How To Grow Your Business By Looking In The Rear View Mirror

In business, as in life, there is no such thing as failure!

There is only feedback!

This is especially true with all the activity you do to promote and grow your business. This is true for networking. This is true for Facebook and Google ads. This is true for organic posting of your videos and blogs.

All too often (myself included) we throw our hands up in celebration when things go better than we hoped… and don’t really look to learn from the experience.

Equally, we throw our hands up in despair when the results are worse than we hoped… and we don’t look to learn how to improve.

The truth is that no one has a crystal ball. No one knows what promotional activity is going to be the highest performing in terms of attracting your ideal customer and making them feel good about buying.

The best that anyone can do is to use their experience (of both past successes and failures) to create a campaign that we believe will grab the attention of your ideal customer… and force them to drop everything to read your message… and persuade them to take the action you want.

If you accept that every promotional action you take gives you real-world-feedback and valuable information to make strategic decisions about how best to move forward, then what success measures should we look at?

The rest of this blog will focus on the success measures of Facebook ads.

If you’re running ads to build an email list, to fill a webinar or to sell your product or service, then this blog will show you the levers that you can pull to enjoy vastly improved results on the same ad spend.

Success By Numbers 

It’s easy to run Facebook ads, right?

It can be as simple as Boosting a post.

But…

Does that help you grow your business?

Does that give you a return on ad spend?

If not, then why are you doing it?

If you're running Facebooks to grow your business, then you MUST run conversion campaigns!

Seriously, if you’re doing anything else, you may as well take up smoking and wrap every cigar in a £50 note.

The Facebook advertising platform has changed so control freaks like me find it very uncomfortable.

With the new Facebook advertising platform, you have to trust Facebook, and you have to teach Facebook to find people that will take the action that you want.

To be fair to Facebook, if you trust the system, and teach the algorithm, then it works really well.

You see, Facebook will find the right people to take the action that you tell it. So, if you tell Facebook to find people to watch your video, that's precisely what they will do.

So…

Don’t be angry when lots of people watch your video and no one buys your product or downloads your ebook.

If you want people to do that, then you need to tell Facebook to find people that want to read ebooks. To do that, you must run a conversion campaign with the correct pixel tracking in place.

This post is not about how to set up a Facebook Conversion Campaign, so I'm going to assume you are already doing this.

Let’s assume you are running ads to fill an online training or webinar.

What’s the first success number you are going to look at?

Cost Per Registrant!

That’s the only number that matters, right?

You want to fill your webinar, and you want to do it for no more than £6 per registrant.

So, if you are getting registrations at £5, then you can do a little dance.

But…

What can you learn from that result?

Similarly, if you are getting registrations at £10, what leavers can you pull to improve your results?

Facebook Ad Leavers Can You Pull

Three things determine the success of your ad campaign and the price of your webinar registrations.

These are the same 3 things if you are looking at purchases or email list growth.

1. Audience
2. Ad Performance
3. Registration Page Performance

Let’s look at each of these in turn.

Audience

You can’t sell ice to Eskimos. You can’t sell a diet to an anorexic.

But…

You can sell water in the desert, at a high price.

So the first question about your Ad Campaign is have you got the right audience. Are you targeting people that want your offer?

How can you answer that question?

By looking at these 3 things.

1. Social Interaction
2. Link Click Through Rate
3. Relevance Score

Social Interaction

You will find this at the Ad Set level, in the Engagement section of Columns results.

This will show you the number of Likes, Shares, and Comments.

If you have an ad that is getting a lot of social interaction, then you clearly have the right audience.

Facebook reward advertisers that give their users a good experience. The rewards come in a lower cost per impression, which will reduce the cost per action. Remember the action could be to register for a webinar, or to download an ebook or to buy a product. If your add is being seen by more people for less money, then you will enjoy better results for a lower cost.

You’ll hit pay-dirt when your ad Like to Share ratio is 3:1. Meaning, 1 share for every 3 likes.

Link Click Through Rate

You will find this at the Ad Set level, in the Performance And Clicks section of the Columns results.

Link Click Through Rate shows you the number of people that read your ad and click through to your webinar registration page or your sales page.

If you have a long copy ad (1,000 words or more) and you have a Link Click Through Rate of 1% or higher, then you know that your ad is performing well.

This tells you that the ad copy is compelling and that the offer is something your audience wants.

If your Link Click Through Rate is less than 1%, then you know that you need to improve your ad copy, or the offer is of no interest to this audience.

Relevance Score

You will find this at the Ad level, in the Performance section of the Columns results.

This gives you a score out of 10, with 1 being the lowest and 10 being the highest. Anything above 7 is excellent.

Anything below 7 tells you that you need to improve your Message and Audience Match.

Remember, you can’t sell ice to Eskimos, so don’t try.

You want to sell cold spring water in the desert.

If you are targeting a relatively small audience (less than 1 million), then you should be able to get the right message for that audience.

As the audience size increase (2 to 10 million) then you are going to have to group together different interest groups. This may cause your relevance score to drop.

Now let’s look at the second Facebook ads success leaver…

Ad Performance

4 leavers influence ad performance.

1. Images
2. Headline
3. Body Copy
4. Button

If you’ve written a long copy ad (1,000 words or more) which is something that I suggest you do, then it’s hard to believe that a different picture could have a big impact on the performance of the ad.

But…

Facebook is a visual platform. In fact, Facebook is the largest picture sharing platform in the world. So pictures matter a lot.

Your picture must stop people scrolling through their newsfeed and make them want to read your ad copy.

So…

Don’t just use an eye-catching image. Yes, pictures of naked women will get attention. But if you’re trying to sell tax advice, then what’s the point. The picture does not stop the scroll of the right person.

The real question to ask yourself is, does my picture embody the offer?

The best performing image I’ve ever used was a picture of me writing in my notebook with a business graphic drawn on the journal.

This image is one of those look over your shoulder types, and it was for an ebook giving you a proven system to grow a business.

Why did the image work so well?

Because it embodies the offer, a proven system to grow your business.

Because it looks like a real picture. The truth is, it was a real picture, taken with an iPhone.

The graphic was created in Illustrator and took me a lot longer than I wanted. The whole thing took about 5 hours to create. At the time, I remember being really frustrated with myself about this.

Now, I’m glad I put in the time to create something good because I’ve used it in multiple campaigns and it never fails to get good results.

Headline

“No words are read more than the words in your headline”David Ogilvy

The same thing is true with your Facebook ad. Your picture stops the scroll, and your headline tells the reader what's in it for them. It tells them if they want to invest any more time in your message.

So, your headline must give them an advantage. It must give them a front row seat to a better life.

You don’t want to exaggerate or make promises that you can’t keep but ask yourself, are you really showing your reader how you can help them. Are you showing them the limits of what’s possible if they use your system, product or service?

If not, then you can rewrite your headline to better attract your ideal customer.

Body Copy

This is what I consider to be the beating heart of your ad. What can I say, I’m a copywriter, so I’m biased 😀

What are the areas to look for improvement?

Make sure the first line or the first sentence is like another headline. It’s got to be so compelling that it pulls the reader in.

Then you’ve got to tell an inspirational story that pulls the reader through to your offer.

Alternatively, you can teach something within the body copy. Give away some value in the body copy and then tell the reader that there’s more… a lot more in the lead magnet or online training that you want to give them.

Body copy that teaches and gives value gets a lot of shares so be as generous as possible. Remember, Facebook will reward you for this with a lower cost per impression.

Button

This is another variable.

I haven’t done enough testing to telling you the Learn More is better than Download.

I'm sure it has an impact on the effectiveness of your ad, and if you are spending £10,000 a day, then it's worth testing. If not, then you'll get big wins by testing the Picture, Headline and Body Copy.

Those are the success leavers for a high performing ad. And you might be thinking…

What Success Numbers Prove You Have A High Performing Ad?

The numbers that prove your ad is successful are:

1. Social Interaction
2. Link Click Through Rate
3. Relevance Score

Yes, these are the same numbers that we used to measure the audience targeting.

Let’s say you’ve been running ads to a large audience for a while and you are happy with that level of response.

What is going to improve your results?

A better performing ad!

That starts with selecting the right image. How will you know if you’ve got the right one? Because your Relevance Score will go up.

How will you know if an ad that gives value performs better than a story based ad? Because your level of social engagement will go up. Also, your Likes to Shares ratio will improve. Remember, more share the better.

The more Social Interaction with your ad the lower your cost per impression which will give you a better return on ad spend.

Finally, you’ll know if value copy performs better than story based copy because of your Link Click Through Rate. If the story based copy gives you a 1% LCTR and the value copy gives you a 2% LCTR then you can immediately see which is better.

This brings us on to the final Facebook Ad leaver you can pull…

Registration Page Performance

If you’ve got a high performing ad (measured by the success metrics outlined above) and a high cost per webinar registrant, then you need to look at the conversion of your webinar registration page.

If you've got a page that is converting at 10% and you increase this to 20% (which won't be very difficult), then you've just cut your cost per webinar registration in half!

If you've got a page that is converting at 10%, then you are doing something very wrong. It could be that you aren't signposting from your ad through to your registration page headline.

One simple signposting action that I always take is to have the same headline on the ad and the registration page.

If possible, you want some of the same language, or you want to continue the conversation that you were having in your ad.

I had a lead capture page that was converting at 8%. I made some changes, and the conversion jumped to 42%.

Yes, that’s an extreme example, and it shows that we all make stupid mistakes.

The numbers show you what you need to do to improve your results. They show you how to make a terrible result better. They show you how to transform a good result into a great one.

Now It’s Your Turn

Look at your current Facebook Ads, or even look through your previous campaigns and see how you can improve them.

Remember, the 3 key areas for improvement are:

1. Audience
2. Ad Performance
3. Registration Page Performance

And the success numbers that will show you if you’re targeting the right audience with a high performing ad are:

1. Social Interaction
2. Link Click Through Rate
3. Relevance Score

I know that diving into reports is not the sexiest way to grow a business… but this does hold the keys to success. This is how you grow your business while looking in the rear-view mirror.

If you've found this useful, then please leave a comment below.

If this can help a business owner that you know, then please share it with them.

Until next time…

Carpe diem

Roland Eva

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