I get a lot of questions from people new to or trying to learn more about, running ads. I loooove chatting things out and helping business owners craft successful ads. There seems to be one very common question, that I get all the time and we’re talking about it today.  What’s the question…Why aren’t my ads converting?  And yea, what’s the point if they’re not converting, eh?

If you know anything about Facebook ads, you know that there are a lot of variables that make up a successful ad, but my first question is always “Are you trying to sell directly from an ad?”.

Yes, selling is one of the primary reasons you’d want to use Facebook ads, but indirectly, not directly (unless you’re an ecomm biz). Sales ads need to be part of a larger sales pathway or funnel. Here’s several reasons why…

FACEBOOK ADS SHOULD BE VIEWED AS A SCALING TOOL

Facebook ads should be used as a scaling tool. Here’s what I mean – it’s best to use FB ads to reach a wider audience for a product, program, or service you have ALREADY had success selling (unless you’re a retail operation). If you have an offer that you aren’t able to sell to the people who already know and trust you, you won’t be able to sell it using ads. This is a common mistake. The solution is to figure out why people in your warm circle aren’t buying and then fix that first, before you invest money into ads. And don’t be discouraged as a lot of times an offer isn’t selling because of simple tweaks that need to be made. And MOST people/businesses have to do this to get the offer just right.


SELLING TO COLD AUDIENCES IS HARD

Trust is super, super important for any business, and building that trust should be a part of your ad strategy. It can be very difficult to get people to purchase directly from an ad without having already built trust (again, unless you’re a retail operation).

Therefore, it’s super smart to warm people up with your ads first and then retarget them with an ad for purchase. Think about it this way: Would you feel comfortable going to lunch with someone you’ve never met? You’d probably have some reservations. You might even think twice about meeting up. Your audience feels the same way. Until they get to know you, they might not be keen on giving you their hard earned dollars. 

So, butter them up first. Make them see why you’re the one they want to do business with. Focus your strategy more on building an audience who loves what you do before you try to sell anything and you’ll start seeing way more success from your ads.

PROVIDING YOUR AUDIENCE WITH VALUE

The keyword here is value. Before you start advertising something you want to sell, you need to give your audience a reason to believe you’re as awesome as you say you are. You do this by giving them something of value that will get them talking about you and trusting your word.

You can do this in a number of ways but my favorites are with a fun and engaging video ad or an ad for a free offer. Anything that gives value and helps people along in some way will work toward building your brand recognition and trust. You can always retarget those people who acted on your free offer later because you’ll know they were interested.

And this strategy should definitely not stop once you’ve built your ideal audience. You’ll always want to keep building that audience. More importantly, you want to hold onto the people you already have by continuing to provide them with the value that got them there in the first place!

THE BEST SELLING STRATEGY FOR FACEBOOK

Once you start creating your sales ads, you’ll still want to keep tacking on value instead of just selling, selling, selling. When people want to buy something, they’ll go buy it. 

Depending on the price of your offer, you may need additional touchpoints there before you will be able to achieve a sale. For example, let’s say you have a $497 digital course you’re offering. You might consider running ads for a free offer (PDF download, free training, etc), and then retargeting those people to invite them to a webinar where you’ll pitch your digital course. If your offer is lower-priced (under $50), you might not need that webinar piece.

You could test running ads to a free informational video and then retargeting people to a free opt-in and then pitch your low-priced offer by retargeting them with ads while simultaneously sending emails that pitch the low-priced offer.

People get tired of hearing me say the word “test” but it’s truly the way to success with FB ads. Everyone, even the most successful of businesses, has to test. The real magic with FB ads is once you’ve done a bunch of testing and can feed the results back into your newest marketing efforts. Your results will get better and better. 

Last but not least, try to reframe your mindset to not view unsuccessful ads as a failure but to see them simply as part of the marketing process. I don’t know anyone – myself included – who gets it correct, right out of the box, every time. Marketing is a process that consistently evolves as your business grows and morphs. Everything you learn along the way is a tool for future success.

Does this post resonate with you? Do you think you’ve been trying to sell too much in your ads instead of providing value? I’d love to hear about your Facebook advertising strategy so far and how it’s working for you – drop me a comment below!