Today I want to reveal to you six critical steps for creating Facebook Ads that SELL.
You’ve got a marketing system set up – your ad targeting is dialed in and your Facebook ad is part of a system, right? If it’s not and you need an outline of a system that works. Get my “11 Tips For Creating The Ultimate Facebook Marketing Machine” by clicking HERE.
In the meantime, let’s get started with creating a Facebook Ad that will actually perform.
To download our 11 Steps to Creating a Facebook Marketing Machine, click the image above!
Step One: Know what you want to accomplish.
Defining this is critical to the success of the ad.
A good Facebook ad will look like a regular post. And when it’s done, it’ll have brought in shares, comments, and likes for the post and your page. Not to mention all the leads and sales it’ll generate for your brand.
There are multiple types of ads that you can choose to use depending on your goals for your campaign:
- Video ads
- Carousal ads (multiple pictures and links in one ad)
- Link click ads (one picture and one link) most common type of ad
All of these work well and using a variety of these ads is key to building a long-term successful Facebook campaign.
Step Two: Get the picture right.
When creating a high performing Facebook ad, there is one critical difference between it and any other advertising medium you may be used to.
When creating a Facebook ad, the single most important part of the ad is the picture.
The picture’s job is to stop a reader who is scrolling through their newsfeed and get them to read the post/ad.
If you don’t get your reader to stop scrolling through their newsfeed, you don’t get a chance for them to take the next step.
What Makes a Good Picture?
The first consideration – what does the web page you’re sending the people to look like? You want a similar look and feel in your ad as you have on your web page.
You want your pictures, headline, and text to be similar in the ad to the landing page. This will help your readers know that they are in the right place.
Some ideas for what makes a good picture for a Facebook ad:
- People (Especially attractive people)
- Make sure they are people about 10 years younger than the age you are targeting
- The subjects should be looking at you, making eye contact
- Kids (If they work in with what you are promoting)
- Animals are always good
- High contrast colors in the pictures
- Use at least a hint of red in the picture for best results
- Bright green is also a good color to try. It stands out in the newsfeed.
- Avoid blue (Facebook’s colors). You will blend in if you use it.
Step Three: Look trustworthy.
This is overlooked many times. Just like in an email, who it comes from and the relationship they have with you is the most important factor in getting an email opened. So the page promoting the post is just like the sender field in an email.
Your reader has stopped scrolling and now at the top of the ad is the name of the page and your profile picture. Does it look good to them and resonate with your reader? Do they trust you?
Step Four: Have a killer headline.
You’ve created a picture that stops your ideal reader in their scroll and they decide that they are willing to take a look at what you have to say. Now you need to get them ready to move to the next step.
You only have a few seconds for this and it’s the headline’s job to grab their attention right away.
The headline is the bold and larger print below the picture. Does it grab your readers’ attention and make them want to read the rest of the ad?
If you want to study writing headlines take some time at the grocery store and look at all the magazines at the checkout counters. These magazines sell by how well their headlines grab attention. Use formulas from here to write your headlines.
Step Five: Write engaging copy.
You are well on your way!
Now the next step is the text above the picture. This text shows up no matter what device the reader is using.
A quick note, in most cases 70%+ of your Facebook traffic is coming from mobile devices. People use them to keep up to date on Facebook more than computers.
You need to give enough information to encourage your readers to do what you want them to do. Sometimes this takes one line and others it takes an entire page of text. Yes, you can put an entire blog post as a Facebook post. We have and in the right circumstances, we’ve had great results.
Many times, if you are sending people to another page, you can use information from that page. It gives the reader a sense that they are in the right place when they get to your page.
If you’re not sending people to another page, you need to make sure your first sentence keeps their attention so they keep reading.
The problem isn’t with the length of the text; it’s with how engaging the text is. Does your audience find your writing entertaining?
Make sure in this area you have a call to action. What do you want your audience to do? Call you? Click here? Go to a web page? Email you? Make sure you spell it out – don’t assume your audience will know what you want them to do.
Step Six: Round it out with a great newsfeed description.
The final step of your ad is filling out the newsfeed description. This is the area under the headline. It is limited to 200 characters.
When you’re creating your ad this shows up and looks like it will be read.
The challenge is that this only shows up on computers, not on mobile devices, so most of your traffic won’t see this writing.
If you don’t put anything in this area, it will pull in any information you have on the landing page you’re sending people to.
You can change it to anything you want – just don’t spend lots of time on it.
Finishing Up:
There are many other parts to a successful ad. You have to test to see what makes a difference. No one knows for sure until the ad is run.
A few other issues to consider:
- Are you going to use Facebook’s Call To Action?
- What is your offer? Click Here for an earlier article on offers.
- What objective are you going to use?
- What are acceptable results for you?
This leads me into one last point. Make sure you’re measuring the results you are getting.
Facebook gives you data and stats – in fact, more than you can use. Make sure you’re tracking your results. Know where your money is going.
As you can see, there is both a science and an art to creating successful Facebook ads. The challenge is that to be profitable using Facebook, writing a great ad is only one step of the system.
Ready to take the next step? (It’s still free!)
You can download my free report “11 Tips For Creating The Ultimate Facebook Marketing Machine” here. This free report doubles as a checklist for me when I’m setting up a Facebook campaign. It’s a valuable tool that will help move your Facebook marketing to the next level.
Have a great day!