DIY-ing your own ads is a brave step in itself and you don’t want to feel as if you have wasted your money on self-promotion. Then there’s the tracking – what means what? Which numbers should I prioritise etc? 

Know what you’re measuring 

Before you decide how to advertise yourself, it’s essential that you determine what it is you want your ad to do. Are you trying to sell more of your product? Get more app downloads? More clients, streams?  Determining the goal of your ad campaign is the first step in creating a winning strategy with a high ROI. It is much easier to see if your ads are actually working or not when you know exactly what you are measuring. 

Invest in cookies

Apple’s new iOS14 update changes who we can reach with ads and how conversions are measured, we now need to verify our domain and then get our pixel set up on our website. Facebook Pixel is a great version of a cookie for the self-employed. It gives you the power to create ads that retarget to website visitors, those who have visited specific pages on your website and you can even select a time frame of when they have visited your website.

Set up Reporting Columns 

Looking at setting up reporting columns is the way to understand what your ROI is. You can use different trackers such Facebook Ads Manager as a way to do this. It’s worth checking in on your ads a few times a week to let them work their magic. The magic balance is consistency with experimentation – give your ads time to work but if nothing has happened after several months, it’s worth experimenting with some new tactics. 

Once you have everything in place and know how to read your reporting columns you can finally determine the return you’re getting from your ads. You have the ability to turn off ads that aren’t performing well. Then your ad spend starts going to the ads that are working after you see exactly what the outcome of your ads is.