Why Your Facebook Ads Are Underperforming
I want to share with you a recent post in the Music Lessons and Marketing Facebook group. The post was by Steve Horvath, the owner of Guitar Lessons in Wylie, Texas. Steve was sharing some concerns or frustrations he’s had with Facebook ads and that he wasn’t really getting the results that he had hoped for. He was looking for advice as to how to get better results from Facebook ads.
The key to Facebook ads is not to think of it as a single act or as a static activity. Think of your Facebook ad as something that’s dynamic. Think of your ad as a lump of clay that you’re to continually molding and shaping until it gives you the results you’re looking for.
Test Your Ads
The way to do this is to continually be testing the various aspects of your ad through the Ads Manager in Facebook. Not that there’s anything wrong with boosting your post, but by creating an actual ad in Facebook Ads Manager, you’re able to get much more granular. You’re able to have much greater control of your ads in your targeting.
1. Identify All the Ad Components
Identify all the different components within your Facebook ad. Each of these components you surely want to test. There’s the headline, the headline that sits at the bottom of your ad, the call-to-action button, the media, your lead, and then the actual copy of your ad. Now, you want to A/B test each one of these components one at a time.
2. Run an A/B Test
In the Facebook Ads Manager, there is an option to A/B test. By A/B testing, you create two different variations of an ad and you track to see which variation is performing better. Then, that aspect that you’re testing becomes your new control.
Think of your ad as a lump of clay that you’re to continually molding and shaping until it gives you the results you’re looking for.
Headlines
Let’s say, for example, the first thing you want to test is your headline. You’ve got your ad written, your picture, and your call to action, but you’re gonna test your headline. In Steve’s case, perhaps one headline might be simply “guitar lessons”. The other headline might be “$50 off guitar lessons” or “Guitar lessons your child will love.” You pick two different headlines and run your ad for a few days. Whichever ad is running better, that now determines what your headline is going to be for your ad.
Call to Action
You’ll want to test your call to action. One call to action says “Learn more”, and the other call to action may be site signup. Run that test for a few days, and then whichever call to action is performing better would be your new control for your call to action.
Images
You might want to test the media—maybe testing two different images. Perhaps you test a photo and a video. Run an A/B test to see which one’s performing better. If the video is performing better, go with a video.
Leads
Next, you’ll want to test your lead. Your lead is the very first sentence in the copy. In Steve’s case, his school’s in Wylie, Texas, so maybe one lead is “Attention: Wiley moms” or “Attention: Wiley parents”. Another lead could be “Would you love your child to play guitar but you’re worried that they’ll dread lessons?”—a question something you know both of these leads are qualifying your audience.
The first lead (Attention: Wiley parents) is going to qualify people that live in Wily and that are parents. The other lead is even more specific, where it’s targeting parents that are actively thinking about signing up for guitar lessons. You A/B test your leads to see which one performs better, and then it would become your new control.
Your landing page and your ad need to be working in harmony. […] If your landing page doesn’t mirror your ad, it can be confusing for the website visitor.
Copy
After that, you test your actual copy. Maybe you have a really short-form ad, an ad that’s just maybe a few sentences long. You test it against an ad where the text or the copy is considerably longer with bullet points and a few paragraphs long.
Consider running ads for specific instruments. If piano lessons are your most popular lesson type, it’s an indication of where you are likely to achieve the continued growth. Be sure to send leads from your Facebook ad to your piano landing page, not your home page.
Landing Page
Another thing to test, which music schools often overlook, is the landing page. Your landing page and your ad need to be working in harmony. When people see your Facebook ad, they form an impression about your business. Your ad’s conveying a bit of what your brand feel is. If your landing page doesn’t mirror your ad, it can be confusing for the person who’s now visiting your landing page. You want the ad, the landing page, and the messaging to be similar. You can even create a landing page specifically for your Facebook ads so you can better track how the ad is performing.
Set a Specific Landing Page for Your Ad
A lot of music schools send traffic from ads to the homepage of their website. That might make sense if you’re running an ad for general music lessons, but you want to send them to a specific landing page if you’re running ads for specific instruments that you teach in your school, which brings up a whole other topic.
3. Be Specific
I strongly recommend testing ads that are promoting lessons in general and then running ads that promote specific lessons in your music school. Something that I would do is run a report to see which instrument in my school is generating the most sales. Then, I’d run ads specifically for that instrument.
4. Know Your Indicator
I’m sure you might be thinking, “Well, I want to build up these other programs.” You could certainly run ads for them. I’m not saying don’t, but the instrument (perhaps it’s piano) that’s your highest performer is also indicating to you that this is where your greatest potential for growth is.
5. Shape Your Ad
Facebook ads work, yes. They’re going up continually in terms of the cost per click, but it’s still a great return on your investment. The key is you have to test to mold your ad to continually shape it until it’s performing the way you’d like it to.
