Do You Think Facebook Ads Don’t Work?

** Formerly Published On COPYWRITERS.COM in 2018 – 2019 **

Here’s How Advertisers Are Using High Converting Facebook Ad Copy to Generate Real Sales

Do you ever wonder why some people can write high-converting Facebook ad copy, yet others fail miserably?

The most apparent difference between these two types of people would probably be knowledge or lack thereof. Those succeeding and generating high-converting Facebook ad copy know what others don’t. In total, 80 million small businesses now use Facebook pages.

Would you like to know what they know and take advantage of Facebook’s 2.4 billion users? If so, then this article is for you.

When advertising on Facebook, you must understand your perfect customer or prospect’s problems, pains, and desires. In the marketing world, this person is also known as your “buyer persona” or “avatar.”

Once you fully understand who you are speaking to, the next step is to know what to say to them. This may seem obvious, but it’s critical to understand this concept before starting.

What you say to them is your “message” or “copywriting.” In advertising, a familiar phrase is the “message to market match.” You will inevitably get a sale if you put the right message in front of the right audience at the right time.

“We need to stop interrupting what people are interested in and be what people are interested in.”

~~ Craig Davis

Because Facebook knows how to laser-target who is looking for what, it can provide you with the right buyer persona market (or audience).

You can help Facebook find this right market, but every campaign must go through a “learning stage” to reach that point. You are steps ahead of the game if you already have an established audience.

If that is the case, you would offer Facebook the emails of this “custom” audience to advertise and then create “lookalike” audiences to find more buyers with qualities and characteristics similar to those you already have.

If you do not already have a custom audience, you would want to target specific interests related to your offer and buyer persona. These interests can be top influencers in your market, behaviors, Facebook pages, groups, authors, TV shows, hobbies, etc. Specifically, what is your perfect avatar interested in? Be sure to start there!

Now that you understand how Facebook will find the right audience of people who look like your perfect “buyer persona,” you still need to figure out your message. You need to understand some important concepts to write high-converting Facebook ad copy.

Number One: Research Your Buyer Persona

Different copywriting strategies exist that you can use to speak to your perfect buyer, but one of the most common messages is to find your prospect’s pains and problems. What pain or problem does your prospect have that you can solve with your offer? Figure out ways to show that pain, agitate it, and solve it for your customer.

To thoroughly understand your buyer’s pains and problems, you would need to go to where your buyers hang out online and listen to what they say. The better you can tell them the problems they describe in their exact words, the more effective your ad copy will be.

If you have an existing list of customers, have you surveyed them and asked them what they are looking for? Directly asking your customers what they want and need will give you a wealth of information.

Number Two: Research Your Competitors

Next, what are your competitors doing? What types of ads are they showing to the same people that you are targeting? Go to their ad libraries on their Facebook pages and check out their active campaigns. What are they talking about? What kinds of comments are their buyers (and your potential buyers) leaving?

Which headlines and curiosity hooks are they using? How can you position your message against theirs? How long have their ads been running? Here’s a tip – ads that have been running for a while are probably working! Can you come up with a similar message with a unique twist?

Do they have organic posts or blog posts that you can read? Have you been through their funnels? Do you know how to reverse engineer these funnels and position your company in a way that improves what they are doing?

“It’s important to remember your competitor is only one mouse click away.”

~~ Douglas Warner III, Former CEO, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co

Number Three: Set Up Your Metrics

Do you know what your conversion numbers need to be for you to turn a profit? These are also known as “Key Performance Indicators” or KPIs. If not, industry standards are commonly used, which is an excellent place to start. But what areas do you need to improve if you know your KPIs?

These key performance indicators measure essential data that tell you how well each step of your marketing campaign is functioning. For example, if someone sees your ad on Facebook, you want to know the number of people who click on that ad, but more importantly, the number of people who click through to the next step, typically a landing page.

The number of leads that become paid customers is the most relevant to your business. The life or death of your business depends on whether your number of customer conversions (sales) outweighs the amount you spend on advertising and other expenses.


Number Four: Create Your High-Converting Facebook Ad Copy

Once you have all that figured out, it’s time to write your high-converting Facebook ad copy message. In the marketing world, this is most often called the “creative.” The first thing that you need to do is GRAB their ATTENTION! And you must be able to do it effectively and competently.

The best way to grab attention is with the headline and the image (or video.) Remember, you have seconds to get them to STOP what they are doing and listen to what you say. The job of the image is to get them to stop and read the headline.

If you consider using video, are you using written captions to accompany the spoken words? This is becoming increasingly vital to businesses due to the high use of mobile phones. Because people view Facebook from their phones in locations where they cannot “listen” to video (such as work), the importance of captions is increasing. Do you have good software to add this essential element to your video?

The headline’s job is to get them to read the following sentence. And so on…
Down what seasoned marketers call the “slippery slide, ” one thing needs to lead to another in an entertaining, educational, and informative way.

One of the best ways to get attention is to talk about a problem they are now having. The more urgent the problem is, the more they will listen to what you say. A great place to start is to write down 5 or 10 of your buyer’s most urgent pains or problems that must be solved immediately.

Take the time to brainstorm this—the more urgent the problem, the better your chance of converting your ad copy into a sale. Remember to center your message around what your prospect wants, not what they need.

Most marketers who generate high-converting Facebook ad copy know that the better they can tap into their potential buyers’ emotions, the more influential the ad copy will be. In the marketing world, it’s commonly known that people buy with emotion and then logically justify their decisions. Are you injecting emotion into your ad copy?

One of the best ways to do this is with stories. The most effective marketers are brilliant storytellers. Understanding how to add storytelling will help you create high-converting Facebook ad copy and put you steps ahead of your competition.

Another important factor to consider when writing ad copy is the increase in mobile phone users. According to the official Facebook website, as of 2020, more people have mobile phones than running water or electricity! As difficult as that is to believe, if Facebook said it, it must be true!


Number Five: Do You Know How Sophisticated Your Audience Is?

The longer a specific product or service has been on the market, the more promises your audience has heard. An audience bombarded with many promises and different reasons that each product is unique will tend to be more skeptical than an audience who hears about a product or offer for the first time. The current term in the industry for this is “market sophistication.”

For example, cell phones. When they first came out, they were brand-new; having one was all a person needed to know. Yet, over time, there became more and more of a need to differentiate one cell phone from another so the buyer could “choose” a favorite phone over the growing “competition.”

A target audience that hears about a product with a lot of competition will be much more skeptical than those who hear of a new product for the first time. The more skeptical your potential buyer is, the more critical it is for you to stand out above the crowd.


Number Six: Level of Awareness

How aware is your audience that they even have a problem? Take foot pain, for example. The average person walking around without foot pain would be considered an “unaware” prospect. They are unaware that they have a problem.

But if that same person hurts their foot later that night, they will begin searching for solutions to this “problem.” Is your product a solution? Does your prospect know that your solution exists? If not, then your message needs to target your buyers in a way that will make them aware.

If they are aware of your solution and are interested in what you have to offer, they will become a “most aware” prospect, and at this point, you need to explain to them “what the deal is.” In other words, they will want to know what you offer, how much it costs, and other details.


Number Seven: Is Your Ad Facebook Compliant?

One element that is undoubtedly most important distinguishes a business with high-converting Facebook ad copy from a company with failed ad copy. And that critical element happens to be compliance. Your business must become familiar with Facebook’s ad policies.

What is so interesting about Facebook compliance is that it’s the opposite of what was considered good copywriting for years. Everything that worked in the rest of the world, does not work on Facebook. Why? The reason is compliance.

The more unrealistic the expectations and promises, the less compliant your ad will be. A good rule of thumb is to want to help people genuinely. Remember, these are real people, and your business and products must be ethical, legitimate, and authentic to produce high-converting Facebook ad copy.

To understand compliance, you need to recognize the platform from Facebook’s point of view. They want happy customers. The platform originated so people could stay in touch with friends and family.

If Facebook users are invaded with intrusive advertising, hanging out with friends becomes a less-than-pleasant experience, and people log off and leave—or worse, complain.

Because of this, Facebook had to create a list of compliance rules and regulations to keep their users happy. A positive side effect is that today, people are better able to find entertaining and educational information on Facebook.

But Facebook users also complained about privacy. Because Facebook was so good at understanding what products and services people were interested in, users began complaining that their privacy was being invaded. At this point, one of two responses became necessary.

Either businesses could no longer advertise on Facebook, or they needed to change their approach and stop calling people out for specific traits and attributes. Of course, for everyone’s sake, they chose the latter.

Those who do not understand Facebook compliance cannot get their ads approved. If ads are disapproved too often, their ad accounts could be permanently shut down. This, in fact, often happened to businesses during the growing pains of finding ways to advertise that would keep Facebook users happy.

However, businesses still have difficulty understanding what will pass through Facebook’s compliance filters and what will not. Because of this, having an experienced copywriter can come in handy. Knowing what to say and what not to say is critical to the success of any business.


Number Eight: What Are Reasons Your Prospect May NOT Want to Buy?

Whenever a prospect decides to buy or not to buy a product or offer, they will often have questions that need answers. Other times, they justify to themselves all the reasons they do not want to buy.

A good copywriter needs to know how to overcome these objections. Do they think your product is too expensive? How can you make them see the value? Do they need to speak with a spouse? Are they having trouble believing or trusting you?

Do they think they can wait and possibly buy at some later date? Are they afraid of making a mistake? Are they afraid they won’t be able to do what is asked of them?

These and other objections need to be handled throughout the sales process. How can you offer proof? What is your guarantee? Can you offer support?


Number Nine: Your Call to Action

Once you have gotten your prospect to read your message, you need to give them a call to action so that they can learn more about your offer. This depends on your business model because each model is different.

For example, an e-commerce ad would lead someone to a sales page with a physical product. A webinar model would lead people to a registration page. A typical info product model would lead people to a sales page, followed by upsell, down-sell, and thank-you pages.

The most important thing to remember about Facebook compliance is that wherever you send them, they must be relevant to your ad. Businesses often make this mistake. Whatever you are talking about in your ad, the landing page must have a similar message so that your prospect understands they have gone to the right place.


Number Ten: Your Follow-Up Funnel

Once your prospect has left your ad and entered your steps, this is called a “funnel.” It’s critical to follow up because statistics say that 96 percent of visitors to your website are not ready to buy anything. In addition to the subsequent sales pages mentioned above, your prospect should be followed up with emails and possibly strategy phone calls.

Again, this will vary depending on the business model. As you can imagine, selling a $10 necklace will have a different follow-up sequence than a business selling a $5000 course. Because of this, the series of funnel steps will be different.


Number Eleven: Re-Targeting Your Audience

One of the strengths that Facebook is famous for is its uncanny ability to re-target its customers. You may have wondered, “How do they do this?” Although the details may be so complex that no one except a web developer could understand, the answer is simple for us as marketers. And that answer is called a Facebook pixel.

A Facebook pixel is a piece of code placed on each funnel step. These pages also contain something called “custom conversions.” This means that Facebook can know how far each prospect has gone down your funnel.

Because of this, you can show them new high-converting Facebook ad copy specific to their actions and behaviors. If they purchased something from you, advertise to them again as a buyer and possibly sell them something else. If they went to the order page but abandoned the cart, you can re-target them as someone who “almost bought” but did not for some reason. These ads would typically answer their objections or why they may have changed their minds.

The non-buyers and people who did not take that first action are often called “leakage points” in your funnel. It’s kind of like the boy or girl who got away! Re-targeting them is a way of giving them more than one chance to change their minds.

As you can imagine, this opens up a world of opportunity for you as a business if you know how to write high-converting Facebook ad copy. Remember that learning to stay compliant and follow Facebook’s rules and regulations is critical.

A qualified copywriter can utilize different types of retargeting ads. But remember that the main thing is to be profitable, of course! This means you must stay within your KPIs. If a campaign is within KPIs, leave it alone! Please don’t mess with it!

If it exceeds your established KPIs, you must revisit the copywriting process and generate new high-converting Facebook ad copy ideas.


Number Twelve: Scaling A Profitable Campaign

Last but not least, once you have a profitable campaign, you start to scale your ad. Here are some ways to scale an ad campaign: Increase your budget, widen your audience, add more creatives, etc.

However, the most important thing is compliance with Facebook’s rules and regulations. If you do not, nobody will see your ads and your business may end up in the Facebook graveyard—and no one wants that!


In Summary:

To have a high-converting Facebook ad copy, you must understand the ad copy strategies and when to use them. But most importantly, you must stay within Facebook’s compliance rules and regulations.

If you are looking for a copywriter who understands these strategies and compliance rules, you have come to the right place! Get your high-converting Facebook ad copywriter today!

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