I watched a fantastic movie while I was recovering from COVID this week called Sing Street. There’s one scene in Sing Street where a speedboat is careening toward a ferry boat. Unless someone changes course, there will be a collision. The speedboat makes a quick turn and stops, but the ferry boat just keeps sailing.
If you’ve hung around me for any length of time when I’m talking about ads, you’ve heard me say, you’ve got to drive your Facebook ads like a ferry boat and not a speed boat. With Facebook ads (and ferry boats), you plot a careful course, and then make small measured adjustments to your course as you navigate the waters. You know it could take a while to get to your destination. It’s the exact opposite of driving a speed boat. You don’t make quick turns and you don’t expect quick results.
With a speed boat, you can stop quickly and then expect to be back up to speed and on course again fairly quickly. That’s not true with a ferry boat, or Facebook ads. It takes time to get up to speed, and even more time to change course. And with a ferry boat, you can forget a hard turn to avoid an obstacle.
The “plotting the course” part of the metaphor is also important to pay attention to. Half the battle when it comes to Facebook ads is planning and building a solid campaign in in the first place. The adjustments you make as you go along certainly matter, but a well built campaign with a clear objective and plan will always perform better than a few campaigns created willy-nilly, just to “see what sticks.”
If you know going in that it’s a “slow and steady wins the race” scenario, it’s easier to be prepared when you are just getting started with ads. Part of what I was supposed to be working on this week, before COVID took me out, was my new course that goes deeper into exactly how to structure your ad campaign so that you start out on the right track and don’t end up feeling like you need to pivot like a speed boat. Keep you eyes on your inbox. (Not on my email list? Sign up here.) We’re looking at a mid-February release date (assuming I can get past COVID part take two!)