Have you ever wondered how to start a Facebook ad agency with no marketing or advertising experience?
What if I told you that you could easily run your own agency outside of your normal 9-5 job and scale it to the point that it replaces your current job?
Does this sound too good to be true? Fortunately, it’s not.
Running Facebook ads for local businesses is a growing niche since small business owners are starting to realize they can run effective, low-cost ad campaigns on the largest social media platform of our time.
For many of those business owners, it’s advantageous to outsource their digital marketing. They can focus on what they do really well — running their business — while an expert (you) handles the ads.
If you’re interested, read on. You’re about to learn:
- What a Facebook ad agency does
- The types of clients you can help
- How much Facebook ad agencies charge
- The skills you need to start a Facebook ad agency
- How to find clients and get them to hire you
- How to scale your digital ad agency
What Does a Facebook Ad Agency Do?
Let’s start with a simple explanation before we really dig in. A Facebook ad agency is a digital marketing agency that drives sales or reaches other business goals for its clients by leveraging Facebook’s HUGE reach.
In order to do the above, the agency finds clients who need these services, then creates and runs effective ads.
Finding Clients for a Facebook Ad Agency
We’re going to talk even more about this later on, so let’s keep it simple here. Most Facebook ad agencies, especially new ones, should focus on specific kinds of clients.
For example, you could focus on local restaurants, bookstores, gyms, salons, or online services.
Each of these niches will have a different kind of ad system that works well. Ultimately, you can’t sell gym memberships in the same way you sell books. Therefore, it’s recommended you “niche down.”
Start thinking about what kinds of clients you would like to work with. Is there a service, field, or product you know a lot about already? Or, are you particularly interested in working with certain clients?
Creating Facebook Ads for Clients
There’s more involved in creating ads for clients than simply adding a few words, a picture, and placing the advertisement. While the steps aren’t too difficult, it does require planning.
Define the Objective
The way you start creating your ads is by finding out what your client’s goals are. These objectives will help you with the development and targeting phases of your ad campaigns.
Here are the different objectives you might be aiming for:
- Brand awareness: This is when you use a strategic approach to get a specific message out about a company, service, etc.
- Reach: This is trying to show your brand to lots of different people.
- Traffic: With this objective, you are trying to get people to click on ads and land on a client’s website. Traffic objectives work well if you have an offer and something specific you want people to do on your client’s website, like signing up for an email list.
- Engagement: Here, you are trying to get likes, comments, and shares as opposed to sales.
- Video views: This is pretty self-explanatory as this objective is to get more people to watch a video.
- Conversions: These ads are trying to get clients to make a purchase.
A couple of things you need with any objective are quality images and compelling copy. Your client’s ads need to stand out in order to be successful.
Choose the Target Audience
The second key to success is targeting your client’s ads for them. This is defined as finding the right people to show your client’s ads to.
There are a few things to consider when targeting the right audience, including:
- Location: This may matter less for online clients, but it is super important for restaurants, salons, gyms, etc.
- Age range: Really think about who will respond to the ad. For example, is a 32-year-old or a 72-year-old more likely to sign up for a hip new CrossFit gym?
- Gender: I am all for breaking gender norms, but choosing male or female often applies to running ads.
- More targeting options: These are really cool and can nail down your client’s target audience even more with options like used apps, liked pages, the types of ads they click on, etc. But, be careful not to waste your client’s money with an ad campaign that is too narrow.
Testing Facebook Ads
Once you’ve developed an ad and know who you’re targeting, it’s time to start running the ads. Most people who start a Facebook ad agency are going to need to do a little testing before landing on the perfect ad.
Keep an eye on how the ad is doing. If your ad isn’t working, make a change (just one at a time) and see if it makes a difference.
While I know all of this sounds like a lot of work, most digital marketers spend anywhere from three to seven hours a week on each client.
Learn more at The 1-2-3 Guide on How to Start a Social Media Marketing Agency
What Kind of Clients Can I Help?
Small business owners are honestly the best kind of clients to focus on. But why is this?
While big businesses have been leveraging Facebook’s massive reach for a while and have entire marketing departments dedicated to this work, small business owners lack the resources and expertise.
Business owners understand the value of their time, and finding someone to run their Facebook ads allows them to focus on things they are better suited to do.
Now, what kinds of small businesses can you work with? Here are just a few ideas:
- Preschools
- Craft stores
- Barbershops
- Salons
- Bars
- Real estate agents
- Auto detailing services
- Authors
- Bookstores
- Carpet cleaning services
- Clothing stores
- Gyms
- Music venues
- Online protection services
- Lawyers
- Lawn care
- You get the idea — virtually any small business can benefit
Again, finding a niche and staying there is incredibly advantageous to both you and your clients. You’ll get even better at defining and using objectives, creating ads, and targeting potential clients.
What Do Facebook Advertising Agencies Charge?
When you start a Facebook ad agency, we recommend you work on retainer for your clients for an entire month. This gives you time to get the entire ad creation and testing process right.
Perhaps more importantly, it also gives your clients time to see that you’re worth the money.
What you charge your customers is a little dependent on the value of customers and conversions you’re bringing in. However, it’s safe to say one client is worth between $1,000-$1,500 a month.
Because each client only takes around 3-7 hours of work a week (ads basically run on autopilot once you’ve created them and finished any retargeting), it’s possible to run ads for more than one client at a time.
Just think about what you could do with an extra $2,000-$3,000 (or more) a month.
Read more at How to Make Money on Facebook: 5 Fairly Easy Ways
What Skills Do I Need to Learn to Start a Facebook Ad Agency?
If the last section got you thinking a little harder about learning how to start a Facebook ad agency, that’s good!
Learning how to use the Facebook ad platform is honestly one of the most useful things you should do. This will involve learning about two very important things:
- Facebook Ad Manager
- Facebook Pixel
This is where most of the magic happens. Learning some copywriting skills, how to create a sales funnel, and even things like the right ad size will be beneficial.
You can search through the internet and learn a lot about how to run Facebook ads and how to start a Facebook ad agency.
We actually have a ton of information here on Laptop Empires (those links above are for some of our articles). But, you should also know about the Facebook Side Hustle Course.
This course covers the essentials of running Facebook ads, discusses how to find clients, and includes one month in our stellar Facebook support group where you can get personal advice from the course creators.
Click over to see how the Facebook Side Hustle Course will teach you the skills you need for success.
How Do I Find Potential Clients?
We cover this extensively in our course because finding clients is a big part of learning how to start a Facebook ad agency. The reality is that you’re not going to be a successful digital marketer without clients.
Here are a few tips for finding clients:
- Build your communication skills. This involves knowing how to talk to different types of people, being a good listener, and speaking confidently. Sometimes it helps to practice your pitch on friends or family.
- Reach out to business owners you know. Mention your services to friends and family, or put your boots on the ground and visit some places to meet new people.
- Be willing to hear “NO.” You’re going to get some people who just don’t want your services, and that’s okay! Don’t let it crush your spirit or motivation because there are plenty of other clients out there.
- Develop testimonials. When you first start a Facebook ad agency, you may want to offer your services for free in return for a testimonial. The client will still pay for the ad spend. While you’re not earning cash, you get experience and a testimonial. Better yet, if this first client finds value in your services, you may have earned long-term (and now paying) clients.
How Do I Grow My Facebook Ad Agency?
This is the goal, right?
Once you’ve developed a system that works well for your niche and you’re seeing results, ideally, you will work towards retaining clients and growing your roster.
One of the best things you can do to grow your Facebook ad agency is to always offer valuable services to your clients. This means:
- Running an effective ad campaign with real results
- Building trust
- Being responsive to their needs
Doing these things will help you earn some repeat customers. You can use those happy clients to do some written or video testimonials and to pass along referrals.
After you get some leads, learn as much as you can about their business before deciding if they’re a good fit. If they are, reach out with a call.
The next steps include:
- Walking them through your process
- Telling them how you can help
- Giving them a chance to ask questions or express objections
- Following up with a personalized email, giving them a call, or visiting them in person
- And, you can always generate business leads with your own Facebook ads
Once you’ve started adding clients, keep yourself as organized as possible with workflow management software like Asana.
Growing your client roster is completely doable. Dozens of students in our Facebook Side Hustle Course learned how to start a Facebook ad agency and are now earning $4,000+ a month with multiple clients.
The Final Word on How to Start a Facebook Ad Agency
The reason we love teaching people how to run Facebook ads is because of how Laptop Empires started.
Here’s some background on the founders of Laptop Empires…
Mike Yanda was a lawyer who ditched the legal profession when he realized that running a digital marketing agency would be a profitable way to earn money while staying at home with his kids. He now has a team of people and earns around $30,000/month with his ad agency.
Bobby Hoyt of Millennial Money Man started running Facebook ads as a way to earn income after he quit his teaching job to pursue full-time blogging. After just a few months, he was earning more with his side hustle than he earned from his full-time teaching job. Even though M$M has turned into a seven-figure blog (in part because he used Facebook ads for his blog), he still runs ads for his first FB client.
Mike and Bobby combined their knowledge to create the Facebook Side Hustle Course and launched this site to help online entrepreneurs with different aspects of their job.
The point is that we love what we do, and we know how starting a Facebook ad agency (or any scalable side hustle) can completely change your life for the better. You just have to be willing to give it a try!
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