Coming up with creative angles doesn’t have to be challenging. A lot of advertisers struggle with this and usually end up copying someone or going the complete wrong direction for a product. Being smart marketers, we need to identify an approach that lets us win. Every time. The process is not difficult, but it is rigorous.
Read that part again. What did I mention above? The word process is super important. Instead of ads developed on the basis of what you think the customers want to see, why not develop ads based on what customers ACTUALLY want? And what they actually say? And yes, I’ll share a process with you a little bit later in this article.
Most advertisers would go around writing their own copy trying to be as creative as possible with their ad copy and their image or video selection.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Our audience craves for us to optimize our products, services and even advertising messages based on their own feedback. They even provide it to us whenever they can. Customers provide us important intel about products and services: things they like and things they don’t like.
So why don’t we listen? I see this time and time again. Someone who is a product owner or a new marketer start a sentence with I think.
Oh great…here we go.
IT really doesn’t matter what you think per se.
Ok, it matters in the sense that you are entitled to an opinion and what not, but it doesn’t matter what you think in terms of your marketing. Why? Because your market doesn’t care what you think. There I said it.
YOUR MARKET DOESN’T CARE ABOUT YOU OR WHAT YOU THINK.Â
I think i made that point loud and clear. And I’m sure you don’t care about that I think that I made my point loud and clear because you only care about what you think…right?
Anyway…So how does this process work? It starts with market research. If you have customers who have already purchased your product or service, this isn’t going to be hard. If you don’t have customers who have purchased your product or service, then go run some ads and acquire them. Try your best to come up with angles by putting yourself in the customer’s shoes. Indeed, you can also look at Facebook’s Ad Library and see what your competitors are already doing for some inspiration.
Once you have some customers and you’ve fulfilled your product or service, it’s imperative that you ask them for reviews. This process can also be included in your post-purchase fulfillment flow. This flow is an email flow designed to get feedback, images and testimonials from customers. This flow gets triggered when the user receives their product or service and has some time to reflect. If the review isn’t automatically delivered with an installed app, this is an imperative step.
By building out a custom flow, with even a video of you asking for a review, testimonial, photo, video or other assets, it creates a far more personalized and meaningful experience. It’s not just another email in their inbox. And your brand is not just another brand in their mind. It’s a brand that cares and has compassion. Consider having a landing page with a video describing what actions you want your customers to take after they receive your product or service. As it is said, thou asks and thou shall receive.Â
Anyway, the point of this isn’t to dive into email marketing flows, the point is to extract information from customers and listen to their feedback. There are many approaches to this method and process.
Here’s the 7 ways to write consistently winning Facebook Ad Copy
1. Call Customers
Wait…what? Seriously? That’s weird. Literally pick up your phone and dial up some customers. Well, ok, not quite out of the blue, but sure you can dial customers if you have a quick question. It’s always best to schedule a time for discussion with your customers. Say 30 minutes max. In exchange for their time, offer them a $25-$100 Amazon Gift Card. And really, it’s up to you what you want to offer them, but give them something in return for their time.
And even if you call them without a scheduled time, you always ask them if it’s a good time to chat and how much time they have available for a brief discussion. If they say they are free, then go ahead and begin the interview process. If they say they are busy, try to schedule a time with them and make sure to send them an invite with a Zoom link. (Hint: Calendly is great for this). Don’t overcomplicate this step, it’s super easy. Just have a conversation with your customers about your product or service so you can really get an understanding of why they chose you over the multitude of other options out there. Plus, what business owner calls customers and actually care about their business these days? It’s few and this call goes a long way. It leaves both of you warm and fuzzy.
Wait, you’re wondering what questions you should ask them. Well, don’t worry, I’ve compiled a list of customer interview questions for any business. Adjust and pivot as needed.
2. Competitor’s customer’s reviews
No customers? No problem. Go read some of your top competitor’s reviews.As mentioned above, here’s another way you can get some interesting angles for your ads.
Usually they are on the product page and listed somewhere on the website. Read through a few dozen reviews to get the gist of why people are buying. Tally the most important reasons and go with the top 3. Always think beyond the obvious reason they bought the product and look for the underlying emotional triggers of making a buying decision. We aren’t looking for reviews that read “This is great”. Look for meaningful reviews. Something that has some heart in it. Customers usually want to express themselves and their emotional association with the product or service. By reading the real good reviews, you’ll get a great understanding of where their head was at during the purchase process. We’re looking for why, not what. WHY did they decide to purchase when they did? What was that trigger? What about the product or service really resonated with the customer? This is what we’re after, not some simple review stating that “It was great”.
Seek out the comprehensive, emotionally charged reviews. And, even if they are bad, see why they are bad.This could be good insight into your product development and optimization.
3. Your Reviews
This one’s a no brainer. If you have your own reviews go through them and find some user generated content. Follow the steps above for determining what reviews to use. Customers will literally tell you exactly what they want to see in the ads. This information is a treasure trove of content and ad copy material. Some of the best creatives came from customer reviews in quotes, followed up by some of the benefits or features of the product or service. Your own reviews is often overlooked, but contains some very valuable content. Remember, you’re looking for similar angles you would have seen in the competitor’s ads, something that is robust and has some key information. Not something that is generic and obvious like “thanks, will buy again”. This isn’t eBay after all!
4. Email Customers a survey
No time for a phone call or to sift through reviews? Fine. No problem, send an email to customers requesting them to take part in a survey. A survey is a powerful tool to help you understand what drives your customers and really identify an aggregate opinion on your product or service. This can help you achieve transparency with your customers and their decision making process. Leaving some questions in open ended in the survey allows you to really get proper feedback from the user’s own written word.
5. Instagram
Whether you’re looking for a brand hashtag or something about your product that is trending, this could be a treasure trove of User Generated Content. Just make sure you ask permission from any users you plan on using as advertisements. Instagram provides essential copy and angles as to why someone likes your brand. For example, I was looking for inspiration for a client’s product on a new marketing angle and I read someone’s post about how they gave the product a “14 day challenge”. Thus, a new copy angle was born to test. Try a challenge, not a direct sale. Offer them a 14 day trial, perhaps. There was a lot of information in that simple sentence that the user provided. With Instagram, you have the ability to search #Hashtags. So do some digging, there may be a hashtag about your product that you aren’t even aware of. Perhaps a brand new use case that you never even guessed. Additionally, there could be some useful creative angles here.
6. Forums, Facebook Groups and Reddit
Not the best for your product per se, but forums and Facebook Groups can be a great way for gauging overall market sentiment and opinions. This will help guide you in the right direction, not necessarily give you a direct solution and angle. Be careful not to get lost here as there is usually a lot noise and trolls in these areas that can lead to discouragement. Just use them sparingly and only to gain an unbiased market sentiment about a product or service.
7. Putting it all together
Once you have all your organization and data it’s time to test what you think is going to work in the real world. It’s time to actually put some spend behind your creative angles. Organize all your thoughts into the best copy you can write with a combination of the above. Break it out into chunks, but try to be concise. Paraphrase reviews that don’t make sense out of context and write some copy.
Once you have it, you can use our Facebook Ads tutorial to start testing. Put some spend behind the creatives with multiple audiences in a single Campaign Budget Optimized (CBO) campaign and give it about 7 days on a $50/day or so campaign. You’ll see some trends develop almost immediately. From there you need to stay on top of your ads and scale the winners while removing the losers. Focus on the key metrics of your campaigns and don’t get distracted with secondary KPIs. Continue this process throughout the development of your business and you’ll stay relevant, and your ads will continue to perform time and time again.
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