Frustrated about that boosted post that didn’t quite achieve your objective? Another campaign with no website visits? There’s several factors to producing a good Facebook ad, but your copy ultimately converts scrollers into buyers.
In this blog post, you will discover the must-dos to get your advertisements over the line with social media ad copy written to convert.
Branding: Infuse your brand voice into your copy
Like every brand, a unique voice is required in your copy to stand out and for your audience to take action. The same goes for your ad copy, as it would for your website, your print collateral, your customer interactions, and your email campaigns. It’s all connected.
Be sure to use the language that your target demographic would use and don’t fall into corporate jargon or slang that doesn’t relate to your audience.
Facebook for Business encourages advertisers to “be yourself and be consistent” -- pretty obvious advice, right? But so many businesses fail to focus their marketing efforts on reflecting their brand’s personality, instead opting for what they believe will work for any and all businesses.
Visual Marketing: Visuals that work with your copy
“Stop them as they scroll”, another nugget of gold from Facebook for Business. Your visuals should complement your copy, the brand story you’re telling, and ultimately catch the eye of your audience.
For an ad to be shown, and to succeed, on Facebook, whether a boosted post or a targeted campaign, you will inevitably come up against rules and regulations around your visuals.
Facebook favours content that doesn’t scream ‘salesy’ and those with less words in the imagery. This means when crafting copy, make sure the visual copy isn’t a key part of your strategy -- as it may be rejected by Facebook for not adhering to the “stop them as they scroll” tip.
As a venue, restaurant or cafe, your visuals are somewhat more important than that of a B2B business, 11% more according to B2C marketers. As a B2C business, you have a lot more power to use graphics and venue photography to tell your brand’s story.
Funnel Marketing: Ads work together, not singularly
A key reason your ads aren’t converting: they’re not part of your larger marketing strategy. Your ad copy campaigns should follow the top of funnel to bottom of funnel marketing principles, meaning you don’t go in hot with the hard sell like you would on AdWords.
You need to build trust first, because your business is essentially showing up in someone’s feed without their permission to sell them something. You need to warm them up, get them interested and engagement, before you get all hard sales with it.
Start with choosing the right objective. Your audience takes steps before they buy, and a ‘Buy Now’ objective will not be as successful as a download or a sign up in the beginning. Susan Wenograd, Facebook ads expert, tells the Social Media Examiner that you need to take smaller steps that produce more non-sales conversions before you can sell.
Other top of the funnel Facebook ad formats to consider:
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Video Advertising
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Messenger Ads
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After you know what objective you want for your advertising, instead of turning directly to targeting, take a moment to be sure what you’re offering (holiday party tips, cocktail recipes) will appeal to your audience.
Next, it’s time to identify the online audiences you ALREADY have. That doesn’t just mean using targeting to find people by their interests, you can also utilise your website traffic and your email list, depending on their size.
With funnel marketing, you can’t rely on just one audience. Your audience differs based on where they’re at in the funnel, which means the criteria for who they are as a user on Facebook is also different.
Performance Marketing: Test, test, test
Longer or shorter ad copy? Two or five word call-to-actions? Test and refine.
The split testing feature in the Facebook Ads Manager will help you to decide on what will work for your audience; there’s no one-size-fits-all for Facebook ads.
Split testing allows you to test your ad copy, the ad copy length, and the jargon you use. By testing, you can better understand what makes your audience click (literally).
As mentioned, Facebook will show ads based on if they’re in line with their advertising standards. Too much text on a visual will tell Facebook that your ad isn’t valuable. Text overlay is a determining factor of the success of your ad. According to Facebook, “If the proportion of text to image is too high, your ad may not reach its full audience.”
Test your visual advertisements with Facebook’s Text Overlay Tool. Simply upload an image and the tool will tell you, just as it would when setting up an ad, whether your visual will be rejected or not.
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To convert your Facebook ads, you need to be thinking big picture in everything you produce, from the brand voice, to the visuals, right down to your campaign objectives.
Stuck on where to go next with your failed Facebook advertisements? Send us a message today & we’ll help troubleshoot why your venue isn’t getting any clicks.
