SBM 084: How to Profit From Facebook Ads with Zach Spuckler

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Profiting from Facebook Ads: How You Can Do It

As with every other site out there, there is a way to monetize your presence in social media like Facebook. Think of it this way: Facebook has an average of 2 billion visitors per day. That’s 2 billion unique opportunities for business.

One of the best ways to monetize your Facebook account is to make ads for it. The trouble here, however, is that deciding to make ads for your Facebook account is an investment in itself. What that means is that you can either earn a lot from it or spend a lot with minimal returns and how you approach this strategy will determine which outcome is the most likely.

Why Some Facebook Ads Fail

Here’s a worst case scenario: you have created several Facebook ads and have planned for some campaigns for them. Once you’ve launched your ads, you find out that nobody is interacting with it. No likes, no shares, no followers. Nothing.

And to make matters worse, you’ve already spent an average of $100-$200 every week just to keep things running. So not only are you bleeding money from your ads, you’re not experiencing a considerable return of investment from it. Why is this so?

The answer lies in you treating Facebook ads like they are traditional ads. In traditional ads, the shotgun approach will work because there are multiple demographics forced to watch that ad whenever they turn the TV, listen to the radio, and even walk through the streets.

This is not the case anymore with online advertising. In fact, any online ad that adopts the same strategy in traditional ads are not as effective as they can be. Just look at how fast people click the Skip button whenever an ad interrupts whatever they are watching on YouTube.

What you have to understand that the online world allows for a higher degree of choice for people. A user is watching a video or reading a text out of their own volition and any presentation that interrupts such would be mostly unwelcomed. Simply put, no matter how good your ad is, if it interrupts a person in the middle of reading a story of how Pepe the Frog triggered SJWs in 2016, they are going to tune it out.

The second reason is that a lot of Facebook ads, well, aim straight for the jugular. They are so direct and upfront in presenting and selling a solution that they don’t even consider that this might be the first time that that reader has discovered the brand.

People are in Facebook mostly to connect with friends and family and partly to entertain themselves with memes and online drama. The last thing they want to do there is to find solutions for problems that they don’t know they have. Also, no good salesman ever offers a product before getting to know a potential customer so why should you go for a hard sell even before establishing a relationship with these people.

Taking Advantage of the Buying Cycle

So, how then can a Facebook ad become successful? For starters it has to be made to specifically target a person based on their buying profile especially on their current phase in the buying cycle. Simply put, you have to have the right offer for the right person in the right stage of their journey as a customer to your business. Here’s how it works:

• 1. The Awareness StageAt this point, the potential customer has no idea that your brand exist nor the reasons why they might need your product. At this point of time, the goal for your ads is to simply make those people aware of your presence in the market. Think of this part as the introductory phase of the buying cycle which means that the goal here is to make yourself known to the public.

  At this point, no risk should be introduced to the audience. They don’t have to do anything for you like giving up personal information. What they only need to do is to just listen to you introducing your business to them.

• 2. The Consideration StageNow that the audience is aware of you, the next step will be to convince them to consider whatever you might want to offer to them. This is where lead generation first takes place as you slowly introduce your offers to your target audience without actually selling something to them.

  At this point of time, your goal is just to introduce to a person that a problem exists and that there is a solution to that. What kind of solution? Well, they’d have to subscribe to you to find out.

• 3. The Decision StageAt this point of time, that audience should have considerable knowledge of who you are which means that you can start convincing them to try out your offers. This is where some elements of traditional advertising can be used as you are effectively telling your audience why your solution should be tried.

  However, given changes in consumer behavior right now, the bulk of your message should be less about why your brand is the best and more about why the solution you offer works. Surprising as this may sound, if you make your offer sound less market-y, the more you can prevent your audience from completely rejecting your message at this phase of the cycle.

Images and How to Use Them Effectively

When it comes to Facebook Ads, the offer is just part of the package. The rest of a good Ad message is made up of the images that you use in tandem with your offers.

A lot of business owners make the mistake that one good-looking image will be enough to make an ad effective. There is more to that. As a matter of fact, an effective Facebook ad image will adopt certain qualities which will include:

• 1. A Good HookYour Facebook Ad is actually divided into two main parts: the hook and the offer. The offer is whatever you are trying to make your potential customer do like subscribing to your email, heading on to this web page, or buy this product. The hook, on the other hand, is the way you present that offer.

  The image that you use can serve as the hook for your entire ad. It has to be more than just attention-getting. Sure, a picture of a cat or a woman or a meme can drive likes to your ad but most of these likes would come from people who don’t care about your offer. Make it a point that your image’s hook should match with the offer that you are trying to give to the market.

• 2. Telling a StoryIf you want your ad to do more than just catch the attention of everybody, then the image that you would use for it should have a message in itself. The way an image tells a story will be different from one case to another but the point is that an audience can immediately get the gist of what you are offering to them with just one look at the image.

  Of course, the story told must be in line with your offer. In other words, it should convince a person that your offer has a positive effect their life. If not, then at least the story told in your image should reflect the overall personality that your brand wants to convey to the public.

• 3. Standing OutIt goes without saying that your ad needs to stand out from the rest if you want it to catch the attention of the public. Of course, standing out for the sake of standing out is pointless. The outstanding qualities have to be intentionally and purposefully included into the ad with the goal of spreading awareness of your brand.

  For instance, using contrasting colors is effective because it taps on the human brain’s tendency to get distracted by bright and flashy things. Using GIFs and videos would also be better than still images as motion tends to catch people’s attention more. Just make sure that the core message is not lost when you put in a flashy presentation.

• 4. Displaying the Product Front and CenterIf you are selling a product and service, then it makes sense that you display them in your ad. These would be effective because a.) it gives you the opportunity to create your own unique images for the ad and b.) it allows you to seamlessly connect your offer to the hook.

  For instance, if your business is a restaurant, then the images you will be used will be about how a dining experience in your restaurant looks like. From pictures of your actual waiting staff to the food that your menu contains, these images will instantly tell the people what kind of restaurant you are even if you don’t technically say anything in the ad.

• 5. Brand-CentricThe image that you use should help people connect your message to the brand itself. The repeated use of certain imagery and color will help people realize that this ad is yours which helps them recognize your brand in the market better.

  How would know you that your images are brand centric? If your audience just takes one look at that ad and can tell that it is coming from your company, even without finishing it, then the ad is successful in introducing your brand. This would be better if the images you use can still allow people to recognize your brand even across multiple ads and various changes in style and format.

• 6. Being EmotionalThink of it this way, text taps into the intellectual aspects of a person while imagery taps into the more emotional side of it. This doesn’t mean that your image should make people cry. Instead, it means that whatever images you use should generate an emotional response.

  Remember that Native American with a single tear flowing down his face in the Make America Beautiful ad in the 1970s? It was so iconic because it generated an emotional response from people. The ad didn’t have to stand on a soap box and preach the wonders of being environmentally-conscious to people. All it needed was for a single crying Indian to tell you to do something for nature. That’s one of the best examples of a emotionally-provoking image and the ad remains one of the best examples of marketing even after it was taken off the air for several decades now.

Subtitling and why it Matters

Although closed captions are already an option in other videos, they might come in handy more in Facebook than any other social media sites. The reason for this is that Facebook ads immediately play when you scroll to it on the feed.

This was a conscious decision on Facebook’s part to help advertisers get the attention of their viewers quickly. After all, nothing can get your attention more than a video ad suddenly playing while you’re scrolling through a comment thread.

Here’s the thing, though: these videos are muted when they are played automatically. Sure, the person has the option to click on the video and activate the audio but that’s not exactly an option for many, especially those who are in the middle of a game.

Subtitling will help you convey your message to those people even if the audio element of the ad is taken out. It has also been noted that subtitled videos tend to have better engagements which can improve your rankings in search engines. As such, it should be a must that you get someone to make a transcription in your video ad or, better yet, do it yourself.

To Wrap Things Up…

There is no telling how well your Facebook ad will fare in the market once it has published. After all, even the best produced ads are still under the mercy of an ever-fickle crowd which only means that your chances of earning profit from Facebook ads is roughly the same compared to every other business out there.

However, what you should realize is that the proper message combined with the proper delivery and with proper timing tend to garner the best possible results. Say the right thing to the right person and at the right moment and you should be earning considerable from any ad you will publish at Facebook.

Have you attempted to run a Facebook ad campaign before? What other challenges have you faced in engaging with your target market in Facebook? Let us know in the comments section below!

ZACH IN ACTION

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