1 - Get your offer & approach right

When it comes to your offer or your “pitch”, it needs to be clear, concise & VALUABLE. Think of it as selling without trying to sell.

Picture this, you walk into one of your favourite retail stores, you’re greeted with a nice welcoming hello from the retail assistant whilst they let you go about your business. After 5 minutes or so, they approach you to see if you need a hand with anything, and just happen to mention that if you are spending over $100 in store today, you receive a $20 gift voucher for free, and leave you be.

They were clear with their offer, it is valuable to you as you’re obviously in their store for a reason & their offer is something useful to you, all whilst not being forceful and over the top.

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On the other hand, you walk into that same store the day before, where the retail assistant comes over to you straight away, telling you all about all the offers they have in store today & continues to follow you around for the duration of your visit.

Now, most of the time a person will enter your store / website with the intention of purchasing something if they see fit. They have made the first move, you don’t need to be overbearing, you simply need to support them with their sales journey. These same principles apply when advertising on-line. You need a clear & concise offer which is valuable to the audience without forcing it upon them.

“50% OFF, DON’T MISS OUT, BUY NOW

THIS SALE WON’T HAPPEN AGAIN!”

A month later, they’re usually offering the exact same sale anyway...

Whilst this sales gimmick has been proven to work at times, it generally will end up driving more people away, rather than enticing & exciting your consumer. When it comes to spending money, a lot of your consumers generally won’t feel too good about it because of the negative mindset people have with regard to money.

“There is never enough of it”

“It’s hard to come by”

“Once I have it, I need to hold onto it”

It’s a psychological game, making your customer feel confident about their purchase can completely change the game for you & for them.

“Subscribe to our website & receive 15% off your first purchase! We’ll also throw in free express shipping, on us!

Welcome to the “ x business “ Family, we’ve got you covered :)”

The same idea of a discount was offered, although one was confronting and promoting scarcity, the other was welcoming, valuable & makes you feel positive about your purchase. More often than not, the right type of offer will actually work better than offering a huge ridiculous discount.

When your “ad” starts to seem less like an ad, and more like a positive message, your consumer will feel far more compelled to do business with you because they’re making a decision on their own terms, without being forced to buy something.

Get your offer right. Clear, concise & valuable. Don’t sell, attempt to build trust & community within your ad copy. Don’t just create one sale based on a huge discount opportunity, create a lifetime customer based on communicating your brand’s message effectively, coupled with an empowering and valuable offer that is sustainable for your profit margins.

2 - Know your audience

We like to reverse engineer this aspect of ads.

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Who is your ideal customer? Where do they live, what type of job do they have, what is their earning potential, where do they hang out, what are their interests, etc etc. Work from the top down.

Knowing all of these factors is possible with facebook ads. Based on the information people supply to facebook, and the actions they take on the internet, we can target people down to a tee.

This is actually extremely useful, because we will only be showing your product or service to people who are likely to do business with you. It’s completely different from putting up a large billboard on a main road in the city and just hoping that the right people see it.

With specific interest targeting, we can pinpoint your dream consumer and send the right offer right to their fingertips!

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3 - Retargeting is more important than you think

Think about how you personally shop on your phone. I know personally, I do my research. If I’m looking for, say, a treadmill for my home gym set up, I’ll browse through all the main fitness retailers first, take notes of prices for the type of treadmill I’m interested in. Then I’ll have a look at some of the smaller shops who may offer a similar product, but cheaper.

Over the course of 2-3 days, I’ll spend a little bit of time each day before I make my final decision so I can scope out the best product, or the best value for my money.

Have you noticed once you start searching for things on-line, you start seeing ads pop up all over the place for similar products? Well, in this case it is NOT the law of attraction, you’ve actually entered an algorithm & other businesses facebook pixels based on your activity.

Within a few days you’ll most probably start to receive emails from those same shops you were browsing, but now with a 10-15% discount. This is when you make the purchase!

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Now, this is called retargeting. There’s quite a high percentage of consumers who won’t make a purchase straight away. They will search far and wide for the best deal, and procrastinate quite a bit.

If someone is jumping onto your website but not making a purchase, you can retarget them to send them more of an enticing discount or offer within hours / days of their first activity. You can base your retargeting very specifically on their actions, such as;

• View website homepage
• Save product to wishist
• Add to cart
• Add payment info
• Initiate checkout

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A study done by Spiralytics shows that website visitors who are retargeted with this particular method are 43% more likely to convert. That is a huge percentage to be left on the table, and surely not something a smart business owner would be willing to gamble with!

So, just because someone has added to cart and left your website, there is still a large chance that with the right offer, they may reconsider and still make their purchase with you. Again, this comes down to having the right offer, an effective means of communicating this offer, and having retargeting funnels in place.

The power of facebook ads, right?

Leave no stone unturned!

4 - Test, test, test!

When it comes to facebook ads, it is NOT plug & play. It is not as easy as clicking a button and have sales come flooding through. Again, it takes reverse engineering, and plenty of testing.

Testing the types of offers, types of visual creatives, which audience you’re targeting, which interests you’re targeting, and then testing each of these variables against each other. Eventually, based on analysing the metrics & results, you’ll find out;

• Which offer is working
• Which specific audience is responding
• Which video / photo creative is most effecting
• Which ad copy is most enticing

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As much as there are proven methods for successful facebook ads, each business or brand will be different. To hit the sweet spot, all of the above mentioned variables must be tested. Sometimes it can take only a few days before we begin to see some positive results. Other times it can take weeks until the AI of facebook ads begins to work effectively.

In saying that, none of the budget you allocate for facebook ads is wasted, because as we mentioned in Tip number 3, all of this data can be used for retargeting. And for the audiences & offers that don’t work, we have now shortlisted the types of ads that are working, which we can then double down on as we now know that they are effective.

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As cliche as it sounds, for facebook ads to work, you need to spend money before you can make money. This doesn’t mean you must spend ridiculous amounts, it’s all about allocating a budget that is realistic for your financial situation. If you can only afford to spend $20 per day, then you work with that budget.

If you can afford to spend $10,000 per month, then you work with that.

Generally speaking, the more you are able to spend, the more eyes you can get in-front of. But, as any successful business knows, it’s all about starting somewhere.

Allocate a reasonable and realistic budget based on your financial circumstances, and scale from there.

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5 - Track real metrics, not “likes”

It’s easy to get caught up in vanity metrics such as likes and follows. And although likes, shares and followers can be a good indicator of engagement, they are definitely not the most important metrics to be paying attention to.

Your business may only have 5,000 followers on Instagram, but your ads may be generating you 10x on your ad spend. In this case, only having 5,000 followers is really nothing to be worried about compared to how effectively you’re able to turn $500 ad spend into $5,000.00 profit.

Important metrics to follow are the ones you can analyse within the facebook ads manager section of your facebook business manager.

Within Facebook Business Manager we can see details of the type of demographic that is responding to your ad, which gender is responding to your ad, which placement on facebook or instagram is giving the most attention to your ad, how many add to cart’s a certain audience is making with a particular ad, etc etc.

Likes & followers are vanity metrics, and although can be a good indication of engagement on face value, they are not the be all and end all.

Focus on your performance metrics, such as the return on your investment, how many add to carts or add’s of payment information your website is receiving from your ads.

When analysing these metrics, we can see how best to improve upon our ads and how to further scale for even better results.