Should Your Accounting Firm Use Facebook Advertising

In people’s minds, Facebook advertising is either the Holy Grail or a complete waste of money. But what’s the reality of it for you as an accountant, a CPA, or a bookkeeper? 

Should you be doing Facebook ads or not? That is the question.

To give you a hint, it’s best to refer to one of our clients who recently wanted to join our Momentum Program. This is actually Oompf Global’s flagship program that enables accountants to get high-value clients.

One of the questions this client had was, “How much money should I be spending on Facebook advertising?” Having heard the inquiry, we wanted the client to slow down a bit because it was such a loaded question.

On top of that, we needed to know whether or not it was even going to work. It’s because this is one of those things you have to determine first before you decide to plough your money into Facebook advertising.

Now, there are firms that sell to businesses, meaning the firm owner predominantly sells to other business owners or CFOs. And if you’re one of them, you might be wondering if you really need to be doing Facebook advertising or not.

However, there’s one thing you should keep in mind. When you sell business to business, you’re actually selling human to human.

So, is Facebook key to scaling your business?

Your Ideal Client Is Probably on Facebook…

What you can do on Facebook is to start building relationships. Of course, not every person in the world has a Facebook profile, but the majority of them do. And what’s interesting is that people spend much more time on Facebook than they’re aware of.

So, first of all, you have to understand that your ideal client is probably scrolling through their Facebook feed. And this goes even if they’re running a really big business. 

These high-profile prospects use the social network to talk to their friends and browse their hobbies. Like everybody else, they use the social network to get information and interact. And the advertising interrupts their day and prompts them to click or download something else.

Knowing this, the first thing to do is wrap your head around the idea that yes, your ideal client is on Facebook. Then, it becomes easier to understand that Facebook groups, personal pages, and advertising work really well in your niche. And it would be wrong to assume that most of your high-profile clients would come from LinkedIn.

The thing is, we’re now using Facebook for business as well as personal reasons. 

If you’re targeting the demographics between 30 and 75 years of age, they’re on the social network. And the funny thing is that older people tend to spend more time there than the younger generations.

With this in mind, you need to remember that there’s no age limit to your ideal client and Facebook advertising. It’s not only for the young, nor only for the old, but for everyone.

Should You Do Facebook Advertising?

Facebook advertising is brilliant indeed, but the quick answer is not yet. It’s because this type of advertising should only get done when already you have a proven sales funnel. 

The first thing you should be focusing on is how to put together the funnel itself. And this is before you write any content, before advertising, and before trying to get people to buy.

It might sound icky or horrible, but what you must remember is that a sales funnel is all about the customer journey. And taking someone on that journey is all about helping them as they go. You’re helping them through their pains so you can achieve two things:

1. They start to believe that they can overcome the pains
2. They see that you are the answer to helping them overcome the pains

While you can get these two things through Facebook advertising, that would be a waste of so much money. Being a VITAL accounting firm means that you’ve proven your sales funnel before you started with advertising. And you need to prove it organically.

Here, you may wonder how to get people into conversations if you don’t do it through Facebook advertising. Quite simply, you engage in a conversation. And it doesn’t even need to come from an ad.

Customer Journey and Marketing Web

The idea is to build this big marketing web where you get people into conversations by being very, very clever. You’d be starting conversations first and stop relying on clients reaching out to you.

To that end, it’s critical to understand that we have to take a prospect on a customer journey. In other words, we’re taking them through the sales funnel. And we also need to prove that the customer journey works before we start ploughing money into Facebook advertising. 

A simple journey through the sales funnel would look something like this.

Say your platform of choice is LinkedIn. You post a hook there asking your followers if they want your ebook entitled “Five Big Mistakes Every Doctor Makes When It Comes to Their Finance”. Then, prompt the people who want the book to leave a comment under the post.

Furthermore, when you get someone to download the ebook, you take their email. You’d be using those emails to drive people back into having a sales conversation with you. And all of the stages on this customer journey have to work.

For example, if you’re posting on LinkedIn and nobody downloads the ebook, you have to understand why. Is it because you don’t have a large enough audience? Or maybe the ebook title is wrong?

So, you have to think about the offer and the market message. You have to be certain that you’re in the right market and that your messaging resonates with its needs and pain points.

Where Does Facebook Advertising Fit In?

Drawing from the previous example, if people don’t download your ebook at the beginning of the funnel, that’s okay. You need to fix the first step first because it’s a bit broken and that’s your priority.

Now, imagine if you did Facebook advertising and you decided to plough £1,000 into it this month. You put up the ebook without an organic test, and it doesn’t work. Then, you’d be wasting £1,000. Nobody would click on the ad because you haven’t got it right in the first place.

The things you need to nail before considering Facebook ads include:

• Your lead magnet (an ebook in this case)
• Your language

Here, it pays to consider the opposite scenario as well. You get a bunch of downloads and people join your emailing list. That now is your database. And if you don’t already have one, it’s high time to do so.

So far so good. 

But after a while, nobody reaches out and books a call with you to find out about your services. 

What do you think got broken this time? Maybe the people didn’t read your ebook and they couldn’t build the relationship with you. Or, is it that the emails you’re sending out aren’t resonating with your clients?

Actually, you don’t need to worry too much about the ebook. But your content might be too bland and boring that they don’t even want to talk to an accountant. This applies to all content you send out, not just the book, and you need to avoid it at all costs.

Test Your Funnel Before Building Ads

It’s not uncommon for firms to have an ebook. Only when the strategy doesn’t work, they blame the book itself. 

But the ebook isn’t the culprit. It’s your funnel. That’s why you need to test every stage of it. You have to fix each aspect of the funnel before going with Facebook advertising.

Feel free to keep testing and making changes until you’re 100% sure that the funnel works from start to finish. And if certain stages need a lot of attention, dedicate the time to repair them. This is how you’d be saving time and money in the long run.

At the end of the day, Facebook advertising only works when you have a funnel that works. This is why you need to focus on creating the funnel so that you can get people into conversations. Then, you can think about how to get more people into that sales funnel.

Doing that requires you to be really prolific with content marketing. And from that content, you get people to join your Facebook group, get a copy of your book, watch your videos, etc.

When you have all this in place, you can get even more people into your funnel through Facebook advertising.

Build Relationships Before Facebook Advertising

If you have a sales funnel that has been organically proven, you can make a million bucks with organic marketing. It’s doable, and you don’t have to spend thousands and thousands on Facebook advertising.

This assumes that you have the right market, the right messaging, and the right offer. So, focus on getting those three things right and high-value clients will start coming your way. And the great thing about it is that this would happen organically.

Then, when you prove the concept, you can start with a small Facebook advertising campaign. Try it with about 20 bucks a day for five days to see how that goes. By the end of day five, you’ll know if the advertising works or not.