What are some tips to making effective Facebook Ads?

Running success facebook ads are essential to any company growing. The reality of this is, the success process of doing this smallest business fail to do, yet every large scale company does, normally very well

There are 6 key elements to running successful Facebook ads in 2024.

1. Stop selling! - ( shameless clickbait type reason)
2. Authority.
3. Play the long game.
4. Understand your audience.
5. Keep in touch with your audience.
6. Understand this is NOT intent-based marketing

#1 Stop selling

The biggest mistake I see in companies using Facebook ads is treating them the same way as an old newspaper ad, a simple ‘BUY NOW’ with a call to action, like call or drop in, etc.

Successful Facebook ads understand a simple concept, people are not on social media to buy your stuff, they are there for . guess what, Social stuff!

So how do we make facebook ads successful?

By appealing to their pain point and at this stage NOT selling the solutions.

I am going to give you a question as an example here, as it will highlight how to do this effectively and make your ads WAY more successful.

Before we start you need to ensure you have a facebook pixel installed on your website.

So, if I had just linked to my website saying, Use us to get better Facebooks ads, would you have clicked? more than likely not, That's right there is lesson #1 in getting successful facebook ads.

#2 Authority

So part of the reason I answer this here is, of course, I want not just to help you but others to see my answer so more people know I know what I am talking about ( Authority).

This means at this stage anyone reading this is not interested in my service, but they are interested in my ability to show, how to be effective when using Facebook ads.

So for the rest of this post, I am going to show you exactly how to succeed with Facebook marketing and ads in 2019.

#3 Play the long game

So with Facebook traffic, your audience will fall into 4 separate audiences.

Audience A. They don’t know you and don’t care what you do

Audience B. They know you, still, don’t really care, but don’t mind you.

Audience C. Know who you, and are looking for solutions

Audience D. Are ready to pay for a solution

Keeping these sections in mind will change everything.

Your first campaign is this.

Audience A.

You want to get an awareness campaign built. This is going to target your broad audience, So if you are ad agency ( like me), then anyone who owns a business, and (in my case) meets certain requirements ( like been in business a few years, not a startup and with Revenue of at least $2m PA is my audience.

At this stage, you are getting your name in front of them with some very powerful value. Like a guide on how to run effective Facebook ads. ;-)

You are focused on your brand and giving massive value.

Audience B.

We now take everyone who has engaged with that initial campaigns, if it likes, shares, even clicks to your guides, etc. and show them a new campaign.

See what we have done, we take taken very cheap ads with awareness and got rid of showing ads to people who don’t care at all at this stage.

This campaign is going to focus on more value, why you are so cool etc. Again building name recognition.

Audience C

So now we take the engaged audience and start to show them more value, in this case ( anyone looking to get more success from Facebook ads) and deliver them more value, but this time you are wanting to send them to your website—

At this stage, I want to mention I don’t tend to use landing pages, as I want someone to go to my website as I want to be able to section their behavior.

So I send them to my website which can be to consume more content ( again not selling to them) may be a video, a blog post, something. At this stage, I want them off facebook so I can gather more data.

So I then look at my website data and set up a new audience on Facebook, using that data I would set up another custom audience

Audience D.

Destinations page+ pricing page+contact page.

If they visit the destination page and pricing, then bounced, then my prices scared them, they are not ready or not my ideal client.

If they visited all 3 pages, in certain orders etc, then I know they have

• consumed my content
• saw my prices
• reach a contact page, but didn’t complete my contact form.

Now I can create my final lead gen form campaign, now I am targeting someone who has completed a number of actions, which shows an interest.

Then as a side campaign, I re-target everyone who opens the forms but doesn’t submit their details back to Audience C type of content.

All of these audiences are fluid, people can easily pass in and out of them.

#4 Understand your audience.

This is where most struggle, I would say out of 10 business owners about 5–7 would say, oh my audience is everyone. In B2B, of course, it's normally better, but still its a problem.

Knowing who your client is is crucial. So I will use my case. In theory, every business owner is my audience, but it isn’t. The majority of SMB will not be able to afford my services, so I don’t want to try and pitch to these businesses. I want them to succeed in their marketing and hopefully, later on, become my type of audience.

So this is why in Audience A, I am using filters that will discount those who are not ready to pay my type of priced service, which in my case tends to ( not always ) exclude any business under $2M turnover.

Spend time getting this right, If you want help getting your audience defined then please reach out to me on LinkedIn, I am happy to help.

#5 Stay in touch with them.

A massive change in mindset happens from the big companies to the smaller one in this area.

Again let’s use me as an example, I know most SMB will not be able to afford my service, however, is they grow, then they will be, So its important I keep running my Audience#1 campaign, including all the others.

The key is to keep the content fresh.

The final point

#6 This is NOT intent-based marketing

Understand that until I have engaged user completing the step I feel qualify them for me to pitch to them, they are on facebook to look at friends pics, share memes and maybe watch the odd cat video.

I always use the example of a dinner party, think of all social media like this, its very public, and at a decent size dinner party you don’t know everyone there.

imagine you turn on with a sandwich board saying BUY MY STUFF, chances are you will never get an invite again.

With social media, you have to fit in. Think low key.

Imagine you turn up, and ask you to talk to people you offer them your business card, or even better you hear a problem they have and you offer to help them, now this is like giving them an invite to a separate dinner party that contain only people with the same problem and searching for a solution.

To break into their feed, its gotta feel natural. This means investing in time and money into getting a very creative writer for ad copy, If you can do this yourself, then huge kudos to you, In my case, this is why I have a team, and for reference, I contract the creative writers. The words and images are likely to be the first encounter with your company someone has ever had. It’s worth the money to pay for an excellent copy.

So, in order to be a bit trendy, here is my TIP:

Don’t sell on the first interaction, prove you are an expert, solve their problem, keep in touch and pitch when they have met your define parameters of being qualified.

If it helps, most businesses do not do this. The is because they are desperate for leads and sales today, and ultimately this is what prevents them from scaling up, that mindset of instant gratification.

Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn, I can provide direct advice on how to target your audience better if I knew what you did.