High-Performing Ads

When making ads, there are a few core elements that make or break your marketing, and they’re the same across every single business model. There’s even an underused strategy that I’ll share with you at the end.

But this all starts with the…

Headline

Your headline is the most important part of your visible ad. This is the very first thing people see, so the headline is the deciding factor of whether potential customers are going to read on or not. So catch their attention and let them know this was made for them.

Copy

The words on your ad are known as the “copy.” This is what sells your product or service, not the pretty picture of the cat you put on your ad. Copy is much more important than any picture or image you could put on your ad. It doesn’t have to be pretty; it just has to be convincing.

Easy Offers

Every ad you run needs to have an offer for the reader, and it should be a very low-threshold task. People are very good at following simple instructions, but once things start getting complicated, they struggle and are a lot less likely to actually follow through. So ask them something simple like, “Watch this video,” “Read this blog,” or “Fill out your email.” Once you get someone to complete the first simple task you give them, they will be much more likely to do the next simple task you give them, like “Buy this product” or “Book a call with us.” Make it easy for them to say yes.

Target Audience

This is THE most important part of any ad because no matter how perfect your ad is, you will never sell your pretty pink ballet shoes to a group of Harley Davidson bikers. So when you make your ad, show it to the people that are most likely to buy your product.

Find your target audience

Qualifying is how you find your target audience. You qualify by looking for information from past consumers; this can be done by…

1. Asking buyers directly

2. Checking the reviews of your competitors

3. Watching ‘My experience’ videos on YouTube

You want to find their problems and what their desires are.

Guarantees

Most people are scared to have a guarantee for their business, so when you have one, you stick out (in a good way). Guarantees increase your credibility and improve how potential customers view you. This can be something as simple as, ‘Click now to get 10% off.’

Testing

Sure, you could write an ad that seems perfect and should theoretically perform extremely well, but that doesn’t mean it always will. Only the market knows what will perform, and you figure out what the market wants by testing.

When testing, you should test one thing at a time, but test big things. Typically you want to test your target audience first, then you move to headlines and copy, and then you move to your creative or picture.

Measurable Results

Every ad you run should have a measurable factor in it. That could be the number of sales, the amount of emails collected, how many clicks you get, etc. Something has to be measurable though, because otherwise, how would you know if it’s working? This also really helps out when you start testing.

Bad Marketing

If you take a look at most marketing, you’ll actually find that almost all of it is terrible. There’s a reason for this though. 

When someone new enters a market, they typically don’t know how marketing works. So they usually just look at what everyone else is doing and try to copy that because “This is how we do it in this market.” This creates a lot of clutter and a lot of companies that don’t stick out to consumers.

This is good for you though, because you’ll know better than to copy and paste what everybody else is doing.

Good Marketing

Marketing is pretty much the same across every single niche; all of the key principles are the same, so there are just a couple of questions you have to ask yourself when making your ads. (You can answer these by qualifying.)

What are you saying?

The message you put in your ads needs to be clear, and it needs to have a purpose. This will set you apart from your competitors that just throw a bunch of word salad on an image and call it an ad.

You can’t be boring either because then you’ll start to lose attention.

Who are you saying it to?

This is your target audience, so when figuring out ‘What are you saying?’ you should make it speak to them directly. When you talk to the people with the highest probability of buying, the probability of them buying goes up. Crazy, isn’t it?.

How are you reaching them?

You have to know what media you’re using to reach them, whether that be word of mouth, social media, cold calls, etc.

Once you know how you’re reaching them, you have to figure out what they’re looking for in those situations. For example, if they’re scrolling on Instagram, they’re looking for entertainment, so you should probably make your ad at least slightly entertaining.

Cutting the Clutter

EVERYTHING IS THE SAME.

And I mean everything. You can look across every single niche, and you will be staring at the same exact copy-and-paste stuff. This makes things easy for you though; just be different. This is why it’s called cutting the clutter. The best and easiest way to do this is to just call out your target customers. For example, let’s say you own a chiropractic clinic.

“Does your back hurt?”

Immediately, you catch the attention of your target audience so you can sell to them. This also turns everyone away whose backs don’t hurt, but that’s the expense you take when you sell a high-quality service.

“When you sell to everyone, you sell to no one.”

The Secret

All this ‘secret’ is, is retargeting. Retargeting is extraordinarily underused for how effective it is.

This is known as 2-step lead generation, so there are going to be 2 steps.

1. Run an ad to get attention or spread information about your ad.

2. Run a second ad to the people that interacted with your first ad.

(You sell to them in this one.)

This lowers your cost per lead significantly and boosts your conversion rates at the same time.

Facebook in particular makes this really easy if that’s the platform you decide to use for marketing.

I know all of this sounds like a lot, and there’s still a lot more to learn through experience. But if you want things to be a bit simpler, we can take care of your marketing for you so you can get back to doing what you do best, running your business.