You have a great product or service and a fantastic front end offer.
You would like to reach a larger audience and get yourself more ideal clients.
If you have a sales funnel in place and would really like to scale your business, running an ad campaign is the best way to attract new people to your product or service.
But there’s a second option, even if you don’t want to create a lot of traffic for yourself.
Today, learning how to run ads for other people’s products and services is a highly sought after skill.
If you’re looking to expand your marketing knowledge and abilities, learning to run ad campaigns (or “buy media”) is a must.
But let’s be real – the world of ad campaigns can be so confusing!
And jumping right into Facebook Ads Manager and trying to sort it out as you go is probably the least profitable way you can learn.
(Side note: You don’t have to jump straight into Facebook Ads Manager. If you’re not ready for it yet, check out our post on boosting Facebook posts for $1 per day using the Omnipresence Content Marketing method.)
Mike Shreeve, founder and head trouble maker of The No Pants Project, teaches a Facebook ads masterclass inside of The No Pants Project coaching and mentoring program.
Get excited because today I’m going to give you a sneak-peek, behind-the-scenes look at what he teaches in that masterclass, so that you can confidently create, test, and discover winning Facebook ads for yourself or for your clients!
But before we get into that, there are some things you need to understand about the ad creation and testing process.
In his lesson Mike shares a story that creates a powerful visual for how his personal method for ad creation works.
Story Time…
“I remember living in the Philippines and I remember this moment of enlightenment I had watching these farmers plant rice.
“What they do is they bundle the rice – the rice seed comes in bundles, and they take these bundles and they bend over in the fields and they take one little seedling at a time and they fill these massive fields by hand planting the rice one little bit at a time.
“I remember watching them in the humid heat of the Philippines and thinking to myself:
“‘Isn’t it interesting that they know that some of the seeds they are planting are not going to yield anything, and yet they are still one by one, very methodically, planting every single seed that they have…
“And why do they do it?
“I realized it’s because they have wisdom passed down from generation to generation about this process – so they know that at the end of the day the process will yield enough rice for them to live off of.
“They don’t put their trust in the individual seeds. They put their trust in the process that has yielded them harvest in the past.”
This is the exact approach that we are going to use as we create our ads.
Mike shows us how to plant seeds in Facebook knowing full well that not every seed will yield a result.
But the process will yield you the results you need to make your own living as a business owner (or to get results for your clients).
It’s so important not to get discouraged when certain ads don’t perform the way that you had hoped.
If you can decide before you begin to keep your emotions out of it and continue through the ad testing knowing these methods will pay off, you’ll be successful.
When you fail, just keep sowing strategically.
Facebook Ads Part 1: The Market Multiplier
Mike created “The Market Multiplier” as a way to stack the odds for success in our favor before we try to run our first ad.
Jumping into Facebook too quickly without a plan and a strategy is a guaranteed way to fail in a costly way.
The Market Multiplier will help to lay the groundwork necessary so that when you go in and start a campaign you will have the best chance of success.
The process for revealing a winning ad looks like this:
- Create a hypothesis – “Here’s what I think will work.”
- Test the hypothesis on Facebook
- Use data to discover the winners and remove the losers
- Scale if needed
- Rinse and repeat
Part of the groundwork that needs to come first is identifying the different angles that you can use to promote your (or your clients’) services or products to different audiences.
Finding New Angles & Audiences
To illustrate how we can go about this, let’s take a look at the humble hammer.
Most people would agree that this tool is meant to be used by a handyman to help him build things.
But – if you do a quick search online you can find over 100 uses for a simple hammer.
Uses like
- hole digger
- blade straightener
- nail ripper
- wood splitter
- ice breaker
- meat tenderizer
- chisel
Yes, it is just a hammer, but there are a lot of different ways it can be used.
Now, to put this into perspective, you, or your client, have a front end offer, a lead magnet – or what Mike calls a “lighthouse.”
Your lighthouse is your way of drawing someone into your sales funnel, and if you’ve created a good lighthouse, it is something that actually adds real value to people’s lives.
But currently you probably think your lighthouse has a certain purpose that will only attract a certain type of person.
You think your lighthouse is “just a hammer.”
That’s why this exercise is so important.
If you can’t change your thinking about what this offer is and what it does, you are severely limiting the people you can reach and help.
It’s time to start thinking of other uses for your lighthouse.
To begin with, try considering the different kinds of people who might be interested in using your lighthouse in different ways.
Think again of the hammer.
- To a chef it’s a meat tenderizer.
- To a gardener it’s a hole digger.
- To a lumberjack it’s a wood splitter.
Different people can use the same tool in very different ways.
What else can your lighthouse do?
And who can use it?
In order to thoroughly answer these questions you’ll need to describe in detail all of your offer’s benefits and features.
And then ask yourself, who can be helped by these benefits?
Your goal is to speak to these different audiences in your various ads and then lead them all to the one landing page that can help them.
If you go on thinking you own a hammer that only contractors will use to just bang nails with then you are missing out on huge untapped portions of the market.
Take your time and dig in here.
Ask Yourself:
- What are the benefits and features of my offer?
- Who could be helped by these benefits?
- How, specifically, does my lighthouse help each of them?
- What’s the big promise I’m making these people?
- What’s their deepest desire?
- What’s the concrete benefit I offer?
- Can I promise to help this person with their problem?
Exhaust this list and think of all of the angles and audiences you can, and then add a few more.
This list will help you know what to promise and who to direct your promises to in your ads.
When you get the right ad angle, audience, and image lined up, you’ll find your winning ad.
But how do you correctly guess these three variables?
You don’t.
You use the Lucky Cube Method and let the data tell you.
Facebook Ads Part 2: Lucky Cube Method
“Let Facebook find your winners.”
– Mike Shreeve
Here’s how the Lucky Cube Method works:
Start by creating multiple ad angles, audiences, and images.
Then, stir them into a pot called the Facebook algorithm.
Turn the pot on, let it cook for the correct amount of time, and then scoop in and pull out the perfect soup.
While the details of this process are Facebook specific for this article, the idea behind the Lucky Cube Method can be applied to all types of advertising platforms.
If you can master Facebook ads, you’ll have most of the know-how to buy media anywhere.
But First, A Note On Budget…
Some people have a really hard time “wasting” money on the testing that’s necessary in great ad creation.
If you’re going to do this the right way it’s critical that you have an understanding about the big picture goal.
The money you spend testing ads should never be viewed as a waste.
You are paying to find the winning ad that will continually draw your ideal client to you again and again.
This is not something that you can guess or predict, and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying.
When you understand that you are essentially paying for a client getting machine, it becomes easier to justify the expense.
The process of Mike’s Lucky Cube Method looks like this:
- Create 4 angles
- Find 4 audiences
- Get 4 images
- Test them all, knowing only some will work
Lucky Cube In 4 Steps:
1. Use Your Market Multiplier Answers And Turn Your 4 Ad Angles Into Ad Copy
Not everyone is a copywriter – and even if you are, writing copy for your own products or services can be especially difficult.
But with some basic direction even the most inexperienced writer can come up with strong ads that get clicks.
A good Facebook ad must stop your ideal customer in their tracks as they are scrolling mindlessly through their news feed.
Within the first sentence, you want to hook them into reading more.
Throughout the ad you’ll need to provide them with entertainment value in the form of excitement, hope, curiosity, or drama.
Then you need to offer them something of value and tell them how to get it.
In regards to ad format, longform copy is still king when it comes to Facebook.
Longform makes it easier to get your points across without worrying as much about character count.
Long form ads also fit more natively into Facebook’s news feed as they read more like a short article.
Here is an example of a longform ad from Mike Shreeve:
Here’s another example of a longform ad:
Before you begin writing, it’s critical to do some research on your competitor’s ads.
In marketing there’s really no need to try and reinvent the wheel.
If certain formats, tactics, and promises are already working for your audience somewhere else, find your own way to incorporate them into your own ads.
Some tools for checking out ads in your niche are:
- Adespresso
- Moat.com (search for your, or your client’s, competitors’ names)
- Swiped.co
2. Identify Your Audience And Learn How To Speak To Them
After answering the questions from the Market Multiplier above, you should have a pretty good idea of which kinds of people might be in need of your service.
That’s half the battle.
Now it’s time to pick a handful and start narrowing down their interests and behaviors so you know how to address and target them in your ads.
If you need help with the actual audience creation, Adespresso has a great article on Facebook specific audience targeting.
You can use these questions as you narrow your demographic to help get the ball rolling:
- Who are the topic gurus this audience already listens to?
- What kind of tools and resources does this audience already use?
- What are this audience’s behaviors and interests?
3. Choose Some Eye-Catching Images
Like every other part of ad creation, the only way to know for sure which image is going to work with your particular audience is to test it.
Some general rules are to use bright, eye-catching colors that stand out from Facebook’s grays and blues.
The majority of viewers also respond best to images of people, rather than objects, landscapes, or graphics (it is FACEbook, after all…).
For more tips on selecting ad images you can check out this article by Pagemodo.
4. Create And Test Your Ad
Now that the groundwork is done we can get into the nitty gritty of creating our Facebook ad campaign.
- Create a Facebook business account, if you don’t already have one for your business page (or help your client do this).
- Read current Facebook Ad policies. These change frequently, so always be aware.
- Set up your campaign. This can look overwhelming, but Facebook aims to be user friendly and once you do it once or twice, you’ll be breezing through the steps in no time. Neil Patel walks you through each step in detail here.
- Monitor Your Campaign performance. This Instapage post will give you an overview of the types of metrics you’re looking for and what they mean!
- Adjust and repeat.
Recap: Mastering Facebook Ads In Two Parts
Part 1: The Market Multiplier
Use the Market Multiplier questions to come up with your ad angles and audiences.
With some research and outside the box thinking you should be able to tap into your prospect’s deepest pain points and desires.
Ask, “What can my (or my client’s) lighthouse do, and who can it help?”
Remember – the front end offer is not “just a hammer.”
Any lighthouse can have many different uses for many different people.
It’s your job to identify those uses and then market to those people!
Part 2: Lucky Cube Method
- Turn your ad angles into 4 pieces of copy.
- Test your copy with 4 separate images on 4 separate audiences.
- Collect your data.
- Throw out the losers and keep the winners.
Repeat as needed until you’ve got a working machine that rakes in customers (for you or your client) again and again!
Want More?
If you’d like to get the full Facebook Ads Masterclass training from Mike Shreeve, more guidance on ad creation, building your service offerings, marketing skills, or launching a profitable freelancing business, come join us in The No Pants Project.
