An AdWords text ad looks exactly the same on mobile as it does on desktop.

You don’t have to worry about the difference. And besides, it only takes a few characters anyway. There’s little room for error.

Now contrast that with a Facebook ad creative, where you’re juggling different headline, image, text and CTA options for different placements, across different devices.

What looks great for one will almost certainly not work for another.

Fortunately, there are a few general rules of thumb to start with that can make your life a lot easier (and not to mention, save you a bunch of money).

Here’s a cheat sheet to creating your own high-converting Facebook ad creative.

How to Decide Between Facebook’s Three Major Ad Placements

An image that’s perfect for the Desktop News Feed won’t cut it on a tiny mobile ad.

And therein lies the dilemma.

Facebook ads are a delicate balance, where you have to weigh up so many different objectives, ad types, placements, and sizes in order to get the creative just right.

One of the first places to start, well before considering an image or headline, is the platform and device placement.

Here’s how to choose between the three options.

Placement #1. Desktop News Feed

The standard Desktop, News Feed placement is your first go-to option.

As a general rule, the priority placement here gets you better-than-average conversion odds.

And you get more room to make your case, with a larger image, longer copy, and additional link description area.

The only problem?

It’s competitive. And it’s expensive (relatively speaking).

You’re paying for the extra emphasis. So while that’s great if your goals include engagement or generating leads and sales, it’s not-so-great for discovery and brand awareness.

Placement #2. Desktop Right Column

Right Column ads typically take a back seat to News Feed ones because they’re slightly out-of-sight, out-of-mind.

Not to mention, your ability to captivate with a smaller image and little-to-no text area becomes a little diluted.

But…

If someone already knows who you are and what you have to offer (i.e. you’re retargeting previous website visitors or past customers with custom audiences), your ads can grab their attention at a more cost-effective price point (per impression or click).

Just make sure you’re creating ads specifically for the Right Column placement, and not simply regurgitating and force-feeding News Feed ads into the smaller placement. Otherwise, this will happen:

These ads are from the Right Column, but written and designed for the News Feed.

So good try, but wrong placement.

That means the design objects and copy in the image are too small to be legible. And their ad text headlines and descriptions get truncated, too.

Which then means they end paying more for this ad, overspending and wasting precious ad dollars because they got only one of the variables wrong.

Placement #3. Mobile

Contra-competitive timing refers to sending email messages, for example, over the weekends when you have less competition to go up against.

Similarly, you can start audience-building on Facebook by specifically targeting mobile devices, where discovery and initial engagement can often be had for much cheaper (than desktop).

According to Massimo from AdEspresso, “Users will discover your product on their phones… then buy it the next day on their desktop.”

Perfect. That’s what we want. Use mobile, awareness-building campaigns to create an audience that we can later target based on previous website visits or Facebook page engagement.

(There is one caveat, however. Facebook’s Lead Ads, which integrate with most major email marketing services, can deliver great conversions on mobile. As always, test for yourself.)

TL;DR?

1. Desktop News Feed: Use for conversions (but can be cost prohibitive for other objectives).
2. Desktop Right Column: Reserve for retargeting & remarketing to brand-aware people.
3. Mobile: Use primarily for driving discovery and brand awareness.

Perfect. Now on to the creative and design portion.

Let’s kick things off easy with the single image ad creative.

Three Major Steps to Nail a Single-Image Ad Creative

An AdWords ad might take you all of five minutes to create. Throw in a ~25 character headline, add another line or two, and call it a day. Time for happy hour.

Unfortunately, creating Facebook ads might make you miss that golden social hour.

‘Cause you’ve got longer headlines and text to create. Not to mention, selecting the picture-perfect image that will jump off the page for viewers.

It ain’t easy. But it can be easier if you start here.

Here’s what an image ad looks like:

• Optimized for Placement: Takes advantage of larger image and longer copy on Desktop News Feed.
• Strong Value Prop Angle: Answers the nagging question ‘why’ someone should click.
• Short & Sweet Headline: Direct and to-the-point in under five words or less.
• Visceral, Communicative Image: Bright colors jump out, with realistic view of what this ad is selling.
• Evidence of Social Proof: If your peers like it, so will you.
• Action-Oriented CTA: Uses a verb to hint at what you’re going to get when you click.

Step #1. Start with a Strong Value Prop Angle

Your Facebook ad creative all starts with the value proposition.

But not for the reason you might think.

Sure, the objective is critical. If you’re going for discovery, something attention-worthy is critical. While if you’re looking for conversions, subtlety and understatement are key.

However there’s something else to consider first.

On Facebook, audience targeting is more important than ad creative.

In other words, better audience targeting with an average ad will almost always outperform an amazing ad creative with average audience targeting.

The reason comes down to Facebook’s Relevance Score, which acts a lot like the AdWords Quality Score; determining, filtering, and suppressing ads with little-to-no relevance to a particular group of people (based largely on their interests).

So your ad’s value prop construction should begin with those oft-mentioned and equally oft-ignored buyer personas.

If you’re gonna waste time A/B testing anything, it should be macro-elements like which messaging appeals to which audiences (and not the stuff you’d immediately rush to, like CTA-copy).

For example, your app, tool, product, or service probably caters to at least two or three different buyer personas. And chances are, they buy or hire for very different reasons.

That’s where you start. Even though your widget offers the same solution (more-or-less), it should come across very differently in both. Startups are obsessed with growth, while agencies care more about saving hands-on management time.

From there, the rest of the ad should begin taking care of itself.

Starting with your angle. If facts tell and stories sell, your angle is the compelling narrative.

The simplest place to start is the old Problem-Agitate-Solution (‘PAS’) copywriting formula. For example:

• Problem: Facebook ad creative design is difficult and time consuming.
• Agitate: Making simple mistakes can waste hours of prep work and thousands of ad spend.
• Solution: This cheat sheet will cut your time in half AND double your ROI.

(Sound familiar?!)

Here’s how that fits into the hierarchy of a successful ad messaging:

• Headline: The big, bold promise you solve for customers.
• Supporting Copy: The benefits that add context to your offer, explaining how quickly, how easy, or how effective it is.
• CTA: The action (or verb) someone takes to attain the value you’re promising.

Just remember: keep thing short. No one came to read on Facebook. They came to browse, look, and procrastinate.

The Right Column and Mobile placements barely give you a line or two. While the News Feed gives you a little room to work with. The median ad post text is only 14 words long, while the link description is around 18 words, according to one study of 37,000+ Facebook ads.

Step #2. Images

5,000 images are shared every second across Facebook and its properties.

It should be obvious why.

Images can increase a piece of content’s visibility by 94%. And they can increase someone’s willingness to actually read the content associated by 80%.

That’s pretty impressive, considering people don’t read anymore. Thankfully, it takes our simple, little brains 13 milliseconds to process images. So they’re like a shorthand translation for whatever it is we’re trying to get across.

And on Facebook, they’re everything.

After your audience targeting and value prop, they’re the most important single aspect of a Facebook ad.

The problem?

Historically there was that whole 20% rule, that said that words can’t take over 20% of an image. That stance has since been softened a bit. But it still creates an issue. Use too much text, and your image’s reach and performance will be tainted.

Instead, your Facebook images need to tell the entire stories themselves – without relying on extra words or context to tell the story for you.

Here’s a few tricks:

Tip #1. Copy Apple

No, not their crazy OCD policies. But their ad creative that showcases beautiful products on stark backgrounds.

Turns out, that stimulating contrast is “very important” to 67% of consumers according to MDG Advertising, which outranked supplementing ad photos with additional information, descriptions, or ratings.

Tip #2. Authenticity Reigns Supreme

Believe it or not, authentic images are preferable to overly polished, cold, ‘professional’ ones.

That’s especially true for ‘hero images’, where you’re attempting to showcase the ‘thing’ that someone gets. This is the end result and outcome of the product or service you’re providing.

If possible, heighten realism with cultural elements that can evoke emotional connection, or sensory currency that shows people doing something with their hands.

Tip #3. Showcase Microexpressions

Microexpressions are those fraction-of-a-second expressions that sweep across our face as an involuntary, subconscious response to something. The seven strongest of which, according to Science of People, include:

1. Disgust
2. Anger
3. Feat
4. Sadness
5. Happiness
6. Surprise
7. Contempt

Substituting these onto the faces of your ‘hero images’ can immediately translate an emotion to people – instantly – without using a single line of copy or text.

Step #3. Headlines

Want to increase conversions? Like… instantly?

Change the headline, which has the power to deliver a 10% conversion lift with little-to-no mental taxation.

The other good thing about headlines? The best ones follow tried-and-true formulas. No need to reinvent the wheel. Especially when you combine it with a solid value prop angle and image, too.

Case in point:

If you were advertising a tool to an audience that already knows all about you, simple and direct might be the best headline approach (e.g. “Get a Free XXX Now”). But otherwise, your ads are going to need to grab attention away from all the pictures of people’s families, friends, and competition’s content.

One study, recounted in Made to Stick, showed that 89% of the most successful ads could be placed into six specific categories.

The same is true for headlines, where ready-made templates are already proven.

Fortunately there are already a few proven formulas to lean on.

1. Value Proposition: Highlight how you uniquely solve a difficult customer pain point.

The relatively straight-forward ‘value prop’ headline highlights the primary benefit along with evidence of what they’re gonna get (or save).

Incorporating a number, like the example above, can help set this headline apart; instantly communicating the value it delivers.

One PPC multivariate test performed by Marketing Experiments showed that the winning headline incorporated a specific, too-good-to-be-true number (“Dental Plans for $8.33 a month. Acceptance Guaranteed.”).

2. Listicle: ‘Hacks’ or ‘secrets’ promise simplicity in a chaotic world.

List posts are among the most prefered headlines on the ‘net. For a reason.

They offer the promise of quick results. Whether it’s a huge list to reference, a funny distraction, or – as the image above shows – specific, step-by-step shortcuts to solve a painful (and disgusting) problem.

When it comes to grabbing attention (for discovery and other top of the funnel campaigns), list posts reign supreme in almost all tests of headline effectiveness.

3. Cliffhanger: Give them a teaser, but hold back the rest to get them to click.

The most popular phrase that appears in the best performing headlines is kind of surprising.

It is, “This is”, according to Buffer’s analysis.

The reason? It hints at something too interesting to not click. It teases you just enough, revealing something surprising or funny or shocking, but then holds back and forces you to take action if you want to see more.

This is like a BuzzFeed headline at its finest; using clickbaity techniques like pattern interruption to get viewers to stop in their tracks and pay attention.

One final reminder though…

No matter which headline approach you choose, keep it short and sweet.

Concise and pithy wins, like this Asana add that gets everything communicated with the fewest headline words possible:

The median length for headlines on Facebook ads are only 5 words. Which means you need to get your point across fast, and get out of the way.

Conclusion

Facebook ad creative is difficult to pull off.

There’s so many different variables that a lot of time can be wasted (and money spent) on trial-and-error before you ever get to conversions.

Start with your ideal placement, which is driven largely by your campaign’s objectives.

From there, you can start thinking through the right value prop’s that will appeal to specific buyer personas, combining both logic and emotion to sell the value behind whatever it is you’re advertising.

Images should be visceral and evocative, communicating almost everything that needs to be said so it can stand on it’s own without a lot of supporting text.

Headlines can the be straight-to-the-point. They can translate your entire message into just a few simple words.

The best Facebook ad creatives then, aren’t just a bunch of isolated pieces. But a sum greater than its parts.

About the Author: Brad Smith is a marketing writer, agency partner, and creator of Copy Weekly, a free weekly copywriting newsletter for marketers & founders.

As a co-founder of an eCommerce startup in a highly competitive industry, I quickly realized that we had to move beyond the basics of marketing optimization and test some advanced techniques to improve our ROI.

After much trial and error, we found few tactics that were really effective. Although our startup did not survive, the learnings I took away from our extensive experimentation and optimization were priceless. In this post, I will cover some of the techniques that worked really well for us.

Before I share these tactics, I would like to point out that it is crucial to achieve a high level of alignment between your marketing, engineering and product teams. Your engineering team should understand marketing and your marketing team should understand the technology. In today’s world, technology plays a significant role in marketing optimization and it is important for your teams to have that common perspective.

Tactic 1: Customize Website Experience Based Upon Visitor Personas

All marketing channels are not equal. Visitors from different channels (or campaigns) are typically in different stages of purchase cycle and have different aspirations.

For example, visitors coming from your affiliate channels that focus on coupons are more likely to be interested in exploring discounted products. On the other hand, visitors coming from Display channels such as Facebook might need some inspiration and education before you barrage them with pricing and transactional information. Many marketers spend a good deal of time optimizing the initial landing page to make sure it is relevant to the campaign that brought the visitor.

But what about optimizing the rest of the website based upon the visitor’s context?

We found that making subtle changes to the entire website content based upon visitor’s persona (associated with the marketing campaign) resulted in over 20% increase in conversion rate. For example:

• Automatically changing the product sorting algorithm on category pages based upon the type of the campaign that brought the visitors (e.g. automatically showing highly discounted products on top of category pages if the visitors came from “deals & discount” focused campaigns).
• Automatically “injecting” dynamic content through out the website based upon the visitor persona (e.g. Showing “Trendy” and “Lookbook” content to visitors coming from Lifestyle oriented Display FB campaigns).
• Dynamically updating the homepage banner sliders based upon the visitor persona (e.g. if the visitor came from “discount” focused campaign, automatically show the “Sale” focused homepage banner as the main banner).

You don’t need to invest in a highly sophisticated personalization technology to implement these dynamic capabilities. In our case, we used Google Tag Manager to setup above rules to update dynamic content throughout the website. Here are some steps to implement dynamic content for your website visitors using Google Tag Manager:

• Come up with 4 or 5 distinct personas that represent your target customers. (See example below)
• Once you have the personas defined, tag every campaign and Ad Set with the appropriate persona. For example, if you use UTM tracking for your marketing campaigns, you can pass an extra variable in your URL such as “utm_persona” which provides a better context about the visitor.
• Then in Google Tag Manager, you can setup rules that dynamically update certain predefined content zones on your website based upon the visitor persona.
• You can even use JavaScript in Google Tag Manager rules to automatically set a different sorting order for your products (based upon the User persona).
• Within the same rules, you can also fire a special Google Analytics event so that you can track the conversion rate improvement associated with these dynamic rules.

Think about your website as a smart salesperson who is able to understand the context of your customer, and speak the language that resonates the most with the customer. There is a lot of information that can be inferred about the visitor by using the referring campaign’s targeting criteria. Take advantage of this information and personalize your website and landing page content to better manage the visitor’s journey on your website.

Tactic 2: Make Your Campaign Hierarchy as Granular as Possible

Many websites run large monolithic campaigns that target multiple demographics and interests. If you are running Facebook ads, create as granular ad sets as possible so that you can easily spot the best segments that are resulting in greatest performance. For example, my current startup targets early stage entrepreneurs who might be looking for branding help. In this case, breaking the ad sets in the following way allows us to get much better insights about which segment is delivering the best performance:

Yes, managing your ad sets at a much more granular level can lead to additional overhead but it can definitely pay off in the long run. You will be able to find hidden gems much more easily and avoid wasted spend on the segments that are not delivering a strong ROI.

When you are optimizing the ad sets, change one thing at a time and measure results. For example, do not change the ad copy, targeting criteria and bid price at the same time. You will never know what led to the improvement (or deterioration) of your campaign performance.

Keep a log of the changes you are making for optimization so you can refer to them. Once you have documented your changes for 30-45 days, you will start seeing interesting trends such as: ads which include a specific time limit (“only 5 hours left”) result in much better CTR than those with generic messaging (“Sale Ending Soon”).

Tactic 3: Smartly Segment Your Retargeting Audiences

Retargeting is a great strategy to convert some of your recent visitors to buyers. A little bit of segmentation can go a long way in optimizing your retargeting campaigns.

First, it is generally safe to exclude all those visitors from your retargeting campaigns who bounced after seeing your initial landing page. It usually means they were not interested in your product or service. Don’t feel bad. It happens. Maybe they landed on your website accidentally, or they realized that your offering is not a good fit for them. Whatever the reason, I have seen a significant ROI increase by excluding those people who bounced after seeing the initial landing page, or those visitors who spent less than 60 seconds during their visit.

Second, always focus on the lowest end of your funnel as the starting point. This is your bullseye. Customers who left your website from the final payment or conversion step might just need a little bit of push to purchase. Those who left from a page that is higher up in your purchase funnel might need a bit more convincing. Create separate segmented lists that correlate to different steps in your purchase funnel. Your bidding strategy should correlate to audience belonging to these steps. Always bid highest for those visitors who abandoned from the final step of your funnel.

Don’t forget about time-based segmentation. Generally, you will see a much better outcome from your recent visitors compared to those that visited your site, say, 7 days or 30 days ago. When you are setting up time-based lists, pay close attention to setting correct exclusion rules. For example, in your 3-day list, always exclude those who belong to 24 hour list. This way, you can ensure that there is no audience overlap in your 24-hours and 3-day lists.

In Google AdWords, you can setup these exclusion rules by using Custom Combination lists.

One more thing – please set some frequency caps to make sure you are not following your audience till eternity. Showing your ads too often can actually turn off your potential customers. I would recommend setting a frequency cap of no more than 5 impressions in a day. However you can test different caps to see what works best in your situation.

Tactic 4: Consider LifeTime Value (LTV) While Optimizing Campaigns

If your website focuses on multiple product categories, you might find that the lower priced or discounted products deliver the best conversion rate. You might be tempted to spend more on those campaigns that are delivering the best cost per conversion. However, this is not always a good thing.

If you analyze your revenue and profitability from these campaigns, you might find that the most profitable campaigns are those where the customers are purchasing higher value products, and where the customers have a greater probability of making a repeat purchase.

To illustrate this, consider the example in the table below. At first glance, the campaign with conversion rate of 3% and cost per conversion of $20 seems to be the most effective and you might be tempted to allocate more marketing spend towards this campaign.

However, once you bring in the revenue, order value and LTV data, the picture changes completely. With the additional data, you will notice that the campaign that targets men on iOS devices seems to be delivering the best overall margin as well as LTV.

Assuming your goal is to improve your bottom line, your marketing spend allocation should be based upon an overall ROI metric which takes into account the LTV of customers acquired from that campaign. Consider building your own custom dashboard (or use an analytics tool like Kissmetrics) to monitor marketing effectiveness, taking into account your internal profitability metrics such as margin and LTV.

Tactic 5: Make Use of Automation

There is a great deal of automation available in platforms such as AdWords that can help you optimize your campaigns on an ongoing basis. Don’t get me wrong – I am not suggesting you put your campaigns on “cruise control” and expect that the automation will handle your optimization for you. However, there are some fundamental levers that you can set up which would allow you to focus your time and resources on more strategic optimization.

Here are few examples of what you can automate in AdWords:

• Raise bids automatically to top of page bid if the keyword is delivering a strong ROI. Let’s say your target Cost Per Conversion goal is $25. In that situation, your goal should be to maximize the impressions for those keywords that are delivering conversions below your acceptable threshold. You can setup rules to automatically increase the bids to top of the page bid in order to maximize the impressions for these keywords.
• Automatically lower bids if your keywords are not giving a strong ROI. You need to allow enough time and impressions before you start reducing your bids. However, let’s say you expect your keywords to deliver a Cost Per Conversion of $30. You could set up rules to automatically reduce max bids by 20% If your keywords have already generated few hundred clicks, but are delivering a Cost Per Conversion of $40 or higher.
• Setting these rules will allow you to automatically optimize the “extreme” outliers so that you can focus your time and effort on other aspects of your campaign.

Conclusion

Marketing optimization is an ongoing journey. There is no finish line. Even though the above tactics worked well in our situation, you might find that they don’t work in your case. That’s ok. The key is to continue to experiment and test. As long as you take a focused and structured approach in experimenting your ideas, you will collect significant insights over time that work well for your business. As architect Buckminster Fuller rightly said:

“There is no such thing as a failed experiment, only experiments with unexpected outcomes.”

About the Author: Darpan Munjal brings over 19 years of ecommerce experience in technology and digital marketing with companies such as Sears, Kaplan as well as venture backed startups that he co-founded. Currently, he is the Founder of Squadhelp, a crowdsourcing platform helping startups engage branding experts for their naming and branding projects. You can connect with him on LinkedIn.

When it comes to online advertising, no one is disputing that demographics are important. After all, they’re what powers your media buying and customer personas. The data you collect is meaningless without demographics to help you properly filter and segment it.

But dig a little deeper, and you’ll find something much more important than demographics powering actual conversions. And using it effectively could make a huge difference in your sales. Let’s take a closer look at what it is, and how you can leverage it to the fullest.

The Dismal State of Online Retail Conversion Rates

According to a report just released by Monetate in November, online retailers continue to struggle with e-commerce sales. A meager 3% conversion rate is something these retailers get excited about. But I’m of the opinion that this number could be much higher, and it has nothing to do with demographics.

Let’s use the just-passed holiday shopping season as a perfect example. Let’s say I’m in the market for a technology gadget of some kind. I’m already not in the target demographics for this market, which tends to lean heavily toward the 20-something male segment. I go to a website where I find the gadget, and proceed to buy it, but the shipping is a bit too high for my tastes, so I abandon my cart and go back to my search.

If you, as the online retailer, carried the same gadget at a better price or value, wouldn’t you want the opportunity to earn my business? Of course you would – which is why demographics go right to the back burner when it comes to enticing me to do business with you instead.

This is known as customer intent.

“So what?” I can hear you saying. “That was for a gift, and it was a one-off purchase, so it doesn’t count.”

But when you consider that 56% of mobile searches for sporting goods are made by women, and 68% of influencers for skincare and beauty were male, you can see how targeting by demographics alone goes right out the window.

How Do You Measure What You Can’t See?

Currently, there is no “one size fits all” tool to measure something like customer intent. It’s far too complex. We can, however, measure the things that lead up to intent. You do it right now without even realizing it. Cookie-based ads, remarketing, email automation — all of these things have been used successfully for years to help target ads relevant to the customer’s search.

But it’s not enough. Until now, marketers have relied on their existing automation systems, their CRM data and other traditional sources (known as first party data) to better understand their customer base. More and more, however, a new type of data known as third-party data, is coming into play. Third party data is often captured through things like IP tracking, shared cookies or user opt-ins.

Let’s say a user comes to your site through a link on social media. They find an article funny or entertaining and decide to continue reading other, similar articles on other sites. Maybe they even leave a comment or two.

All of these actions leave a sort of “breadcrumb trail” for publishers to follow and glean insights from. Maybe the article you read had to do with funny images of babies, and perhaps your comment was a story about your own little one. From these few points alone, advertisers can deduce that you’re probably a mother of an infant or toddler, and that information, combined with other sites you visit, could paint quite a picture of you without ever being personally identifiable.

It’s questionable from a privacy perspective, but welcomed by marketers, as it gives them little tidbits of information about a prospect — just enough, perhaps, to measure their intent on buying.

So the question then becomes, how do we attract the kinds of people that are intent on buying?

Crafting Content for an Intent-Centric World

Just as all these first party and third party data snippets come together like pieces of a puzzle, so to must marketers and content creators do a little detective work to determine what kinds of content best resonate with that audience. One of the most well-known companies to leverage this kind of information in a meaningful way that boosts their own sales is the Home Depot.

A couple of years ago, they discovered that their do-it-yourself customers were browsing YouTube on their mobile phones to determine how to do different home improvement tasks, ranging from painting a room to building a fire pit. So Home Depot made several YouTube videos walking customers through the process of the most popular types of DIY projects:

Currently, the Home Depot’s YouTube channel has hundreds of how-to videos, all of which have received a remarkable 48 million views combined. There are lots of different ways you can leverage this strategy yourself, including:

• How to clean/repair/care for the products you sell
• Reviews of the products or their ingredients
• Recommended accessories or add-ons for the products

There are plenty of analytics tools available – including Kissmetrics – which can help you ascertain customer intent and then harness that intent to the fullest with helpful content, reviews and recommendations.

And although it may be a bit of a stretch to say that intent is more important than demographics, it nevertheless fills an important role that all marketers should be aware of when planning campaigns both now and in the future.

Which Do You Think is More Important? Demographics or Intent?

Do you weigh demographics more heavily than customer intent? Or is intent simply too cumbersome to measure? Do you think both deserve a place in your marketing plan? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!

About the Author: Sherice Jacob helps business owners improve website design and increase conversions through content marketing and SEO copywriting. Get your free printable conversion checklist and web copy tune-up at iElectrify.com or follow @sherice on Twitter.

Breaking news! Facebook is popular, with 1.86 billion monthly active users, and 1.23 billion daily active users.

Admittedly, not the scoop of the year. How about this?

This just in! Facebook ads accounted for 97% of its revenue in 2016, and the social media platform makes more from advertising than traditional sources like Disney, Comcast, and CBS.

You may have already known that, but the stats are impressive nonetheless:

So it’s a no-brainer, right? Easy-peasy. Get started today, and watch the dollars and cents come knocking at your door by tomorrow. It’s got the numbers, and it seems like everyone is doing it.

Not so fast. There’s an art to this.

An Important Service Reminder

The thing to remember about Facebook is that it’s cold traffic. Nearly two billion people are using it, but it’s not the same as, say, Google Adwords. There, someone navigates to the search engine, types in “cheap smartphones phoenix”, and is served up an appropriate ad with the organic results. That’s warm traffic.

We know their intention (in this case, they’re looking for an affordable smartphone in Phoenix, Arizona). AdWords and Facebook Ads are fundamentally different in this way.

On the social media behemoth, we don’t know why they’re on the platform. They might be updating their status, looking at photos from friends and family, checking the news (66% of American adults get their news on Facebook), or simply killing time.

What they’re probably not doing is looking for new shoes, or a cloud accounting service, or designer sunglasses. That’s cold traffic.

The good news? You can turn cold Facebook traffic into red hot leads if you use ads the right way.

There are plenty of Facebook Ad tips and secrets posts out there for you to devour (design tips, testing secrets, and so forth). And you should. Instead, let’s focus on warming that cold traffic to the point of boiling, shall we?

Let’s do this.

Step 1 – Start with Your Warmest Cold Traffic

Sounds a bit paradoxical, but hear me out.

There are 1.23 billion active users on Facebook, but most of them are simply not interested in whatever it is you’re offering. That’s the harsh reality.

But Facebook is a marketers dream, with unparalleled targeting abilities. Think about it: everyone who signs up voluntarily provides data about themselves, their interests, their demographics, their likes, the businesses and groups they follow, and more.

Begin by identifying your ideal customers. Create very detailed buyer personas so you understand everything about them.

Next, zero in on them in your Facebook ad. You can target by location, age, gender, language, interests, behavior, and demographics. Be specific.

A protein supplement for young men? Find them. Will every male between the age of 20-40 be responsive? Nope. But they’ll be much warmer than a 53-year old woman.

Heat rating: room temperature.

Step 2 – The Awareness Game

According to the iconic marketing book Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz, there are five levels of awareness in the buyer’s journey.

You need to know exactly where your target falls on that spectrum, because it’ll influence the ad content you present.

To use our protein supplement example, the targets already know that supplements exist and what they do, but they’ve probably never heard of yours.

They need to be made “product aware” (your new supplement), and they need some incentive (discounts and deals) to give it a try and switch from whatever one they’re currently using.

That’s what your ads need to provide them.

If, on the other hand, you were the first to create a protein supplement, you’d start at the “solution aware” stage and offer claims and proof instead.

Heat rating: lukewarm.

Step 3 – Educate Above All Else

Consumers need to know more about your product or service before they hand over their cash. They need context. They need specific on who you are, what it does, why they need it, and what it’ll do for them.

To do that, consider a series of ads that enlightens them one step at a time. Takes longer, sure, but you’ll see a better conversion rate overall.

FBA Wizard had a FB ad that took people to a landing page to sign up for a free trial. It was your basic “Here’s something. Get it” approach. Conversion rate? About 1%.

Not good enough. They switched to a 4-part video series delivered over four days to their “warmest” cold traffic that educated people on the product and its context incrementally. The result? They nearly tripled the CVR to 2.93%.

Educate first, pitch second. Woo them before you sell them. The traffic temperature is starting to rise.

Heat rating: getting hot.

Step 4 – Target Reacquired

How often do you see an ad for the first time, click, and purchase? Most people – and this is especially true for cold traffic – need to see something multiple times before they pull the trigger.

Enter retargeting.

Using the Facebook pixel – a small snippet of code installed on your website – you can retarget people who have visited your blog, or landing page, or whatever.

They check out your supplement product page without buying, for example, but then see an ad with additional details for the same product on Facebook and make the leap.

That’s the power of remarketing. In the FB Averts Manager, under Audience, click on Create New > Custom Audience > Website Traffic and fill in the details.

You can also opt to retarget individuals who have engaged with your Facebook content directly – such as your Page, your lead ads, your videos – under Audience > Create New > Custom Audience > Engagement on Facebook.

Between the two – your site and Facebook itself – your bases are covered.

Heat rating: scalding.

And that’s that. We slowly turned up the heat and made cold traffic a scalding hot lead by approaching Facebook ads intelligently and zeroing in.

Too many marketers play the numbers game on Facebook, believing that with nearly two billion people on the platform, someone is bound to bite.

They might. But isn’t your business worth more than “might”. Start with your warmest cold traffic (your ideal customers), identify their awareness stage (and create your ad accordingly), educate before you pitch them, and retarget as necessary.

Cold to warm to warmer to red hot. That’s the right plan. Otherwise, you’re simply handing your money to Mark Zuckerberg (and I hear he’s doing “okay” financially).

Have you tried Facebook Ads? What was your experience? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

About the Author: Alex Fedotoff combines consumer psychology, conversion optimization, and Facebook advertising to consistently scale his clients’ businesses in ecommerce and SaaS niches. He is the Founder of AF Media, one of the most sought-after Facebook advertising agencies in the world, and is managing about $2.5 million dollars in profitable monthly ad spend. You can connect with him on Facebook.

Facebook advertising is a big auction.

There are both winners and losers.

Now, you wouldn’t want to be on the losing side, would you?

So, what can you do to create Facebook campaigns that finish the race as champions, having collected many new customers in the process?

A smart move would be creating ads that catch people’s attention before any other Facebook post or ad can get to them. While there are many tips and hacks written about all across the web, here’s one that seems highly promising: playing on people’s emotion.

An analysis of 1,400 successful ad campaign case studies found that campaigns with purely emotional content performed about twice as well (31% vs. 16%) as those with only rational content.

Trend Hunter Marketing analyzed 55 emotional marketing campaigns, and found the average popularity score to be 8.0 — higher than in other categories.

By spicing up your Facebook campaigns with a pinch of emotion and a dash of thrill, you can allure your Facebook audience, making them click and purchase.

There’s no limit to the emotions you can bring into play – excited, melancholic, delighted, shocked – you name it.

This post will teach you how to apply emotional marketing to Facebook ads (and celebrate a landslide victory over the competition.)

Ready to win the Facebook ads race? Let’s go!

1. Master the Art of FOMO

If you’ve ever attended an event because you thought “Maybe something cool would happen,” it was likely due to FOMO – the fear of missing out.

What if all your friends go out while you’ll be missing out on all the fun…

A study of millennials found that as many as 69% experience FOMO when they are not able to attend an event where their friends are going.

People are afraid of being left without an amazing experience.

But FOMO doesn’t only apply to attending events. It also applies to other aspects of life and business.

For example, Sumo has written Facebook ad copy that makes the reader think that everyone else is already using their software and the person reading is the last one out.

By saying that over 175,000 websites use their tool, Sumo makes the reader wonder if they’re missing out on something.

Now, you wouldn’t want to be left behind while all those other websites speed right past you. So, you’ll likely click on the ad to see how to get the tools yourself.

How to use FOMO in your Facebook ads:

• Mention the number of people already benefitting from your product.
• Pose a question, hinting that the person’s missing out on a great opportunity.
• Make the reader feel like there’s a fascinating community they’re not part of… Yet.
• Make your Facebook ad offer limited by time to nudge people to sign up faster.

2. Show the Excitement

Excitement is known for its ability to increase impulsivity and make people quicker to act.

So, if you’ll manage to get a person excited in your Facebook ad offer, they’re a lot more likely make the purchase based on the momentum.

The author of The Psychology of Social Shopping, Paloma Vasquez points out that:

“In a state of excitement or arousal, people think and behave very differently. Emotional states trump rational thinking; it’s easier to sell to consumers when they are excited.”

As you look at Try The World’s Facebook ad, you’ll notice that it breathes excitement for several reasons: the bright ad color, lots of exclamation marks, and the energetic tone of voice.

One can almost feel the excitement of opening the subscription box and discovering its treasures.

As you decide to use the excitement tactic in your Facebook ads, don’t let the sparkle fade before the purchase is made.

An article in the Wall Street Journal suggests that it takes 20 minutes for the feeling of excitement to pass.

In most cases, emotions fade even faster.

So, it’s best to keep your ad’s landing page as straightforward and compelling as humanly possible and lead the visitor to signup.

A few tips for creating exciting Facebook ads:

• Use bright colors in the ad design.
• Use exclamation marks and keep your ad copy short.
• Include an ad image that shows excitement.
• Showcase your product at the most exciting moment of its lifecycle.
• Make sure that your offer is actually interesting to the target audience.
• Include a discount offer to give the final nudge and make the ad irresistible.

3. Create a Curiosity Gap

If you’ve ever thought what makes Upworthy and Buzzfeed headlines so irresistible, here’s one of their secret weapons: the curiosity gap.

Put simply, the curiosity gap is the discrepancy between what we currently know and what we’d like to know.

And it works wonders if your goal is to get people clicking.

Copy Hackers was able to get a 927% boost in clicks on their Pricing page after applying the tactic.

And of course, curiosity gap can also be incorporated into your Facebook ad copy.

As someone spots HubSpot’s question “How well do you rank for SEO” in their Facebook Newsfeed, they’re bound to find out the answer. That is, if HubSpot’s targeting a Facebook audience of marketers.

The formula of curiosity gaps is simple: Ask people a fascinating question or tell them a cool story, and leave the best part untold.

SurveyMonkey, for instance, asks in the ad’s headline “Want a GoPro?” and sparks the reader’s curiosity to find out more.

The reason why this works is that people have a natural tendency to connect the dots and discover the answers. It will be hard for them to resist reading and clicking on your Facebook ad after it has posed a fascinating question.

When targeting a cold audience, it’s best to fill in their curiosity gap for free. With warm audiences, you can ask for something in return, e.g. their email address.

4. Make People Happy

A study in 2010 of the most-emailed New York Times articles found that emotional articles were shared more often. The study also noted that positive posts were shared more often than negative ones.

What if the same rule applies to your Facebook ads – will positive ads get more likes and clicks?

There are three main tactics to make use the emotion of happiness in Facebook ads:

1. Brightly colored ad design.
2. Including an ad image with smiling people.
3. Using adjectives and verbs with positive connotations.

Eventbrite is applying all the three methods across their Facebook ad campaigns.

From the positive color scheme…

To smiling people:

Not only Eventbrite’s ads spark positive emotions towards the offer, but people will learn to associate the entire brand with happy feelings.

A study analyzed more than 1 million online reviews on sites like TripAdvisor and found that restaurants received significantly better ratings on days with nice weather and worse reviews on any day with rain.

If your goal is to make people remember your brand as a mood-booster on a rainy day, create more positive ad designs.

Happiness marketing can work especially well for B2C brands. For example, alcohol producers are often publishing commercials with people enjoying themselves on the beach or at a party. If you look at Corona’s ad profile, you’ll see that every ad follows this best practice.

5. Learn to Handle Negative Feelings

A Facebook ad sparking negative feelings isn’t always a bad thing.

Especially if it first ignites the negative thoughts and then offers a solution to cheer you up.

However, don’t overdo the negativity in your ads.

A study by researchers at Stanford GSB and Tel Aviv University discovered that small doses of mildly negative information — a so-called blemishing effect — might actually strengthen a consumer’s positive impression of a product or service.

The key to successful Facebook ads may lie in including just the right amount of negativity.

For example, Contently’s ad headline can make many marketers worry: “If the future of content isn’t blogging, what am I going to do?”

But just as the ad’s negative headline has grabbed the reader’s attention, it offers a solution: “More videos. More downloadable content. More infographics.”

According to the viral content study by The New York Times, some negative emotions contribute more to virality than others. Most specifically, the negative emotion of anger.

Here’s how to put negative feelings to good use in your Facebook ads:

• Capture your audience’s attention with a negative headline.
• Let your audience know about a small default about your product to show you’re not hiding anything.
• Remind the readers of a negative fact or situation they encounter on a daily basis.

6. Offer Hope for Better Future

We all hope that we’re going to be prettier, smarter and funnier.

That’s one of the reasons we buy new things — to improve our lives.

While deep inside, everyone knows that most of the time material things won’t make us happy; we still keep hoping they will.

Shopify’s Facebook ad plays on the emotion of hope, using aspiring language and brilliant copywriting.

“Start your journey” and “Get more out of life” are both great slogans and talk to Shopify’s target audience.

Now that you already know that the emotion of hope can be activated by masterful copywriting. Is there anything else you can do?

In fact, there is — as you create a Facebook ad sparking hope, also provide a platform or a solution to reach the better future. For example, if you promise to double a company’s revenue, be clear about how you’ll do it.

Asana’s Facebook ad promises many great improvements in teamwork, making a project manager wish their team could achieve even more.

7. Help People to Feel Proud

According to Dan Hill, author of Emotionomics: Leveraging Emotions for Business Success:

“Emotions process sensory input in only one-fifth the time our conscious, cognitive brain takes to assimilate that same input.”

This means that emotions have a strong effect on our immediate actions.

LEGO’s Facebook campaign makes moms proud of their kids, reminding them of the children’s capacity to create amazing things.

Moreover, LEGO’s campaign hooks with the previous point — using the emotion of hope. Many parents are drawn to the offer because they’d like to see their children learn and succeed.

Another way to make people feel great about their purchase is to remind them that they’re making a smart choice.

That’s exactly what the Dollar Shave Club does by saying their product is the smarter way to shave.

The person who buys the subscription will know they’ve made a clever deal and will feel good about it.

8. Create a Sense of Urgency

When you give people too much time to make a decision, they’re going to postpone the conclusion and will likely forget about it.

However, when presented with a limited time offer, people get worried about missing out on the awesome offer.

Applying scarcity and urgency on a website helped an entrepreneur increase sales by 332%. How much can you increase your ads’ click-through rate by using the same tactic?

For example, Target’s Facebook ad creates the sense of urgency by limiting their discount offer to a specific date.

Groupon has even added the end time with the time zone specification to make their offer feel more urgent. This way, there’s no doubt when the offer’s going to end.

How to create a sense of urgency in your Facebook ads:

• Define clear dates, e.g. “Today only” or “Offer ends in 24h.”
• Offer a great discount, e.g. “Get 60% off today.”
• Keep your offer simple and brief.
• Place your best offer in the ad’s headline or the image.
• Match the ad’s offer on the landing page.

9. Surprise Your Audience

Psychology Today reports that fMRI neuro-imagery shows that consumers use emotions rather than information to evaluate a brand.

If you’re looking for a strong emotion that will immediately catch your audience’s attention, create an offer that’ll surprise them.

A simple way to surprise people is to conduct an original survey and share interesting stats with your ad audience. That’s exactly what Grammarly has done:

You can also learn to apply the surprise-and-delight approach that’s based on the principle that nice surprises make people feel special and important.

Offer a free coupon or some other pleasant surprise to win your Facebook target audience’s attention and trust vie a series of small gestures.

G2 Crowd offers a $5 Starbucks gift card in exchange for filling in a quick survey. This works for two reasons:

1. People are pleasantly surprised to get the gift card.
2. By filling in the survey, they’ll become familiar with G2 Crowd’s brand.

When you create noteworthy Facebook ads, they’ll distribute organically via the likes and shares of your target audience.

According to a Nielsen study, 83% of people say they always trust the recommendations of friends and family, which makes it ever more important to engage your target audience.

10. Spark the Sense of Belonging

Some of the world’s most successful brands were originally built through low-cost community-based marketing. Starbucks, Google, Apple … The list goes on.

People are hardwired to search for understanding and support from their peers. A sense of belonging to a large community improves our motivation, health, and happiness.

What if you could frame your Facebook ad offer as an invitation to an exclusive club of awesome members?

This approach is often used in event marketing. By presenting all the famous attendees, conferences make people interested in joining them at the venue.

Here’s an example by Litmus, inviting the viewers to join “the talented community of marketers and designers.”

How to use emotional marketing to create a sense of belonging:

• Frame your offer as an invitation into an attractive community.
• Include the names of influencers using your product.
• Mention the size of your user base to convince people of the community’s worth.
• Make the entry challenging enough for the person to value the community.

11. Untap the Power of Guilt

People feel guilty about different things, but one thing’s for sure: if you can hit the right nerve, you’ll win their attention.

Consumers who feel guilty tend to respond well to small, short-term fixes. That’s why the number of new gym memberships soars after a long holiday period and declines shortly after.

A study published by researchers at The University of British Columbia suggests that guilt can be a powerful tool for motivating self-improvement and for selling self-improvement products and services.

But not only — guilt as an emotion can also be used in the B2B industry.

For example, Scoro’s Facebook post asks, “Are you working hard or hardly working?” makes a person think whether they’re really contributing enough.

The Facebook ad also offers a quick solution: 89 productivity hacks to improve oneself.

Remember that emotional marketing with guilt works best if you also provide a quick fix to the audience’s problem.

Slack’s Facebook ad has taken a similar approach by stating “Your inbox is out of control.”

Another reason why this ad works is the strong emotional word “Yikes” in the first ad image, instantly catching people’s attention.

How to use guilt for successful Facebook campaigns:

• Remind your audience of a small mistake they’re making.
• Offer a quick solution to their problem.
• Use strong words that spark negative feelings and help to grab attention.

12. Make People Feel Important

Performance coach Tony Robbins has named the feeling of being significant to be one of the six basic human needs.

We all want to feel important and valued by others. And smart marketers know how to use this knowledge to create irresistible ad campaigns.

For example, Google’s Facebook ad looks at every benefit through the prism of you: New domains that tell your story. Get your domain today. Find a domain name for your story.

Here’s another clever Facebook ad example by Spotify:

By creating a highly personalized value offer, Spotify will ignite curiosity while also making the person feel important.

To make your ad audience feel important, create a personalized ad and use the word You to talk directly to the reader.

Conclusion

Emotions can go a long way in helping to create click-worthy Facebook ads.

According to a 2016 Nielson report, emotions are central to advertising effectiveness. The ads that generated the best emotional response also generated a 23% lift in sales volume.

Applying emotional marketing tactics to your Facebook campaigns isn’t as difficult as it seems. All it takes is smart copywriting and original ad design. And of course, a touch of creativity.

To wrap it up, here are all the emotions listed once more: The fear of missing out, excitement, curiosity, happiness, negative feelings, hope, pride, urgency, surprise, sense of belonging, guilt, feeling of importance.

Find out what works best for your target audience, and see your sales results grow.

About the Author: Karola Karlson is the founder & author of Aggregate, the most upright blog about marketing, growth, and data. She’s also a contributor to marketing blogs like AdEspresso, HubSpot, and KlientBoost, and works as the Digital Marketing Manager at SaaS startup Scoro. Karola’s all about random cool ideas, growth marketing, and taking new marketing approaches on a test drive. Connect with her by visiting her blog or on Twitter.

The majority of customers use multiple devices on their journey to purchase.

And they’re gonna take nearly a dozen ‘touches’, too.

Case in point: people who receive choreographed emails + ads are “22% more likely to purchase” than those that only receive one or the other.

That means the likelihood of one campaign, on one device, one time, generating a significant conversion, is slim to none. And getting worse.

So why stop there?

Facebook ads can generate interest. Also leads. Or you can use them to trigger marketing automation, SMS, webinars, and even direct mail to generate a steady-stream of new business.

Here’s how to do it.

1. Lead Ads

Facebook ads work best when you re-create a funnel.

Different ads are used to first generate interest, before following up with those people to generate leads, before later following up with leads to generate customers.

That means different campaigns on different devices at different times. That’s the key to creating a Facebook customer acquisition machine that consistently creates new demand for your products and services. (You’ve read that eBook, right?)

And when you begin setting that up, you’ll notice that different ad placements will work better at different times. For example, mobile is great for brand awareness + discovery because of (1) consumer behavior and (2) more inventory and (3) less competition.

That means people read and consume content on their devices. But don’t usually convert as highly.

Except… for one exception: Lead Ads.

Introduced a year+ ago, this little handy ad unit removes the biggest hurdle to conversions on mobile devices (having to click through to a landing page and type your personal data into tiny form fields with your big thumbs).

Six+ months ago, AdEspresso threw their money in the air like they just don’t care, testing the performance of lead ads vs. landing pages.

The results? Lead ads outperformed landing pages for driving mobile conversions.

Which is great! ‘Cause mobile internet usage already eclipses desktop (and showing no signs of slowing down).

So one down, four more to go. Simply use Lead Ads for mobile to generate leads from an already-curated custom audience.

Only one problem…

Facebook collects user data in their Lead Ads so people don’t have to manually submit their emails, etc. But all that data’s still locked up tight inside Facebook. Not much good it’s gonna do in there alone.

You could manually download a .CSV file and upload it to your CRM. But c’mon. Don’t you have, like, hobbies? A family? A friendly bartender at least? Much better things to do.

(If not, there’s always unpaid interns – right?)

Fortunately, Facebook already integrates with MailChimp. So you can seamlessly pass subscriber data over without getting your hands dirty. (Presumably, more are on the way.)

Otherwise, you’ve got two other alternatives.

The first is Zapier. An awesome little tool that helps you ‘hack’ marketing automation features that would normally cost a bundle.

The second is a marketing automation tool that costs a bundle. But worth it in most cases.

For example, AdEspresso’s Data Sync feature will connect your ad campaigns to powerful programs like HubSpot or Infusionsoft.

And that’s where things get interesting.

2. Marketing Automation

We’ve already given up the punchline.

Consumers bounce around from channel to channel and device to device on their long journey to becoming a customer.

So let’s be frank: no way you’re gonna do that manually.

You can try, sure. But once again, see: a life.

IF you wanna generate results, you gotta ditch one-off campaigns in favor of personalized segmentation. The only way that’s gonna happen is with some fancy MarTech tool.

The good news, again, is that you don’t have to blow your budget.

Facebook already integrates with MailChimp natively. And their ‘automation recipes’ have improved significantly in the past year+.

So new leads generated courtesy of your Lead Ad can now enter seamlessly into an automation workflow that delivers what was promised and begins the nurturing process.

For example, the initial lead offer could be a time-tested eBook. But anything would do, including a checklist, free guide, whitepaper, free course, or webinar (which we’ll come back to later).

People opt-in from their mobile device on Facebook and automatically start receiving your pre-set emails that deliver twofold:

1. Educating new leads on how to solve their problem (with your stuff).
2. While also building trust with these new leads at scale.

Of course, you can also kick things up a notch (BAM! – Emril style) with a more sophisticated setup like HubSpot that allows for IF/THEN branching technology and a slew of other premium features.

For example, people will go through this initial sequence and may not convert. No problem. Let’s see if we can re-engage them by targeting the pain point they’re dealing with.

Now. Do any of these people click a specific link? Maybe a link mentioning your product or service? That signals at least some interest or intent. So why not pull them out and add them to a brand new list with follow-ups that go straight to the point.

The point is that you’re starting to build a scalable system that’s constantly following up with people depending on where they’re personally at in time. In different channels and mediums that already mimic their own behavior.

(So you can and should, for example, also keep retargeting these people on Facebook by creating a brand new custom audience with your lead list. Which means they’re now seeing next-level ads on FB that are tied to email messaging they’re also receiving.)

But of course, we’re just scratching the surface. Because marketing automation doesn’t just stop at email marketing.

3. SMS

Sometimes, ‘boring’ niches are also the most interesting.

The competition level is often so high that there’s no room for errors. You don’t have the time or money to waste on Facebook bots if they aren’t gonna deliver results ASAP.

Which is why this next example caught me by surprise.

You see, tax relief is one of these aggressive niches. There are a few savvy competitors all going after the same, small pool of poor saps with crushing tax bills.

That means tax relief companies go straight for the jugular when they smell blood. (Jaws would be proud.) The quickest way to learn what works, is to simply go research exactly what some of the biggest companies are already doing in that space.

So here’s how it went down.

The Facebook ad offered “free tax tips”. Or similar. Doesn’t really matter to be honest.

You opt-in, and instead of seeing your email inbox blow up with a carefully crafted automation sequence, your phone dings.

Curious, you glance over and see the following SMS begin to pour in.

Look at that!

SMS marketing automation in action. The first message is literally just a teaser. It hints that you’re about to receive a phone call. It preps you to respond. (Pavlov would be proud.)

This company wastes no time beating around the bush. They go straight for the phone call ‘cause those convert at 30-50%. But that’s not all.

When you don’t answer (because seriously, who in their right mind wants to sit on the phone with an aggressive tax relief person for only research-sake), you get another message a few minutes later.

Classic IF/Then being played out on your mobile device. ‘Cause SMS opens are as high as 99%. You can’t help but look!

Few ways to do this.

Autopilot can make it happen. So too can TextMagic or BurstSMS with a little help from Zapier.

Once again though, don’t stop there.

Let’s stick with tax relief for a second.

Person opts-in to the initial offer. Next step is to get them on the phone to review tax options. They resist. That means they don’t take the ‘next step’ in your funnel to view options, pricing, etc.

Cue: custom audiences. These people viewed one URL (the initial Thank You confirmation page) but haven’t taken the next step, so SMS messaging (is that redundant?) can be tied back to retargeting Facebook ads yet again. In other words, you can literally see who visits the landing page, but fails to visit the Thank You confirmation page, and then send a text message to prompt them along.

4. Webinars

There’s a reason most B2B marketers use webinars: scale.

Only one problem with them: math.

To generate XX buyers at $YY customer value, you need A LOT of people registering for your webinar. For example, a measly $1,500 takes a lot of work.

Here’s how it breaks down:

1. Three customers paying $500 LTV.
2. At a 3-4% purchase rate.
3. Requires 50 people to attend.
4. But only around 40-50% of registrants will actually attend.
5. So you need like ~80-100 to sign up.
6. Average webinar registration rates are around ~50%.
7. That means you’re gonna need at least ~200+ peeps to visit the page in the first place.

And that’s why Facebook ads are a perfect fit. Look no further than this textbook example from the GMAT Club:

Perfect. Now, how do you remove as much friction as possible? How do you get people from A -> B with the least amount of work that might screw up your numbers?

Once again, pass data automatically. For example, setup an integration between Facebook Lead Ads + GoToWebinar.

You can also have this data passed first to your CRM or marketing automation software and then register them for the webinar, too.

+1 for sending SMS webinar reminders, too.

Because as we’ve learned so far, multiplying channels = increasing odds of success.

But we ain’t done yet. Time to go old school first.

5. Direct Mail

The Law of Shitty Clickthroughs says that channel results decline over time.

It’s natural. Inevitable even. More and more competition generally reduces effectiveness. That whole supply vs. demand thing.

We can sit here and complain about trillions of emails being sent. Or we can do something about it.

We can improve segmentation. Message match and timing. Personalization that extends to ads in other channels like Facebook, SMS, and webinars.

But let’s not hesitate to dust off old, forgotten stuff either.

Direct mail, incredibly, still works. One company used an account-based marketing approach to target $30 million+ companies and saw a 25% response rate from direct mail.

Lob is one of my favorite examples in this case, because you can connect and send through an API. Which means… yes, you can automatically send stuff to new Facebook leads.

Picture this:

You run ads to new people who might be attending a conference. And/or you retarget existing contacts who might be running to the conference. When you confirm their interest and attendance, you physically mail an offer to them that will compel them to visit your booth.

Like sending an empty iPad box with a note to come pick theirs up in-person.

That’s what Matt Heinz did, retelling the story to Topo, “We sent two-day packages to executives in advance of a big conference. The package was an empty iPad box. We wrote in the direct mail to come by our booth to pick up the iPad. Most executives came by just to compliment us. It worked.”

Part of this strategy’s appeal, they point out, is that executives are notoriously difficult to reach. They don’t have time to sit on webinars and you’re not likely to find them downloading whitepapers, either. So took an unexpected approach to get results.

Conclusion

One-off campaigns are dead.

They’re just a piece of the puzzle. A beginning to a long journey.

The trick is stringing together multiple campaigns that already mimic how your customers are already behaving.

That means you gotta show up all over. If the effectiveness of a single channel is in decline, you can sidestep it by roping in multiple channels.

Facebook’s peerless retargeting (courtesy of custom audiences) means you can use it at nearly every step of your marketing and sales funnel. You can use it to trigger new leads, follow up with prospects, and line up sales appointments.

But only if you’re showing up in multiple channels on multiple devices. Just like your customers.

About the Author: Brad Smith is a marketing writer, agency partner, and creator of Copy Weekly, a free weekly copywriting newsletter for marketers & founders.

Historically, retail search marketing was synonymous with Google text ads. But fast forward to today, and Google Shopping ads have replaced text ads as retailers’ preferred method of advertising on Google.

In fact, 2016 was the tipping point: Retailers spent 53% of their AdWords budgets on Shopping ads — for those keeping score, that’s more than half.

Unlike text ad campaigns, which relied on verbal wizardry and endless A/B testing to optimize, Google Shopping success means analyzing quantitative performance data for all of your products. Even a smaller retail catalog of a few thousand items yields millions of Shopping KPIs to consider — no easy feat for busy e-commerce pros.

Fortunately, AdWords comes equipped with some handy tools designed to help marketers cut through all that noise, and quickly take data-informed actions to improve their Shopping campaigns. Here are four to get you started.

1. Dimensions Tab

The Dimensions tab is my starting point when optimizing Shopping campaigns. Easily findable at the top right of the AdWords console, the Dimensions tab features several Shopping-focused views of campaign performance.

Here are just a few of the ways you can put the information contained in the Dimensions tab to work for your campaigns:

• Implement day-parting adjustments – View your Shopping campaigns by Hour of day or Day of the week to see when your campaign’s conversion rates are highest or lowest. With this information, you can apply bid modifiers to your campaigns to bid more on traffic during high converting days/times — or decrease bids on days/times when conversions falter.
• Throw in geo-targeting filters – Select the Geographic view to see how your campaign performs by country, region, metro area, city, or the most specific location available. Once you’ve determined which regions are the best or worst for your campaigns, you can apply geo-targeting bid modifiers to pump up your bids for clicks from top-performing areas.

2. Item ID Report

Diving deeper into the Dimensions tab, you’ll find the Item ID option. This takes you beyond aggregate campaign performance, and surfaces performance KPIs for individual items that you sell.

You’ll find the Item ID report in the Dimensions tab, under the Shopping drop-down menu. After selecting this option, you’ll see your campaign broken down item-by-item. Relevant KPIs are then displayed for each product.

If your catalog features hundreds or thousands of items, you’ll see a lot of data. You can swiftly make sense of it in the following ways:

• Sort by clicks – Rank your products by clicks to highlight the items that are most important in the Shopping channel. These items might differ from your top sellers in-store or on other digital avenues.
• Consider product breakouts – You may notice a handful of products that are performing especially well in Shopping. Consider breaking each one out into a separate product group with a slightly higher bid. This will allow you to drive even more revenue from items that are already strong sellers in Shopping.

Once you’ve uncovered insights around your top products, regions, and times, you’re ready to answer some more critical questions. Which search queries are driving the best traffic to your campaigns? And what devices are your customers using?

3. Search Terms Report

Search queries add an extra layer of complexity to Google Shopping. Some search queries indicate higher purchase intent and yield better results than others.

But unlike text campaigns, which enable marketers to select the exact keywords for which their ads appear, Google’s algorithms decide what queries trigger your Shopping ads.

Fortunately, AdWords offers a detailed look at the search terms powering your campaigns. Like the Item ID report, the Search terms report is also housed under the Dimensions tab.

Your Search terms report probably contains tens of thousands of unique queries. But here’s how to manipulate it to determine which queries are most valuable to your campaigns:

• Sort by impressions – See the queries that are driving the greatest number of impressions of your Shopping ads. This will give you a deeper understanding of the terms your customers use to find your products. You can use this intel to inform the language you use in other marketing efforts. You can also compare this view over different time periods to see if the terms that trigger the most impressions align with the words you use in special promotions or change with the seasons.
• Sort by cost – Stack your report by cost to unearth those terms that are driving up costs, i.e. receiving many clicks, but not yielding conversions. This could mean that the items Google is surfacing for that term are not exactly what searchers want. If a term is not yielding efficient conversions, consider adding it as a negative keyword to your campaign. This will guarantee your ads won’t surface for a weak query in the future.

4. Devices Report

The interactive, scrollable carousel of Google Shopping ads is the first thing shoppers see on the mobile SERP. It’s no wonder, then, that mobile Google Shopping ads’ share of total Shopping revenues keeps growing year after year.

And AdWords’ Devices report enables retailers to capitalize on this trend by displaying performance stats across various device types.

You’ll find the Devices report under the Settings tab. While the information displayed in the device report might seem self-explanatory, here’s the best way to use it:

• Examine your performance across devices – First things first, take a look at your device report to see how the various device types stack up in your campaigns. AdWords breaks it all down by mobile devices, desktops, and tablets with full browsers. What you find might surprise you…
• Adjust or segment – Did your device report reveal that one or more device types aren’t efficiently driving conversions? Consider applying a negative bid adjustment to bring ROAS for the offending device type in line with your overall campaign goals. If you really want to take things to the next level, you can also break out mobile traffic into its own campaign. This will let you set device-optimized bids for items that perform better on mobile than on desktop.

Conclusion

Spend some time poking around the reports and campaign views outlined above, and it’s immediately clear just how much data is generated by even a modest Shopping campaign. But these hacks all offer an excellent entry to being proactive — rather than reactive — in the new Google Shopping-centric search landscape.

For the full scoop on these tools and how they can supercharge your Shopping campaigns, check out the recent webinar we presented with Kissmetrics 4 Data-Driven Hacks to Turn Searchers into E-Commerce Shoppers.

About the Author: Mike Perekupka is a Senior Statistical Analyst at Sidecar. He also moonlights as an Adjunct Professor of Statistics at Rowan University. Before joining Sidecar, Mike was a high school math teacher and a data analyst for NASA. When not crunching numbers, he can be found on the nearest tennis court preparing for his next tournament.

I’m going to give this to you straight. If you’re directing your hard-won PPC, Facebook, Twitter or banner ad traffic to your homepage…

There is a better way.

Conversion happens on landing pages.

And your homepage is not one of them.

Why?

Your homepage is a hub. It’s a jump off point to the rest of your site’s content. A landing page is a destination. It’s where you want visitors to end up.

Let me show you what this looks like.

Where to Go (and How You Get There)

Picture this:

You’ve decided to go on vacation. You call up your travel agent. You tell him you’re in the mood for tropical climates, white sand beaches, and public intoxication.

I know just the place, he says.

Your travel agent, who moonlights as an Uber driver, picks up you up and you’re away. Ready to soak up that mojito-laden air.

But, instead of taking you to a resort, he drops you off at the airport. He leaves you there — with no idea where you’re going or what to do next.

See where I’m going with this?

You are the prospect and your travel agent/Uber driver is your ad.

You had an idea of what you wanted and where you wanted to go. But instead of him taking you there — you’re left in a crowded terminal with only one question:

What now?

Sure, you may meander around for a bit. You might even stumble upon a flight to a coastal city.

But, odds are, you’ll find someone else who will actually send you somewhere. Someone who will set you on the path to a beautiful and exotic land—ing page.

It’s About Awareness, Intent, and Direction

Every visitor who clicks on an ad, comes to your site or buys from you, is in a certain stage of problem awareness.

Here’s a brief a rundown on the five stages:

1. Unaware – The first stage The prospect doesn’t know they have a problem. Enter Dwight. The marketer who works his nine to five, five days a week without issue or complaint.
2. Problem-Aware – This stage comes after something triggers a feeling of discontent. A disconnect between desire and reality. It’s Dwight at his desk at 9:37am, realizing he feels burnt-out. He doesn’t know what he needs. He only knows he has a problem.
3. Solution Aware – Vacation. He needs a vacation. The solution stage is when a prospect identifies a way to solve their problem. But, still unaware of the options. He doesn’t know where he can go to get the relaxation he needs.
4. Product-Aware – Iceland? Sydney? Hawaii? The next stage is awareness of the available options. It’s a prospect knowing your solution exists and what it can do.
5. Most-Aware – Dwight likes Hawaii. The final stage is when the prospect is not only aware of your solution but when it’s also the top contender.

What does this have to do with paid traffic?

Two things.

First, the awareness stage dictates what they’re looking for, why they’re looking for it and how they got there.

In a word: Intent.

Second, knowing which stage a prospect is in allows you to write targeted ad copy. It’s the copywriting adage of joining the conversation that’s already going on in their head — in action.

And it’s not only your ads. Every page on your website addresses concerns at different levels of product awareness. The goal of paid ad campaigns is to prime for conversion by moving them through these stages.

So, which would better fulfil this goal? A homepage or a landing page?

If you answered homepage. Read on.

If you answered landing page. Nice. Read on.

Why Copywriters Hate Writing Homepages

I know what some of you are thinking:

Our homepage has the product on it. By sending traffic there, we’re making visitors product-aware. Plus, it’s littered with information about our value proposition. And THAT will move them into the most-aware stage. It’s the ultimate landing page. Bazinga.

Fair point. But, remember the ultimate goal is conversion. Convincing Dwight that Hawaii is the best place to be, doesn’t mean he’s booked the ticket. Getting to the final stage of awareness is still only awareness — not action.

And although visitors are “landing” on it, I’ll say this again:

A homepage is not a landing page.

Homepages are the gateway to the rest of your site. They are for visitors at every stage of awareness. This makes writing homepage copy a bit of a doozy.

But, landing pages are purpose-built conversion-machines. They follow an optimized set of design principles. Squeezing out every sign-up, opt-in and sale possible. They do this by adhering to a staple of conversion copywriting:

The Rule of One.

The Rule of One is to design each page with one reader and one big idea in mind. For example, Spotify’s landing page for a product-aware prospect (one-reader) with a free trial offer (one big idea):

The purpose of the Rule of One is to convert. It gives a single visitor a single path.

This is why homepages are troublesome for copywriters. A homepage is for everybody, and so, it converts nobody. Sure, you may have a CTA above the fold, smack-dab in the center. But, how many conversions do you get compared to a purpose-built landing page?

A lot less, I’d assume.

Focus Trumps Clutter

The real problem with sending visitors to your homepage is onus of responsibility. You make them responsible for navigating through your site. You make them responsible for finding your landing pages.

You make them responsible for your conversion rate.

Let’s go back to Dwight. He knows he has a problem. He needs a solution — so he Googles:

And this ad comes up. What do you think he’d prefer to see when he clicks on it? A solution to his workplace woes? Or a page cluttered with links and information that may or may not be relevant?

Directing paid traffic to conversion relies on visitor expectation — join the conversation that’s already going on in their head.

If they’re in the problem stage, they’re expecting a solution. If they’re in the solution stage, they’re expecting a product.

Give it to them.

The first page they see plays a pivotal role in convincing them your offer is worth their time and attention — make it count.

There is already plenty of content out there on designing landing pages. So we won’t get into that here. But, there is one aspect of landing page design that makes it a conversion beast:

Variation.

As in, multiple, targeted and focused designs. Here’s an example: Instapage — a landing page building platform.

If anyone knows how to design landing pages, it should be them, right?

Now, here’s where you come in. You have a problem. You need landing pages. And you need them now.

You go on the Google machine and search for “how to build landing pages”. You scroll down and click a link to Instapage’s homepage:

Immediately you see menu items, a CTA button, and a video play button. There’s also “3 Brand New Design Features” to check out. You don’t even know the old features yet.

You’re at the airport.

Why are you here? Where do you go? What’s the next step?

Now for comparison, here is the landing page after clicking on the PPC ad for the same search query:

See the difference?

The landing page has a clear path for the visitor to “GET STARTED NOW”. Clicking either button takes you to a page with a simple signup form — and nothing else. Below the fold, you see the features most pertinent to your search query: how to build landing pages.

What’s more, every single clickable element leads to the same sign-up page as the first CTA button. Like Spotify’s landing page, it gives a single visitor a single path to conversion.

The focus is on the visitor’s intent — anticipating their needs. And by presenting the right information, they meet their expectations.

Now, let’s see the search query: “high converting landing pages”. This is the PPC ad’s landing page:

Again, above the fold there is a central focus — get started now. Below the fold are features relevant to the visitor’s intent and expectations. In comparison, the homepage now looks cluttered and directionless.

Targeted, focused, and relevant landing pages are the key to high conversions.

One company found their ad-specific landing pages outperformed their generic pages by 115%. And companies have seen a 55% increase in leads when increasing their number of landing pages from 10 to 15.

This is the beauty of directing paid traffic to landing pages. You can create them based on exactly what the visitor needs to see at their stage of awareness.

Homepages are static — There can be only one.

The Bottom Line

If you’re directing paid traffic to your homepage — you’re wasting your marketing budget.

Your homepage was never meant to be more than a central hub. A starting point. Whereas landing pages have every single element designed, tested and optimized for conversion.

You are paying money for this traffic.

If you currently have ads directed to your homepage, direct them to a relevant landing page. Go, now.

If you already direct them to a landing page, ask yourself:

• Is this the most optimized landing page for the intended reader’s stage of awareness?
• Does the landing page present information that they’d expect to see?
• If it doesn’t, can I build another landing page that would be better suited?

Remember, Dwight needs the vacation. Don’t leave him wandering through the airport.

If you show him the boarding gate — he’ll get on the plane.

About the Author: Andy Nguyen is a professional copywriter for hire. He helps B2B SaaS and marketing companies produce content their audience wants to read.

Think ‘lead magnet’ ads are new-age?

Think again.

Free opt-in ad campaigns like that have been around for almost a century.

Everyone’s looking for the hot new thing. A watch that counts your steps, takes notes, answers your calls, and oh yeah, also tells time. An iPhone that has a new update every time you turn it on. A car that is so smart it can drive itself.

But there’s something to be said for sticking with what works. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Even better, if it works well, no need to reinvent the wheel.

Here’s how today’s ad pros are still using copywriting techniques from old-school campaigns that ran decades ago.

What the 1960’s Taught Motorola About Influencer Marketing

When it was time for Motorola to promote its new line of smartphones and features, it took its campaign to YouTube.

The phones were marketed for a younger audience, and with 54% of 18-34 years olds using YouTube at least once a day, Motorola knew it was the place to be.

They used 13 influencers to each create create “partnership announcements” and “hero” videos to show them using the new Moto Mods, that allowed users to customize their phones just the way they wanted. One user strapped the phone to a rocket and launched in 16,000 feet in the air.

No joke.

The result? 11.6 million video views and more than 38 million social media impressions. Even more? 80,000 clicks to motomods.com from first time users.

This shouldn’t be surprising. Buyers are 92% more likely to trust the reviews and opinions of friends and peers over standard advertisements.

A recent Tomoson study found that this kind of influencer marketing is “the fastest-growing online customer acquisition channel, beating organic search, paid search, and email marketing.”

But as hip and cool and successful as this turned out to be for Motorola, it wasn’t a new idea.

In fact, it was decades — even hundreds — of years old.

Companies have been using celebrities, real users, and even beloved, made-up characters for years to sell their products.

Remember how much Santa loved Coca Cola? This one’s from ‘64:

And what about Babe Ruth and his love for Pinch-Hit?

Yes, that’s Babe Ruth as spokesperson for a tobacco company. The same Babe Ruth who later died of cancer at the age of 53. Next level brand partnership, right there.

You see, this stuff is nothing new. It’s not that new and fancy and innovative and cutting edge.

It’s the same old playbook, just dusted off and revised with a new edition. One that takes into account how our constantly evolving consumer preferences keep shifting.

Here’s a few more ideas for how tried but true methods are still relevant today.

Start by Grabbing Their Attention

Remember when Old Spice used to literally mean old.

As in, the only people who wore it were your grandparents?

That all changed a few years ago with a little sex appeal and humor:

Sales jumped 107% in just one month. Old Spice became the number one body wash and deodorant brand in both sales and volume.

And they reached new demographics of people (which is important when yours historically is about to drop dead).

But even that ad campaign, now nearly seven years old, is just a first-cousin of marketing techniques from long ago.

David Ogilvy’s 1958 Rolls Royce ad uses the same shock and awe tactic by grabbing the reader’s attention with what’s essentially a one-word headline:

$13,550 for a car in 1958 was a lot of money, and Ogilvy was hoping to hook customers with mystery, intrigue, and a little high-end appeal.

He also updated their tag line a bit, which was a simple and direct, “The Best Car in the World,” that now reads, “What makes Rolls-Royce the best card in the world?”.

By turning that statement into a question, and then answering it, he was able to produce their highest-performing marketing campaign to date.

Unsurprisingly, there’s data from today that backs this up.

For example, MarketingExperiments.com ran two basic AdWords headlines against each other. The Control was a question, while the Treatment was simple and straightforward. Can you guess which one won?

You got it. The question-based headline.

Last second copy changes in order to test headline variations ain’t new, either.

Even Ogilvy’s testing back in the ‘60s wasn’t a groundbreaking notion. Good ol Hopkins was doing that long before around 1900:

“Hopkins outlines an advertising approach based on testing and measuring. In this way losses from unsuccessful ads are kept to a safe level while gains from profitable ads are multiplied. Or, as Hopkins wrote, the advertiser is ‘playing on the safe side of a hundred to one shot’.”

Today we use content marketing to grab top of the funnel attention. Turns out that’s nothing new. Because storytelling is one of the best ways to develop the interest and intrigue required to keep people reading long enough to make a decision.

Storytelling Piques their Interest to Draw People Near

Today, marketers face unprecedented hurdles to get their name out there.

A New York Times article from a decade ago claimed the number of ads we saw each day was around 5,000. Keep in mind this was early for Facebook, YouTube, et. al. They hadn’t even hit critical mass yet.

Fast forward and nearly 200 million people worldwide are using ad-blocking software in order to take back control over their (albeit, limited) attention. A recent study found that only 14% of respondents could recall the banner ad on the page they just visited.

Couldn’t remember the company. Couldn’t remember the product.

All of this spells disaster for marketers when our prospects lack the attention span of a goldfish.

That’s where storytelling comes in.

Nike has been leading the pack for years.

Back in 1999, they put together a one minute spot for the retirement of Michael Jordan. Clips and photos of his career, telling the story of his journey and successes. They didn’t even put up the Nike logo until the very end. For a good reason.

“It understood that what would really make a lasting impression, and what would help build the brand and allow the company to sell more products in the long-term, was an authentic story,” said Sujan Patel.

Ross Jeffries told a story, albeit a slightly more seedy version, in 1998.

“The Amazing Seduction Secrets of a Skinny, Ugly, 6 Foot Geek from Culver City California That Could Get You All the Girls You Want.”

(Yes. This actually happened.)

Nerdy guy trying to get the girl is a tale as old as time. Now every non-skinny, ugly, 6 foot geek from Culver City California is gonna be hooked to read more of this. (And trust me, there’s a lot of them.)

Taking a familiar story or something that a consumer can relate to helps them understand just how perfect your product is for them. Why they need it. The emotional aspect that tugs at our heart strings or appeals to our vanity.

Ad copywriting formulas, like AIDA, help us touch on all of these critical pressure points. And once again, AIDA wasn’t just invented by some growth hacking millennial. It’s been around the block a few times since the nineteenth century.

Ad exec Joseph Addison Richards was talking about it way back in 1893:

“How to attract attention to what is said in your advertisement; how to hold it until the news is told; how to inspire confidence in the truth of what you are saying; how to whet the appetite for further information; how to make that information reinforce the first impression and lead to a purchase; how to do all these, – Ah, that’s telling, business news telling, and that’s my business.”

Now Get Them to Take the Next Step

Nobody knows why they need anything.

I didn’t even know I needed a special bag just for my french bread until you showed me how lacking my life was before I bought one.

But this information sharing takes a little time and finesse. You have to walk the customer through their journey. Too much, too soon, and it backfires.

That’s the chief difference between running PPC ads on Facebook vs. Google AdWords. (And why the former doesn’t work like the latter.)

There’s not much seduction required when people type something into Google. They’re already at the end of their journey. But successful advertising on basically any other medium requires you to lay the groundwork (that we’ve already discussed).

Once again, classic ad copywriting formulas help you better explain why people need what you’re selling when they don’t always yet realize they need it.

Even the U.S. Military has gotten in on the PAS (Problem, Agitate, Solution) game. Here’s an ad from 1967:

This guy waited too long to sign up (problem). Now he can’t pick which branch he wants. That could happen to you, too (agitate). Fill out this form and we’ll get you what you want before it’s too late (solution).

Or what about this example from 1990 for a book to help readers with their grammar?

Look around and you’ll see PAS ev-ry-where. Here’s a slightly modified version from Dollar Shave Club Australia. No commitment? Everyone’s trying it? Only a couple of dollars?

Sold.

Long, long ago (like more than a century), advertising pro Claude Hopkins encouraged advertisers to create work that essentially sold itself.

According to the most factual source on the internet*, Wikipedia, Hopkins: “Insisted copywriters research their clients’ products and produce ‘reason-why’ copy. He believed that a good product and the atmosphere around it was often its own best salesperson.”

(*Not true.)

In other words? The purchase (or more accurately, decision to purchase) should be an absolute no-brainer. The value should far exceed the mental, emotional, or physical costs.

But that action-step that happens once the solution is presented often takes place with a simple click-through or from an online ad.

How exactly? Tripwires.

Here’s info-marketing guru Ryan Deiss with a too-good-too-be-true offer for his latest book:

The offer here is low-friction. It doesn’t require a lot of steps or a big commitment, and the customer gets a good return on their time and money. And, you get to sift out the people who really have some interest from those who are just stopping by.

But, once again, not a new concept. Here’s one from over fifty years ago in 1965.

Conclusion

The latest shiny tactics are always fun.

But sometimes even what seems fresh and new has been around the block a time or two. Decades old marketing tricks and tactics still work today.

And more importantly, can still produce more consistent results, too.

A/B testing works some of the time. But storytelling, copywriting formulas, tripwires? They’ve been working for years and years and years and years.

The next time you’re stuck on an ad campaign or looking for inspiration, don’t just look at what’s hitting the top of Growth Hackers.

Because history tends to repeat itself. And that’s a good thing for bottom lines.

About the Author: Brad Smith is the founder of Codeless, a B2B content creation company. Frequent contributor to Kissmetrics, Unbounce, WordStream, AdEspresso, Search Engine Journal, Autopilot, and more.

AdWords is one of the most predictable paid media channels. By using it, you’re focusing on people who show their intent in advertising platforms.

Search traffic is growing by a lot. In 2014, marketers spent $23.44 billion in the search channel. That same figure for this year is already $32.32 billion, and it’s expected to reach $40.60 billion by 2019.

The success of the platforms comes with an influx of competition. As Gary Vaynerchuk said: “marketers ruin everything.” AdWords became more competitive, and it became harder to get positive ROI.

Traffic you spend money on directly impacts your ROI. The key to the traffic is that it has to be qualified.

The Same Mistake As Driving a 600HP Beast With Manual Transmission

With the AdWords platform being very complex, it’s easy to make mistakes. If you start making mistakes, your traffic can go from qualified to unqualified.

AdWords is a super-powerful advertising platform with lots of manual options. Just like a Porsche 911 Turbo with 600 horses stuffed under the bonnet and a snappy manual transmission.

This car isn’t your ordinary Honda Civic — as much as we’d all love to get behind the wheel of the Porsche, we wouldn’t be doing ourselves any favors by rushing into it.

Without a bit of knowledge, practice, and patience, you might wrap the car around a pole. There’s a whole lot of machine underneath you to control.

It’s the same with marketing. So, how do we translate our high-powered automotive example into advertising terms? It’s about control. You have to control everything you can, otherwise things will go sour. Doesn’t matter if it’s a Porsche 911 or an Adwords campaign.

Replacing the stick shift, flappy paddles, clutch, and launch control from our Porsche are variables you can (and must) control in order to truly grab the reins, and take command of your advertising campaigns.

To avoid the business equivalent of mishandling your horsepower and wrapping your campaign around a pole, I’d like to point out three huge mistakes you might be making and hurting your ROI with:

1. Thinking that your traffic is qualified.
2. Not checking if your traffic is qualified.
3. Not knowing where to check.

Given the prevalence of these mistakes, I‘ll go over some examples that’ll help you understand the type of traffic you’re targeting — and how to get the most ROI out of it. Let’s get to it.

Mistake #1. Your Traffic Is Coming From The Wrong Search Terms

You may have a gap in your intended targeting versus your actual traffic. In most cases, this happens due to a simple misunderstanding of keyword match types. I don’t want to get into the usual, boring old platitudes here (broad, phrase, exact match). Search industry covered it 50,000 times already, and I don’t see a point in beating a dead horse.

Instead, I want to clear something up:

Keywords ≠ search terms.

One of my pet peeves is how marketers believe that keywords and search terms are the same thing. Marketers use them interchangeably, but they’re very different. Here’s how I define each:

• Search Term: The exact word or phrase a person uses on the search engine to find what they were looking for (appropriate for all of us).
• Keyword: The word you use to target search terms on paid search platforms (appropriate for marketers).

Let’s circle back to keyword match types. They only help you control which search terms your ads will show up for. That’s it. They’re not as powerful as marketers like to think.

In the end, think search terms, and not keywords. In other words, consider how your ideal customers use search engines to answer their questions and needs.

What to do about the mistake?

You need to make sure you’re targeting your intended search terms.

Perform the “Search Term Analysis” in your paid search platform. The analysis consists of the following:

• Search terms triggered by keywords.
• An analysis of their relevancy and KPIs.
• Actions you can take (expanding, excluding, changing bids).

To look at your search terms, go to your Keywords tab, and then click the “Search terms” button. Here’s what that’ll look like on your screen:

The search term report displays the correlation between your keywords, and search terms.

Here’s an example report from one of our clients:

In the report, you’ll see three types of search terms:

• Relevant search terms with good KPIs. I like to use two levels of KPIs: primary (conversions and cost per conversion) and secondary (clicks and CTR). These are opportunities to expand. If these search terms aren’t managed as exact match keywords, add them. You’ll be able to control the bids, and you’ll also be able to improve ad positions, or increase your impression share to get more traffic.
• Relevant search terms with poor KPIs. You have a few options: you can either exclude, or add data as exact-match keywords and wait for statistically significant data.
• Irrelevant search terms you don’t want to target. This is how you exclude a full term entirely. Here’s an example of who might do this, and why — commercial attorneys. If a law firm is focused on commercial work, “pro bono” is not relevant to their business (and may hurt their ROI through wasting ad spend), and needs to be excluded from future targeting endeavors.

If you want to get fancy, you can use scripts, API, and software to speed up the process. Here’s an example of how we use scripts to present search term data in a format we find to be effective and quick:

Too much of a breakdown isn’t needed, here. Just know that, as it’s been since the dawn of computers, custom scripts do quite a bit of heavy lifting when it comes to sorting data. Look into it if you’re not utilizing this approach already.

Now that we’ve covered that, let’s move on to the next large mistake I see marketers making.

Mistake #2. Your Traffic Is From The Wrong Buyer’s Stages

Let’s say you work for a French language learning company “Le French”. Your company sells “Learn French Fast” online course and offers a free DVD set with the purchase.

Your offer is geared for buyers who are ready to make a decision. You’re going after the sale — but buyers aren’t responding to it.

Why? Their intent is not there. It was because your keyword strategy covered all buyer stages for the same offer.

We need to take one step back. Buyers have different stages in the journey. To illustrate the situation, I will focus on three buying stages of “Le French” customers. Here’s a visual of the Buyer Stages concept visualized as something I call the “Paid Media Cube:”

In the example, you see the following buyer stages:

• Awareness. This represents buyers who are still early on in the buying process. They’re looking for ideas, or trying to identify a problem. They’re far from making a decision. Think of people looking for ideas on how best to learn and speak French. They know they have a desire to learn the language, but they’re not quite ready to go after expensive software or coursework quite yet.
• Consideration. This is where buyers are considering potential options. It’s the planning stage — the drawing board. These buyers are not ready to make a decision, but they’re getting warmer. Think of people looking for French language course types, and pricing. They know they want to learn French, and have decided to take a course. They won’t sign on the dotted line yet, but they’re really weighing their options.
• Decision. These are buyers who are ready to make a decision. They’re looking for a solution and are ready to commit. Think of people who are researching a particular French course online and are showing it favor after doing their research.

Since your online course + DVD offer was geared towards the decision stage, you can expect buyers to react to the offer as they see it in that stage.

Traffic from the Awareness and Consideration stages was not relevant. Buyers had a completely different intent, and the offer did not match it.

To sum it up, you can’t expect to flash pricing in front of people who are in the awareness stage and expect them to pony up.

What to do about the mistake?

You need to check if your campaign strategy deliberately represents each buyer stage. You need to either:

1. Eliminate or suppress traffic coming from irrelevant buyer stages OR
2. Adjust your offers for each respective stage.

Keeping the same example in mind, let’s assume we took the latter step. Here’s how things would look.

• Decision stage with a high buying intent, would have immediate sale objective. Offer an online course with a DVD set would be very appropriate.

You could also create two separate offers with the intent in mind.

• Consideration stage has a medium buying intent. Go for the lead generation objective. As with the above example, educate your leads until they reach the decision stage. Your offer will change. You could offer a free trial of the French course to the Consideration stage buyers.
• Awareness stage has a low buying intent. Go for the lead generation objective. Then, follow up consistently, and educate your leads until they reach the consideration or decision stage. If you don’t, you’ll waste your advertising dollars, and you’ll get poor results. Your offer will be different, too. In this scenario, you could offer a free “French for Beginners” mini-lesson to the Awareness stage buyers.

Notice how, ultimately, it breaks down to paying attention to where your buyers are in the Buyer’s Journey, and catering to their pain points in each stage.

Let’s take a look at the third and final mistake I see marketers making all too often:

Mistake #3. Your Traffic Is Coming From The Wrong Locations

Rule of thumb: location targeting is somewhat similar to search query targeting.

Locations ≠ user locations.

AdWords has different location settings that could cause your ads to trigger in areas you don’t want them to. You could be triggering in three different capacities. They are:

1. Physical location
2. Location of interest
3. Both

Here’s an example of a report for one of our clients. Their location settings trigger traffic from physical locations, and locations of interest.

The implication there is that locations of interest could be sending traffic from the wrong locations, and wasting your budget. Of course, this varies depending on the nature of your business, but let the numbers talk.

The same client was targeting the United States and Canada, but they ended up with traffic from India, the United Kingdom, Mexico, and the Philippines. See the screenshot below for an example of locations this client ended up pulling traffic from:

In order to focus in on your intended locations, take a look at this setting from your campaign settings dashboard:

What to do about the mistake?

Get the facts first. Check where your traffic is coming from. You’ll need two reports:

The User Locations Report, which will tell you exactly where the people who saw your ads were located. See the screenshot below for an example:

You’ll also need the Geographic report, which tells you where people who saw your ads were located, and which targeted locations people were interested in, regardless of their physical location.

Once you have these reports, you’ll be able to evaluate your location data. I like to do two things first and foremost:

1. Verify this locations in question are part of your paid media strategy.
2. Review the KPIs of the locations in question.

Once you’ve done so, it’s time to take action. Based on your evaluation, you’ll end up with the same buckets you would with a search term analysis:

• Relevant locations with good KPIs. This is an opportunity to expand. If for example, you unknowingly targeted Mexico, and this location helped you achieve your objectives, add it to your targeting. You’ll be able to control the bids, improve the ad position, and increase impression share to get more traffic, just like the search term analysis we covered earlier.
• Relevant locations with poor KPIs. Here, you can exclude or add specific targeted locations to manage separately while you wait for statistically significant data. Let’s say you’re targeting the United States, particularly Chicago. You’d then add Chicago as a targeted location, so you can manage it separately, and make your decisions after pulling Chicago-specific data.
• Irrelevant locations you don’t want to target. Here’s how you can exclude a location entirely from your campaign. For example, let’s say a client noticed that traffic from India wasn’t relevant, since the client doesn’t do business internationally. Therefore, India would need to be excluded from future targeting efforts.

Driving a Porsche is hard, and so is managing AdWords. Identifying the unqualified traffic, eliminating it, or reducing exposure to it will reinvigorate your budget, bring qualify traffic, and improve your ROI.

Read it again, execute, and win.

About the Author: Tom Bukevicius (boo-ka-vicious) is a Principal at SCUBE Marketing, E-Commerce marketing agency delivering results through PPC & CRO. Tom’s motto is “Magic bullets are for losers. Execution is key.” Check out Tom’s new SCUBE Rating self-assessment to improve paid search campaign efficiency.

PPC advertising should be straightforward.

You buy an ad. Your ad appears on Google. That ad gets clicked.

You spend a little dough per click, and voila – you’re a marketing genius.

Traffic is booming and you’re appearing in all the right places.

Except that’s not always how it works.

And for some strange reason, you can’t quite figure out why.

Not to worry. Most of the time, you just need to know where to look.

You need to be able to spot those common problem areas. Many of which might be lying to your face.

Here are the seven biggest pay-per-click nightmares that can kill your ROI before it even gets off the ground.

1. Neglecting Attribution Models

It’s painfully obvious to say that Google Analytics can help you track traffic and conversions.

It will show you exactly which areas of your sales funnel are working vs. which ones aren’t.

via GIPHY

The trouble is that tracking PPC conversions in Google AdWords isn’t quite the same.

Google AdWords uses a “Last AdWords” click attribution model.

Meaning that the last PPC ad someone clicks before conversion gets all the credit for that conversion.

This can make it harder to know exactly where users are engaging, what’s bringing them back, and why they converted.

That’s because PPC attribution is designed to build demand now that you’ll convert later on. It’s less like “click > conversion” and more like:

Generic impression > generic click > generic impression > brand click > conversion

To top it off, there are different attribution models that actually tell you where the credit for your conversions is coming from based on what you find important. You could assign every touch point equal credit for conversions, for instance.

Basically, it’s not as easy as saying, “I got a click and therefore my AdWords are working.”

A better solution is to focus on (1) URL tracking and to (2) create an attribution model that meets your conversion goals.

This is important because some devices act like conversion helpers but they don’t actually obtain the conversion credit.

Correct attribution tracking will display your Google AdWord conversion paths more clearly. Breaking these down into micro-conversions can help you tweak each little step.

That’s why first and last-touch attribution models don’t always cut it.

How many steps do it needs to take before the buyers can be converted?

Did they actually convert from your PPC ad the very first time?

Unlikely.

People just used it last.

✅ Social referred them.

✅ Organic found you.

✅ Email nurtured them.

❌ PPC swooped in to steal all the credit.

Put everything in its place. Don’t lose sight of the big picture.

2. Incorrect Conversion Tracking

The thing about PPC is that your ad isn’t the be-all-end-all.

You don’t sell in an ad. You just get people to click.

PPC ads typically go to landing pages that have CTAs and the CTAs are the thing that’s driving the conversion. (But how would you know if you’re not tracking attributions, right?)

Yet conversion tracking isn’t setup properly.

The primary CTA is ignored.

Or worse, you’re counting clicks as conversions.

It’s not that they were just counting the wrong conversion metrics, though. This example was actually ignoring their CTAs completely.

The primary page CTA was a phone number. Anecdotally, phone calls brought better customers that converted faster.

And yet, no call tracking.

You have nothing without historical conversion data.

❌ You have no idea which campaigns are performing best.

❌ You have no idea which keywords are performing best.

❌ And you have no idea where you’re overspending to cut back.

You’re flying blind. Any campaign tweaks or changes are shots in the dark at best.

Neglecting attribution is one thing. But screwing up conversion tracking is quite another.

Notice that this still applies to things outside of “AdWords conversions.”

More often than not, that ringing phone in the background is the direct result of your digital efforts.

70% of phone calls are driven by digital channels, according to Invoca’s Call Intelligence Index that tracked over 30 million calls.

Now compare that to the pitifully low lead generation rates in the Unbounce Benchmark Report that hang somewhere between 2.8% and 6%. And those are just leads, not even closed customers!

Those phone stats are impressive as hell now.

‘Cept for one teeny, tiny problem.

PPC gets the credit about 0.0% of the time in this instance.

Which means you, dear marketer, get 0.0% of the credit. Which nets you 0.0% of the budget required to keep those calls coming in.

Sure. AdWords call extensions are a start.

But more often than not, someone’s clicking through to your site. They’re browsing around. They’re learning and comparing before dialing.

Those call extensions catch none of this.

You need something, anything, like custom phone numbers to track dials from each page.

3. Ignoring Revenue-Based Metrics

PPC “conversions” aren’t always conver$ion$.

If your conversions aren’t making you money, they’re not conversions.

PPC success is about the big picture and the customer journey, absolutely.

But ultimately that journey should lead to a purchase. It should lead to revenue.

Clicks, impressions, and CTRs matter. To a point. But not in the big picture.

But the same holds true when PPC conversions = leads.

Just because campaign A delivers more leads than B doesn’t mean it’s “better.”

Yet that’s what happens. Every single day. In the team talks and discussions with clients or bosses.

Budget gets pulled from B and put behind A.

You need to dig a little deeper. You need to analyze how Cost Per Lead, Revenue Per Lead, and Lifetime Value of a Customer look before making those resource calls.

If you were trying to track LTV, for example, you would want to open up your Google Analytics, set the acquisition date range, select your LTV metrics, and select a few comparison metrics.

This would show you whether or not all your blood, sweat, and tears were actually making you money. Or if you’re still just measuring things that don’t matter in the long run.

4. A/B Testing Bad Offers

Uh oh! Ad CTR is low.

Better A/B test to make sure things are working smoothly, right?

Yes and no.

A/B tests can often be a huge waste of time.

It’s not to say that testing is totally useless. But most of the time you’re not actually ready for it.

Many small businesses and startups simply won’t have the transaction volume when they launch a campaign for A/B testing to make much of an ROI difference.

Roughly speaking, when you have less than 1,000 transactions (leads, signups, purchases and so on) per month, you will be better off pouring your efforts into other areas.

But look.

I know you’re probably going to A/B test anyway. I get it. Some growth hacker said it was a good idea.

If you do want to double check whether or not your campaigns are working, you should focus on testing your offers. Not fiddling with colors or CTA buttons or other A/B testing elements.

Offers are the most important determining factor sabotaging your conversions.

Want better results? Un-suck your offer first.

Don’t spend so much time and energy obsessing over A/B testing PPC ads.

Not when your offer needs help. Not when your landing pages are fugly.

And not when your unique selling proposition isn’t so unique after all.

5. Focusing on Keywords Instead of Search Terms

Google often recommends that you bundle single keywords in an ad group that revolves around the same common theme.

In fact, they recommend you “start with 10-20 keywords.”

This is great advice.

If you are Google. Because it means you make more money – off of people that follow this advice, get terrible results, and then have to spend more on ads.

That many competing keywords makes message match impossible to pull off.

You’ll end up bidding too broadly or bidding on short-head terms.

You won’t be able to laser target ads or landing pages. And you’ll overpay to get competitive traffic that’s not ready to convert.

You might select keywords. But you’re paying for search terms.

And one look at your search terms report will unveil the reason PPC conversion are nil.

In an ideal world, you should keep your keywords as tight as possible in each ad group. Some say limiting it to just a single keyword per ad group.

The reason is because you want to constrict the number of variations each ad shows up for.

Then you can refine with negative search terms to disqualify the leftovers and squeeze more from less.

6. Missing Message Match

The last tip sets up this one.

That way, each one is laser targeted to the ad and landing page.

People will convert better because your results perfectly line up with their query. And you’ll get an added bonus of better quality scores to pay less per click.

1. The keywords someone types in, should
2. Show up in the ad you show them, which
3. Repeats the same messaging on the landing page

That’s how message match should work in an ideal world.

However, that’s not always how it does work.

One day, Oli from Unbounce decided that he was in too good of a mood. So he decided to make himself miserable by clicking on 300 different ads.

The result was that 98% did not match correctly.

Thankfully, there are two easy solutions to solve this problem.

➀ AdWords Dynamic Keyword Insertion.

Create a list of keywords that can be swapped in-and-out depending on what someone searches for.

Let’s say you sell multiple types of furniture.

You can use one basic ad template that will automatically switch out the exact product keyword someone uses (like “Couches”).

➁ Dynamic text replacement on landing pages.

Same idea, but this time on your landing pages.

You can run the same scenarios to make sure that the product ad people searched for lines up with the same ad and landing page.

In the Stone Ages of digital advertising (like seven years ago), you used to have to do all of this manually.

You would literally create variations of both ads and landing pages to literally match every single keyword you advertised on.

Technology saves the day yet again.

7. All-Around Bad Ad Creative

Sometimes, you just suck.

Own up to it. Admission is always the first step.

Your ad text is still lame. Or, God forbid, your ads or landing pages are not mobile optimized (← yes, this still happens in 2017).

Some PPC hack once told me that, “Most of the time we’ve found that people don’t even pay attention to the ad, it’s the landing page or website impression that matters most if we get that click.”

So maybe the problem you think is a problem isn’t really the problem.

But the good news is that this one is easy to fix.

You just have to avoid some of the most rookie mistakes and focus on the tried-and-true PPC methods like using headline formulas, landing page formulas, and, where appropriate, power words.

If you try to run through the exact process your customers will, these problems should become obvious.

Here’s a perfect example.

This morning I looked for a “aptitude test for digital marketing” for hiring new people.

Everything started off great, until the first result’s ad text started going into MS Excel and a bunch of other random stuff that has very little to do with marketing.

Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt, though.

I decided to overlook the irrelevant ad copy to click on their site and check out if they had what I was searching for.

I immediately regretted it:

There are so many issues with this page it’s hard to know where to start. But here goes:

• Zero message match. Page headline doesn’t match ad text or search query.
• Cheesy stock photos don’t perform well.
• A wall of text. Seriously. No one’s reading it.
• Random salary and employment stats.
• “Free Trial” CTA that doesn’t communicate benefit you’re signing up for.

You can see the page right here for yourself.

I’m not trying to be a jerk. (Not completely, anyway.) But so you can see how obvious these issues become.

Scroll down below the fold and here’s what you see:

More random junk.

Look:

They’re paying good money for these ads! I bet it’s not cheap.

Yet they’re shooting themselves in the foot with basic errors.

There are plenty of places you can go to learn about this stuff. You just have to do your own research. Spend an hour reading any good blog on PPC and you’d spot these issues instantly.

At the end of the day, you have to know the game in order to improve your game.

Not taking the time to learn the basics, or not learning which metrics are important or which ones you should ignore, can sabotage your PPC results.

Conclusion

Nobody said PPC was easy.

But there are certain things you can do to make it easier.

And there are many cases where you make it harder on yourself then it needs to be.

Look for conversions that lead to revenue. Track metrics and data that matter.

Don’t bother A/B testing miniscule information when it’s your offers and value props that dictate results.

Segment your funnels, but make sure each step in that funnel aligns to everything matches properly.

All of these mistakes are common. But they’re not surprising or new.

The solution is out there if you know where to look for it.

About the Author: Brad Smith is the founder of Codeless, a B2B content creation company. Frequent contributor to Kissmetrics, Unbounce, WordStream, AdEspresso, Search Engine Journal, Autopilot, and more.

Facebook recently released Facebook Messenger app ads to the general public.

Aaaaaannnnnddddd digital advertising just got even more creepy than ever imagined.

Thanks, Zuck.

You can now directly message potential prospects via Facebook Messenger right in their inboxes. Kinda like LinkedIn’s Sponsored InMail. Meaning you can nag people 24/7 now.

But with all of these new features comes white noise. Using the right tactic is like finding a needle in a haystack on new platforms.

Just like with any new digital advertising platform, it’s hard to know what works and what doesn’t.

What will help you acquire customers and what will get you reported for stalking.

Here’s how to find that proverbial needle in the haystack by using Facebook Messenger ads to acquire customers.

The Three Main Types of Facebook Messenger Ads

Currently, Facebook offers three main advertising formats or placements with their new Messenger ad services.

Each one is different. But you can use them all together to create one big, happy, harmonious user experience.

Here, we’ll look at each in-depth, analyzing the best practices for each to get the best bang for your buck.

First up: Messenger destination.

1. Messenger Destination Ads

Your first Facebook Messenger ad option is destination-based.

This works like any old display-style ad on Facebook.

It sits right in the news feed for someone to click on.

But instead of taking them directly to the Facebook page or a landing page on a website, it takes them into a conversation on Messenger:

Instead of a call to action like “read more,” it says “Send Message.”

It’s a great conversation starter and strays from the normal display ads you see on Facebook.

For example, lead magnets are great, but they often get stale.

We’ve seen the same thing a thousand times over. And eventually, that means results decline, too.

These destination ads, though, can help streamline your customer acquisition process in two big ways:

1. Qualification: You can initiate a conversation up-front before spending hundreds of dollars to get a user into your funnel. They work to start a conversation on topics that are either complex or expensive. For example, if you’re selling SEO services, these are perfect for initiating a qualification conversation before a full-scale consultation that costs time and money.
2. Retargeting: Once you have a broad audience for your Messenger destination ads, you can funnel those engaged users into sponsored messages – the third format we’ll touch on today.

Messenger destination ads are best used to start a conversation. To get people interested in learning more about your offer without having to give up personal information or schedule a full-blown call.

(Who even talks on the phone anymore?)

These ads can also serve as a form of account-based marketing. Meaning you focus on qualifying prospects ahead of time rather than trying to get them into your funnel to qualify them at the end.

Account-based marketing seeks to narrow the pool early in order to spend more time on ideal clients.

This produces better clients that are more likely to convert, while trimming away the clients who are just there for a free eBook.

For example, Facebook expert Jon Loomer is already using the destination-based ads to start conversations ahead of time:

Instead of simply offering an eBook and collecting thousands of emails that won’t convert, he takes a direct approach:

Message Me.

Is this training right for you?

He’s effectively qualifying leads before they are even leads.

Now he can narrow down the candidates and skip the traditional funnel process where most won’t convert even at the bottom of the funnel.

DigitalMarketer is using the same strategy to get qualified users to interact with their business (before they’re ready to sign on the dotted line):

Once qualified users click “Send Message,” they are asked about subscribing to the newsletter and are allowed to ask any questions about how the platform can help their business.

These ads work just like a live chat on your site but without the need to drive that site traffic in the first place.

Meaning you can save money and time, all while qualifying prospects up-front.

To get started with these ads, head to your Facebook Business Manager and create a new ad based on the messages objective:

Under the messages section, make sure that “Click to Messenger” is selected:

This ad type will show up in the news feed and direct users to a message click, like the examples above.

After selecting your audience, scroll down to the ad format and choose either a video or a single image:

The key here is to get specific.

You don’t want a user to feel overwhelmed with ten options to message you.

Plus, it makes it easier to create a specialized message and offer by using a single image or video.

Next, upload an image or video:

Now comes the fun part. Start setting up your ad with a headline and text:

The goal here is to qualify prospects ahead of time and to get information on whether they’re right for your business or not.

You don’t want to appeal to everyone and waste your budget on clicks that don’t convert.

Ask the most burning question that your best customers ask when converting on your product, encouraging them to message you.

Be sure to select “Send Message” as your call to action, too.

This will start a conversation in their messaging inbox.

Now there is only one step left:

Setting up your welcome messages:

This will be the opening message that someone will receive when they click on your ad.

You can now start to customize your message format and even the customer actions available:

You can also add basic personalization to make each message feel personalized and targeted.

For example, in this ad, we are qualifying users up-front and allowing them to either click to a landing page off of Facebook or message us directly on the Messenger ad.

You can customize these buttons to your liking, driving traffic to your site or landing pages, or simply encouraging more conversation within Messenger.

Remember: Best practices for this ad focus on lead qualification and getting people to start a conversation with your business.

2. Messenger Home Placement

The Messenger home placement is slightly different than the destination-based ads.

This type focuses on sending messaging options directly to the home section of a user’s inbox.

Here’s what it looks like:

It works the same way as the Messenger destination ads do in the sense that a user has to initiate the conversation.

Meaning you can’t just message them individually. They have to accept your invitation to message first.

Here’s how Jon Loomer has structured his home placement messaging ads:

They work as a sponsored blast, just like your destination ads. But instead of appearing in the news feed, they show up in the messaging app.

It’s simply another way to get in front of your audience with targeted messages.

The majority of ads should focus on qualifying prospects and getting them interested in your business without asking for information just yet.

Thankfully, this one is extremely easy to set up.

All you have to do is check the “Home” box under the placement section of your ads:

This will allow your ads to show in the Messenger app as well as the newsfeed for a combined approach.

Follow the same strategy here of generating a conversation rather than trying to land prospects with a lead magnet or a quick sale.

3. Sponsored Messages Placement

Sponsored messages are one of the best new additions to advertising options on Facebook.

But you can’t use these sponsored message placements on just any audience.

Which is actually great if you think about it.

Imagine randomly getting a message from a company you’ve never heard of that asks you to buy SEO services or some other random, untargeted offer.

Blocked.

It’s safe to say that an approach like that would kill the user experience on Facebook. People don’t come to Facebook to get bombarded with ads.

They use the search network for that. The intent simply isn’t there.

Using these sponsored messages allows you to send a direct message straight to a user’s inbox. But the catch is that they have to engage with you first.

Meaning they have to start a message thread with you before you can message them again.

Once a user engages with you, then you can retarget them with sponsored messages.

For example, here’s how it would show up in your Messenger app:

It looks like any other message you’d get.

Plus, you don’t have to ask them to message you.

You can deliver a specific message without them needing to accept or initiate a call to action.

Since these users are already brand-aware, it’s best to message them with an offer or a discount now.

They know your brand, and you’ve likely qualified them up-front from your destination ads.

So you can push them further down the funnel.

DigitalMarketer has started using a coupon/discount-based tactic to convert these brand-aware users:

Jon Loomer has taken a similar approach, attempting to drive qualified, brand-aware users to his training program:

Sponsored messages are akin to lead magnets or purchase offers in traditional advertising.

You’ve already done the majority of the work:

1. Finding the audience
2. Generating brand awareness
3. Evaluating their pain points
4. Qualifying users

Now you just need to complete the last step:

5. Getting them to convert on an offer.

This should be your final step in customer acquisition with Messenger ads.

It should help you get their detailed information as a qualified lead. Then you can nurture them via other platforms like email or phone.

To set up this audience, you’ll need to create a new custom audience based on engagement:

Next, select the “Facebook Page” option:

Now, select “People who sent a message to your page” as the custom audience criteria:

This will allow you to create sponsored messages.

Now all you have to do is create another ad with the message-based custom audience you created, and you’re ready to convert these brand-aware users into full-on customers.

Finding your needle in the haystack doesn’t have to be hard.

Try implementing each one of these ad types to work together to fill your customer funnel.

Conclusion

Facebook Messenger ads offer great, new ways to reach customers.

But with any new platform or technique comes risk.

What works? What doesn’t? How do you know without wasting thousands of dollars on testing?

Start by using Messenger destination ads to qualify prospects up-front.

These ads take a cue from account-based marketing, where qualification is done at the beginning of the user journey rather than at the end.

Once you’ve done this, you can place Messenger ads directly within the app and even send more personalized messages to engaged users with sponsored messaging.

You can use Messenger ads to do a lot more than you may have thought possible. You can use them to build up brand awareness at the beginning, nurture newly-aware leads, and convert them into qualified prospects who are ready to buy.

All at a fraction of the competition you’re typically running up against. Which means if you do it correctly, a fraction of the cost you’d typically spend, too.

About the Author: Brad Smith is the founder of Codeless, a B2B content creation company. Frequent contributor to Kissmetrics, Unbounce, WordStream, AdEspresso, Search Engine Journal, Autopilot, and more.