3-Step Formula to Creating Unstoppable Facebook Ads
Facebook advertisers will all tell you different things about what’s important and vital for creating successful Facebook Ads. In all reality, these things most often just make them 10 times more complicated than they have to be. In this article, we will break down our simple 3-step formula to developing a bulletproof Facebook Ads strategy.
TOC
Objective
Audience
Offer
Knowing what campaign elements matter most will help you create an effective Facebook Ads strategy for your business.
Before you begin creating your Facebook Ad, there are a couple of things you need to take into consideration. How much money are you willing to spend? What is your overall goal for running the ad? What kind of return do you want to see? Who is your ideal customer?
As you define each of these questions, you’ll be able to find the best solution for each step of this bulletproof formula.
Objective
What is the goal of your ad? Are you looking to drive website traffic, generate leads, or produce sales? Each objective requires a certain budget, so make sure your ad spend aligns with your overall marketing goal.
For example, if you are looking to generate leads, but don’t have a large enough budget to do so within your industry, you can use the website traffic objective to drive qualified traffic to a landing page that provides a value-packed offer. You can also use the traffic objective and other engagement objectives to build a retargeting audience that has already interacted with your brand out of curiosity for the benefits you could provide.
If you want to increase sales, conversion campaigns are great for that. They are, however, the most expensive. That’s why understanding how to develop an effective sales funnel will help you understand how to turn a cold audience into paying customers step by step in a cost-efficient manner.
Understanding when to increase awareness, leverage traffic objectives, and when you can afford it, optimize conversion campaigns will make the difference between a negative return and a very profitable return.
Audience
Knowing your audience and knowing who you’re trying to reach will not only help you drive the most results, but will help you create a more cost-effective campaign.
There are three different categories for audience groups that you should be aware of.
Cold audience - A general audience defined by demographics and interests that is usually unfamiliar with your brand. They often have a problem but are unaware of a solution or how to find one.
Warm audience - An audience that has expressed interest or intent in a specific product or service through digital behaviors and interests. They are often aware of their problem and are trying to find a solution.
Hot audience - An audience that is actively searching for your product or service. This group can easily be targeted by users that have previously engaged with your brand online (retargeting website traffic, page likes, purchases, video views, etc.).
If you have a smaller budget, you should be targeting audience members that are easier to convert (i.e. those who have already engaged with your brand or are actively searching for your product or service). You can use traffic campaigns to deliver an irresistibly high-value offer that drives users to a landing page where they can either convert or be tracked for further retargeting purposes.
If you have a larger budget, you can run a conversion campaign that targets a more broad audience of people that might not be actively looking to purchase, but could be persuaded with an enticing offer. You can also use part of your budget to run an awareness campaign to build a retargeting audience for down the road.
Lookalike audiences help you target users on Facebook that are similar to and likely to take the same actions as current customers.
The most efficient audiences you can use on Facebook Ads are custom audiences and lookalike audiences. Build an audience from your website traffic, customer lists, and Facebook user engagement and create a lookalike audience from those. This will help Facebook determine similar profiles of people that have already taken action with your brand and will hopefully target others just like them.
Offer
An irresistible offer builds value among your audience that piques their curiosity and makes them have to learn more. It speaks directly to what they are looking for and appeals to their financially-sensitive side through discounts or free offers. It minimizes risk and guarantees the benefit or solution that they have been craving, and now they can have it all at just a push of a button.
Your Facebook Ad itself is what pulls the user in, makes them want to learn more, and converts new sales. Knowing how to set up your visuals, copy, and call-to-action will determine how many results you see at the end of the day.
This last element is arguably the most important, but won’t work if you don’t have the right objective or audience. None of these elements works quite as well without the other, so understanding how to leverage each of these will help you outperform your local competitors and generate cost-effective results.
