A Simple Ad Angle To Boost Facebook Ad Engagement
I’ll start by stating at the beginning of this article, that I would not consider myself to be a ‘copywriter’.
At heart, I’m a numbers guy. Someone that digs deep into the data and pulls out learnings and insights.
BUT, if you are trying to market your business in 2019 and beyond you can’t look past the power of copywriting.
Campaign structure and targeting can only get you so far….
If you aren’t crafting ads that really speak to your target audience then you will get left behind. Especially with the major ad platforms such as Facebook & Instagram trying really hard to move away from the ‘clickbait’ type ads that just sell, sell, sell.
The goal is the ENGAGE users and improve the overall user experience.
Do this and you will be rewarded by loads of likes, comments and shares (on Facebook), resulting in significantly lower delivery costs.
But how can you spark engagement?
One way that I have found quite effective is to identify a ‘common enemy’.
And this isn’t a new tactic at all..
It’s used by thousands of marketers every single day. In Facebook ads, long form sales pages, webinars, video sales letters…. I have no doubt you have been exposed to this tactic of persuasion.
Blair Warren sums this one up nicely in his book ‘The One Sentence Persuasion Course’where he states in just 27 words –
“People will do anything for those who encourage their dreams, justify their failures, allay their fears, confirm their suspicions, and help them throw rocks at their enemies”
Looking specifically at the 5th principle here…”throw rocks at their enemies”.
What does this mean?
Well, people have enemies. Whether it be an individual, a group, an illness or a setback. All people have struggles.
This struggle, is their enemy!
As marketers, our goal is to get our target audience to know, like and trust us. This can be incredibly difficult to do when running ads to new prospects (cold traffic).
So instead of trying to convince your audience you are the person that will save them from their struggles. Why not point the finger the other way, and identify a common cause of the struggle – CALL OUT A COMMON ENEMY.
This way, the prospect is uniting with you and your cause. It will immediately lower their levels of scepticism about you – which leaves them open to consuming the rest of your content.
By uniting against a common enemy, the prospect is ‘unconsciously’ aligning their values with yours.
Remember the saying ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ ??
This synergy can then create that trust factor you have been striving for.
What does this look like in practice?
Here is an ad that I created for a client in the Renovation industry. They help people add value to their homes through renovations.
Now look at that engagement – there is over 350 likes, 125 comments and 31 shares & this is only on ONE of the ad variations that we trialed for this client.
Note: This ad is still live (and converting) now. We’ve spent over $10,000 on this one ad and acquired well over 1,000 targeted leads.
You can see the first line directly calls out a “common enemy” which we identified for this client as REALITY TV SHOWS.
They have unrealistic timeframes, they use huge unrealistic budgets and they have armies of tradies working in the background.
Here are some actual comments from this same ad, where people are BEGGING to watch the webinar and engage with ‘The 2 Belindas’:
AND as expected, people are really rallying and turning on the ‘common enemy’ that we created. Check out the below comments (there are literally hundreds of these).
Engagement across these ads in Facebook is KEY to getting high relevance scores AND low CPC figures.
Check out the scores across our ad variants and the corresponding webinar registration figures:
Relevance scores of 10 across the board!
You can see that Facebook is LOVING these ads, and we are getting rewarded with cost efficiencies because of this.
Conclusion:
This strategy is extremely effective and the ad platforms love it. Engagement is key to lowering your ad costs over time and really building a tribe for your brand.
Try leveraging this powerful tactic in your next Facebook ad campaign and see how they perform!
Feel free to reach out to me at [email protected] if you have any further questions or would just like to connect for some general marketing chit chat.
P.S. Click HERE to get access to the entire case study for this campaign.
In less than 6 weeks, we turned $13k ad spend into $93k revenue AND this particular client had ZERO people on their email list.
Grab your copy over at simplyconverting.com/case-study