In the podcast:

01:35 – 10 elements to make a good Facebook ad
01:35 – Good Offer
02:57 – Good image
03:57 – Good call to action
04:46 – Have a link in the copy
05:17 – Try and use a story in your head
06:24 – Test long vs short copy
07:37 – Try and use some emojis
08:21 – Use a question in your ad
09:12 – Incorporate social proof in your ad
11:02 – Moderate comments

In this episode, I discuss 10 key elements that make up a winning Facebook ad. Be sure to listen to each of these 10 tips and apply them to your own Facebook ads

Ilana Wechsler here with another episode of Teach Traffic. So in today’s episode, we’re going to be talking about what makes a winning Facebook ad. As in the many years that I’ve been running my PPC agency called Green Arrow Digital, or in our PPC Academy, where we teach people how to do exactly what we do. I’ve probably seen and run myself literally thousands of different Facebook ads in lots of different industries.

And when you kind of get exposure to that many ads, you get to see a trend. A trend of what works and a trend of what doesn’t work always, regardless of any industry. So that’s what I want to talk about in today’s episode. What are the critical elements that really make up a good Facebook ad, because there are definite commonalities in these ads. And so I’m going to break them down into each element that you can apply to your business almost regardless of what industry you’re in. So let’s get stuck in today’s show.

10 elements to make a good Facebook ad

1. Good Offer

So the first critical element that you need for a winning Facebook ad is a really good offer. If you don’t have a good offer, if what you’re offering people is not enticing, it’s not irresistible, then no amount of good copy or good targeting or anything like that will make your ad successful. Because at the end of the day, it’s got to be irresistible to your target audience.

I really believe that success with Facebook ads hinges on your ability to put your ad in front of the right person at the right time with the right message and your offer that what you’re offering people is at the core of that. So you need to think about what is irresistible to your target audience and obviously craft your ad around that particular offer.

Because if you think about it, your target customer is probably standing at the bus stop scrolling through their newsfeed or standing in the line for the bank or doing their shopping or whatever it is, and your enemy is their thumb, they’re going to be scrolling through their newsfeed and you you have to stop them in their tracks. And you have to make them think, Oh, I really want this, this is irresistible to me. So have a think about your target audience what keeps them up at night that you can offer them and ideally solve a problem for them. And that’s where your offer really comes in.

2. Good image

Okay, the second element to a successful Facebook, that is a really good image. Once again, your target customer is going about their daily life. And the first thing that they are going to see is that image that you use in your ad, it’s so, so important to have a compelling and an enticing image. And it almost doesn’t even have to relate to the actual offer or the ad. In fact, we’ve had a real play around with this where I have used images that are completely related to what I’m offering.

And I even address that in my ad copy, I might say, yes, this image has nothing to do with whatever it is we just like the image. And therefore I inject a little bit of personality into the ad. And people quite like that. So you need a good image. And there’s lots of free resources that you can use to find images. But you do need a really good image to stop people in their tracks to stop their thumb from scrolling past your ad so that they look at it, and it’s appealing to them in some way.

3. Good call to action

So the third aspect, you need is a really good call to action. It’s I can’t tell you how many times I see this being missed is that people will have an ad. Have a great image and then there’s no instruction of what you want people to do. You need to be quite explicit in telling people what you want them to do. In fact, I’ve seen comments in certain ads, where they’ll say, Yes, please, or how do I proceed? Or people asking in the comments? What do they need to do to take the next step?

So, yes, as an ad manager, it might be obvious to you that you’ve got to click on the ad, right? What, you’re probably thinking, but people don’t realize that you need to click on the ad. And so therefore, you need to be explicit in what you want them to do. Which kind of leads me on to the next point of point number four.

4. Have a link in the copy

Next point is its good to have a link in the copy of where you want them to go. So yes, it’s in conjunction with the link that if they click on the image, they will go there, but it’s just being that level of explicitness people telling them click on this link to do whatever, download this checklist, or etc, etc. It just makes it a little bit more obvious for people what do you want them to do to. Avoid getting those comments in your out of yes, please, or how do I get download the guide.

5. Try and use a story in your head

So, point number five of what makes up a winning Facebook ad is to try and use a story in your head. And I just say so many people not doing this. And it’s such a missed opportunity. If you think about it, Facebook is a social network. It’s a social platform where people are engaging and being social with each other. And there’s no reason why your ad should be any different.

We have used stories in ads so many times.And every time it just does so well, because it lets people’s guard down, I can relate to the story, you draw people in with your story. And yes, at the end of the story, we relate it to whatever it is the offer, we are offering, but we user story to relate to people and to let people’s guard down. So please try and use a story in your ad in whatever way you can. Because it just makes it a lot more engaging, especially if it’s an offer that they want. But they’ll actually read your story because it’s, it’s interesting, and it’s engaging, and then they might share it or tag their friends and especially like, and that’s really the metrics that you want to have a look at point number six.

6. Test long vs short copy

Point number six for a winning Facebook ad is to test long versus short copy. And by long copy, I mean, lots of words in your ad, like, and sometimes even so words, we’ve used when I started testing this, I thought to myself, Well, the short copy is going to win every time because people’s attention span. These days, and not what they used to be, and no one’s going to bother to read a long copy ad. And I always say to students, and coach and clients, I’m constantly humbled online, I’m constantly humbled by what people do, because it’s sometimes the opposite of what I think they will do.

And this is an instance where it’s the opposite. Because long copy nine times out of copy, I find will outperform and out convert the short copy. And that’s because this is obviously long copy when it’s written well and it’s using a story that’s engaging because it becomes almost like a mini landing page. And then the people who do actually bother to read all that copy and more likely to convert if they click on it, because you’ve qualified them through that copy. So try it in your business, try and test short copy versus long copy, and you too might be surprised at what you will find by doing that test.

7. Try and use some emojis

The next point is to try and use some emojis. I know this is a mixed response with people. Some people really don’t like emojis, but test it in your business. Because the results that we see where we use emojis in our ads are really good. And that’s sort of continuing on with the social aspect of Facebook that lets people’s guard down the ad doesn’t feel like an ad because it’s not so clinical, and it’s a lot more conversational and relatable. So try and inject some emojis in your ad, you can just search online for some free emojis. And you just copy and paste them into your ads. They’re really simple to use and you’ll find you can really inject a bit of your own personality through the use of emojis in your ads.

8. Use a question in your ad

The next point is to try and use a question by lead your ad with a question. And ideally, a question that they say yes, to the questions I’ve used in one of my ads is, are you spending a fortune on AdWords and just not getting results? Most people would say yes, because they really struggle with AdWords, and therefore I’ve pre qualified the people. So maybe if the people say, no, they’re really happy with AdWords, then they’re probably not interested in my offer of my free guide.

So it’s a way of me pre qualifying the people who would be most interested in our offer. So try and use it in your business lead with a question, but a question that is framed in such a way, way that you want the people who’ve said yes to and that also like people are compelled to answer questions in their head when they read something. And it’s I guess it’s a classic copywriting technique.

9. Incorporate social proof in your ad

Point number nine of what makes up a winning Facebook ad is to try and incorporate some social proof in your ad, we all know that social proof adds a huge element of trust to you, and your business and your ad. So any kind of social proof that you can incorporate in, it will be the ultimate kind of endorsement for your ad. And you can do this in two ways. The first way is to incorporate some kind of testimonial into your ad copy itself. And obviously, you would use quotation marks, and really identifying the fact that it is a testimonial. And that’s a great way to really advertise the fact that you’ve got some great testimonials by using it in your ad copy.

So that’s the first way you can do that. And the second way is to try and get some social proof in the form of comments on your ad itself. You can imagine when you’re looking at an ad, and you see all these great comments below it, of people saying, I bought this product, and it was fantastic. Or I download this AdWords guide and I improved my conversion rate from 0.8% to 8%. The transformation of that ad is quite remarkable, because that is the ultimate endorsement.

So you might be wondering, how do you generate these comments on your ads? What’s the best way? Well, there’s lots of tactics, actually, that we use, which we do cover in our PPC Academy. But there are lots of ways that you can do it, which definitely worth doing. Because once you get those comments on your ad, well, we use that ad continuously when we start really building and scaling our campaigns. And the difference in an ad with good social proof versus an ad with no comments actually can’t even compare the results.

10. Moderate comments

And the last element that makes up a good Facebook ad is kind of a continuation on the one before, but is to please moderate comments. I see so many Facebook ads that have some pretty awful comments on there, and the advertiser hasn’t moderated the comments at all. So yes, of course, haters will always be haters in you will get some negative comments on your ads.

But I actually think it’s a good opportunity to address whatever other objections or concerns that people have. And it’s good opportunity to say at, not hide them and address them. But don’t leave them unaddressed. If you’re not going to address it, or you think there’s no nice way of responding to people that will turn it around and improve your ad then either remove or hide the comments or and block that person from making further comments on your end. Because when you’ve got unmoderated comments on there that quite scathing and rude and negative and it just looks really bad. So either respond or remove.

So there you have our top no elements that make up a winning Facebook ad. What I’m going to do is I’m going to create a summary of today’s episode with these the points on a one page document so you can download that and have it next to you when you are creating your next Facebook ad. So we’ll make that PDF available for you to download. All you got to do is go to TeachTraffic.com that actually redirects to the podcast section on our website called Teach Traffic.

But if you go to Teach Traffic, it will come, it will take you there. And then you can download that PDF. And I would love to hear when you follow these unaddressed elements, the difference in performance that you have with your ad so head on over and download that resource.

If you are enjoying our show and this episode, I would love to hear about it and you can let me know by leaving an iTunes review and telling us what you think about today’s show, or our show in general. So head on over to iTunes and leave a review I would be eternally grateful and thank you for listening and stay tuned for further episodes.