5 Ingredients to Make a Successful Facebook Ad

As many of us know, Facebook is by far the most popular social media platform on earth. Statista recorded that Facebook had 2.5 billion monthly active users as of the fourth quarter of 2019. Not only is that monthly number high, but the daily numbers are high as well. The number of Facebook users that say they visit the site daily is 74%! So, why is this important?

It’s important because, for just $20, you can reach over a thousand people with a Facebook ad. Don’t believe me?

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However, there is a catch. Since it just takes $20 to reach over a thousand people and just $5 to reach hundreds, everyone is doing it. Facebook is saturated with ads. So how do you stand out in the sea of ads? With 5 ingredients that make any ad irresistible.

Know your objective

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Facebook is very flexible when it comes to marketing objectives. As you can see, there are three macro-categories that your objective may fall under: Awareness, Consideration, and Conversions. From there, you can choose specific campaign goals under each one. I won’t dive into what each goal does (mainly because Facebook already does a great job at that, see, “Help: Choosing an Objective” for more information).

However, to give a rule of thumb, the macro-categories move in order of contact to sale. For example, awareness is simply that. It is a way for people to become aware of your product or for you to reach as many as possible and let potential customers know you exist. Consideration is one step closer to sale. You aren’t selling your product or service yet. However, you want someone to engage with your post, not just notice it. Finally, you have a conversion ad. Conversions are trying to get someone, already interested in your business, to buy or use your product or service.

2) Keep a broad audience

If you have been in business for a long time and have a good sense of who your customers are, you can disregard this step. This step is crucial for people who haven’t run Facebook ads before and don’t already have a loyal customer base. Everyone thinks they know their customers only to find out that they are a completely different demographic than previously expected. The only way to figure out exactly who wants your product or service is to leave your audience as broad as possible. Then study the people who engaged with your ad.

If you are offering an intro to finance online course, just chose the category finance. Don’t narrow your audience and don’t exclude people. For the “Expand your detailed targeting” section, click that button if your current audience is under a million. This will usually help reach more people and lower your costs. When it comes to smaller audiences, Facebook charges more because it’s offering very targeted advertisements to your most valuable audience.

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3) Optimize your campaign budget

Optimizing your budget is the easiest step. You want to make sure your Optimization for Ad Delivery is set to link clicks (if you are trying to get your audience to click on a call to action) and then set a daily budget of no more than $20. I would even recommend going as low as $5 or $10. That’s because the key to Facebook ads is testing and retesting all of your ads until you find one that has a superior ROI. There is no point in spending a bunch of money on ads to get them in front of more people if the ad isn’t connecting with the intended audience. Once you find a winning ad that has a positive ROI, then you can start scaling up your budget.

4) Provide a clear and persuasive call to action

Before running any campaign, you should know what you want from your audience (that’s why the first step is to know your objective). Do you want your audience to sign up to your mailing list, buy something, download your ebook? Once you know your call to action, you work backward.

Let’s assume you want someone to buy your dog food. So you have a call to action that says “Learn More.” It would help if you now had a persuasive piece of text to make someone want to learn more. Some of the most persuasive messages can be ones that use fear and social proof. For example, “Did you know that 77% of dog food is processed with harmful additives that… that’s why we offer “Dog Bites,” the only organic dog food that has…”

Another option is to use social proof. For example, “9 out of 10 dog owners say that their dogs have been happier and healthier after switching to Dog Bites.” There are many ways to make a compelling piece of text. It’s up to you to find the one that makes the most sense for your selling proposition.

5) Use a video for your media

Remember when I said that Facebook ads were super crowded because they only cost a few bucks to get shown in front of thousands of people? That’s only a part of the reason. The other reason is that it literally takes SECONDS. I am not joking. You can go on your phone right now and say, “promote this post” and be done with it under a minute.

The fact that it’s so easy to promote on Facebook is a good thing for us. This means that if we just put in a little bit of effort, we can genuinely distance ourselves from the competition. This effort isn’t in finding a great stock photo or using a video app to make a video mashup. I mean getting you and your product behind a camera and being the spokesperson for your brand. In just 15-59 seconds, you can create a video, hell it can be a selfie, where you promote and then at the end, give your audience a call to action.

Key Takeaways

Facebook is, by far, the biggest social media platform when it comes to daily active users. So not only can you reach thousands of people on Facebook, you can do so for pretty much the same amount it cost to get bottomless breadsticks at Olive Garden. However, Facebook is fraught with competition, which means to stand out, you need to know your objective, keep a broad audience, optimize your campaign budget, provide a clear and persuasive call to action, and use a video for your media.