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 you should use to create the best Facebook ads for your business. Each phase will introduce some fundamentals and include some more advanced tips to push your advertising performance to the next level.
Facebook Ads 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. The early lessons learned on YouTube translate across to Facebook ads. So take note. In preparation for your Facebook ad creative, learn from what happened on 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…
Ads designed for TV use a different pacing and style of story telling.
TV ads start slowly with an intro, then have a lead in before they presented the hook/benefit. After the benefits the ad would announce an offer and close by reinforcing the brand. Effective advertising for digital and social media on platforms like YouTube and Facebook is different.
It’s a good idea to prepare your creative using this format;
Open with High Interest
Quickly deliver your hook/benefits of your product or service
Connect through empathy and understanding (good storytelling)
Make a clear and compelling offer
Close with extra info and a personal sign-off
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.
Great Facebook Ad Strategy
Now that you’re ready to create great Facebook ads, let’s get laser focused.
What is the purpose of your ad?
Instantly you reply “To make sales or to get leads of course!”
OK. That’s a good start. But it’s also worth considering if you may need to use multiple ads.
All advertisers on Facebook should start with two campaigns:
Every great Facebook Ad Account has these two campaigns in common. An ‘Interests’ campaign and a ‘Retargeting’ campaign.
Before I dive into this a little further, this is not about campaign objectives. I cover campaign objectives in the next section. This section is about campaign strategy.
Your #1 objective for advertising will be to deliver potential customers to your website. You have two types of visitors.
People who know about you.
People who don’t.
Your most important campaign/s will focus on the people who DO NOT know about you. It is here that you win the war, so to speak.
We call this ‘interest-based targeting’ and it is generally used at the top of the sales funnel. That means, casting a wider net and generating interest in your products and service.
When choosing to use interest-based targeting you’ll create what Facebook calls a ‘saved audience’. This is an audience you can customise by adding people to it based on their interests.
Interests vary greatly and can be broad or specific. For example, people who are interested in ‘Physical Fitness’ (10M people) vs people who are interested in ‘Anytime Fitness’ (1M people).
Your most profitable campaign/s will focus on the people who DO know about you. It’s here that you create your highest return on investment which positively affects your overall account conversion values.
This is best known as retargeting or remarketing. It’s where someone who has interacted with your website at an earlier date, sees your ads.
People who are already familiar with your brand will be much more likely to purchase from you. That’s why this audience will be the most profitable.
However, it’s essential that new people discover your brand. Which is why your interest-based campaigns are so important to get right.
Facebook provides a free tool for all advertisers who use their platform called ‘Audience Insights’.
This tool can be found in your business manager account. Here you can discover more interests and how different interests are connected to each other.
Using the Audience Insights tool is also very handy to see how people with different interests interact with Facebook ads.
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 Objective.
Every Facebook ad 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 campaign objectives that will help you achieve your goals. Each objective option has different pro’s and con’s, so take the time to work out what is important for your campaign.
For example: If you were to only create two campaigns (one interest-based and one retargeting) you might choose to use a ‘Traffic’ or ‘Lead Generation’ campaign objective and a ‘Conversions’ 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 campaigns before you create your ads will help you find success. Consider all your interest-based options and your retargeting options. Then implement your ad strategy and optimise over time to improve your ads performance. 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 biggest opportunities are the ad image and the opening sentence in the main text area. Then the headline itself and the description which are both on the bottom of the ad.
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 in your ads and landing page, 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. This is true for your ads as well as your landing pages.
“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.”
Mark Clohessy //
Owner @ Security Capital
WE HELP BUSINESSES MAKE MONEY USING SOCIAL MEDIA ADVERTISING.
