The 5 Pillars of Successful Facebook Ads

Facebook™ Ads are not magic, they’re media. A media placement tool to be exact. 

You can get amazing results with Facebook™ Ads, but you can also flush a lot of money down the drain. 

We have some clients who generate 20+ return on ad spend (ROAS) month on month. While we have audited some accounts (we do this as a free service for potential clients) and they aren’t even breaking even. Ouch. 

So why do some Facebook™ Ad accounts do well, and some don’t? 

We like to look at it holistically. There are a lot of moving parts that all need to work together to ensure Facebook™ Ads success. These are the 5 pillars we use for Facebook™ Ads success. 

 

5 Pillars of Facebook Ads Success: 

 

1. The Product

The product that you advertise to sell on Facebook™ is critical. You need to have a fantastic product that people actually want. Sounds obvious right? But you’d be surprised how often people try to sell absolute crap.

You also need to have a healthy gross profit margin and a reasonable minimum order value. Facebook™ ads will rarely work for a $5 product or a product that only has 20% gross profit margin. We like to work with clients who have an:

  • 80% gross profit margin and
  • $80 minimum order value.

Why? Facebook™ Ads aren’t free. You need to have a healthy margin in order to be able to invest in the growth drivers of your business.

 

2. The Funnel

The second pillar to Facebook™ Ads Success is the funnel. This is how the campaigns and ad sets are setup. It’s the optimisation method, targeting and placement that is used. 

Basically a funnel is the journey your customers take to go from not knowing you exist, to purchasing from you. They start at the top and end up at the bottom, and there are many steps in between.

You can deep dive into our advertising funnel here. 

People make the mistake of setting up a few campaigns that send their ads to their target audience based on interests, geographics and demographics. But this is just the top of the funnel. They leave a lot of money on the table by not having a follow-up sequence, which is the rest of the funnel. You read more about this here. 

The other mistake people make here is they don’t let the algorithm do its job. The algorithm exists to show the most relevant ads to the right audience. If you try to control or manipulate who sees what too much you will interfere with the algorithm and it won’t be able to do its job.

 

3. The Creative

The next pillar to running successful Facebook™ Ads is the ads themselves. And there are a few elements we’re going to look at here. 

  • Thumb stopping visual. The visual you use, whether that be an image or a video, needs to be thumb-stopping. Meaning you capture peoples’ attention and get them to stop scrolling through their newsfeed. 
  • Copy that converts. The copy, or the words you use to convey your message, needs to align with your target audience and entice them to take action. 
  • The type of creative. People often ask us whether they should be using an image, a video, a slideshow or a carousel to get the best results. And the answer is yes. See your audience will like to consume media in different ways. Some will like still images, some will prefer video. You need to test and measure all the options that Facebook™ give you and see which one performs the best. And this testing and measuring never stops. 
  • The right message at the right phase of the funnel. You don’t ask someone to marry you on the first date. What you say is important, but when you say it is critical. This is explained in detail here.

What you say, how you say it and where you say it is super important.

 

4. The Destination 

The website that you are sending traffic needs to be ready for that traffic. The ads’ job is to get traffic to your website. Your websites’ job is to convert traffic to a sale. 

Facebook™ bots read the content of the website you are sending people to, to see if it’s consistent to your ad, relevant to your audience and doesn’t violate Facebook™’s terms of use.  Not only that, but your potential customer makes a decision on whether to stay and look around, or leave, based on what they see.

If you drive traffic to a site that is not ready for the traffic it’s like turning taps on and not having any buckets in place to catch the water. 

5. The Data

From the moment you start running ads you are collecting data. If your ads aren’t converting to sales you can analyse that data and make decisions about what to test and measure. If your ads are converting to sales you can analyse the data and learn how to make them even better. 

The data will tell you what’s working and what’s not.

The data will tell you if there are holes in your website. The data will tell you if your creative sucks. The data will tell you if you are targeting the wrong audience. 

You need to have patience in order to collect data. You need to test and measure. 

 

A final word

There is success to be had with Facebook™ Ads but Facebook™ Ads aren’t a silver bullet or magic wand. It can sometimes take a little while to get all the elements working together, especially if your business is new to online advertising, you’ve been doing it ineffectively or you haven’t made many sales yet, but once you crack the code, it’s worth it. 

Want to learn more? 

  • Join our free Facebook Group for lots of free trainings and more great info.
  • Want to deep dive into learning how to set these kinds of ads up for yourself? Check out our education program eComm Ignitor.
  • Or if you want someone to do it for you, get in touch. We provide a done-for-you service to our clients.

Written by Megan Winter

Megan is an award-winning marketer and has worked with some of the fastest-growing eCommerce brands in the world.

Megan loves helping ethically-produced, heart-centred, soul-driven online store owners to make more income and achieve more impact. 

Know copy is important but feeling stuck? 5 tips to get overcome writer’s block.

When people visit your online store they use the information that is on that website to make a decision. 

And they only have the information you give them. 

They can’t try it on, smell it, sample it, touch it, taste it or look in the mirror with it like they would be able to in a physical shop. They can’t ask the shop assistant questions and get an instant response. 

So what you say on your online store, and how you say it, is super important. 

During our eCommerce website audits, we often find messaging that is totally backwards. There are little nuggets of gold buried deep in the about us page, while the main headling on the home page is pointless and meaningless. 

Often we are so close to our own products and brands that we totally miss the most important messaging because we think that it’s obvious. We forget to say the things that are most important. 

And we can often feel stuck and unsure of what to write. 

So, next time you are writing a headline, product description or any piece of copy, use these tips to nail your messaging. 

Tip 1 – 5 Whys

If you get stuck with knowing what headline to create or how to define your brand value proposition for example, I find the 5 Whys method to be super helpful in overcoming overwhelm and get to the bottom of knowing what to write. 

The founder of Toyota, Sakichi Toyoda, developed the 5 Whys technique and I believe they still use it at Toyota today. 

You can do this on your own, or with a team. Grab a pen and paper and ask “why” 5 times. 

For example, if you are trying to work out what headline to include on your homepage, ask “People should buy our toilet paper. Why”. 

You can use versions like “but why does that matter” or “and why is that important” if find yourself coming to a dead end. 

(your answer goes here)

 

Why: 

(referring to the above answer)

 

Why: 

(referring to the above answer)

 

Why: 

(referring to the above answer)

 

Why: 

(referring to the above answer)

 

Repeat asking “why” as many times as you need to get to overcome the problem. 5-7 times usually does the trick!

 

Tip 2 – If I knew

Take a deep breath (seriously do it!) now say this to yourself: 

“If I wasn’t overwhelmed and knew what to write it would be…. ” 

Just write whatever comes. You aren’t going to fail for writing the wrong answer. Just start writing. It will start the creative juices flowing and after a few rubbish sentences, you may uncover some gold. 

Tip 3 – Start wrong 

Start by trying to create a wrong version. 

Get out a pen and paper and start by writing this “This is totally wrong but…” then just write your worst. Keep writing and see what flows. 

When I’m writing anything I always write a wrong version, then I go back and refine it. I am not scared of making mistakes and I’m not trying to get it perfect. 

By giving yourself permission to write the wrong thing you are removing the pressure, and your brain has the space to craft the right thing! 

Tip 4 – Make progress not perfection  

Perfection is the killer of progress. When writing something use the above tactics to make progress… and forget about perfection. Perfectionism is simply our protection mechanism and our excuse to avoid criticism. I often find that taking imperfect action will help us to see things more clearly. As Marie Forleo says “If you wait to get it perfect, you’ll never get it out there.” Which leads me so nicely to my next tip: 

Tip 5 – Remember that unless it’s a tattoo, it’s not a tattoo 

No headline, product description or website is permanent. Of course, you want to make progress (not perfect) and do your best to create the best version of it. But remember, that it’s the best version of it right now. The beauty about digital marketing and eCommerce is that we can test, measure and tweak constantly. So remember, unless it’s a tattoo, it’s not a tattoo. 

So use these tips to overcome the overwhelm next time you face a block when writing for your brand.

Want more on this topic?

  • Join our free Facebook Group for lots of free trainings and more great info.
  • Feel free to ask questions or comment with your key takeaways on this article. We will always read and reply to your comments.

Written by Megan Winter

Megan is an award-winning marketer and has worked with some of the fastest-growing eCommerce brands in the world.

Megan loves helping ethically-produced, heart-centred, soul-driven online store owners to make more income and achieve more impact. 

How to use Facebook Ads to Deliver the Right Message to the Right People

I recently purchased some coffee pods from this company. 

Then I got this ad in my Facebook newsfeed:

This ad is encouraging me to purchase. There are 2 reasons why this is not great:

  1. I just purchased, so this just seems like a waste of money.
  2. They are offering a discount in their ad. If I just paid full price I’d be super annoyed.

When running ads of any kind, you want to match your messaging to where people are in their buying journey and what stage they are at in the eComm funnel.

What is the eComm Funnel?

This funnel is the journey your customers take to go from not knowing you exist, to purchasing from you. They start at the top and end up at the bottom, and there are many steps in between.

The eComm Funnel looks like this:

The messaging people receive at each phase of the funnel is super duper important. The messaging for a coffee pod company throughout the funnel may look like this:

  1. Awareness – “we sell coffee pods”
  2. Interest – “we sell nespresso compatible, biodegradable coffee pods”
  3. Education – “our coffee pods are filled with coffee roasted by unicorns”
  4. Decision – “the starter kit would be perfect for you as it includes a selection of our most popular coffees for you to try”
  5. Action – “we have a money back guarantee”
  6. Loyalty – “do you need more coffee?”
  7. Advocacy – “do your friends like coffee?”

It’s essential that you deliver the right message at the right time.

  • You don’t ask someone who is in the awareness phase “would you like to buy?”
  • You don’t tell someone who is in the action phase “hey, we sell coffee”
  • And you definitely don’t tell someone who has just purchased and paid full price “hey, we sell coffee, here’s a discount”

Facebook Ads are great because you can control what message people see, depending on where they are in the buying cycle.

So, what’s wrong with this ad? 

I would love to help this company with their Facebook ads as they have all the right ingredients for a very successful Facebook ads strategy:

  • Great product
  • Great website
  • Great content

If I was running their ads I would:

  • exclude people who’ve purchased from their sales based ads
  • setup ad campaigns to deliver ads to people who have viewed the product, but haven’t added to cart yet
  • setup an ad campaign to deliver ads to people who have added to cart, but haven’t purchased yet
  • setup an ad campaign that only goes to people have purchased with a thank-you ad
  • setup an ad campaign for 30 days post-purchase with a reminder to purchase again. Because coffee is a consumable.

How do you deliver ads with the right message, to the right people?

STEP 1 – Firstly, we need to identify where people are at in the funnel.

You need to have the Facebook pixel installed and setup correctly. The Facebook pixel is a free piece of code that allows you to create audiences based on your website visitors behaviour. If setup correctly, each time someone takes an action an event is triggered and Facebook puts that person into an audience.

The Facebook events for a coffee pod company throughout the funnel may look like this:

  1. Awareness – someone visits the site and the “pageview” event is triggered
  2. Interest – they check out a product and the “viewcontent” event is triggered
  3. Education – they explore the product page and find out more. If this info is on your product page an event
  4. Decision – they add a product to cart and the “addtocart” event is triggered
  5. Action – they check out and the “purchase” event is triggered
  6. Loyalty – they purchase more than once and the “purchase” event is triggered multiple times, over time
  7. Advocacy – their friends’ become aware and start back at the beginning where the “pageview” event is triggered

You can install the free tool, Facebook Pixel Helper, to see which events are being triggered.

It will look like this:

Awareness

Someone visits the site and the “pageview” event is triggered. You can create an audience of all the people who’ve visited your website for up to 180 days.

Interest and Education

Someone checks out a product and the “viewcontent” event is triggered. 

Decision

They then add a product to cart and the “addtocart” event is triggered

Action

They check out and the “purchase” event is triggered. 

This looks the same for Loyalty as the “purchase” event is triggered again. 

Each time an event is triggered, Facebook puts that person into an audience.

We use the pixel events to setup audiences for each phase.

STEP 2 – Setup ad campaigns based on the audiences 

Once you have your audiences setup you can then create ad campaigns that include and exclude certain audiences based.

Identify what action you want people to take at each stage of the funnel: 

  1. Awareness – visit the home page
  2. Interest – visit a product page
  3. Education – explore the product page, or other information based pages such as FAQ’s, shipping info, about us, etc.
  4. Decision – add a product to cart
  5. Action – visit the thank you for purchasing page
  6. Loyalty – visit the thank you page again
  7. Advocacy – their friends check out the website

Identify who you want to target at each stage of the funnel:

  1. Awareness – who you think your customer is, excluding anyone who has been to your website before. You do this using Facebook’s extensive targeting options. 
  2. Interest & Education – anyone who has been to your home page, but hasn’t visited a product page yet. So anyone who has visited your website excluding “ViewContent”
  3. Decision – anyone who has visited a product page, but hasn’t added to cart yet. So “ViewContent” excluding “AddtoCart”
  4. Action – anyone who has added to cart, but hasn’t checked out yet. So “AddtoCart” excluding “Purchase”
  5. Loyalty – anyone who has purchased more than x days ago. So “Purchase” in the last 180 days excluding “Purchase” in the last 3o days, for example.
  6. Advocacy – friends of those who’ve purchased.

STEP 3 – Setup ads for your campaigns

Once you’ve done this you setup different ads with different messages for each phase of the funnel.

So the ad I saw, after purchasing, would be great in the Awareness phase (minus the discount).

Here are some examples of ads that’d be relevant to each phase of the funnel from a a client I adore, Munchkin and Bear: 

Awareness: 

Interest & Education:

Decision:

Action: 

Want to learn more? 

  • Join our free Facebook Group for lots of free trainings and more great info. 
  • Want to deep dive into learning how to set these kinds of ads up for yourself? Check out our education program eComm Ignitor. 
  • Or if you want someone to do it for you, get in touch. We provide a done-for-you service to our clients. 

PS – I love Pod Co’s values, website and customer service. If you’re from Pod Co, reach out, I’d love to chat about how we could slay your Facebook Ads. 

Written by Megan Winter

Megan is an award-winning marketer and has worked with some of the fastest-growing eCommerce brands in the world.

Megan loves helping ethically-produced, heart-centred, soul-driven online store owners to make more income and achieve more impact. 

Sell More on Your Online Store with Bundles

There are really only 3 ways to sell more on your online store:

  1. Increase your sales conversion rate (how many people buy from you)
  2. Increase the traffic to your site (how many people come to your site)
  3. Increase your average order value (how much they spend)

Think about this. If you did nothing else but increase your average order value, you’d be making more money from the sales you’re already making.

I was recently speaking with a friend who’s getting ready to launch a new product. We started the conversation by discussing shipping. She said she was losing sleep around whether to offer flat rate shipping or to offer free shipping. I advised to increase the price and offer free shipping. You can read why here. However, I didn’t want to stop here. I wanted to continue the conversation into bundles.

Bundles are one of my favourite eCommerce tactics. 

What are bundles?

A bundle is when our customers are incentivised to buy more than one single item.

Example of bundles:

  • Save when you buy more than one, like on The Good Bag Project.
  • Buy the top + legging combo and get free shipping.
  • Buy the face wash + toner + moisturiser and save 15%.

Some example of bundles are: 

 

Evia offers a saving when you buy the set. They have indicated this buy showing the RRP price crossed out next to the price you pay. 

The Good Bag Project offers a saving if you buy a bundle of 3 or 6 bags. We highlighted this with the “Value Buy” and “Best Value” callouts. 

YP Threads offers a saving if you buy a bundles and they showcase bundles in their main menu. 

Why offer bundles:

  • Your shipping and handling costs are maximised
  • You leverage the time, effort and money that went into making that sale
  • You can increase your average order value

Bundles are a great way to sell more on your online store because you are incentivising people to spend more to save more.

It takes time to handle, pack and send the order. This time has a cost. And it takes almost the same amount of time to pack and send 1 item as it does 3. As you scale and need to replace yourself with someone to do these tasks for you and you can bet that they won’t be doing it for free like you probably are now. In fact, time is your most precious asset so you want to leverage it as much as possible.

Your packing bags and thank you cards have a cost. If you can send a bundle instead of a single item, you’ll be maximising the cost of these too.

It costs you money, effort and time to get people to your site and retarget them through every step of their buying journey using Facebook ads and other media. Each sale has a marketing and advertising cost associated with it. And again, it usually costs the same to get someone to buy 1 item, as it does to purchase 3. Once you get someone to your site and they have committed to making a purchase, if you can encourage them to spend more to save more, it’s a win for them and a win for you.

Want more on this topic?

  • Join our free Facebook Group for lots of free trainings and more great info.
  • Feel free to ask questions or comment with your key takeaways on this article. We will always read and reply to your comments.

How to Schedule on Instagram (with beautiful line spacing)

Having a content strategy in place that delivers unique, magnetic and engaging content around your brand and your product is essential to having a successful online store.

Online store owners will often forget to post content for days – or even weeks. Or they will post something in the moment, without thinking about the strategy behind what they are posting.

When you have a plan in place you don’t ever have to feel overwhelmed or unsure when it comes to content creation.

Creating and scheduling your content in batches is a great way to ensure your content is published in line with your strategy, and you don’t miss a post just because you’re busy.

Which tool to use to schedule your posts

There are plenty of scheduling tools, however, they tend to lead to lower reach and therefore less engagement than if you posted it natively.

Instagram works out what content to show its users by using its algorithm. It shows your content to a percentage of your followers. It then assesses how much organic engagement your post gets when you first put it up. If it gets none, then the algorithm will deem your post irrelevant and it won’t show it to more of your audience. If it gets lots of engagement, it will think your post is relevant to your audience and show more of your audience.

So, we want as much engagement as possible.

We’ve always recommended posting natively. Meaning using the Instagram app to post, rather than using a scheduling tool. The good news is that Facebook (which owns Instagram) has brought out the ability to schedule natively within the platform. So, we don’t need to use a third-party app.

We have also noticed lately, that pages that use a third-party scheduling app like Later or Hootsuite are getting temporarily blocked from using the posting function. 

There are still a few limitations, however, I predict the features will be regularly tested and updated and we will soon have the ability to view by grid layout, add the first comment (which is where you load in the bulk of your hashtags) and other cool features some of the other apps have. Stay tuned.

How to create nice line spacing in Instagram posts 

One of the limitations Instagram seems to have is nice line spacing. Seems like such a small thing, but there is nothing worse than writing a long post with lots of paragraph breaks, only for Instagram to squish it all up. 

In this post, I am going to show you how to schedule your posts using Facebook Creator Studio AND make sure your posts have lovely line spacing.

 

How to schedule posts to Instagram (with beautiful line spacing): 

Step 1: Log into the Facebook profile you use to manage your and go to https://business.facebook.com/creatorstudio

Step 2: Click on the Instagram icon in the very top menu bar. Select the Instagram account you want to schedule to:

Step 3: Select Create Post and then Instagram Feed:

Step 4: Click on Add Content and select the image you want to use:

Step 5: Crop the image if required then select Save:

Step 6: Copy the text you want to go with your post (including line spacing and emojis). Open up this cool free tool and paste it into the text box. Click Content (&copy to clipboard): 

Step 7: Paste the text you just copied from the converter tool into Your Post text box in Creator Studio:

Step 8: Click on the drop down box to Publish, Schedule or save as Draft. If scheduling, select the date and time you want it to go live, then select Schedule:  

Now, just because you can schedule your posts directly to Instagram, don’t forget to check your Instagram app once a day to reply to comments and to engage with your audience and other accounts. I recommend turning off your notifications and treating Instagram like a serious business tool, because it is.

Want more on this topic?

  • Join our free Facebook Group for lots of free trainings and more great info.

  • Feel free to ask questions or comment with your key takeaways on this article. We will always read and reply to your comments.

 

Written by Megan Winter

Megan is an award-winning marketer and has worked with some of the fastest-growing eCommerce brands in the world.

Megan loves helping ethically-produced, heart-centred, soul-driven online store owners to make more income and achieve more impact. 

Lessons from Layne Beachley

Layne Beachley is one of the most authentic, grounded, unassuming people I’ve ever met. I had the privilege to spend time with her in Fiji at Nurture Her and I was so blown away by her wisdom that I wanted to share a few key takeaways with you. These are so relevant to us as business owners.

Layne is regarded as the most successful female surfer in history. But here’s the kicker. That’s not because she’s a talented surfer. Of course, she is a talented surfer, but that’s not the reason she won 6 consecutive world titles between 1998 and 2003, and went on to win a 7th in 2007. She put in the work. She made sacrifices. She levelled the F up.

It’s easy to mistake persistence, discipline, dedication and sacrifice for talent.

My key takeaways from Layne:

Don’t surround yourself with dream thieves; surround yourself with those who lift you up. 

Who you surround yourself with is so important. You’ve probably heard the saying “you are the top 5 people who you spend your time with”. And that’s true. If you spend your time with people who are constantly complaining or talking negatively about others or telling you why you can’t achieve something, you will inevitably be affected in a negative way.

On the other hand, if you spend your time with people who are positive and supportive and encourage you to slay your goals, you will be elevated, inspired and motivated.

Action: Take a moment to list out the 5 people you spend the most time with. Are you happy with your answer? Now I’m not saying you should sever your friendships and burn your bridges (although in some cases you should!) but do you need to expand your network, join a mastermind or up-level your connections and network?

Start with your identity. The process and outcomes will follow. 

You may have heard of Simon Sinek’s TED Talk “How Great Leaders Inspire Action” about starting with why. It’s currently got over 46million youtube views and at least 20 of them are from me!

Well, Layne introduced me to James Clear’s 3 levels at which change can occur:

  1. Identity
  2. Process
  3. Outcome

As business owners, we often focus on outcomes. And many of us begin the process of affecting outcomes by focusing on what we do. This leads us to outcome-based habits.

The alternative is to take action based around our identity. Who we believe we are. With this approach, we start by focusing on who we wish to become rather than what we want to achieve. You can read more about this here.

If it’s not a HELL YEAH, it’s a F*CK NO. 

This is a simple, yet really powerful process for making decisions. As business owners, we are presented with dozens, if not hundreds of opportunities every week. We need to decide what to do with these opportunities. We can often say “yes” to these opportunities out of fear. Fear of scarcity or fear of letting people down. If we say yes to everything and everyone we can become burnt out, resentful and miserable. What we need to do is create boundaries and know what to say yes to and what to say no to.

Layne’s process, which I love, is to feel into it. This is your immediate initial reaction you get when presented with a opportunity before that little voice in your head starts to give you all the reasons why it will/won’t work or is/isn’t a good idea. Pay attention to that feeling. If it’s a HELL YEAH then do it.

Now, I am a “jump out of the plan and build the parachute on the way down” kind of person, so this is easier for me, than someone like Karyn who likes to have all her ducks in a row before taking off. We make such a good team because we are so different.

So that’s how you make the yes decision. And if it’s not a HELL YEAH, it a F*CK NO.

Flip it

I love this concept and it’s something we can all start doing straight away.

When we start to imagine what could go wrong, flip it, and imagine what could go right.

When we start to think about why we shouldn’t do something, flip it, and think about why we should.

Think about our dialogue.

  • “Don’t forget your wallet”
  • “Don’t miss the train”
  • “Don’t, don’t, don’t”

It’s so negative. Let’s flip it to be positive.

  • “Remember you wallet”
  • “Catch the train”
  • “Do, do, do”

So there are my takeaways from the lovely Layne Beachley. I hope this inspired you too.

Written by Megan Winter

Megan is an award-winning marketer and has worked with some of the fastest-growing eCommerce brands in the world.

Megan loves helping ethically-produced, heart-centred, soul-driven online store owners to make more income and achieve more impact.Â