Run Facebook Ads That Convert
Who uses facebook advertising
The aim of any advertiser is to get adverts to reach as many people as possible, create leads, and convert them to paying customers. The three important words here are reach, lead, and convert.
In the recent years, Facebook has become the go-to medium for advertisers due to its potential to reach so many people. The platform is reported to have an active monthly user base of about 2.74 billion people. Which makes it the largest singular assemblage of people globally.
With such a huge user base, Facebook already solves one problem for advertisers – reaching out to people. Potentially, it also helps create leads and convert them. We use the word potentially since although you can leverage Facebook’s huge user base, its advertising mechanism doesn’t automatically create leads or convert them into paying customers. This depends on the quality of your ad, the irresistibility of your offer, and the efficiency of your ad setup.
And while many people use Facebook to create ads, not all are successful, experiencing little to no return. A survey has addressed this by publishing that 62 percent of small business owners claim no success with Facebook ads.
It’s not Facebook’s fault that your ads don’t convert, neither is your niche that bad because someone somewhere, in your niche, makes good bucks through Facebook ads. You’re most likely not reaching out to the right people or creating the right leads. Low conversion comes as a result. But don’t worry, we got your back. We created these guides to give you the definitive steps to help you scale your Facebook ads and convert.
Why Facebook Ads (here's why you shouldn't give up just yet)
With over 1.8 billion daily users, there’s no doubt that Facebook is the largest and one of the most diverse virtual communities around. Which makes it a lethal marketing tool for any business, whether small and home-based or large businesses. No wonder more and more ads keep popping up whenever you surf the site’s interface. If it wasn’t good enough, the ads would’ve stopped coming in.
A recent report asserts that Facebook has an advertising audience of about 2.14 billion people. This represents the number of users capable of reacting to an ad. Also, an average Facebook user clicks on 12 ads every month. I don’t think there’s a platform with better reach.
We could go on and on with the statistics, but one thing is absolutely clear: Facebook remains a strong tool for effective ads regardless of your previous experiences.
Definitive Tips To Create Ads That Convert
We had earlier stated three vital expectations of every advertiser:
- Reach
- Lead
- Convert
We’ll categorize the tips under these expectations for easier understanding.
Reach
The first thing you’d want to get right when advertising on Facebook is the ability to reach out to as many people as possible. We already said that 1.8 billion people on average visit Facebook daily. Now, imagine if you can reach out to just a tiny fraction of that number – that’s when you’re nearing success.
However, these people won’t be online 24/7, and it may not be cost-effective to leave the ad running all through the day. You’d want to run ads at specific times when more people are online and easy to reach. This brings us to the Ad Schedule.
Ad Scheduling / Timing
There are lots of suggestions all over the internet as to when to run a Facebook ad – but then, what works for Jack may not work for Jill. And what works for a tech ad may not work for an apparel and accessories ad. Mind the time zones and cultural differences, they influence when people are online.
In a report, an eBay expert stated that the best time for mobile shopping was between 11 am and 1 pm. At the same time, an unreported interview with a realtor revealed that real estate ads showed the best engagements during weekends. These are contradictory, but of course, understandably different industries.
Ad timing should be subjective, yet research-informed. Don’t choose the time based on what you feel – do proper research instead. To find out the best time to run your ad, you must first have proper knowledge of your business and potential clients. For instance, running an ad for stay-at-home mums would be more effective when they are most likely to be free and online, which may be late mornings to midday (when the kids are at school). This is contrary to the popular notion that ads work best in the early hours or late evenings.
You, however, need more informed statistics to guide you. With similar ads done before, all you need to do is go back to the statistics and report. Facebook always retains data on your previous ads, so you need to head to the ads manager and you’ll be good. Take note of the following points:
- The time and days you had the highest engagement.
- The time and days with highest sales or inquiries.
This can be a veritable guide for scheduling your future ads.
If you have not done an ad before, you could research to find out if others in your niche have published such information. Or, you can use indirect research to get what you need. For instance, you can ask “when are stay-at-home mums more likely to surf the internet or log into Facebook.”
Reaching out is not the ultimate goal – rather, it should be among the first things to have in mind. It gives insights into some massive possibilities in Facebook advertising.
Lead
Now you know about the potential reach of advertising on Facebook and how best to maximize it best, so now we’ll talk about generating quality leads from those reached.
When you generate leads, you haven’t converted yet, but you’re almost there. Whether you can generate leads and handle them determines if the ad converts and becomes successful. Before moving further, let’s quickly differentiate the reach from the lead.
Reaching out means you’ve successfully shared your ad with a large audience on Facebook, and many can see it at a fitting time. Leads mean that your ads caught the attention of those reached, and they are now interested in your offer. All of these, including the third phase, which we would discuss shortly, make up the process of creating Facebook ads that convert.
Here are the tips to help you generate quality leads.
Targeting
Facebook’s huge user base presents is highly diverse. You’ll find people of different ethnic backgrounds, cultures, professions, religions, interests, and much more. It would be unproductive to run ads spontaneously without targeting. That’s relying on luck to generate leads and paying customers right there.
Facebook targeting exists so that you can tweak ads to display only to a selected audience tied by the same interests, profession, age, gender, or simply those more likely to respond to your ad. For instance, if you sell children’s toys, you’d target young parents; if you sell medical equipment, you’d target those medical experts. It’s common sense that a vegetarian wouldn’t be interested in non-vegetarian cuisine and delicacies. Thus, a restaurant looking to create ads would rather exclude certain interests from seeing the ad, leaving room for more quality leads and potentially, more conversion.
A good Facebook ad is not a feature of luck or magic. Why do you think you mostly see ads of things you’re interested in? It’s targeting, not a coincidence. For instance, you can have detailed targeting, like men over 35 years that live in Ontario, Canada, are single and interested in a relationship.
Facebook targeting works so well that it enables you to streamline your ad to your chosen audience based on certain demographics. Here are some of them:
- Gender: you can target only males or females, or both.
- Age: targeting based on age enables you to set people of a certain age range as your preferred audience. For instance, 18-35.
- Location: it’s inefficient to select a broad location for an event or service offered around a particular place. With location targeting, you can limit those seeing your ad to a certain city, state, country – or wider.
- Marital status: Yes, this also applies, and you may target people based on it.
- Interests: Setting up a Facebook profile entails adding your interests. Facebook uses them for ad targeting; hence, an advertiser can take advantage of this to target ads based on interest.
Other demographics and factors that can be used for detailed targeting include:
- Life Events & Profession
- Education level, etc.
The timing of your ad becomes inconsequential if you target the wrong audience.
Focus On Your Message
In advertising, content is key. With it done right, you can achieve more success than you can imagine. Content, in this context, refers to your message and its delivery. If your ad copy or message is not captivating and convincing enough, then your targeting may not yield any results.
Your ad message should connect with your audience and keep it interested. People only react to what they find interesting or useful. Most times, language and word choice determine what’s of interest to people.
In a social experiment, two ads of the same products with separate ad copy were displayed to the same audience at different times. The result showed that the audience that claimed no interest in the product suddenly became interested and bought it after the second ad. This happened because the second ad had a more captivating message. This experiment proved the importance of ad copy.
Here are some tips to help you write better and convert Facebook ads.
Captivating Caption: This could be a question, rhetoric, fact, or simply something catchy. It has to be short and concise. You can draft a few options and seek the opinion of colleagues and friends to help you decide on what works better.
In the example above, the caption is quite catchy: “This just made going keto so much easier!” Imagine if it was “a very good keto cereal” – boring, right? Messages should be short, simple, and descriptive. Short and descriptive sounds contradictory, but it’s best to fit the vital information that attracts your audience in a few lines. Keep your message simple – short, but sweet. It should address the needs and wants, or at best arouse curiosity to find out more. With Magic Spoon Cereal, we can see a brief, but informative description that drives a buying decision.
- 11g of Protein per Bowl
- 3g of Net Carbs
- Tastes like Magic.
Short, direct, simple, and informative.
Fitting Media: Visuals appeal to the mind and highlight the ad’s message .
- Never create an ad without accompanying media. More importantly, a relative media. It can be a picture, a group of them, or a video. Don’t just add a visual for the sake of it – it should be relative to the message or describe the ad’s content.
- A Definitive Call to Action: using definitive phrases as a call-to-action button is mostly effective. Please, don’t leave them with a choice of words that implies thinking. Use words like “Shop Now,” “Book Now,” “Learn More,” or “Send a Message” – this depends on the action you want your audience to take.
Convert
After getting a good lead, the final step is to ensure that it converts. Without a good lead and a definitive call to action, your audience won’t buy. Here’s how to enhance the conversion process:
- A Detailed Landing Page: If your ad is captivating, your audience will view your landing page. That’s a good job done thus far – you’re just a step away from converting. A landing page should contain more detailed information on your ad: answers to any questions your leads may have. Your landing page should also have a contact form that enables you to retarget the interested.
- An Irresistible Offer: Always have a realistic, but catching offer. A discount, gift, bonus, return policy or warranty – there could be more; certainly, you can’t go wrong with a good offer. It’s the hook, it convinces your lead. Imagine that you’re selling a weight loss supplement, and you need to convince your audience that it works. You could simply add a money-back guarantee: something like, “if you don’t get results in 3 months, call us and we’ll refund you for the stress.” This can be your magic wand, with more people convinced to try out your supplement. Be sincere and ready to withstand whatever offer you throw out.
- Retargeting: This implies using available or former data to run all subsequent ads. You can do this by using Facebook ads analytics or Google analytics on your landing page or website to retarget people who had shown interest in your ads before. So, please, take your analytics seriously and always refer to it. This could be your goldmine.
Conclusion
Running a successful ad that converts is not a stroke of luck, but an intentional process. All you have to do is have the right knowledge and apply it; you’ll be glad you did. Every point in this guide depends on the other – so, to get good results, apply it altogether, not partly.
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