Advice For Effective Facebook Ads

Using highly targeted advertising, like that found in the Facebook Advertising platform can certainly be a huge boost to your marketing efforts.  Unfortunately, I often see marketers who are just getting started with FB advertising struggle to get results.  If you don’t understand what’s important in making your FB ads work, there’s a good chance you’ll end up throwing your money down the drain.

So, here’s a couple tips to getting great results with your FB marketing campaigns.

Relate To Your Targeted Facebook Audience

It’s called “Social Media Marketing”, so be social. – Too often I see beginner marketers writing novels during their first go at FB ads marketing.  People don’t scroll FB to read novels or even short stories.  They go there to socialize.  So write your ad in a way that speaks to the customer as if you’re simply talking to them.

Read the ad to yourself out loud as if you’re talking to a someone you just met at a neighborhood BBQ.  Be sure that’s exactly how you would tell a stranger about the product.

Picking The Pics That Work Best On Facebook – 

Colorful scroll-stopping pics are always the best.  You have to give people a reason to stop scrolling.  If you’re using pictures of yourself or family, be sure to stick to this script:

  1. Bright colors – Color catches the eye.  Use it to your advantage.
  2. Clear faces – No one wants blurry pictures from a distance, get close.
  3. No sunglasses – Letting people see your eyes gains trust.
  4. Good lighting – If the picture is taken outside, be sure to turn your face toward the sun.
  5. No more than 2 or possibly 3 people in the pic – I’d stick with two.

There’s a ton of tips all over the internet about how to create good pictures for ads.  Read up and don’t be afraid to snap selfies all over the place.  This is a business.  You need content and you never know when you may need another selfie!!!

Focus on your “Micro Ad” –

The best marketers won’t hesitate to spend 80% of their overall ad creation time on honing the “Micro Ad”.  The “Micro Ad” is everything that the potential customer will see before they hit the “… See more” button.

The components to the “Micro Ad” are:

  • Headline
  • Brief Description of Your Offer
  • Picture or Video
  • Call To Action Box (If you choose to have one)

The “Micro Ad” is ridiculously important.  Without paying close attention to it, you’re ad is a guaranteed failure.  

In the Headline, ask a question that triggers an emotional response.  Sales is all about emotion.  

You want to describe your offer in the micro ad.  Tell people up front the type of offer or what you are offering.  This will help prevent “curiosity clicks”, where people are clicking just to find out what the ad is all about.  If they don’t want an air fryer and have no interest in ever buying one, we actually want them to scroll by.  

You may be saying, “I want everyone to click!”.  Actually, no you don’t.  Facebook’s algorithm will work for you if you let it.  Getting curiosity clicks is going to throw the algorithm off and you’ll be getting thousands of people clicking on the ad and never buying your air fryer. 

On the flip side, someone that sees that you’re offering an air fryer, clicks because they might want an air fryer, are much more likely to BUY the air fryer… and you want Facebook’s algorithm to 

Let Facebook’s Algorithm Work For You

Facebook’s advertising algorithm is designed to get you the very best results.  Facebook holds hundreds of thousands of data points on each user.  It tracks user’s actions with your ad and automatically shows your ad to more people that are performing those actions by comparing the data points that it tracks on every user.

In order to get the full optimization of your ad, it’s important to do a couple things.

Minimize Curiosity Clicks To Your Facebook Ads

Curiosity clicks can be caused by a couple different things.  Vagueness of your headline and message is probably top of the list.  It’s important that you convey a clear message and offer so that interested people are the only ones that end up clicking.  This way Facebook can better tune your ad to a more interested audience and give you better results.

If you don’t tell people what the offer is without a click, your fine tuning is thrown out the window.  So let people know up front what your offer is.  The less guessing people have to do, the better Facebook’s algorithm will work for you.

Setup Your Facebook Pixels For Ad Optimization

Each step of your sales funnel should have a designated conversion pixel.  You can utilize Facebook’s standard events or even create your own custom events to optimize the entire funnel process.

The idea is to run your ad to optimize on Conversions.  First you set the Conversion to your landing page view and as Facebook gains enough data from your ad, you can move the Conversion event to the next step of the funnel.  This way Facebook can fine tune the exact people who are more apt to get to that Conversion.  Eventually by gathering enough data, you can then optimize on downloading of your “free Ebook offer”, webinar registrations, or even sales and upsells.  The more data Facebook has to use the better fine tuning it can do for you.

So be sure your pixels are setup with a specific conversion event at each and every step of the funnel.

Know How To Read The Data In Facebook Ads Manager

There’s a domino effect to advertising.  Ymore to FB’s ad data than just CPL (cost per lead) in order to get you moving when you start an ad.  

The first thing you want to look at is your CTR All.  This is a percentage of how many people are clicking anything on your ad in relation to the amount of people viewing it.  This tells you if your complete “Micro Ad” is working.  

Clear And Concise Calls To Action

Make Retargeting Part Of Your Initial Campaign

Don’t just launch an ad.  I learned this the hard way.  I threw away hundreds of dollars in ad spend before the light dawned on my marble head.  

On average it takes a potential customer around 7 views before they become a customer.  That means you need to put yourself in front of any customer that shows interest multiple times before you’ll see a purchase.  

So create 3 or 4 ads that will take your customer by the hand and walk them towards the purchase.  

There’s a lot you can do here with this, but here’s an example.  I run an ad “How I took control of my finances using this simple 3 step program and was able to save my home from looming foreclosure”.

If someone is interested, they’ll click.  By removing the possibility of curiosity clicks, we’ve created a warmer audience that’s reading the ad.  Using FB ads you can retarget the people that clicked on the ad who haven’t clicked on the link with another ad that talks more about the offer.  

If someone has clicked on the ad and clicked on the link, but hasn’t purchased… you guessed it.  Target those people with another ad “Hey I noticed you visited our site!  I can see you’re really interested in our product and I wanted to let you know that you can try it out for 14 days at no cost to you!”.  I think you get the picture. 

This is just as (if not MORE) important as you’re followup email sequences!

So plan ahead for when people move along your funnel.   

Split test like crazy

1500-1800 impressions and you’ll know how the ad is going to perform.  If the ad isn’t working, kill it.  Always have multiple ads running or at least have ad copy and pictures ready to go if you have to kill an ad.  Remember, you’re not married to it.  If it’s not doing anything for you, turn it off.

Split test headlines, pictures, offers, placing of links in the ad, etc.  Carry split testing over to your landing pages.  Be sure that everything is congruent!