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🤯 I’ve Designed 10,000+ Facebook Ads: Here’s What I Learned

🤯 I’ve Designed 10,000+ Facebook Ads: Here’s What I Learned

by | Feb 4, 2020 | Facebook Advertising, Instagram Advertising, Lead Generation, Social Media Marketing

It’s a beautiful feeling when you’ve spent hours on top of hours perfecting your beautiful new Facebook ads and sending it off into the wilderness. You’ve got a huge bright red button, the universally accepted blue background, and you wrote “FREE” three times in the ad copy. This will surely work!

But then the click-through rate dropped by .5%? HOW?

That confusion and disappointment of seeing your ad go wrong when you theoretically followed every single guideline to create the perfect ads, I’ve felt that same confusion and disappointment too many times throughout my career (I’ve designed 10,000+ Facebook ads).

Here’s what I’ve learned: Those textbook guidelines aren’t always the right rules to implement on your campaigns or your company. I’m going to share with you the seven biggest lessons that I’ve learned so that you can create Facebook ads that deliver the results you need.

1. It’s never about the colors, it’s always about the contrast

Over the years, I’ve read many blog posts and Facebook specialists debate about the best colour to use for a button. Based on all of my research, the best colour to use is lime green.

I’m kidding! (Please don’t use lime green)

There is no concrete or quick answer to this and it all depends on your audience and a little fundamental design principle known as contrast.

This particular study conducted by Hubspot, compares red buttons vs. green buttons. The study found that the red button performed and converted a lot better than the green button. A closer look at their designs reveals that Performable’s (company used to test) logo and website contained a lot of green. Red contrasts well with green.

The easiest way to find contrasting colors is to revisit our old childhood friend, the color wheel.

The first step is to find the most dominant color in your ad, and switch to the exact opposite end of the colour wheel to find the contrasting color.

Here are my favourite free colour palette tools that can help you create amazing colour schemes for your ads; Canva’s Color Palettes and Adobe Color, which lets you select an opposite color scheme.

You can create contrast in your ads without using colour—you can also modify effectivenes with things like brightness, saturation, and scale to make your buttons stand out more. You can also create high-performing ads that don’t even have buttons, but we’ll get into that in the next section of this article.

2. Keep it simple

Communicating your message in the simplest and cleanest way is one of the most critical ways to creating successful ad creatives. If a prospective client isn’t able to immediately understand your ad, they’re not going to click, or even remember it.

It’s critical to understand exactly what your audience will see first. Facebook ads that are placed in mobile will only show the audience three lines of text, compared to the seven that could be previously viewed. Facebook users can now click to show more of the text. Photos and videos will have a 4:5 aspect ratio, at most, compared to the previous 2:3.

3. Context is key

It’s crucial to consider and understand the context in which your Facebook ad will be displayed and consumed when you start brainstorming design themes. When I first started with Business Marketing Experts and worked with my first client, I was just beginning to get a feel of their brand, I was tasked with making some new Facebook ads. I felt really good about how clean, polished and modern my ads looked. I was positive it would perform really well.

It didn’t perform well at all. I went back to the drawing board. What’s the secret ingredient missing here? It’s context! While that particular ad looked great, I didn’t consider how the ad would be consumed and the ad felt too much like an ad and not a part of their experience.

We’ve found that our Facebook ads tend to perform better when they work together with the prospect’s timeline to create a cohesive experience within Facebook itself. Creating ads that compliment your ideal client’s timeline and Facebook experience is a great way to improve your conversions.

According to Facebook, a combined approach of video and image ads delivers the best conversions on their platform. And carousel ads tend to perform notably well for eCommerce businesses.

5. Use seasonality to refresh your creative

Utilizing holidays and seasonality in your ads is an excellent way to refresh existing campaigns throughout the year. They also serve as great motivation for your copywriting. Just remember to be considerate of your audiences when making seasonal or holiday-themed ads.

6. Take advantage of free resources

Not every single business has the budget to hire a full-time designer or wants to pay the high fee’s of a stock photo subscription service when they’re just starting out, that’s why it’s a good idea to utilize all of the great free tools that are available. Here are a few other free tools that I personally recommend.

Moat, the GOAT of competitive creative analysis

Moat offers a paid product with more in-depth data, however, their Free Banner Ad Search tool is amazing if you’re looking for creative inspiration. Type in an existing brand, and Moat will provide several examples of ad creatives that have been run by that brand. You should use this information responsibly. Just because a particular brand has deployed these creatives, doesn’t mean that they’ve performed well.

Free stock photos that don’t suck with Unsplash

Even though I have access to a paid stock photo resources, I find myself browsing Unsplash, because the images are often better suited to what I want than what I’m able find on stock photo sites. The photography has a more natural feel than the majority of the staged stock photos circulating the internet.

Facebook’s Text Overlay Tool

You’re able to upload the photo that you’re going to use for your Facebook Ad and the Facebook Text Overlay Tool will determine the amount of text is in your ad image. If the proportion of text to image is too high, your ad may not reach its full audience. You’ll have a great idea of how your creative will perform on the Facebook Audience Network algorithm.

7. Divorce your ideas

My final tip is the most important but the hardest to acknowledge: Don’t be super attached to your ideas!

As a creator, I completely sympathize with how easy it is to get emotionally attached to an idea that you’ve worked on for hours. Separate what you think is a great idea from what actually delivers strong results, because this is different for every brand, business and every audience that you’re going to target.

How something makes you feel probably makes another person feel in an entirely different way based on their own personal experiences, childhood and etc. Take the time to learn exactly what it is that your audience likes by testing new creatives frequently, and setting up A/B tests because they will help you figure out just what the secret ingredient is that’s making a certain campaign a top performer. Art is always subjective, but great design is objective.

I help businesses develop lead generation and digital marketing campaigns that deliver results. Ask me about my success stories florind@businessmarketingexperts.ca

In the last 7 years, Florind has mastered packaging brands, products, and services in today’s digital landscape. He brings brands and customers together in a very natural way.

The first word that clients describe Florind with is results – measurable, tangible/real, and trackable. Transparency is rare in the industry but data never lies. By combining analytics, systems, automation, and metrics – Florind has been able to deliver exponential results for his clients. His attention to detail and his pursuit of efficiency and effectiveness is why clients love him and the results he delivers.

Understanding The Facebook Learning Phase

Understanding The Facebook Learning Phase

by | Jan 29, 2020 | Facebook Advertising, Lead Generation, Social Media Marketing

So…you’ve finally launched your first Facebook ad campaign! That’s exciting! It means you’re ready to take your business to the next level. 

You’re here because you launched your campaign and saw your Ad Set go into the “Learning Phase”. You’re curious! I put this together to help answer a lot of the questions that you might have. It’s short, concise and to the point.

During the “Learning Phase” the initial performance of your campaign will significantly fluctuate. This is normal. It only lasts for a short period of time. 

Do not panic! It’s important to know that many campaigns go through an initial data collection period. This period is the “Learning Phase”

What is the Facebook Learning Phase?

The “Learning Phase” is the period of time that Facebook takes to learn how it will generate the best results for your campaign. 

Facebook presents your ads to different people within your target audience. Then it calculates who is most likely to take decisive action after seeing your ads.

This is how Facebook describes the “Learning Phase”:

Each time an ad is shown, our ads delivery system learns more about the best people and places to show the ad. The more an ad is shown, the better the delivery system becomes at optimizing the ad’s performance.
The learning phase is the period when the delivery system still has a lot to learn about an ad set. During the learning phase, the delivery system is exploring the best way to deliver your ad set – so performance is less stable and cost-per-action (CPA) is usually worse. The learning phase occurs when you create a new ad or ad set or make a significant edit to an existing one.
The Delivery column reads “Learning” when an ad set is in the learning phase. While the delivery system never stops learning about the best way to deliver an ad set, ad sets exit the learning phase as soon as performance stabilizes (usually after around 50 conversions).
Your campaigns will usually start off rocky as Facebook is learning how to deliver the best results. Facebook tries to understand which kinds of users in your audience are most likely to click on your ad. This will help you optimize your campaigns and pinpoint the relevancy of your targeting.
 
Once you collect this data, you’ll be able to make informed decisions! Data speaks. The results will dictate what type of action you need to take. You might want to increase the budget. Decrease the budget. Stop. Turn off specific ads.
 
So before you panic, keep in mind that lackluster results are normal during the initial stages of your campaign.
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How long does it run for?

The “Learning Phase” starts once you launch your Facebook ad campaign. Or when you have made a significant adjustment to your campaign. It will continue to run until your ads get approximately 50 optimization events. That’s when it finishes and your campaign runs normally, but with improved accuracy.
 
What’s an optimization event? The campaign objective defines what the optimization event is. So, for example, if you optimize for an increase in Traffic, then the learning phase will run until there have been approximately 50 link clicks.
 
Ads that are going through the learning phase can be viewed in the Delivery Column of the Ads Manager. Here’s a little screenshot of what it looks like:
If your ad set doesn’t register 50 optimization events, Facebook may remove your ad set from the learning phase. Facebook explains that this may occur if your ad set’s optimization event is too rare and can’t meet its minimum intended target or if your ad is not competitive enough in the auction.
 
This may mean that your ad set or campaign needs some improvement to succeed.
 
Don’t make any significant changes or edits to your ad set or campaign during the learning phase. By doing so, you may cause the learning phase to reset. It’s going to cause a long delay to generate positive results. Facebook needs a bit of time to generate the relevant data so it can give your campaign a boost!
 
And take this key tip from us: Don’t make any significant changes or edits to your ad set or campaign during the learning phase. Doing so may cause the learning phase to reset itself as it re-examines the new changes you have applied, causing a lengthy delay in your pursuit of positive results. Facebook needs a bit of time to generate the relevant data in order to give your campaign a boost!

Editing during the learning phase

As I mentioned above, significant changes to your ad set during the “Learning Phase” can reset the phase, but that doesn’t mean all changes will cause this.
 
Only significant edits can reset the “Learning Phase”. If it resets than your campaign will require another 50 optimization event to end. You want to get out of the “Learning Phase” as quickly as possible so your campaign starts delivering stable results.
 
Here’s a list of changes or edits that Facebook would consider significant during the learning phase:
  • Any change to targeting
  • Any change to an ad creative
  • Any change to optimization event
  • Pausing your ad set for 7 days or longer (the learning phase will reset once you resume the paused ad set or campaign)
  • Adding a new ad to your ad set

The following two changes can identify as significant or insignificant, depending on the size of the edit.

  • Bid cap or target cost amount
  • Budget amount (This doesn’t count if you’re using the target cost bid strategy, in which case your budget changes won’t be considered significant)
So if you increase your budget from $400 to $450 then the learning phase won’t reset. But, an increase from, $300 to $1,000 would cause it to reset.

Best Practices

During the learning phase, ad sets are less stable and usually have a higher CPA. To avoid behaviors that prevent ad sets from exiting the learning phase, we recommend you:

  • Wait to edit your ad set until it’s out of the learning phase. During the learning phase, performance is less stable, so your results aren’t always indicative of future performance. By editing an ad, ad set or campaign during the learning phase, you reset learning and delay our delivery system’s ability to optimize.

  • Avoid unnecessary edits that cause ad sets to re-enter the learning phase. Edits that meaningfully change how your ad set might perform in the future can cause an ad set to re-enter the learning phase. Only edit your ads or ad set when you have reason to believe that doing so should improve performance.

  • Avoid high ad volumes. When you create many ads and ad sets, the delivery system learns less about each ad and ad set than when you create fewer ads and ad sets. By combining similar ad sets, you also combine learnings.

  • Use realistic budgets. If you set a very small or inflated budget, the delivery system has an inaccurate indicator of the people for whom the delivery system should optimize. Set a budget large enough to get at least 50 total conversions and avoid frequent budget changes (which can cause an ad set to re-enter the learning phase).

The learning phase is necessary to help the delivery system best optimize ads, so you shouldn’t try to avoid the learning phase completely. Testing new creative and marketing strategies is essential for improving your performance over time.

More than 7 days in “Learning Phase”??

If 7 days have passed since a significant edit and your ad set still hasn’t exited the learning phase, the Delivery column status will read “Learning Limited”.

This usually occurs when:

  • Your bid control or cost control is too low. Consider raising your bid/cost control.

  • Your budget is too low. Consider raising your budget.

  • Your audience size is too small. Consider expanding your audience.

  • You have too many ad sets. Consider using fewer ad sets (for example, by combining audiences) to aggregate delivery learnings.

  • Other ad sets from the same ad account or Page are winning auctions instead. Consider combining ad sets to avoid high audience overlap.

  • Your optimization event occurs very infrequently. Consider optimizing for an event that occurs more frequently. For example, if you see fewer than 50 purchase events in a week, consider optimizing for add to cart events instead.

If your ad set failed to exit the learning phase, consider making a significant edit to resolve one of the above issues.

I help businesses develop lead generation and digital marketing campaigns that deliver results. Ask me about my success stories florind@businessmarketingexperts.ca

In the last 7 years, Florind has mastered packaging brands, products, and services in today’s digital landscape. He brings brands and customers together in a very natural way.

The first word that clients describe Florind with is results – measurable, tangible/real, and trackable. Transparency is rare in the industry but data never lies. By combining analytics, systems, automation, and metrics – Florind has been able to deliver exponential results for his clients. His attention to detail and his pursuit of efficiency and effectiveness is why clients love him and the results he delivers.

9 Killer Tips For Successful Lead Generation

9 Killer Tips For Successful Lead Generation

by | Jan 14, 2020 | Lead Generation

Every new client is always disappointed with their previous lead generation campaigns. I understand that lead generation is a process and each step is super important.

Only 10% of marketers feel that their lead generation campaigns are effective. And, 60% of marketers feel that lead generation is a key pain point for them.

The plethora of information online has made it difficult for you to track, reach and engage leads. Yet, things aren’t as discouraging as they seem.

I’ll be conducting a proper examination of common lead generation challenges. I’ll share 9 amazing lead generation tips with you that took me 7+ years of experience to master. I’ll help you survive the natural selection of lead generation.

I was able to identify five surveys dedicated to lead generation challenges.

Top 10 Lead Generation Challenges 2010 survey by RAIN Group in cooperation with ITSMA:

  • Finding a strategy, tactic, or offer that gets the attention of potential leads — 42.1%
  • Having enough people/the right people to generate leads — 38.2%
  • Measuring and documenting lead generation success — 31.2%

MarketingSherpa 2012 Lead Generation Benchmark Report:

  • Generating high-quality leads — 71%
  • Getting a high volume of leads — 44%
  • Creating public relations “buzz” — 36%

2013–2014 Survey of CPA Firm Best Lead Generation Practices by Vitberg LLC:

  • Generating high-quality leads — 43% (Very challenging) and 35% (challenging)
  • Generating a high volume of leads — 35% (Very challenging) and 36% (challenging)
  • Time or resources — 25% (Very challenging) and 42% (challenging)

2015 Lead Generation Survey of B2B Technology Marketing Community on LinkedIn:

  • Generating high-quality leads — 59%
  • Converting leads to customers — 42%
  • Delivering effective lead nurturing programs — 37%.

The State of B2B Lead Generation and What it Takes to Succeed held by Digital Doughnut in September 2017

  • Lead quality — 30%
  • Getting the right processes in place — 28%
  • Tracking ROI from leads — 26%

Why is getting quality leads such a big challenge for marketers?

Lead generation is a crucial component of any business and very difficult at the same time. A wide range of factors makes the acquisition of quality leads difficult (and we’ll list them below). Never underestimate the importance of this task. Your business needs to generate high-quality leads. High-quality leads are going to help you save on these 3 major resources:

1. The time and effort

It takes up to 30 minutes for an experienced SDR to conduct extra research on a lead. Up to 30 minutes to craft a great follow-up email. And up to 8 phone dials to establish contact with the prospect. If the quality of the lead is low, the efforts and time of your sales rep will be wasted with 0 results to show.

2. The emotions

Rejection has always been difficult to handle, even for strong resilient SDRs. Don’t make them experience failure more than they’d like. An experienced sales rep will understand that the lead is not serviceable. They won’t be happy servicing bad leads!

3. The resources

Time = money. Always! Calls cost money! A bad lead reaching your top Account Executives is the worst-case scenario. It will cost your company more time, more effort, more negative emotions, and more money. That is why it’s important to tackle this problem at the very beginning of your sales pipeline.

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Over the last 7 years, I’ve developed lead generation systems that deliver results. I’ve listed 9 killer tips that made the difference for my clients!

1. USE SOCIAL MEDIA TO BOOST YOUR SALES PIPELINE.

Use social media to help share your content and get it in front of more of your target audience. Facebook is still dominant in social media and can help generate targeted traffic.

By developing a powerful social media marketing strategy, you will build your following. Getting to know your audience will help you generate goal-focused content. 

The last tip is to avoid focusing your posts on your company. Try interacting with your followers and try to be helpful. When a prospect is ready to buy, they will more likely come to you and trust you as a supplier. You should focus on creating a strategy that speaks to your client’s pain points.

2. HAVE THE RIGHT AUDIENCE DATA.

The best way to target the right people at the right time is by developing precise audience data. When you create strong audiences, you’re going to be collecting A LOT of VALUABLE data. You need to use that data and improve the quality of your audience.

Analyze your product and your company and then craft a brand new buyer persona from scratch. It’s always better to build a new one than update an irrelevant buyer persona. Your clients are evolving daily and your buyer persona should reflect that. The right data will help you make the best decisions.

The first step that I take when building Lead Generation systems for new clients is to analyze the data that’s already available. Based on those insights, I build new audiences that reflect key findings. That insight will also help us pivot, adapt and build out a campaign strategy. Refer to the image above, those are the first data points I analyze.

3. HAVE THE RIGHT TOOLS IN PLACE TO TRACK YOUR LEAD.

You want to track your ROI and divide budgets to support the top-performing platforms.

One tool you should always use is Google Analytics. Google Analytics data is essential to identify audience behaviour. The process is simple, collect valuable data and plan based on your findings. 

Optimize your CRM system to tackle all the challenges you currently face. Always refine your workflows and automation. They’re never perfect. They’re always a work-in-progress.

It’s critical that you keep your leads organized. You should be tracking the effectiveness and value of each lead generation source.

Your workflows and automation should follow up with each individual lead. Great systems are built through testing. The perfect system doesn’t exist.

You NEED to be optimizing and refining all systems based on the data that you ARE gathering.

4. QUALITY OVER QUANTITY.

When it comes to leads, you always want sales to focus on quality over quantity. Don’t waste time on unqualified leads. Your TOFU (Top of the Funnel) should be optimized to qualify. TEST, TEST and I can’t stress this enough TEST MORE!

Low-quality leads should be in an automated nurturing workflow.

5. GRADING STRUCTURE FOR PROSPECTS.

Lead generation is time-sensitive, divide your leads into short-term, mid-term and long-term. Each parameter requires its own automated nurturing workflow.

Your sales team takes action on a nurtured lead already qualified by an automated system.

6. ALWAYS MONITOR YOUR COMPETITION.

Did your competition launch a new product or website? Always keep a close eye on your competition and track what they’re doing. 

Use that information to create more effective strategies. Your competitors pay for the same eyeballs as you.

  1. Monitor their lead generation initiatives.
  2. Identify their winning ads. (Ads that they’re running all the time)
  3. Analyze your comps content generation strategy. (soft sell/hard sell)
  4. Estimate how much their spending based on their website traffic (Use Alexa)

7. STRUCTURE YOUR COMMISSION SCHEME.

Structure your commission scheme to reflect the performance and ambition of each individual SDR. Each top performing SDR is unique, cater to that.

Divide your sales team into two divisions, Hunters and Farmers. Salespeople that focus on selling new customer accounts are “hunters”. Account managers focused on managing existing customers and growing their accounts are “farmers”.

8. CAPTURE INFORMATION ON YOUR WEBSITE.

You need traffic on your website to generate leads. Is your website experience optimized for a positive visitor experience?

Your audience should know exactly what you want them to do on your website. Pages developed to achieve goals deliver results!

Perfect doesn’t exist in digital marketing. Testing and data build compelling landing pages!

Identify your visitor’s key actions by using Facebook Pixel and Google Analytics. Tailor your user experience to drive action from your visitors. You should have clear goals such as selling products or booking meetings. Build the user experience to achieve those goals.

9. USE AN AUTOMATED, OPT-IN EMAIL MARKETING SCHEME

Emails can be a great cost-effective way to generate new business. When you are sending emails, it’s essential to tailor them to your lead so they feel exclusive. Emails with clear call-to-actions deliver outstanding results.

There are two components to Opt-In Email Marketing, creation and placement. If you want to increase your conversion rate, you need to put your opt-ins in the right places.

Do you want to get more email signups from your website? Email signup forms won’t capture qualified leads from your website with incorrect placement.

I’ve listed the most efficient Opt-In Email Marketing placements below:

  • Blog webpage and blog posts
  • About page
  • Sidebar
  • Header
  • Landing page

I help businesses develop lead generation and digital marketing campaigns that deliver results. Ask me about my success stories florind@businessmarketingexperts.ca

In the last 7 years, Florind has mastered packaging brands, products, and services in today’s digital landscape. He brings brands and customers together in a very natural way.

The first word that clients describe Florind with is results – measurable, tangible/real, and trackable. Transparency is rare in the industry but data never lies. By combining analytics, systems, automation, and metrics – Florind has been able to deliver exponential results for his clients. His attention to detail and his pursuit of efficiency and effectiveness is why clients love him and the results he delivers.