Episode 2 · Strategy & Marketing
Facebook ads: are they right for my type of business?
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What’s covered
- 01:10The business types Facebook ads suit best — and worst
- 06:00What you need in place before the first dollar of spend
- 12:30Realistic starting budgets and how long a test needs to run
- 18:00Ecommerce versus service business: different objectives entirely
- 24:10Reading results without over-reacting to a bad week
- 29:00When to stop, and what to fix before trying again
Show notes
Facebook ads are neither a sure thing nor a scam, and the difference between those two outcomes is usually decided before any money is spent. In this episode Anna and Caroline work through which business types the platform genuinely suits, what has to exist first, and how to run a test that produces a real answer.
The first section is about fit. Products with visual appeal, a clear impulse or considered-purchase pathway, and healthy margins tend to do well. Services with a long sales cycle can work, but they need a different objective — capturing a lead and nurturing it, rather than expecting a stranger to book a high-value engagement from a single ad. Very low-margin products, and businesses whose customer is genuinely rare, often struggle to make the arithmetic work regardless of creative quality.
Prerequisites come next. Tracking installed and verified. A landing experience that converts existing traffic at a reasonable rate. Known margins. A clear offer that a stranger can understand in one sentence. Anna is firm that ads amplify what exists — if the message is unclear, ads buy you a larger audience for a confusing message, which is a fast way to lose money with excellent reporting.
Budget and patience get a practical treatment. They discuss what a meaningful starting budget looks like for a small Australian business, why running fifty dollars across six audiences teaches you nothing, and how long a test needs to run before the data means anything. Killing an ad set after two days is the most common and most expensive mistake beginners make.
The middle section splits ecommerce from service businesses, because they should not be measured the same way. Ecommerce can reasonably target purchases and measure return on ad spend directly. Service businesses usually need to measure cost per qualified enquiry and then track what proportion of those enquiries convert, because the sale happens off-platform, often weeks later.
Reading results is next. Anna and Caroline cover the difference between a genuine downturn and normal variance, the seasonal effects that catch Australian businesses out, and the danger of making changes so frequently that the account never stabilises long enough to learn anything.
The episode ends with when to stop. If the numbers do not work after a properly run test, the answer is not more spend or a new agency — it is to go back to offer, message and conversion rate, fix what the test exposed, and return with better fundamentals. The test was not wasted; it told you exactly where the business is weak.
If this is the constraint in your business right now, it’s what our marketing coaching is built around.
Transcript
Transcript coming soon
The full transcript for this episode hasn’t been published yet. In the meantime, the show notes above cover everything discussed. Need it sooner? Email us and we’ll prioritise it.
Resources mentioned
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