3 Simple Steps to Improve Your Facebook Ads

If you’re a freelance professional or run a small business and you’re not happy with the results of your Facebook Ads, you’re in the right place. I wrote this piece because I meet more and more people who are frustrated with their Facebook Ads.

The common complaint is: “How come others get results and I don’t?”

This article is for business owners who need to overcome the typical Facebook Ads challenges.

If you:

• Don’t know how to get started with your first campaign
• Have an agency run Ads for you and results are not as you anticipated
• Spend big $ on Facebook Ads, bringing people to the landing page but making no sales
• Have decided that Facebook Ads just don’t seem to work for small businesses

… there’s good news for you. I’ll show you how to get started with Facebook Ads or improve your underperforming Campaigns.

Do you like the sound of generating 100 more leads per week, without putting a whole lot of extra effort into your Facebook Ads?

Do you want to know how we went from $3 per click to 20¢ per click?

If yes, you are in the right place...

You probably feel frustrated when others talk about their great results with Facebook Ads, while you are getting nowhere.

 

You Want - and Deserve - More Leads, Right?

 

You know how good your product or service is, and you may be struggling to get people’s attention.

We’ve been there too... so we know how it feels.

We once boosted a Facebook post and saw our $10 budget get spent in an hour… with zero results. We had a well-targeted ad (or so we thought!), but after just a few impressions our ad was no longer visible on Facebook...

So we increased the bid (our budget now maxed up)… and ended up paying $3 per click. Ridiculous!

We thought:

"Facebook Is Clearly Not for Our Business... "

Next we tried Google AdWords. The results? Even worse!

We kept hearing success stories regarding Facebook Ads, so we decided to persevere. Only to feel even more frustrated – others seemed to get it, while we just continued to waste our money and time. We tried… and tried. We took this advice, then that advice... and wasted more $ on ads ...

… until we finally cracked it. 

 

These 3 Steps Are a Must-Do

If You Want to Get More Leads

From Facebook Ads with Minimum Spend

 

Before you read any further, I would like to make something clear to you. It may surprise you...

Don’t use Facebook Ads to sell!

No one buys at first sight anymore. 

You want to provide value to your potential client, warm them up, and then make an offer.

How do you do this? You send traffic from your Facebook Ad to a landing page that gives value to your prospects – just as this page gives you value. But this is a subject for another conversation. (Stay in touch so you get access to that piece of content – also for free.)  

Right, back to your Facebook Ads...

If you don’t improve your Facebook campaigns, you will continue to struggle as you chase clients, attend networking events that rarely generate prospects, or rely on your previous clients and people you know to introduce new clients to you.

When you get Facebook right, it will feed your pipeline with prospects… so your team’s efforts will lead to more sales and increased profits.

 

Grab Those Potential Clients With Just a Few Tweaks to Your Facebook Ad Campaigns

 

Here are 3 essential steps to creating Facebook Ads that work:

 

Step 1. Revisit Your Target Audience

Are you paying attention to who your audience really is? Or have you become a bit lazy about it?

This first step is crucial.

Why?

Because Facebook charges you based on the performance of your ads. In other words, if an ad is displayed to many people and you hardly get any clicks, the Cost per Click is higher. A good Facebook Ad Campaign gets your Click Through Rate high, so your Cost per Click is as low as possible, which means that with the same budget you get more leads and more sales. This is how you increase your ROI for your campaigns. 

What do you think happens, say, if your company’s product / solution is aimed at mature business people, yet your Facebook Ad is shown to students? Exactly, not a single click! Ok, I’m exaggerating to make my point… I see our clients targeting their ads at the wrong audience time and time again, even though they believe they are getting it right.

Conversely, when you talk to the exact people who have a real need for your services, they click on your ad, they engage with your content and with you, which lowers the Cost per Click… and makes the process fun for you, as you get great feedback from your audience!

Here’s what you need to do:

1. Relook the target for your Facebook Ads by fine-tuning key elements like age, location, education, and work.
2. Most importantly, make use of the special Facebook features that look at interests and behavior. These two elements make a big difference to your targeting. 

We defined the main elements early on in our targeting, but until we got the interests and behavior right, we didn’t see results.

 

How Can "Behavior" Help You?

 

Facebook is a goldmine of information about your ideal clients! For example, did you know that you can select to show your ad only to people who shop online?

How cool is that?!

If you want to sell something online you can ensure you only get exposure to people who have their wallets open! Compare this to attracting people to your website who are not willing to purchase anything online… They hit a dead end – and so do you.

 

How Can "Interest" Help You?

 

If, for example, you sell personal development coaching, and know your prospects like Tony Robbins, you can simply serve your ads only to those who are fans of Tony Robbins.

Pretty cool, eh?

Mix and match these elements and build the target profile that represents your ideal customer on Facebook.

But that’s not all.

There are 4 more ways to …

 

Cleverly Target Your Audience

 

Tip #1: Target Other Facebook Pages

Let’s say you offer integrated management software to restaurants. Then you want to talk to restaurant owners. So you target Facebook pages of restaurants!

 

Tip #2: Target Your Email List – on Facebook!

If you have an email list, you can upload it to Facebook and then ask Facebook to create a custom audience by matching the email addresses on their system with yours.

Why would you want to do this? You’ll need it for the next step, or simply to serve ads to people who are in your database – as an alternative or in addition to your regular email communication. I explain in one of my webinars why this is so important. Join here.

 

Tip #3: Create a Look-Alike Audience Based on Your Email List

A Look-alike Audience is one that is similar in psychographics and demographics to the people on your email list. This means they are potentially hot prospects for you, as they have similar characteristics, interests and behavior as those who are already buying from you.

 

Tip #4: Create a Look-Alike Audience Based on Your Website Traffic

You can tell Facebook to create a Look-alike Audience based on the kinds of people who are already visiting your website, with two clicks.

Why do this? Because if they’re visiting your website, they are likely to be interested in your offer.

Most people skip this step – revisiting their target audience – because they don’t understand its importance. They want to cut corners and get quick results. There are indeed shortcuts you can take, but this is not one of them!

The truth is…

Unless you really understand

• who your target is
• who your ideal client is

you won’t get results with Facebook Ads.

In fact, you won’t get results with any of your marketing activities. We live in an era in which people are bombarded with messages. For you to grab the attention of your potential client, you have to first know who they are and then serve a relevant message to them.

 

Step 2. Identify Your Target’s Real Problem

It is essential to nail down the problem or need of your targeted audience, and to build your ad around that.

Identify the problem or need as they see and feel it. Remember, people are motivated by pain and pleasure; i.e. they want to move away from pain, and they want more pleasure.

Example of a problem: “My services are amazing – it’s just that not many people know about them. I don’t have enough leads; my message is not seen by enough people.”

Example of a need: “I need more subscribers in my list, so I can email more people about our wonderful services.”

 

Your Facebook Ad Has to

Fix a Problem or Fulfill a Need

 

Take the time to understand the real problems and needs of your potential clients and how you can truly help them.

Why do you need to understand their problems? Because you want to take them from where they are and help them move forward. Eventually you want to help them get ‘unstuck’ with your product or service, which really does solve their problem.

 

You Also Need to Get Their Problems

Expressed in Their Words

 

Because when you put their words in the ads, they feel they are finally being understood; you are saying what they’ve been thinking or feeling all along, sometimes without even knowing it.

But how do you get into your clients’ minds? Consider customer surveys, reviews on your website, Amazon, social media, forums.

And then what?

Once you have identified the real problem of your clients, you create a free giveaway relevant to their situation. This way, they will be unable to resist signing up for that valuable information you are offering them. This could be in the form of a five-part video series, PDF, cheat sheet, blueprint or checklist. Above all, you want to solve their problem by giving actionable steps.

 

 

Step 3. Improve Your Copy

If your Facebook Ad copy is not appealing, or says nothing to your target that’s of interest to them, they are not going to click on it. You have probably realized this by now. We have all made this mistake, don’t worry. Your time, effort and money spent won’t lead anywhere until you get the right message across, with the right words.

Write your message (ad) by focusing on the problem.

Use this formula:

“How to _____ (main benefit) without _____ (experiencing their main pain/problem)”

Be specific.

Why? People are sick and tired of big fat claims they know are not true.

For example, in our case, instead of saying: “We help you grow your business” (which is our core activity), we said: “We help you get clicks from Facebook Ads for just 20¢” (which is only part of what we do). By making the message specific, we got people who are interested in getting better results with Facebook (people like you!) to read this article.

 

It is All About Them, Not About You

 

Make sure your ad really talks about the benefits or why they should click (as opposed to the features of your product or service). If you believe in what you do and in the value your solution provides your clients, it will be easy to show this to your prospects.

And my final advice …

 

Write as if You're Talking to a Good Friend

 

When you write your ad copy, think of your very best friend…

Think of that person you love to chat with, with whom you're never at a loss for words and conversation flows. Because that is a nuance of Facebook: it’s friendly, conversational, easy-going.

 

A little story

 

One of our first Facebook Ad Campaigns had a CPC (Cost per Click) of $3.97. We knew we were delivering value through our articles and products and that we had targeted well based on our ideal client. But something was still not right...

So we worked on the copy of our Facebook Ad. We adjusted it to trigger the attention of our ideal client by talking about their specific problem.

Guess what?

The CPC dropped to $0.76 (see below)… that’s 5 times cheaper, when we used the right copy that triggered our ideal client to click.

With further optimization we lowered the CPC to $0.21.

When you'll use the 3-step approach we’ve covered above you will too significantly improve your Facebook Ads.

If you want to see the structure of a Facebook Ad that works …

DOWNLOAD THESE TEMPLATE FREE

These templates are a powerful instrument that really helped us get results. We use these exact templates for our ads – and as you are reading this article, the tool clearly worked for you! So you know it will work for your clients too.

Click here to gain instant access!

Check it out and see what’s missing from your Facebook Ads, so you attract your ideal clients with only a few cents per click.