“Facebook Ads for creatives can be one of my most lucrative marketing efforts you make!” – Cam Petty Palmer

Facebook and Instagram Ads are a favorite of mine to talk about because as someone who has learned the hard way and tried running ads a few different ways, I’ve finally figured out what works best for my creative business and I’m pumped to tell you all about it today! 

So let’s dive right in with some things you may not have known before when it comes to Facebook and Instagram advertising. 

First, within the Facebook ads manager, you actually form your Facebook AND Instagram ads simultaneously! You can certainly do a promoted post within the Instagram app, however, to see the sponsored posts within stories and the feed, you form those through Facebook Ads Manager. 

The second thing you need to know is that you can create audiences to see your content through the traffic you’re already getting through your website, email lists, and other social platforms!

And lastly, creating Facebook and Instagram ads is WAY easier than you might think! 

I know when I started creating my first ad on Facebook, I was totally confused and honestly crossing my fingers and hoping it turned out as I was expecting. Luckily that happened! However, in more recent months, I’ve actually learned the ins and outs of Facebook Ads and can confidently say that what you’ll learn here and in my step by step ad to successful Facebook Ads guide, you’ll feel confident putting together yours! 

Alright, are you ready to dive in?

If you’ve NEVER set up an ad within Facebook before, you’ll need to go to business.facebook.com to set up your Ad account. To do this you’ll go to the nine little dots in the upper left corner of your screen. That button will be your main navigation so finding this first is super important. Go to Business settings there and you’ll add yourself, your business page for Facebook and Instagram, and create a new ad account. Adding in those four elements will set up your ad account to begin.

So first things first, we need to form a plan of where we’re going and the results we want to create. You can apply everything I’ll teach you today in any area of your creative business. If you want to run an ad to fill up a freebie you’re running to grow your email list, or sell tickets to an event, or just drive traffic to your website for a sale, you can use this formula to creating ads! 

So pick your result you want to get out of the ad you’ll create and that will help us define our objective.

There are a few things we need to define before we continue:

The objective which is what I just mentioned is the goal in mind that you just choose. Facebook ads manager calls this the objective and most will choose something like Traffic or Conversion, but it totally depends on the result you want to drive. There’s about 11 objectives to choose from and when you are on that part, it will tell you more about each, and I recommend looking at that before you continue on. You can find that within the green button that says create on Facebook Ads Manager.

Another thing you need to know is the difference between cold and warm audiences.

A cold audience is a group of people who don’t yet know who you are or what you do. A warm audience has some sort of idea about you whether they’ve followed you on social media, joined your email list, or visited your website. 

COLD AUDIENCES

• Finding their likes and interests
• Location
• Demographics like age and gender
• Lookalikes to your warm audience

WARM AUDIENCES

• Web visitors
• Email list
• Followers 

At this point, you’ll want to go ahead and set those audiences up in the Ads Manager within the area called Audiences. Ok, in my guide, I show you exactly how to set these up and configure your cold audiences through an exercise! 

The second thing you need to do is set up your Facebook pixel. This one takes a little bit of time to get set up and working on your website. You want to have a Facebook pixel set up on your website to track if your ad is performing. The main reason for an ad is to drive your cold and warm audiences to your website to do something, like buy a product, submit a contact form, or sign up for your email list. So a Facebook Pixel is there to assure that’s actually happening. You’ll want to go ahead and add this pixel to every page on your website and once you do the first one, it becomes simple to do from there! Facebook will also have you test your pixel before you start your ad just to make sure it’s all working properly. 

The third step to creating your ad is creating the ad itself and the elements you need for the ad such as the copy, images, and landing page you want the person looking at your ad to go to. The four key elements to a great ad are this:

• An image that stands out with a 3-5 word call to action
• Killer copy that hooks, sells, and gives a drool-worthy call to action
• A click-worthy headline, and
• The landing page that looks and feels similar to the ad

Let’s tackle the image first. The main color of branding for Facebook and Instagram is blues and pinks. So if there’s hues of blue or pink throughout both platforms, you’ll want an image that has opposite colors either neutrals or greens and yellows. If you do an image with lots of blue or lots of pink or red, it won’t grab your attention as quickly, so keep that in mind when picking your image. There’s also a rule of no more than 20% of words on the image. So if you choose to add words to your image, make sure it’s a hook to an action you want the viewer to take. 

Can we talk video real quick? 

I’m going to ask you a question. How long does it take for someone to decide if your video is worthy of watching or swiping through? 3 second! Yes, you heard that right!!

Ok, I have a follow-up question for you. How long should your Facebook Ad video be? Answer, anywhere from 15-30 seconds.

The social media game is rapidly changing and video is showing up and performing way better than images are. The other day I was scrolling on Instagram and it took me about 20 different posts to get to just an image, all the previous ones were videos!! Remember a few years ago when social media experts were saying the social media world was going to be moving in the direction of video? Ya’ll we’re there! Experiment with video and you can even do what’s called an A/B ad which is testing two elements against each other such as Instagram versus Facebook or image versus a video.

The other great thing about video is that when you do a retargeting ad, you can specify the retarget by how long someone watched the video and measure those metrics. A retargeting ad is key to run, which we’ll talk about later because it takes the people who clicked on your ad, visited the page, and then got distracted and just gently reminds them to come on back.

Write Compelling Copy

Next, Let’s talk about your copy. Now if you’re newer in business, copy means the words and text you use in marketing. Think blog posts, captions, the show notes of this podcast, anything that has words to describe or invoke a feeling. So when it comes to the copy of your ad, you’ll want to think of this in two formats. First, being conversational and not too formal of writing. And the second with SEO in mind. SEO is Search Engine Optimization which is the words used to pair your searches with the results you’re looking for. The bones for a good copy is a hook, story, and a call to action. 

I’m going to walk your through a quick exercise to find your perfect copy

• So let’s take your average Ideal Client, what is one of their main desires on a day to day basis? (Time, security, family)
• Now let’s take that desire and how might that show up on a daily basis? (desire for time to themself, hoping to make an impact, time off for intentional vacations with their family)
• When they finally feel like they’ve accomplished this desire, what might that show up like for them emotionally? (relief, excited, valuable)
• Now let’s do the same thing for stressors or fears in their life. What is one of their main points of stress or fear? (Lack of knowledge, not enough time, not doing it right)
• How does that show up on a daily basis? (imposter syndrome, a long list of to-dos, feeling less-than)
• Finally, when they are inside of that fear, what feelings might show up for them? (overwhelm, anxious, comparison)

So let’s take some of that and integrate it into the copy you use in your ad. The reason we do that is to resonate with them and make them feel seen and heard by you and to relate to your ideal client. Knowing the desires and stressors of your ideal client will help you in your messaging not only in your ads, but also in your emails, website copy, and any communications you might have with your customers.

Alright so here we go, let’s write that ad copy.

Writing great compelling copy starts with a “Hook”. This is the MOST important part of the copy you’re writing on an ad. Make sure you call out the person you want to attract. 

A good rule of thumb in any hook you write should be used in a singular voice, not plural. The reason for this is when you read something that has to do with you, you want it to feel personal. If you call out to a group of people it may feel like your a fish in a big pond. For example, if I was writing you an email but it was sending to my entire email list, I would write “Hey Friend, …” for singular, and “Hey Friends, …” for plural. I know I would rather receive something that is singular rather than plural. So, we’re going to start with your hook. If you can make this a question and address their desires or fears then that’s a great formula for an awesome hook. So an example of a hook in order for them to feel called out in a good way is to say this: 

“Hey friend, do you feel completely _______________ by this season.”

You’re addressing the feeling they are likely feeling most often and addressing a possible season they might be in.

The next part is the story you use to show who you are while also resonating with them. I’m sure in your many years in business as well as a mama you likely have some sort of short story you can tell that connects you. The biggest thing I say all the time is people buy from people and don’t want to feel like they’re just a number, so if you can relate to them any way possible, this is another key to a successful Facebook Ad. This story should only be a handful of sentences long and shows your similar fear and desire that’s similar to what they desire as well. 

Finally, the last part is the Call To Action. You want to be super clear here and act like you’re telling a 5-year-old to go and do something. So take your son, Winston, for example. If you were to tell Winston to go and purchase a piece of your jewelry, you’d be way more specific than too your friend.

Now you’ve got some copy. 

The next is your headline. This is the second most important piece of copy you need to focus on. It’s what prompts your viewer to take action. I usually recommend making a list of 20-30 headlines before you pick the one. Don’t stop until you get to at least 20 different headlines. It should start with a verb like Book or Sign Up, or Learn More, or Purchase. Something that causes them to take action.

Ok, we cant talk ads and not talk about the place you are sending those ads to convert to. I can’t tell you how many times I have clicked on an ad to be taken to where I was hoping to go and be unfortunately disappointed when I got there. Part of creating an ad is following up with a landing page with a similar feel and ambiance your viewer is pointed to. If you have a super professional ad that has an incredible image and then you get pointed to an outdated site with different copy and images you’re going to click off of it as soon as you land there. 

Has anyone seen the ads on Instagram where it’s a cute dress or sweatshirt set on a normal looking woman and you click over to the website to learn its a site from overseas and looks untrustworthy?

Ok, let’s take it even a step further, have you seen those ads, bought the product and it shows up totally different than advertised? Yall, I clicked on an ad for this cute fall green dress that had these scrunched arm sleeves and was cut at the perfect spot above the knee. The same photo was on the website and I bought it. Well, it showed up about a month later (which was longer than expected) and I opened the package hoping to find this cute dress and hopefully wear it the next day. Well, as I opened the package and pulled it out, I tried it on to find out the dress looked nothing like the ad and looked a bit more like a pilgrim dress that was a longer length and what was kind of like bell bottom sleeves. 

So not only does your website need to match your ad, but so does what the consumer receives from you if they convert to a customer. You might not have a product where you could have a crazy fiasco like that, but you might have them sign up for your email list or online products and if you aren’t consistent with what you advertised in the ad, you’re going too have people asking for refunds or unsubscribing from your email list.

Now it’s finally time to set up your Facebook Ad. Facebook Ads Manager makes it pretty simple to create the ad, however, I have a great guide to setting up your ads along with the exercises on worksheets to assure you’re creating the perfect converting ad which I’ll tell you more about at the end of this episode. So just hold on a few more moments. 

The last part of a successful Facebook Ad for Creatives is to make sure your ad is performing how you expected. 

How long after you’ve published this ad should you go check to see how it’s performing? 3 days!

The reason you need to wait 3 days is to give it time to learn the audience and gather the information needed. If your numbers are low and you aren’t getting traction then you need to switch some things up such as the image, your copy, or your landing page. 

I ran an ad recently for my holiday wreath-making classes and in the first few days, my numbers were super low. I looked at what could be keeping people from converting and figured it out that people were clicking but not getting to the checkout portion of the landing page. I had made the page on my computer, did the ad on my computer, and tested it out on my computer. What I didn’t do was have someone else outside of my inner circle check it out on their computer and phone. What I learned was my call to action was too far down on the landing page and people weren’t even getting to the thing I wanted them to do! A simple change of position on the landing page and my conversions went straight up! 

I have one extra credit tip to share with you! Retargeting ads. We talked about this a little bit earlier and a retargeting ad is a gentle reminder to those that may have gotten distracted. Like the mama that was scrolling on Instagram and her kiddos needed her attention? Or the busy entrepreneur that was about to purchase that product, but then their phone rang! A retargeting ad is super simple to set up. All you do is create a new image and tweak the copy to expand on your previous copy or call them out by saying something like, “Hey friend, I don’t want you to miss out on this thing.” 

Listen on Apple and Spotify for the full episode on Facebook Ads for Creatives!