What Makes A High Performing Facebook Ad

What makes a HIGH PERFORMING Facebook ad?

There is a reason why some businesses’ ads outperform others every single time. There is a simple structure to follow to influence people to click on your ad rather than keep scrolling away… and I am going to reveal it in this post.

First let me start with something major you need to keep in mind when creating your Facebook ad.

DON’T sell your product/service in the ad.

Probably sounds counterintuitive but I really mean it.

The purpose of any Facebook ad isn’t to get people to buy you, it is to get them to click the link to go to your website/landing page.

There is too much to sell people into for what they need to know. Facebook ads are a traffic source to get people to a specific page that will sell them into taking an action.

The purpose of your ad is to sell the click. Influence them to click on your link so your landing page can do its job.

To make a high performing ad there are 3 critical elements you need to focus in on so you can achieve outstanding results.

Each element has a specific purpose and objective.

The elements are

  1. Media of the ad
  2. Headline/top line of copy
  3. Body copy

I am going to dissect each element of the ad to give you clarity on what you are aiming to achieve with each specific element of the ad.

The flow of this explanation will be the same flow people go through when consuming your ads.

Let’s start at the beginning…

THE MEDIA

The media is the image or video of your ad. “What about a carousel ad”, yes, that is an image or video so I mean that too. (Side note: I have tested thousands of different types of media and have never had a carousel ad perform better than a single image or video).

The main objective of the media is to stop them scrolling.

This is going to be the element of the ad that gets them to stop the super scroll and actually read your ad.

What works best here is creating a pattern interrupt. Have something that is out of the ordinary and call your audience out.

Some types of pattern interrupts are

  • Mess with something familiar
    • What would they recognise that you can distort to get attention
  • Canva Effects
    • Black & white or colour saturation
    • Canva Filters
  • Money $$$
    • If you can do it tastefully
  • Off center or diagonals
    • Most people are a little OCD
  • Add in moving elements to a static image
    • Canva elements

It can be easy to go a little crazy with this so remember to keep it tasteful and on brand.

The next element for a high performing Facebook Ad is…

THE HEADLINE / TOP LINE OF COPY

The headline is the section below your ad media and the top line of copy is what you see before you have to click “See more”.

The objective of this element is to influence them to click “See more”.

Now that you have stopped them scrolling you need to capture their attention to keep engaging with your ad.

The ideal ingredients to capture their attention is 50% end benefit to them and 50% curiosity.

End benefit for them is telling them by engaging further with this ad they will have some kind of value or understanding that will benefit them in the future.

Adding in curiosity makes them feel the need to know more.

If you have more of one than the other then this doesn’t work.

If you have too much end benefit and not enough curiosity then people will feel they already got what they needed or it sounds too good to be true.

If you have too much curiosity and not enough end benefits then you sound clickbaity and spammy. You don’t want to be the all sizzle and no steak person.

Talking to their known desires and creating open loops work really well here to influence people click that blue see more button.

The final element for creating Facebook ads that perform above the rest…

THE BODY COPY

The body copy is everything that is under the see more button.

The objective of this element is to get them to click the link to your website/landing page

So, this prospect has stopped scrolling, read the headline and top line, clicked see more and now are going to read your ad to determine if they want to know more about it.

In this section you want to relate to your audience as much as possible so they get the feeling that you truly know them inside and out. Once people feel like you have a good understanding of their situation/problem/desires they feel a bit of a connection with your brand.

What works well is

  • Highlighting a behaviour they have due to the problem you are looking to solve
    • Something they do on a regular basis because of this problem
  • Turning the knife on the problem
    • Give them clarity on all reason why this is a problem to spark motivation around it
  • Start to present the solution and what it means to them
    • Talk about the solution not your brand. What will help them out of their current situation and what life would be like if they took action
  • Give them direction
    • Tell them to click the link so they can get X or discover how they can Y

This section is all about selling them into the click, not your service.

“How long should my copy be?”, great question that I get very often.

My two favourite answers are

  1. How long is a piece of string
  2. Exactly 43 words

Both of these answers are me being a peanut.

The real answer is, as long as it needs to be to influence them to click the link. I have had very short copy work and very long copy work(and by long I mean you are scrolling at least 3 times to read it all).

Test both to find out what the market wants. They are the only opinion that matters for results.

Bonus Element

This was all around the ad but just a bonus, the next stage of their journey will be to click the link to your website/landing page.

The above the fold (the section they see before they scroll down) that section’s main objective is to sell them into reading the rest of the page

This section needs to let them know that they are in the right place and that they want to consume more of the page.

Having a strong headline and subheadline is important here. Along with an image that resonates with your audience and shows them the desired end result of what they actually want.

There is more I could go on with the landing page but let’s leave that for another day.

In summary

The main elements are

  • Media of the ad
    • Stop the super scroll so they start to read your ad
  • Headline/top line of copy
    • Engage them enough to click see more
  • Body copy
    • Influence them to click the link

By breaking down your ad into these main areas and putting more thought and effort into what will work for your audience will give you a dramatic increase in your click through rate.

If you’ve read this far, first off, thank you. Second, I want to give you a reward with absolutely nothing needed in return.

If you are finding your ads need more work or aren’t performing well then send them to us and we will give you feedback on what would work best for your or more likely just rewrite them for you to use.

Email your ads to info @ blackliondigital.com and mention this post blog. (I left a space so the bots crawling the internet don’t spam us)

Shoot them over and we will email the goods back, no spamming email list you are getting added to, no constant follow up (probably one follow up to see how they performed) just us doing more of what we love to do.

Only until we get too busy so don’t hesitate.

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