Learn from the experts as they critique eight Facebook ads, offering insight on what the marketers did right and what they could improve upon. Listen as they offer actionable strategies you can implement in your own Facebook campaigns and how to avoid eight common Facebook ad mistakes.
Find the images of each Facebook ad critiqued in the Resource section and podcast transcript below.
IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN:
- The approach almost any marketer can apply to effectively communicate your product/service is the best fit for your customer avatar (« and what it has to do with a rainy weekend).
- The simple strategy you can use in your ads to quickly grab your audience’s attention (« Hint: This is a very effective tactic to use if you’re not a great ad copywriter).
- How you can “sell the click” on your Facebook ad and what not to do so don’t intimidate the viewer from clicking.
LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
Episode 67: The Proven 3-Step Formula to Transform Your Business with Video Ads [Part 1]
Episode 68: 3 Elements of High-Converting Video Ads [Part 2]
Episode 84: Ryan Deiss: 7 Questions I Ask Myself Before I Finish Writing Ad Copy
Episode 97: 7 Facebook Tests: Optimize Your Facebook Campaigns with Our Results
Molly’s Ads:
Keith’s Ads:
Ralph’s Ads:
Episode 98 Transcript (swipe the PDF version here):
| Keith Krance: | Hello and welcome to episode number 98 of Perpetual Traffic. Today’s episode is Eight Facebook Ad Critiques from the Perpetual Traffic team. |
| So, our version of F8. So it’s Ralph, Molly, and myself. We’re going to be taking you through eight different ad critiques; the good and the bad. We’re going to show you what we like and what we don’t like. And, like always, you can find all the screenshots and anything we reference in this episode on the Show Notes over at DigitalMarketer.com/podcast. This is episode number 98. | |
| Molly’s got three critiques, Ralph’s got two critiques, and Keith has three. So let’s get right into it. | |
| Molly Pittman: | Hey guys! Molly Pittman here. Hope you’re having an awesome day. I’m excited to critique some ads for you. I’ve picked out three ads that are very different and in very different markets, so hopefully you pick out some nuggets of information here that help with your ads. |
| Now again, if you want to see these ads for themselves, they’re at DigitalMarketer.com/podcast, but I’m going to do my best to describe them to you. | |
| So the first one that I’m going to critique is from HomeChef.com. Now this is a screenshot of an ad that someone sent me, so I don’t have the landing page. And it’s actually just an add-in in the right-hand side placement. So, we don’t have a lot to work with, but I wanted to critique this one because I think they do something that’s really cool, and it shows you really what simplicity will get you and what a good marketing hook, how far that will get you.
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| So again, this is from HomeChef.com. The headline says, “Try Home Chef Today. $30 dollars off your first order.” So it sounds like Home Chef is one of the meal delivery services. And the amount of copy that I can see, you know probably the first line of copy in the news feed is “If you think steak dinners are out of your price range, think again. We deliver everything.” | |
| And then it cuts off. But the premise here is that this is a meal delivery company. Now what’s really cool is the image. So on the left-hand side, they have a steak that’s sliced up. And there is a money sign in the top left-hand corner and it’s green. And next to that image is another steak, and it actually doesn’t look quite as good as the steak on the left-hand side. In the top left-hand corner of that image, it has three dollar signs and they are red. | |
| And so they’re absolutely portraying their marketing message here of, “If you think steak dinners are out of your price range, think again.” | |
| So, they’ve used an approved before and after picture here because it’s not talking about weight loss, to really compare a steak that you would order at a restaurant, and showing three red dollar signs, right? So that’s going to emotionally tell someone, “Whoa, this is expensive,” compared to another steak that also looks great, with a green, just one dollar sign. | |
| And what’s cool about this is, they’ve been able to portray their entire marketing message with their image. So they’re showing that you can get this steak dinner at your own home for less money than you would get it at the restaurant, but it’s similar quality. And of course they’re making a great offer of 30 dollars off of your first order. So I just thought this was a really awesome ad, and I wanted to show you guys. And it goes to show how simple your ads can be, especially if you’re able to rely on an analogy, or a comparison, right? So Home Chef is not saying, “We deliver to your door, the food’s high quality.” They’re comparing it to something that most people in life have experienced. A steak dinner at a restaurant that’s great, but might be out of their price range. So, again, I thought this was an awesome ad. | |
| Now, the next ad that I’m going to critique is from Ministry of Supply. And they are selling clothing. They’re selling a menswear shirt. And the copy says, “Everyone sweats, but not everyone has to see it. Sweat wicking menswear. Ministry of Supply garments are sweat wicking, breathable, and ventilated, making the summer time day to day a whole lot more comfortable.”
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| Now, I love this ad because it provides a why beyond, “This is an inexpensive shirt.” Or, “This shirt exists.” Right? Which is what most clothing stores rely on. There’s a why here and how it will improve the person’s average day to day. Everyone sweats, but this will make sure that people don’t see your pit stains. I think that’s a great hook and there’s so much more of a reason to buy this shirt than just its cost or that it exists. | |
| Now, the image is a guy sort of leaning over with this shirt on. And the image is fine, but if I were to improve this ad, I would portray the marketing message a bit more in the image by maybe even showing, you know someone with pit stains and then this you know suave looking guy with no pit stains and very happy with his life. So if I was to make one little tweak to this ad, it would be that we really hit on that pinpoint of pit stains a bit more in the image. But overall I think they did a really great job. | |
| Now, the last ad that I’m going to critique is pretty interesting. So, this was an ad that came up in my friend’s newsfeed. He lives here in Austin. And it actually showed up this week. And it was from Blazer Tag. And Blazer Tag is like a laser tag facility here in Austin. And it says, “Looks like rain all weekend long. Let Blazer Tag save the day for all of those outdoor birthday parties. We still have spots available on Saturday and Sunday throughout the day, our event coordinators are eagerly awaiting your call and would love to get you booked. Call us today.” And then they linked to the Austin weather weekend on accuweather.com and it’s just pulled in an image from AccuWeather.
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| So first of all, I thought this was a brilliant ad. For a local business taking advantage of the weather this weekend and possible pain points. Right? Parents might be having outdoor birthday parties and be freaking out and not knowing, you know exactly what to do. How to save their kid’s birthday. I thought this was absolutely brilliant and it goes to show how local businesses or really any business can take advantage of current situations like weather. Especially for a local business. Now if I were to tweak this ad a bit, I would call out Austin. So, it says, “Looks like rain all weekend long.” I would say, “Austinites, looks like all weekend long. Let Blazer Tag save the day for all of those outdoor birthday parties.” | |
| So, I would’ve actually added on to this and brought up other scenarios than just outdoor birthday parties. So, “What are you going to do with your kids since it’s raining?” Right? They could’ve broadened this ad out a little bit because most people in Austin are looking for something to do this weekend because it is raining. So they could’ve broadened it out a bit and not made it just out birthday parties. But the fact that they came out and said, “The weather’s going to be bad, we’re your solution.” Right? That was great. So I just would’ve tightened up the ad copy to speak to other scenarios where people might be looking for something to do because it’s raining. | |
| I actually wouldn’t have linked to the AccuWeather Forecast. I guess if they don’t have a landing page, that’s okay. But maybe even link to their Yelp page, or you know if they do have a web page, link to their home page where people can learn more information. Because they’re just sending, you know AccuView free traffic. And you know the weather is something that if you say, “People, you know it’s going to rain this weekend.” There is trust there. Right? It’s something that’s pretty factual. | |
| So I would’ve linked to some other page where they could’ve received more information. They did have the phone number in the ad copy, which was great. But I would’ve just added a few details here that made it easier for conversions to happen. And that made it easier for people to see themselves in a situation where Blazer Tag could be the solution to their rainy weekend. So again, a great concept here and something you should think about. Especially as a local business, how are you taking advantage of what’s happening, you know week to week or month to month in your community. And how can you position your product or service to best fit the needs of the people that live in your local area. | |
| So I hope you guys enjoyed those critiques. Three very different ads, all with great qualities and things that we can take away and implement in our own campaigns. | |
| Keith Krance: | All right, so now it’s my turn. This is Keith Krance back with you and let’s get into my three critiques. Number one is an ad that I saw in the right column. So, this ad is by Goinfinitius.com and Scott Oldford, the is the creator of these ads. And I noticed just by his comments and threads, he’s kind of always up on the cutting edge of what’s happening. So when I saw this ad, I actually didn’t know it was him until I got further into it. So, once I saw that it was him, I was like, “Oh, okay, he knows what he’s talking about here.” So, my radar kind of went down initially when I see an ad that I like, my radar goes up. Like looking for holes. And most of the ads that I was looking for this episode, it was tough. Because it was probably 80/20. 80% of the ads were negative comments I had, and 20% were positive. |
| Most of the stuff that we see in the newsfeed are in the right column, is stuff that you know we would definitely do differently. So I like it when I see a good one here. And super simple, basically. Just like everything that we teach on this podcast. | |
| So remember, this is a right-column ad, this is not a newsfeed ad. So, it’s got an image of a cover of a guide, “The Three Phase Landing Page Mastery: Get the Guide.” So the one thing I would say though, is the writing on that is pretty small. So the title of that book for the right column version of this ad, is just a little bit too small. So I’m sure it wasn’t designed initially for right-column ad. It was just designed for the e-book and for a newsfeed ad it would be okay. But it’s got the subtitle in there that you can’t read at all in the ad.
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| So, that’s just minor though because the landing page mastery title of it does stand out. And you can see that very clearly. Below that is the headline, “Fifty-percent plus, conversion rates for landing pages?” So once again, leading with a question is always just one of the go-to strategies that we like to use. And then below that is, “Did you know there are three types of landing pages. If used properly, it’s easy to get fifty percent plus con…” So that says conversion and this is a right column ad, so we don’t get to see the rest of the ad copy. | |
| So I like this cause it’s got the very clear fifty percent. It’s a question mark, so there’s some curiosity. And I like the three types of landing pages. So that brings even more curiosity, and who doesn’t want to get fifty percent plus conversion rates? Most people. And so if you click on that then it goes to the landing page. “FREE GUIDE” all in full-caps and parenthesis as kind of a pre-headline. It’s written bigger than the headline. But it’s a very simple headline. So it’s free guide, below that is “Three Phase Landing Page Mastery.” And below that, the sub-head has a little black background square. I kind of like this. And it’s, “Discover the three phase process to achieve fifty-five percent plus conversion rates on your landing pages, almost every time.” With examples, in parenthesis. I love that too. | |
| And this landing page has really good ad-scent as Molly and Ralph like to call it on this podcast, which is when the landing page looks very similar to the ad itself. So people feel comfortable when they land on that. Subconscious alarms don’t go off, you know it’s got a basic link, first name and e-mail. To get the guide, and it’s a simple landing page. You know I took it all the way through, just to see what would happen here, and it’s got a pretty cool little process. You know on the next page he says, “Thanks for signing up. Want to skip the wait and start using this three-phase landing page approach immediately to generate qualified leads. Sign up for the five-day marketing funnel challenge to plan out your fully automated marketing funnel that brings you leads day in and day out.” | |
| So, you have to opt in again, and it’s kind of weird. But your name and e-mail’s already pre-filled out. And it’s for a five-day challenge. But I do kind of … I like that. Because he’s building good will instead of kind of surprising people, he’s letting them know that, “Yes. This is another piece of content that you’re going to get. Even though it’s free.” I can see this headline being very similar if you’re to go right into some kind of a one-time offer for a course or a product. Then if you opt in again, it basically just takes you to how to access. And he invites you to a free Facebook group. So he’s using the free Facebook group to build community, and he’s using Facebook ads to really quickly grow that audience. | |
| That’s it for Scott. Good stuff Scott. And number two. Number two is an ad by MuscleTech. This is a health and fitness supplements. It’s a protein powder that they sell. So this is mass consumer and this one I saw in the newsfeed. And when I first saw it, I was like, “Gosh, I don’t remember being at MuscleTech’s website recently. How come I’m seeing this type of ad? It looks like a re-targeting ad. It looks like a shopping cart abandonment ad.” I’m not sure what happened, but it has one line of copy and it says, “Don’t miss this deal on the most advanced protein formula ever created!” Exclamation point. And that’s it. No call to action. You know there is a call to action below the image. But that’s it for the ad.
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| And then it’s got an image, a nice good image of a MuscleTech. Two of the big bottles of protein with some chocolate like, looks like chocolate milk splashing around it. So it’s a red background for that lower third and white all-caps font. And then below that for the headline it’s the same thing. “Buy two get one free.” And that description, link description’s kind of like the sub-headline. It says, “Mix and match the best protein line up in the world. Buy two bottles of any 4 pounds or 5.5 pounds nitro-tech formula. You’ll get a third bottle of equal or lesser value free. Shop now.” Is the button, call to action. | |
| And this has a 129 reactions. You know likes, loves, or you know angry faces. And it’s got five comments and two shares. Now you’ve heard us mention this before on this podcast. If you haven’t go back and listen to Episodes 67 or 68, where we went over our proven three step video ad formula. Or any of our episodes where we talked about ad creative and ad copy. Sometimes I will mention the like to share ratio. And when you’re running ads, you’re always going to build up likes. It’s just a collateral benefit. People will like your ad. And someone will comment, and someone will share it. | |
| So I always like to look at the ratio of likes to shares. So for every ten people that like or love or just react on your ad, how many people share it? So if ten people like it, and one person shares it, then that’s a ten to one ratio. If ten people like it or love it or react on it and five people share it, that’s a two to one ratio. And so, when you get to the point that you’re like close to two-to-one or you know three-to-one or better or something like that. For every ten people that like it, you have three shares. Especially if you’re in the B2B space, business-to-business, you’re doing pretty good. | |
| In the B2C, you typically want to have even better ratios. So if you’re selling health and fitness or personal growth, or anything like that. If I see an ad that has less than two-to-one, or really less than three-to-one, then might not be the greatest ad. If it’s a retargeting ad, like this product-focused, deal-focused, it’s okay. It’s just how it’s going to be. You’re not going to expect to have a great ratio there. But this is a cold audience. Now yes, of course, I’m in their targeted audience. Cause I’m very healthy and I buy protein and stuff. But this is not a retargeting ad for me, so they have 129 likes, reactions, and two shares. Okay. So that right there tells me that this ad is probably costing a lot of money. And I just know just by the ad copy and everything. | |
| So, it’s just very focused on getting the protein, there’s no value. There’s no “Ah-hah” moment here, anywhere. So one caveat here. If you have a very good offer, like buy two get one free, you could do something like an offer-ad. Like a Facebook offer that has expiration. And so it’s like a coupon type of deal. And so sometimes these offers, because it’s such a good impulse buy thing, you don’t need great ad copy. Because it’s such a good and compelling offer. | |
| How can you add something? You don’t have to have a lot of ad copy. I mentioned this on Episode 97. Ryan Deiss’ seven questions he asks himself before writing any piece of ad copy. He went over all of these back on Episode 84, and number one is what comes to mind here. Number one is, “How can we make our offer appear novel, unique, and distinctive?” What is it about this nitro-tech protein that stands out? What is it that makes you different? Maybe it’s something like, “Did you know that 90% of men over the age of 35 are getting too much caffeine protein? Or whey protein. Whatever it is. “And this is why we created this, because it has the right formula of different types of protein.” | |
| So, there’s different ways you can do this. What happens is when people see your ad, their guard comes down and they want to click on it and maybe buy it. But also, even if they’re not in your audience, you might have given them an “Ah-hah” moment about nutrition and so they will like it and they might share it. Which means you get free impressions. But more importantly, that is a signal that is sent to Facebook’s algorithm that tells them that people like your ad. And they reward you with cheaper conversion costs and more impressions. | |
| So, this ad takes you to a product page where there’s a pop-up of a ‘buy two get one free’ kind of coupon. So this is going much too quickly to the offer. What they’re doing is they’re the guy at the bar that goes up the girl that’s about to order a drink and tells her to, “Hey why don’t you save your money and save some time and just, I’ll buy you some drinks tonight. And why don’t you just come home with me tonight? And while we’re at it, why don’t we get married?” But it’s not very authentic, is it? No, it’s probably not really what she wants to hear. | |
| All right, number three. Let’s get into number three. And this is another good one that I liked. This one is by ClickFunnels and it’s a video ad that I saw in the right column. And we’ll have the screenshot of this in the Show Notes at DigitalMarketer.com/podcast; Episode 98.
Coincidentally there’s actually a ClickFunnel’s ad in the newsfeed at the same time. But the ad that I’m talking about is in the right column and it’s a video ad. And I like this because it hits on a ton of things we talk about in the three step video ad formula. And I’m just going to play a few seconds of it here. |
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| Nicole: | Jared! |
| Jared: | Hey, Nicole! |
| Nicole: | Hi, so look what I found. |
| Keith Krance: | So, Nicole is in the middle with a white background with a weird like cardboard sign with the ClickFunnel’s logo. And then Jared comes in from out of the frame on the left side and walks pretty quickly into the frame. So guess what they have? They have that pattern interrupt with motion. We love the motion. And then they go right into kind of leading with some of the frustrations that people have with their website. And what I love about this video is it goes in and it really shows that transformation. It really uses the Eddy formula. We love to see videos that you know either do all four of these or at least two or three of these. Educate, demonstrate, inform, and or entertain. |
| Nicole: | ClickFunnels. |
| Jared: | What’s ClickFunnels? |
| Nicole: | It’s for our online business. |
| Jared: | But we already have like a website and Facebook. Why do we need a funnel? |
| Nicole: | But- but that’s so confusing. Our customers come, and it’s just there’s too much … it’s like going to a grocery store and it’s a grocery store you’ve never been in before, you walk in and there’s so many aisles and it’s so hard to find what you’re looking for. |
| Keith Krance: | I’ve been listening to this podcast because great metaphor there. Right? We’ve been talking about quite a bit that Ryan talked about back on that same episode, number 84. And that would be number 5. What metaphor can we use to tap into the brain and positively associate with our offer? |
| Nicole: | We’re going to take one button, one click, and drop in our headline. |
| Keith Krance: | Love this because they’re doing a lot of things we talk about. They’re also demonstrating. Kay? And they’re also giving a lot of people an “Ah-hah” moment. Because they might not realize this type of technology exists. So they’ll share it and it’s just got a great positive energy to it as well. |
| Now a couple critiques I have on this is that this is a right column ad and we always recommended people when they’re running video ads to get a link in the ad copy itself. Because if you don’t do that, you have to watch this all the way to the very end to actually get to a clickable link. And at the end, the call to action is a 14 day free-trial. Which is a great offer. Click now to get your 14 day free-trial. But there’s nowhere, doesn’t mention the URL, and you can’t click it anywhere unless you watch all the way to the end. | |
| And the one big recommendation we have to people when they do longer videos. And this isn’t too long, it’s two minutes. But even if you’re doing, you know minute and a half, but if you’re doing two, three, four, five, six, ten, twelve minute videos. As long as you have natural authentic calls to action throughout your video, then they don’t have to watch the whole thing. Right? But you also need a URL in the post copy. In the text area there, especially when it’s a right column. Because there’s no call to action button below the video like there is in the newsfeed. Is if somebody shares that video, they share it, one of their friends is not in your target audience, sometimes that won’t even show up at all at the end of the link. So, you’re kind of … you’re really hosed. So you want to make sure to get that link in there. And it helps you brand your business better as well. They can remember that. Make it an easy to remember, use pretty link or some kind of a redirect. So it’s a very simple URL, even if it’s a trackable link. And that will make a huge difference. | |
| Just the one thing to realize, if you have a super like viral type of video that’s got … that’s really funny or it just gets really cheap views, like, you know, less than a penny views because it’s so engaging. Sometimes having a link in the post can peel off some of that organic reach. Which it can end up costing you more money when you’re paying for views. So just remember that. But in most cases, especially this type of audience, I would always put the link in the post copy. | |
| That’s my three, Ralph you’re next. | |
| Ralph Burns: | Hey, this is Ralph and these are my two critiques for Facebook ads that I saw in my mobile newsfeed just today. And I’ll be critiquing them specifically around how they appear in mobile because upwards of 90% of Facebook’s traffic right now is on mobile. So you really do have to be very careful and preview your ads in mobile, prior to setting them live. I would make sure that you do that first. Even before desktop and the second one I’ll critique here you can actually see that they probably didn’t do that for mobile. |
| So, the first ad is by a company called SharpSpring and there’s a couple of things I like about it. I mean I actually like some things but I don’t like more things than the stuff that I do like. It will obviously link to both of these images in the Show Notes.
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| But the first thing is that the ask a question in their first line of their ad copy. Which is good. A lot of people don’t do that. And I think it’s a great way if you’re not a great ad copy writer, just ask a question. What we will typically say is when we have an agency customer that comes on board, we just ask them, you know what’s the biggest frustration of your market? You know have you done a survey to your list and found out what the biggest frustration is? Or the biggest desire? | |
| So you want to speak to that known desire. Like what keeps them up at night. Like you know what’s waking them up at 3 AM? Can you address that specific issue? And ideally having some kind of an offer that is tailored to that issue that solves it, hopefully. Or your product solves it, is a great way to go. So to be able to pull that out we try and dog whistle, we’ll call out that. And that’s just a Dan Kennedy, Frank Kern term that we use quite a bit which is to try and call out the avatar by asking them a question. | |
| Sometimes we actually will do it. Say, “Hey coaches.” Or “Stay at home moms, this is a solution for you.” Or something like that. So anyways on this one they do ask a question. Problem is that the question, I don’t really know what the question is, actually. And I’ve been targeted for this, so I’m not really even sure what they’re selling. So that question I do like. So, we’re going to start there. And the other thing that I do like is that they’re using, you can tell they have a friends of fans overlay on this. Which is pretty cool. Friends of fans, you can spot those by whether or not there is a line at the top of that ad that says, “One of your friends on Facebook likes” whatever the company is. | |
| So, in this case, my friend Josh likes SharpSpring. So I know that they are using a friends of fan overlay. So they could either be doing just friends of fans everyone. It could be. Or they could be doing, you know an overlay which is basically when we use people who are friends of people who like your page, which is in your drop down inside your ads manager. So, in ads manager under “Detailed Targeting” there is a little button that says connections. And it says, “add a connection type.” So, you can target your fans by going to Facebook pages and then people who like your page. Those would be your fans of your business page. Right? | |
| So you can target those people. But what you can also do is you can target friends of people who like your page. So you can also exclude people who like your page too. If you’re doing like a like-campaign, like we do that as an exclusion. Cause we don’t to target the same people who have already like the actual page. So I know that they’re using friends of people who like your page, because of that one part to the add. So I do like that a lot. So that’s where the things that I like end. (laughs) Unfortunately for this one. | |
| And the reason is, is that the rest of it is somewhat confusing. So the question that they ask is one that I really don’t know what this means. I mean I’m in their avatar grouping and I’m not really sure even sure what they’re asking me here. “Looking for a marketing automation platform?” I don’t have any clue as to what that means. That could be a hundred different things in my mind. So you know for me, it would be better to say, “Are you frustrated that you can’t automate your social media posts?” Or you know, “Frustrated that you’re doing your social media posts manually?” You know something like that. I think that’s kind of what they do here. | |
| A marketing automation platform is not something I wake up in the morning or wake up in the middle of the night thinking about. I think about you know how am I going to get more leads for my business? How am I going to get more sales for my business? How am I going to manage my team? You know how am I going to make our processes more efficient? Like these are the sorts of things that I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about. And as a business owner, my guess is that they sell a solution. An automation solution that probably helps with marketing. Helps with my marketing. | |
| But the question does not hit that real urgent pain for me. That bleeding neck pain that Perry Marshall talks about. So right there, we’ve already critiqued to the heck out of just that first line. But you get what I’m saying. The first line should be speaking to that known pain, that known aggravation, that known desire. And then your solution is whatever your next step is. To click on the add, or to get, you know in this case, it’s a, “Compare the top six vendors on pricing, terms, and reviews with our interactive guide. Download now.” Now I actually like this because … I guess this does go back onto the likes side of the ledger here. Is that they are doing a Lead Magnet that is comparing vendors. So that’s actually kind of cool. | |
| Now obviously, cause I’m getting it from SharpSpring, it’s going to be geared more towards SharpSpring. It only stands to reason. And they do actually have sort of this matrix that actually shows what they do and what other people do. I still don’t really know exactly what they do, but that’s part of the problem of the ad. Is that. | |
| So, and then they actually waste some space there and say, “Download now.” In the post copy. We never do that in the post copy. We always sort of assume that people know they need to click. We might say, you know, “Click here to learn more.” Something like that. So download now, they use that … the download button in their call to action button. A lot of people think that, “Hey, if I click that button, I might automatically download and they might steal my information off Facebook.” You just never really know what people are going to do, so we try and make those buttons a little bit less restrictive. Or a little bit less intimidating. So we’ll typically use “Learn More.” | |
| Like all you want to do is you want to sell the click in your ad. And these guys are trying to get you to download the guide. They don’t even know what they’re downloading yet, on the ad itself. Which probably leads to a very low click-through rate, a very high cost per click, and probably a very high cost per acquisition. | |
| So, let me go into the image here. The image is a stock photo of someone writing something on a piece of paper. And it has nothing to do with the hook in the message. In the image it actually says, “Compare the top six marketing automation vendors.” That’s great. I still don’t know what a marketing automation vendor is. I would rather see this image be something more along the lines of like what my problem is. You know if I’m having trouble getting my social media posts out on time. Or you know my Facebook ads aren’t working well. Or you know I’m not getting return on ad spend from my YouTube advertising. Like that’s the kind of stuff that you want to kind of talk to. | |
| And I don’t know if those are necessarily hooks for this type of ad, but they’re definitely not speaking to that. So if you get your hook down and your copy, your image should reinforce whatever that hook is. You know maybe there’s a picture of somebody frustrated at their desk about their Facebook ads. Maybe there’s an inside sort of graphic of like that Facebook ads manager with, you know frowny faces on it. I don’t know what it would be, but those images would reinforce that hook that I’m sort of making up for these guys for SharpSpring. | |
| So, there’s that. So the image I don’t like at all. And I would definitely not use stock photos if you can avoid. Just because people … it screams ads. It really does, it just absolutely tells people that this is an advertisement. So they also take up about half of their image with copy. So, chances are they’re probably getting under delivery of this ad. Because if you have too much, more than 20% text in your image, then Facebook will limit your impressions. So, if you’re not watching your Facebook ads or you’re just pumping out these ads you know through automation software or through some third-party vendor, you probably won’t ever see these messages. These error messages. | |
| That’s why we manage everything through the tools that Facebook gives us, so we can stay in real time and understand, “Yeah all right maybe we do have too much copy in the image.” And that’s definitely the case here cause it shows up as about thirty to forty percent easily of the image. | |
| So, the last thing on this ad that I don’t like is the fact that the headline, you’ll see this in the Show Notes is completely cut off. So your headline should not be cutoff. Your headline should be front and center. I would say it’s probably the second or third most important part of your ad. With your ad copy or post copy at that top, your image maybe being second, your headline maybe being a close third. But the headline says, “The Six Marketing Automation Vendor …” so that means that Facebook cut that off. Cause I can’t see anybody writing that as a line in a mobile newsfeed ad. | |
| And once again, they’re using the download call to action button. It’s a little bit too intimidating for this type of thing. So, I like the fact that you know they are doing a comparison. It’s kind of a cool idea for a Lead Magnet. I would definitely go through you know sort of the ad copy a little bit more with a hook. Just reinforce it with the image. And also make it so that you’re selling the click and not intimidating people that they think the download is automatically going to happen. Which is sort of the way that this ad leads you to believe. And you know really, you got to, you just have to preview your ads on mobile prior to setting them live. | |
| And you can do it inside the ads manager, you can also send it to your phone, just to make sure it looks good. You know depending on what kind of device that you have. So all those sorts of things. And you can kind of see that there are actually some likes on this ad. Very low like to share ratio, I would say about you know one to seven, thereabouts. Which is very low. You know we aim for, you know two to one or maybe one to one on like a best case scenario. Maybe three to one. And this one is about a seven to one with ten comments. Which I did not read, and I’m sure they’re probably not great comments either. So, there’s our first ad with the do’s and don’ts of SharpSpring. | |
| Now, the second one is from somebody who I actually know. Fairly well. But I haven’t seen their ads in quite some time. But I do know a little bit of the backstory about their business. It’s from Ted McGrath’s, “Message to Millions.” So, he teaches and coaches business people to use their life story in message to make impact. So this is for speakers, coaches, consultants. He has a bunch of different products that are really top notch, really high quality stuff. | |
| This ad, which I saw on my mobile newsfeed as well is a lot better than the last one that I saw. It’s still, there’s some room for improvement here. So he, like the SharpSpring ad, starts with a question. But this question is actually … it’s a pretty good question. It’s a little bit on the long-ish side. But it says, “Want more people to actually watch your videos, teleseminars, and webinars?” And then below that it says, “Swipe my eleven point presentation template.” And then there’s a very long URL. And then it gets cut off, unfortunately. Continue reading is what it looks like inside on my phone here.
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| Which I would rather have …. and sometimes it’s hard to do this cause you, you’d have to actually preview this in all different devices. But one of the things, when we’re promoting just a straight opt-in for a template or Lead Magnet or a checklist or something like that, is we tend to not put the naked URL, is what we call them. And we referred back to this a few episodes ago. Which is basically that “https:// URL string.” We don’t put that in the post copy at all if they need to just click on the image or click on the, you know call to action button or whatever to go to the page. | |
| So we tend to use the URL for video only. And the reason is, is because for video you really don’t have the opportunity to click and go off page until the end of the video. Which takes up, you know a fair bit of the real estate in the ad. But with an image post ad like this one, you can click immediately to that URL. So we don’t take out that space in that all important post copy area. | |
| So what I would do here instead, is I would probably take that out and just use what they have which is you know, get my eleven point presentation template, you know here. Or something like that. Really super short. I would also add some emoji’s to this. So, we talked about the value of emojis back in episode … I believe it was 97. And you know I would add something there to that first line. I would also split test the heck out of that first line. And you know as much as possible. So probably at least three or four or five different headlines. | |
| And then take out the URL part, and just get them to click. Because if you’re a speaker, if you’re a coach, like you want people to watch your videos, teleseminars, and webinars. So that is a pain point. So I think they’re actually hitting on something here, which is pretty good. I would like to sort of delve into that a lot more with them to figure out all right what is it specifically that they want behind that desire? You might want to cut into that, or you might want to tap into that in your question. But so far so good, I think with some of this. But I think the reason why they’re probably not getting as many clicks is because of that URL. Which is just taking up so much space. | |
| So another thing that I would here in that first line, even though I think the question is actually pretty good. I would probably shorten it up a little bit in the question. But what I would also do is I would call out the individual avatars. So what you do is you would match your ad with the different avatars you have. Let’s say you’ve got coaches, speakers, and then maybe service professionals. You could probably put in something like, “Attention coaches, Hey.” Or, “Hey Coaches.” You know colon. Or brackets around “Coaches only.” You know something like that so it’s calling out that avatar, it’s an obvious dog whistle call out. | |
| But if you match that with coaching based interests, or then you do one for speakers and do speaker based interest. Now you’re really having this very good synergy between your ad copy, your hook, as well as your audiences. And then if you can reinforce that through the image, which will get to in just a second, it’s really … we’ve seen that strategy work extremely well to lower overall costs per clicks, cost per acquisition, shoot up your click through rate. And all of which leads to a better end result. So I would definitely add that in as part of the spit test. | |
| So now onto the image. So the image here … so there are two things that I like on it. First off there is some branding in the lower right-hand corner, which we do in the agency to reinforce branding for our customers. We always sort of like that, looks … it looks good as long as it doesn’t get in the way of the 20% text rule. So we’ll typically do that. So I do like that. They also have a picture of the ultimate online presentation swipe file. Which is very cool, but then there’s this woman on a laptop sitting on the beach and she’s looking at the laptop, and I’m not exactly sure why she’s there. | |
| So maybe it’s because she’s watching the video, teleseminar, webinar? But it’s just not abundantly clear. So that is what I don’t like and it’s obviously it’s a stock photo. Hasn’t been retouched or anything. Which if we do use stock photos, we have an agency policy that you have to Instagram-ize it, which makes it look like its native in the newsfeed. So we add like an Instagram filter to those stock images, just so they don’t look so stock photo-y. So this one is just taken right from a stock photo site and then used. | |
| Another small detail in the image, which I don’t like as well is that you can tell that the image of the swipe file was taken from another photo. And you know it just doesn’t seem to fit right. She’s sitting on the beach, but the swipe file actually, you can see its reflection in front of it, like it’s sitting on a glass table. So it just bothers me. That would be something I would definitely change. | |
| I would like to see some kind of reinforcement of the hook. You know somebody, maybe somebody visually watching a presentation, or somebody in the front row of a presentation, just like aghast at how great the speaker is. You know I probably wouldn’t use a stock photo in that case because it would … there are plenty of stock photos of people that are sitting in actual seminars. And it would just look a little bit too stock photo-y there. So we would probably use some sort of vector image. Something that’s an analogy of this, you know maybe with a computer that shows, you know like a webinar being done. Or people gathering around a computer and all watching it. | |
| You know something like that. But probably not a stock photo. Something that our creative designers would have to put some effort into. Cause it’s a really important part to get the click. The hook in the first line, the question, is really important. Your image is really important to stop the scroll. So think of people on their mobile newsfeed as just thumbing. They’re just thumbing through their newsfeed. So how are you going to stop that thumb from scrolling? So, you need a killer image that speaks to that urgent need or reinforces the hook in the ad copy of that urgent need and concisely conveys your message in seconds. Like this stuff is important, you got to get this stuff right. | |
| So, one of the things that I do like about it is if you actually click through on the ad, and we won’t actually see this in the Show Notes, but if you click through the ad you actually do see the swipe file immediately. Which is good. So there some ad-scent that goes right from the ad, right to the landing page. Which is good, although I would definitely want to see if I could squeeze the call to action button to enter … to click to enter my name and e-mail above the fold in my phone, if at all possible. | |
| So tiny little details here guys, that you know … I mean we nitpick this stuff pretty much day in and day out. But you know every once in a while a bad ad does get through, but in most cases we’ve got a pretty strict quality control measure that we put in place to make sure that all these ads look really, really top notch. So I mean I think this ad is a good one. I think there’s way to improve it overall. But with just a few tweaks, this could be a great ad and not merely just a good ad. So those are my two for this week. | |
| Keith Krance: | Well that our F8. In case you don’t know what that is, that’s Facebook’s big conference they do. Kind of developer conference, F8. So that was a little tongue-in-cheek joke I made at the intro, in case you didn’t get that. That’s our eight Facebook ad critiques. Please get to the Show Notes, DigitalMarketer.com/podcast; Episode 98. If you liked this episode, if you like this podcast in general, we’d love to hear from you. Please leave your reviews over at iTunes. Leave us an honest review, give us some feedback. |
| We’d love to call you out. We’re going to start reading some of these reviews once in a while on this show. So we’d love to hear from you. And other than that, we really love doing this. This is our best part of our week. Once again, we keep repeating this, but can’t wait to talk to you again next we’ve got some great stuff coming. Bye-bye. |
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