the best facebook ads are highly effective
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Introduction
Advertising successfully with the best Facebook ads can be the difference between blue skies and black clouds.
Blue skies and you’re making bank, selling like crazy in your eCommerce store or growing your sales team to deal with more leads than you’ve ever had before.
Black clouds and you’re resenting even opening the damned Facebook app on your phone – cursing your competition who seem to be flourishing while you’re eating dirt in a ditch.
This guide will help you transform your failing social media advertising into a success story.
A bright blue sky and a breath of fresh air for your business.
Preparation
Strategy
Execution
Secrets to Success
We break down the three phases to creating hyper-successful Facebook™ advertising campaigns.
Each phase will introduce some fundamentals and include some more advanced tips to push your advertising performance to the next level.
Preparation.
Short Story: In 2007 YouTube launched the first ads on their platform. They even gave money to big brands to create ads to be shown on the YouTube to encourage future brands to follow suit. Much to the surprise of the advertisers – and the YouTube exec’s – the ads tanked. The viewers rejected the ads because they weren’t ‘native’ to the environment. Instead, they were the usual corporate style ads that get shown on mainstream TV which were jarring on the amateur video platform that is YouTube.
TV vs Social Media…Important lesson:
YouTube discovered early on that TV style ads
don’t work on their platform – and here’s why…
TV ads were designed with a different pacing and style of story telling.
They would start slow with an intro, then have a lead in before they presented the hook/benefit after which they would announce the offer and close by reinforcing the brand. Effective advertising for digital and social media on platforms like YouTube and Facebook is different.
Advanced Tip
No matter if you’re using video ads or plain text, the best Facebook™ Ads have the same ingredients. High interest early with a great hook/benefit before you connect with your ad copy, then make your offer and extend with relevant information. That’s a repeatable formula to follow.
Stats that Matter
There are 15 Million monthly active Australian users on Facebook.
(Jan 2019).
1 in 2 AUSSIES USE Facebook on a daily basis.
Strategy
Now that you’re ready to create your ads, let’s get laser focused.
What is the purpose of your ad?
Instantly you reply “To make sales/get leads of course!”
OK. That’s a good start. But it’s also worth considering if you may need to use multiple ads.
Here is just one scenarios where you might take a different approach:
You’re an unknown StartUp with a great product, but people don’t even know what it is you’re selling. They’ve never even heard of it before.
In this instance, you may not want to ask for a purchase. Rather, you may want to create an entertaining video that highlights the usefulness and innovation of your product. It’s not a direct sell – rather it’s an informative product demonstration to an unsuspecting audience. That’s ad #1 and will produce some leads/sales – but you shouldn’t stop there.
Creating Ad #2 that is shown to everyone that watched 50% or more of the Ad #1 video with a limited time discount offer of 15%.
In this scenario, Ad #1 is created entirely to facilitate Ad #2 with the side benefit of still generating some leads – though at a higher cost.
Now by using engagement audiences, everyone that sees Ad #2 have already shown an interest in your new product and are more likely to be interested in buying it. This gives you you a much better return than if you’d only shown the ad to a broad audience.
The combined ad spend still offers a great return on your investment but had you just run either Ad #1 or Ad #2 to sell your product, it’s likely your campaign would have been a failure.
However by sequencing your ads, you’re able to generate a far better return on investment because you planned your sales funnel more strategically – thinking beyond the first ad. Facebook gives you many different paths to make sales and have an impact.
Understanding how to strategically plan your ads and how to use the Facebook(TM) platform in a cohesive way will help you formulate a winning strategy.
Use the right Campaign type.
Every campaign you create will have a different
purpose and form part of your strategy.
In order to maximise your results, you want to choose Facebook campaigns that will help you achieve your goals.
Each type has different pro’s and con’s, so take the time to work out what is important for your campaign.
In the example we used above, Ad #1 could use Brand Awareness, Reach, Engagement or even Video Views. However, it’s very likely that your second ad, Ad #2 will perform best if you choose Conversions as your campaign objective.
AWARENESS
- Brand Awareness
- Reach
CONSIDERATION
- Traffic
- Engagement
- App Installs
- Video Views
- Lead Generation
- Messages
CONVERSION
- Conversions
- Catalogue Sales
- Store Traffic
Advanced Tip
Taking the time to plan out your campaign even before you create the ad will help you find success.
Consider all your options such as how you will best target your audience…
Using Interests? Using Engagement? Perhaps lookalike audiences are best? Or maybe remarketing is a great option. Then again, why not run 4 campaigns to do all of those things?
If you fail to plan, you’re planning to fail.
Execution.
Seconds….
1, 2, 3, GONE…
All the best Facebook ads quickly get the attention of your audience so they stop scrolling through their feed and pay attention.
All you have is a few seconds. That’s it. If they don’t stop scrolling, your opportunity is gone.
Focus on high impact headlines and visuals.
Pay attention to the heat map.
These are the areas that viewers eyes will be drawn to first as they scroll through their news feed.
Your first opportunity is the opening sentence in the main text area. Then the image. Then the headline itself and the description.
When creating those three components, make sure they are;
- Compelling
- Benefit driven
- Invoke curiosity
- Aligned with your offer
In the main text area you have the opportunity to write a short novel… and maybe, just maybe you should.
We split test short and long copy all the time.
There’s no one rule to rule them all – so do both
and see what works best for you.
Advanced Tip
Ecommerce –
Your product image shot should be the best possible image you can produce. Split test different image types such as the product on its own or while in use. Use a carousel style ad to show different angles/colours or a range of similar products.
Advanced Tip
Lead Generation –
Empathy with your future customers goes a long way to building affinity and showing you really understand your customers pain points. Don’t shy away from a lot of text. If you write engaging and interesting copy, your ideal clients will read it and convert.
Always be split testing.
If you’re unfamiliar with split testing, it’s simply where you create multiple ads that are different in one way or another.
Use a different image but keep the rest of the ad the same.
Use a different headline but keep the rest of the ad the same.
Use a completely different ad to the first.
This way, you can discover your best Facebook ad combinations using different components which will drive down your conversion costs and improve your return on investment.
Facebook™ handles split testing a little different to other platforms. The Facebook™ platform will favour one ad and give it all the traffic and views for a while before it shows the second ad.
This is very different to a platform like Google where ads are evenly rotated.
A general rule of thumb; Once your ads have hit 1800 impressions, you can often choose the winner. Therefore, the higher your ad budget, the faster you can split test.
Advanced Tip
Most people know about split testing ads but rarely do they split test audiences. This can help reduce ad spend waste while boosting your return on investment.
If you’re in it for the long haul, spending a little extra on split testing will always be your best option.
“Digital Domination helped us launch the opening of two new commercial projects by generating brand and location awareness utilising the Facebook platform. This gave us measurable awareness and traffic growth throughout both centres over the 4 month launch period.”