say Facebook, give me a big old look-alike audience of like two million people that look like the folks on my email list. Or I have a big Instagram account, give me a look-alike audience of those folks. Run those two audiences. You know there's like 10 ads running, total in there five ads per audience. And then you can kind of sit and let the algorithm do its thing.

Speaker 2:

Right.

Speaker 1:

You know it's a little more hands-off approach. You do have to log in, obviously, and manage the algorithm, because it will run awry sometimes Right Right.

Speaker 1:

Also be structured in your naming schemes, like name your campaign, your ad sets your ads consistent with, like some sort of naming scheme where it's easy to tell what's in which ad set and which ad is, so that you're not, like some of the clients I've coached around in their account, like what is what? Like what's what ad is this? Which is that? What have you tested? What hasn't worked? Like what's the ad copy that's continuing to work here? I don't know. I gotta click now and look at the read through the ad copy and it just it takes time and it drains your energy right, right, which I would also say.

Speaker 2:

Your time is a resource, so one. If you are managing your own ads, just don't let it eat up your entire week. Make it a limited time that you are just kind of cause you could tinker and meta all day long, really.

Speaker 1:

Right.

Speaker 2:

But the real question, though, isn't just can I afford the ads and ads manager, but is running my own ads the best use of my time?

Speaker 1:

So Yep, Yep. You're the owner of your business and usually focusing on the things that only you can do that are very, very, very, very, very high value per hour or high return on investment, ie your time. That's the way to go. Ads management can be hired out right Among other things, like you know inbox management, you you know customer service and customer support, community management inside of your Facebook group or maybe your own circle like those things can be hired out right and yeah, so we'll end here.

Speaker 1:

Take care, be blessed, know that you got your skills and your passion. I believe your business will grow. Continue to make those smart decisions, continue to evaluate your time and see where you can best put your time, and then you can scale faster. Mastering your ads will help you scale faster and if you're in that cool spot where you can work with an ad manager, then we can help you scale even faster.

Speaker 2:

Right.

Speaker 1:

Yep.

Speaker 2:

All right, take care, be blessed, we'll see you soon, bye, bye.

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