You must have been proud of yourself when you have created a certain type of content that you loved it. The first impulse was to share it with the world. You have clicked on Boost button and you’ve probably started asking yourself a lot of questions:

• How to write the ad to be clickable?
• Who should see my ad? How to select the most relevant audience, being interested in what I offer?
• Which is the best goal to set for my ad?
• Which is the best budget to reach my goal?

I asked myself the same questions. I need clarity in creating ads even if I have “played” with ads before that. And I was recently surprised to discover a Facebook ad that targeted me. Kiwi Marketer, a digital company from Timișoara has opened Edukiwi, a training online academy that sets your basics for Facebook ads and campaigns. I have subscribed to their free webinars to try the experience and I have discovered an insightful guide in creating ads.

How to write the ad to be clickable?

Text structure for Facebook ads:

• Hook: a question, a curiosity
• Turn the knife in the wound
• Solving
• Benefits
• CTA

I have tested this structure for one of my ads and I was satisfied with the results. I have set the goal on site clicks.
The budget was symbolic 5 dollars for three days, but I have reached over 7.000 people and I have got almost 200 link clicks from interested persons.

Why my ads didn’t work?

You don’t consider the customer journey
The temptation is to create ads that have sales messages for people who don’t know your business.
People need credibility before buying something. They don’t know your business and they need a journey to become loyal customers.

This is the customer journey. Let’s see the type of content you need to create on Facebook for every stage:

• The first stage is called “Cold”: share for free articles, reports, videos.

• The second stage: “Warmish”: ask an e-mail address.

• The third stage: “Warm”: sell cheap products. People test your business in this stage. They want to see the experience with your business.

• The fourth stage: “Hot”: sell your products. Let’s say customers had a good experience (you kept your promise, you delivered a quality product on time) in the third stage and they are willing to become loyal consumers. They are the most valuable public. Keep them engaged with your brand, by creating special offers for them.
  

There is of course the happy scenario in which people buy from you in the cold stage (for example, you sell consumer products such as water), but this journey means to gradually increase people’s confidence especially if you sell cars, apartments, services.

Let’s see some examples from the “Don’t do that’ category:

1. Your ad is written from your business perspective, not from your client’s perspective
You have to highlight a problem that your client has and the benefits you offer him to solve this problem. Write the ad for him, not for you. You can choose the structure presented above, which will help you reach your customers and motivate them to take action.

2. You don’t research your target audience
You have to put yourself in the customer’s shoes and see their interests, what they are doing on Facebook, what type of content they click on, what brands they follow. Think about their income, their job, their hobbies, and their marital status. If they have children or not. You can ask a friend about his online behavior if you consider him as your target.
The best advice is to get out of the bubble “I want people X who have this problem now” and open your mind about your audience.
Don’t try to address the same ad to an 18-year-old and a 65-year-old. You have to write personalized messages for every segment of your public. Speak their language.

I also made a mistake in targeting. I boosted a post about maternal insomnia and I considered insomnia to be a general problem for all ages. So, I have select a wide audience (18-65-year-old) and the engagement goal. I was unsatisfied with the results because I get comments from +50 people who were excited about the sleeping sloth in the ad picture. But I have learned that I need to target mothers (25-40 years-old), and deeply searching their interests, their online behavior.

3. You don’t set the goal according to what you want to achieve
The biggest temptation is to want to get everything from an ad: engagement (likes, shares, comments), traffic, conversions. But Facebook optimizes your ad for one a single goal that can be:
Awareness – you can choose from: brand awareness or reach
Consideration – you can choose from: traffic, engagement, app installs, video views, lead generation, messages
Conversions: you can choose from: conversions, catalog sales, store traffic

So, if you set a traffic goal, don’t expect to get likes, comments, and shares. Facebook will show your ad to people interested in your topic, willing to click.
If you want to get more results such as likes, comments, shares, set another campaign with an engagement goal.

In my example about maternal insomnia ad, the traffic goal would be much more effective than the engagement goal because I want people that read the articles and visit the site knowing that here they will find the information they need.

The Facebook goal is like your life goal, you can’t follow more objectives at the same time.

4. You conclude too quickly from the statistics
Facebook takes a “learning phase”, to understand people’s behavior regarding your ad. This period can be up to 7 days or 50 events per ad set. Keep an eye on your ads from the start of promotion in order to see if the cost are higher than you expected or as usual, but don’t try to make big changes (on budget, for example) because Facebook is trying to learn who and how to deliver your ads.

So, a good advice is not conclude to quickly that your ad doesn’t run very well. If it doesn’t spend too much money, let it run for a week. The conclusions will be more relevant than after one day.

5. A big budget doesn’t guarantee better results than a small budget
Start with a small budget of 5 dollars per day or 20 dollars for three days to test and see the cost per result. If you start with a bigger budget, the cost per result may be higher. Also, if you see that your ad runs well, don’t increase your budget. It’s possible to get some more results at higher prices.

You can set your budget, according to your goal. For example, if you choose the engagement goal you will pay less than on traffic goal or conversion goal.

So, what mistakes did you do in creating ads and how did you solve them?