Facebook Ad Consultants | Rates, What They’re Best For, and Where to Find Them

Facebook advertising has boomed in popularity as a way to gain new customers and stay engaged with existing ones. With more than 2 billion users according to Statista, Facebook’s advertising platform allows businesses to target nearly any audience in the world with seemingly endless demographic and behavioral targeting.

If Facebook advertising will be a part of your marketing plan, you need to decide whether you’ll hire a Facebook ad consultant to help create, place, and track these efforts. Some business owners will run Facebook ads themselves, but there are certain advantages to hiring an experienced freelancer to manage the process.

There are many options to consider and questions to ask yourself when it comes to hiring an outsourced Facebook ad consultant. Here we will discuss everything you need to know to make an informed decision about hiring a consultant to manage your Facebook advertising. We will touch on the reasons to outsource, how and where to go about finding freelancers, the costs associated with different levels of consultants, and different types of fee structures you may encounter.

When to Use Facebook Ad Consultants

It’s tempting to wait to outsource Facebook ad management until you’re so busy with other business functions that you no longer have the time to spend in ads manager making tweaks and optimizations. There are other situations, however, that may trigger the need to outsource sooner, like:

1. Your business is in a highly competitive or saturated market.

If you are part of an industry where there are a lot of companies already taking advantage of Facebook marketing, you do not have the luxury of slowly building your Facebook marketing acumen or implementing a trial-and-error strategy.

Since social media marketing—and Facebook specifically—are some of the best places to go today to reach the largest amount of targeted consumers, you will need to hit the ground running and work with a consultant or company that has a proven track record of success on the platform.

2. You have tried Facebook ads yourself and haven’t seen a strong ROI.

While Facebook ads are a relatively inexpensive and efficient way to get your message to the right people, it does require money and time to do so. All marketing dollars are spent with the goal of seeing a return on your investment. If the time and money commitments you’re making are not translating into sales, you will need to turn to a more proven, specialized marketer.

Not seeing a strong ROI on your marketing commitment can be worse than having no marketing at all. If the Facebook ads you have tried on your own haven’t worked, spending a little more, working with a consultant, and seeing a lot more in return just makes sense.

3. You have run into barriers with disapproved ads or blocked ad accounts.

Facebook’s advertising platform is a very specific and delicate ecosystem. In today’s world of scams and fake news, social media platforms, in general, are moving toward disallowing content they think may run afoul of laws, customs, or taste. You may think you created totally legitimate ads in a completely ethical way but because of a tiny—and often hard to diagnose—issue, Facebook may disagree.

Since you probably do not have the time to become an expert on all of Facebook’s terms and conditions, turn to someone who is so you don’t waste time and money or put your business’ reputation in jeopardy.

4. You do not have the technical expertise to run your campaign.

Facebook has made it very easy for anyone to run ads on their platform. But to run a truly efficient and successful campaign, you need to have a more advanced level of technical know-how. Creating visually and creatively impactful ads, maximizing your reach, hitting your optimized target demographic, and truly understanding and maximizing your ROI requires a knowledge base that you, as an expert in an unrelated field, may not have.

Running Facebook ads yourself, especially without the proper experience and training, can be expensive. When they’re done right, Facebook ads can drive a huge—in the range of 4X to 8X—ROI for your business. However, if done wrong, Facebook ads can be a never-ending money pit.

Where to Find Facebook Ad Consultants

Freelance marketplaces like FreeeUp, Upwork, Fiverr, and Credo allow businesses to find and hire freelance Facebook ad consultants. The good news is that when you find freelancers through these sites, you can meet them, conduct an interview, and ask to see examples of their work. The sites also have policies already in place to remove freelancers and agencies that run afoul of their rules and regulations.

In October of 2018, Facebook for Business announced the launch of a beta test for the Facebook Marketing Consultant Program. Consultants in this program are vetted Facebook marketing specialists who have proven that they know how to work within the Facebook ad system. The goal is to connect businesses to proven advertising consultants, “enabling them to discover vetted service providers who are experts in removing roadblocks and setting up optimal Facebook marketing, such as pixel deployments, product catalog setup, and dynamic ads campaign setup.”

Consultants with this certification offer project-based or hourly billing options and have a deep technical expertise in Facebook ads. Facebook itself touts that using a Facebook Certified Marketing Consultant will help improve your campaign performance and efficiency, provide expert support for all the tools needed, and be a cost-effective and flexible solution. They currently offer certifications for freelancers and agencies from the US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Romania, Poland, and Malaysia.

No matter where you find the right Facebook ad consultant for your needs, you still need to make sure whoever you end up hiring is skilled at what they do and will provide you with the comprehensive service you need. Some of the questions you should ask when hiring a freelancer to create and manage your Facebook advertising include:

• How much experience do you have with Facebook ads?
• What monthly budget do you typically work with?
• Can you share some examples of your results?
• Do you do your own ad creative, or do you outsource the actual work to other people?
• How do you track and report back on results and ROI?

Making sure you do your due diligence when hiring a freelancer is of the utmost importance. The internet has democratized the ability to provide goods and services, which is great, but it has also put a much lower threshold to entry. Because of this, you need to take extra care to make sure the people you are looking to hire are reputable and good at what they do.

At FreeeUp, each freelancer and agency goes through a pre-vetting process before they join the marketplace. Regardless of where you look for a Facebook ad consultant, do your research and make sure there is a good fit between your business and who you choose to hire to help with your marketing.

Facebook Ad Consultant Rates

Rates for Facebook advertising consultants are based on the level of experience, country of residence, and how much work they are expected to do, among other factors. In addition, there are different fees associated with finding a freelancer through different marketplaces.

For example, hiring a native English speaking consultant for a six-month ad campaign to drive more revenue to your business will likely require a higher hourly rate than using a non-native English speaker just setting up a two-month campaign. Make sure you know exactly the scope of work you need going into the process so you do not end up paying more than you need for additional skills and services that will not be of benefit to you.

While less experienced freelancers can be hired at lower rates, you may need to be more involved with ad editing and checking up on campaign progress. A highly experienced Facebook advertiser, on the other hand, will require a higher rate but not as much oversight from you. As with all aspects of your business, you need to know the value of your time and be able to put a monetary value on it so you can properly assess how much it will cost you to be more involved in the process.

A Facebook ad consultant who is not a native English speaker will range from $9 to $30 per hour, depending on experience and expectations. A native English speaker from the US, Canada, or the UK will be in the $35 to $75 per hour range, again varying based on experience.

Facebook Ad Consultant Fee Structures

Many Facebook ad consultants work on an hourly fee structure and can offer a wide range of support and services for those hourly fees. There are also a few other types of fee structures that are used in this industry. By knowing about the various options, you can consider each and choose one that may make more sense for your budget and business.

• Setup and Management Structure – In this arrangement, there are two distinct periods of your Facebook ad campaign. The first is the setup where your campaign will be developed, tweaked, and put into action. This is the most time-consuming piece of the process so it will usually cost more than the management piece.

The setup fee is usually charged up front before work is started. The second piece of this structure is the monthly management of the campaign. While managing the campaign, the consultant should be monitoring what’s working and what’s not, testing new audiences and copy, and recording and reporting back on results. Facebook ad consultants may charge a flat monthly fee to do this or an hourly monthly fee depending on how much work needs to be done in a given month.

• Percentage of Spend Structure – This is usually a structure implemented by larger agencies for larger clients and is a carry-over from the commissions-driven days of traditional media placement. The idea though is that by taking a percentage of the spend, the consultant will be compensated for additional work when the spend goes up and the client will not have to pay the same amount for less work when the spend goes down.

It is a fairly simple and fair way to go about working with an ad consultant. There is also usually a volume discount baked into this structure—most consultants setup their offer so that the more money you spend, the smaller percentage of that spend they take based on various tiers.

• Performance-Based Structure – A great structure for yourself as a client but it probably means that you are dealing with a relatively inexperienced consultant. A Facebook ad consultant will offer this structure as a way to gain experience and build an initial client base. The benefit for you as the buyer is that if your campaign doesn’t give you the anticipated results, it will cost you little more than some wasted time.

As with any commission-based system, the consultant should be highly motivated and invested in making your campaign a success. Just make sure it is very clear from the beginning what the terms of the structure are to avoid confusion and problems down the line. Depending on what you are looking to accomplish and what the consultant is providing, performance can be based on impressions, clicks, conversion rates, etc.

Conclusion

If Facebook advertising is going to be part of your business strategy, and you want to free up your time and budget, you should look at hiring a freelancer to run your Facebook advertising. There are many different options and costs associated with hiring a Facebook ad consultant so no matter what the size of your business or budget, you’ll be able to find a consultant that is right for you.

It can be a big leap to take but hiring a tried and true professional to run your Facebook advertising may be just what is needed to get your organization the exposure and customer base it needs to grow and prosper. With the right person or company, the money you spend will come back to you many times over!