Why You Can’t Expect Guarantees in Business

Have you been burned by a previous advertising/marketing agency and find yourself determined to have a “guarantee” before moving forward with a new agency? Truth bomb: You can’t expect guarantees in business. If you think you can, you’re in for a rude awakening...

We hope the below article helps you to understand why we, and no agency for that matter, can offer a guarantee of specific results. 

Why Can’t We Offer Guarantees? 

The results of any marketing campaign, and in our case specifically, Facebook ad campaigns are heavily dependent on the client (the business) holding up their end. This is why it’s quite literally impossible to guarantee results on something that is only partly within our control. Are you maintaining greatsite metrics? These site metrics determine how good of aROAS you can achieve. Are you offering a good promo? Good promos help lower the barrier to entry for a first time customer, who are notoriously more expensive to convert. If you make it easier for people to buy, it’s going to cost less to convert them (thus bringing in a higher ROAS and lower cost per purchase).  

You may be wondering:Whatcan marketers control? Great question!What we can control are things on thead side, or what we call "soft metrics". Soft metrics are important numbers that tell us whether or not an ad campaign ON Facebook/Instagram is performing well (excluding what those users do on your site). Examples of these metrics include:link CTR and cost per click. The closest thing to a guarantee that we can offer is our 8+ years of experience in Facebook ads and extensive expertise in the ecommerce niche in order to optimize these numbers to the best of our ability. We also use strategies and techniques from pasthigh-performing ecommerce campaigns that we've already tested extensively. While every campaign and business is different, our experience with tried-and-true strategies allows us to generate the bestresults possible.

In addition to what we or the client can control, there are also other variables thatwe, nor the client, can't control, such as: the market, trends, competition, globalpandemics, Facebook’s ever-changingalgorithms,policies on Facebook, natural disasters, etc. 

Working With A Qualified Agency

Before you panic and think that all is lost, let us help ease your mind: you have the ability to determine if the agency or ad manager you are looking to contract is qualified to bring you the results you’re aiming for. If you find ahighly-qualified agency, itgreatly increases the likelihood that you will reach your desired results, while also understanding that itmay not happen. How can you determine if an agency or freelancer is truly qualified? Their reputation, reviews, and case studies should shed a lot of light on theirexpertise in the Facebook/Instagram niche. Additionally, they may provide an analysis of your account which will reveal how well they know the ins and outs of Facebook ad manager. Lastly, finding someone who specializes in your niche (such as ecomm or local service business lead generation) is an even better likelihood that you will hopefully achieve the results you are desiring. 

Social Media Marketing: A Calculated Risk Worth Taking 

Starting a business is acalculated risk that entrepreneurs take. Just like any risk it has the potential to fail, but it also has the potential to pay big dividends. Any decision a business owner makes should be a calculated risk; one where they assess all the possible angles, plan, prepare, and then make decisions. Investing in marketing is no different.

Marketing is a calculated risk that a business owner takes in an attempt to increase their sales, increase their exposure, or both. There are many different avenues that you can choose to invest in from a marketing perspective from radio, television, flyers, print, sponsoring little league teams, buying billboard space, creating a website, investing in social media marketing, etc. The list of potential marketing options is nearly endless, andnone of them can offer you a guarantee of a certain amount of sales.

All marketing investments are a risk that the owner knowingly takes on; some risks are more likely to produce the desired result than others. In this day and age, it is safe to say that for online businesses, investing in social media marketing is a calculated risk that is worth taking. Every business owner must understand that a qualified and experienced marketing agencywill be able to mitigate those risks and much more. As far as a guarantee, what a good marketing agency can guarantee is a certain level of service. They should have a solid track record of happy clients with evidence that they know what they are doing and are able to produce good results for businesses (case studies +testimonials). They should guarantee to stand behind their best practices and deliver the best service they can, but that’s it. Expecting an agency to guarantee a certain return on investment or specific results in a certain timeframe is an amatuer mentality. 

Say Goodbye to a Fear Based Mindset

If a business is looking to hire a freelancer or an agency it is likely one of two reasons:

1-You see the value of investing money to have an expert handle your advertising, which will free you up as a business owner to put your energy and expertise into the things that are going to help your business grow overall. You are in a healthy place and feel ready to jump into working with a professional agency, knowing there is an element of risk but that the likely benefit makes the risk a no-brainer.  

2-You think that you should be doing social media marketing due to a perception that everybody's doing it, so you should just do it. However, you haven't really thought about what it is really going to take, and you don't really know much about what's actually involved. 

As an expert agency, the latter scenario is the camp where we see more business owners looking for a guarantee. This ultimately reveals a business owner who is not looking at the investment properly. Here is another truth bomb for you: you’re likely operating from a fear based mindset: fear of losing. That is already a losing proposition. We encourage you to shift your mentality to the perspective of a business owner who is positioning themselves within their market space and isready to invest the money into a new form of advertising to supplement their business and to take that calculated risk without fear. This is where you will be more likely to find the results you are looking for. 

Approach Your Campaign Holistically And With a Can-Do Attitude

It is imperative to properly look at any marketing investment from aholistic perspective, and in terms of how it fits into the bigger picture of your business. If you're looking for a form of advertising to magically solve yourproblems, or be your primary source of revenue, it sounds like you are looking for ashort term result rather than thinking big picture/long term. Advertising agencies are understandably wary of potential clients who think that my form of advertising will be the quick fix-all for their business, and they're just going to “make a bunch of money” because they're investing in Facebook ads.Truth bomb:It is a very amatuer mentality to think that Facebook ads are like a math problem or an algorithm where all you have to do is simply invest money and it's just gonna make you a certain number of sales. 

Are short term surges and boosts in revenue possible? Of course. But muchtesting, time and tweaking are required to refine any marketing campaign;you have to be invested in the process, not the outcome.  Businesses that don't do due diligence and A/B test essentially waste their advertising dollars. Even though there are other standards and proven paths to follow in Facebook advertising, ALL Facebook experts still A/B test...and they should be A/B testing extensively. 

Be Realistic and Optimistic 

Before we close, we want to touch on one last thing. Obviously, every business needs to know what theirmetrics are to make their marketing investment feasible. E.g., if based on your metrics you need a 2 ROAS to make FB marketing feasible in the long term, that is important information to know.Every business owner should go into an advertising campaign knowing their break even points. Keep in mind that knowing this data is very different than offhandedly saying theyexpect to get that return. Be realistic about your metrics, while having optimism that your campaign will work out the very best it can when in the hands of an expert agency with years of experience. 

We readily agree that it’s wonderful to havegoals. But make sure you go into any advertising campaign with the understanding that it requires testing and there will be ebbs and flows in conjunction with that. Trust the experts have a dose of realism when it comes to expecting certain results overnight with your FB advertising campaign.

In conclusion, launching a Facebook ad campaign for your store can seem like a big investment. Honestly, it is. But once you've solidified your site metrics so that it’s great at converting visitors into paying customers, Facebook ads will be one of the most powerful tools for your marketing strategy that can take you from a budding online store to a thriving and growing business. It all starts with building a solid website foundation and having realistic expectations. Before you even dive into any ads for your business, make sure your site is performing well in order to get the BEST return from your Facebook advertising campaign. Taking this approach, in conjunction with being selective, discerning and smart about the advertising agency you hire, is the closest to a guarantee that you can secure for your business.