Best Facebook Ads … 8 Secret Design Factors for Successful Marketing

I’ve resisted investing in social media advertising for a long time, believing that there is a host of free and helpful tools and free strategies. I have always felt such tools and strategies can help your business grow on social media organically. Here are some of the best Facebook ads design factors that can take you beyond this type of thinking.

More learning: Pinterest Marketing … Rich Pin Tips for Discovery Shopping

best Facebook ads — Best Facebook ads design factors.

But I have learned quite a lot in the last few years. What I’ve come to learn through my research are these secret design factors:

Social media ads can earn you the biggest returns

In some cases, it’s the cheapest way to reach people.

There are so many inspiring digital marketers who are pioneering the best practices and cool strategies for social media advertising.

As we dip our toes further into social ads here at Buffer, it’s been fun to discover all the great tips we might try. I’ve collected eight of my favorite ones here in this blog post—a list of simple, actionable tips that drive successful Facebook ads.

Best Facebook ads … focus on Facebook relevance score

Ad relevance score is a metric in ads reporting that provides an estimate of how relevant an ad is to its target audience, based on how the ad is performing and other factors.

When your ad’s score is high, it’s more likely to be shown to your audience than other ads. You also pay less to reach more of your target audience.

The score will range from 1 to 10, ten meaning we estimate your ad is highly relevant and one meaning we estimate your ad isn’t very relevant. It will be based on some factors, including positive feedback we expect from the people seeing your ad (ex: clicks, app installs, video views) and negative feedback (ex: someone clicks I don’t want to see this on your ad).

You’ll be able to see this score once your ad has had about 500 impressions.

Jon Loomer wrote a detailed breakdown of Facebook’s relevance score, explaining what it is and how it’s calculated.

Briefly, relevance score helps explain the way Facebook views your ad and why it might prefer certain ads you’ve created versus others. It is a very valuable metric.

Secret Facebook ad design factors … reverse psychology

When marketing thinkers talk about “the death of traditional advertising,” they may not only mean the shift to digital but a much larger transformation to alternative methods of genuinely reaching the consumer.

According to Indrajit Sinha and Thomas Foscht, authors of “Reverse Psychology Marketing: The Death of Traditional Marketing and the Rise of the New ‘Pull’ Game,” reverse psychology marketing, pull marketing, and anti-marketing may not be familiar buzzwords. However, there is a global change happening regarding defining the most effective ways to communicate with consumers and increase sales.

To accomplish these goals amid overwhelming noise in the digital world, it often takes the most daring ideas.

Regarding alternative marketing, capitalizing on psychological principles is certainly not new territory. Leveraging reverse psychology can be a controversial choice, and certainly a risky one, but even church billboards have seen success with this simple tactic.

Reverse psychology can be loosely defined as a method of getting someone to do what you want by pretending not to want it or by pretending to want something else. This is largely tied in with reactance theory, the idea that people who feel their sense of control is being taken away from them will grab it back by not doing what they are asked.

Blogger Jens-Petter Berget writes, “The reason why reverse psychology in marketing works is that it generates curiosity.” For this reason, it is not a technique that can be drawn upon frequently and remain effective, as it will quickly lose its magic.

best Facebook ad examples — Best Facebook ad examples.

Create multiple versions of the headlines or ads

When I write headlines for many of my posts, I try to define 3-4 options. This gives me test options and alternatives for blog posts.

The same idea works with social media ads.

When you read about a successful social media ad, it’s likely that the ad has gone through a few key variations based on these actions:

Write several versions of ad copy

Test a variety of images

Adjust for your target audience

Regarding testing out different ad copy, there are many popular recommendations which can include power words, time prompts, and question marks.

For images, you can test things like product pictures, people, and faces, even memes.

And when it comes to custom audiences, there are some great tactics on different ways to hone in on a segment that converts best.

Best Facebook video ads … the “Learn More” button

When creating ads for the Facebook News Feed, you get the chance to include one of seven buttons with your ad.

If in doubt, it’s best to choose a button instead of no button.

And the best button of all? The “Learn More” button.

You can add the button in the bottom section of the Facebook Ads editor. These are the seven button options to choose from:

Shop Now
Book Now
Learn More
Sign Up
Download
Watch More
Contact Us

The theory behind why these button works are that it helps focus your ad to an even greater degree, like a Mario mushroom for your already great copy. Adding a button enhances the call-to-action and primes a reader to take action.

As for which button works best, you might notice that one fits your niche particularly well (“Book Now,” for instance, would be great for vacation spots). For the “Learn More” button, there seems to be growing evidence that it’s the best overall bet for engagement.

Pay attention to mobile traffic

When creating a social media ad, you’ll typically have the option of segmenting the audience by some factors, including those using a desktop/laptop versus a mobile device.

To fully optimize your conversion rate, show your ad to those on desktops and laptops. Don’t show your ad on mobile.

A couple of additional notes here also:

Not only do the most successful social media ads hone in on the device type, but they also keep in mind the location of the ad.

Typically sidebar display ads—like those offered by Twitter or Facebook—see lower click through numbers (they’re recommended as a great option for retargeting). The best results are those that appear natively in the News Feed or timeline. Ezra Firestone calls these “advertisements that blend in with the platform.”

Removing mobile display from your ads is an often-recommended strategy, though there are two sides to the discussion.

Brian Honigman, writing at SumAll, mentions that your ads should focus on mobile first to capture the huge volume of Facebook traffic that accesses the site from mobile devices.

Promote a deal

social media ad examples — Social media ad examples.

In a survey of Facebook users, 67 percent of people said they were likely to click on a discount offer.

A simple strategy for a successful social media ad: Mention a discount in your copy.

The custom landing page

If the goal of your social media ad is conversions—sales, signups, what-have-you—then you’ll want to think not only of the ad itself but also where a person might end up once they click.

Picture social media ads as a two-step process:

Create the ad
Create the destination

Some of the most successful social media advertising campaigns include custom landing pages, where the copy carries over from the ad and the action crystal clear.

More to learn: Improve Success with Small Business Tagline Designs

The more targeted your ad, the more targeted your landing page needs to be

You’ll see this often with e-commerce ads that do a great job targeting a single product and then send the person from the ad to the main product page, full of menus and related products and all sorts of potentially distracting (albeit eminently useful) places to click.

The bottom line

To be effective in this new era, we as marketers need to see our jobs differently. No more just focusing on metrics like clicks, video views or social media shares. We must successfully integrate our function with other business functions to create entire brand experiences that serve the customer all the way through their experiences throughout the business.

We can do better. Much better. But first, we need to stop seeing ourselves as crafters of clever brand messages and become creators of positive brand experiences.

There can never be enough focus on continuous improvement in social media marketing, independent of how well the business is doing. This is an excellent time to make a statement with their brand marketing. Changing before you have to is always a good idea.

Need some help in capturing more customers from your marketing strategies? Creative ideas to help the differentiation with potential customers?

Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.

Call Mike at 607-725-8240.

All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.

When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.

Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.

Are you devoting enough energy improving your marketing, branding, and advertising?

Do you have a lesson about making your marketing strategy better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?

Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed how reasonable we will be.

More reading on social media platforms from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:

Facebook Statistics … Lots to Learn From Current Data

11 Updates to Starbuck’s Creativity and Innovation

6 Fantastic Facts about the Changing Social Media Landscape

About Social Media … Ways to Use Social Media for Learning

Like this short blog? Follow Digital Spark Marketing on LinkedIn or add us to your circles for 3-4 short, interesting blogs, stories per week.

Like this short blog? Follow Digital Spark Marketing on LinkedIn or add us to your circles for 3-4 short, interesting blogs, stories per week.

Learn From These Reverse Psychology Ad Campaigns Examples

It is a simple concept. People don’t read ads, they read what interests them. So if you are going to design winning advertisements, you are going to have to create an interesting copy. Like, reverse psychology ad campaigns.

And, oh by the way, it must be more interesting than the millions of other advertisements out there. Now that is a daunting task, isn’t it?

It has been said that advertising is the price to be paid for being unremarkable. That may be true, but I have noticed, despite the growth in online marketing, that even remarkable businesses also advertise the old fashion way.

Here is a short video that gives a summary of how reverse pskchology works.

It is a key component of your marketing campaign, for awareness or consumer education of your value.

According to Nielsen, there are 27,000,000 pieces of content are shared each day. And Statistic Brain says that our average attention span has dropped from 12 seconds in 2000 to 8 seconds – one second less than a goldfish!

We check our phones 150 times per day. We check our email up to 30 times an hour. And the amount of information in the world continues to double every 18 months.

All this available information and data is creating a battle for customer attention between brands, publishers, and every one of us who creates content. But more importantly, its forcing businesses to think and act like publishers and creative designers.

Rosser Reeves, the accomplished advertising executive credited with coining the term “unique selling proposition,” once said, “The people who read and remember your advertising may buy less of your product than people who are not aware of your advertising at all.

Your advertising, in other words, may, literally, be driving away customers.” With this reality in mind, some brands have cheekily taken to using anti-marketing sentiments to their advantage. Newcastle routinely makes fun of its own advertising, even boldly describing its own Facebook page as “Your place to complain about our ads.”

When marketing thinkers talk about “the death of traditional advertising,” they may not only mean the shift to digital but a much larger transformation to alternative methods of genuinely reaching the consumer.

According to Indrajit Sinha and Thomas Foscht, authors of “Reverse Psychology Marketing: The Death of Traditional Marketing and the Rise of the New ‘Pull’ Game,” reverse psychology marketing, pull marketing, and anti-marketing may not be familiar buzzwords yet, but there is a global change happening in terms of defining the most effective ways to communicate with consumers and increase sales.

To accomplish these goals amid overwhelming noise in the digital world, it often takes the most daring ideas.

For London department store Selfridges, that daring idea was to actually remove branding. The No Noise project of 2013 centered around the re-launch of the store’s Silence Room, first created by founder Harry Gordon Selfridge in 1909, to allow customers to “take a moment to pause and switch off.”

This inspired move drew in customers by offering them a place to shop that was intentionally devoid of advertising. Of course, the brand behind many products remained recognizable, since a shell of its logo often remained present. Regardless, minimal advertising is beginning to draw in modern customers as well. Though not yet as popular in Europe and the U.S., the Japanese are already calling it “zen advertising.”

In terms of alternative marketing, capitalizing on psychological principles is certainly not new territory. Leveraging reverse psychology can be a controversial choice, and certainly a risky one, but even church billboards have seen success with this simple tactic. Reverse psychology can be loosely defined as a method of getting someone to do what you want by pretending not to want it or by pretending to want something else.

This is largely tied in with reactance theory, the idea that people who feel their sense of control is being taken away from them will grab it back by not doing what they are asked.

Blogger Jens-Petter Berget writes, “The reason why reverse psychology in marketing works is that it generates curiosity.” For this reason, it is not a technique that can be drawn upon frequently and still remain effective, as it will quickly lose its magic. However, once in a while, there are special moments when an ad’s message of forbiddance succeeds in not only coyly tricking a consumer, but doing so in a way that isn’t off-putting, but even a source of amusement for the consumer.

Here are seven examples of advertisements that leveraged reverse psychology.

Little Caesars

Little Caesars’ “Do Not Call” campaign by Barton F. Graf 9000 tempts customers by forbidding them to call and order pizza. Of course, this only plants a seed of curiosity about the reason.

The long series of warnings against calling to order from Little Caesars or visiting ForbiddenPizzaWebsite.com culminate in your house being haunted by ghosts.

Maybe something more creative or brand-relevant would have been a better choice, but it’s fairly cute, and if customers are hanging around until the end, that’s a lot of time in front of Little Caesars’ messaging.

The Troy Public Library

reverse psychology tricks — Reverse psychology tricks.

In a sneaky and anonymous move, Leo Burnett Detroit launched a fake political campaign to save Troy, Michigan’s public library.

The city faced aggressive campaigning against the small tax increase needed to keep the library open, so the agency decided to turn things around by creating a fake group that posted its message widely on social media: “Vote To Close Troy Library On Aug.2 – Book Burning Party On Aug. 5.”

After sufficient outrage ensured, the agency finally dropped the hoax and revealed the true message behind the campaign:

“A Vote Against The Library Is Like A Vote To Burn Books.” In six weeks and with a budget of only $3,500, Leo Burnett helped turn out 324 percent more voters than expected, with an overwhelming majority voting to keep the library open.

Patagonia

In 2011, Patagonia drew attention when it ran a full-page ad in The New York Times on Black Friday, declaring “Don’t Buy This Jacket.”

The ad calls on consumers to rethink consumerist behaviors and instead make purchases only when necessary and with sustainability in mind.

The brand’s move toward transparency helped consumers see Patagonia as an environmentally responsible choice, given the consumer actually needs a jacket.

Get Covered Illinois

To encourage young people to sign up for health insurance, Get Covered Illinois used reverse psychology, as well as a little dark humor, to show what really comes with the choice to live without coverage.

The fictitious “Luck Health Plan” involves no annoying paperwork, but also no doctors, prescriptions, or benefits of any kind. The slogan? “You’ll be OK. Probably.”

The Oakwood school

reverse psychology experiments — Reverse psychology experiments.

At the height of the recession, fundraising for private schools wasn’t at the top of most people’s to-do lists.

But with the help of numerous celebrities, “Don’t Give,” a tongue-in-cheek ad for The Oakwood School, showed why donating should remain a priority.

“The purpose was to communicate to our constituents a vital but easily misunderstood message: that in these challenging times, giving is more important than ever,” said James Astman, Oakwood’s head of school, “in the short run to support financial aid and in the long run to build our endowment.”

The Miami Hurricanes

The Miami Hurricanes football team knew it had an attendance problem, so instead of pushing overpriced season ticket packages on its fans, it unveiled “Two-Game Mini-Plans.” The full ad featured in South Florida newspapers read “Go to fewer games” in large bold letters.

This attention-grabbing move helped the team poke fun at its relatively low popularity while still celebrating its fan base and offering a practical deal to encourage a larger audience.

Lady Gaga

One day after the release of her single, “Applause,” Lady Gaga appeared in a promotion, declaring “Lady Gaga is no longer relevant.”

Seemingly attempting to beat critics to the punch, Gaga’s video says “Ever since ‘Born This Way,’ she’s a flop,” and even instructs fans not to buy her single or her new album.

“Give her no A-P-P-L-A-U-S-E. DON’T dance to the song at all,” the video’s text states, seemingly daring fans to just try to stop loving her music.

The bottom line

Unfortunately, there is no easy solution to the advertising industry’s woes. No grand initiative, strategy wrapped in a bow, or presentation deck that can bring back the glory days. The reality is that in order to survive, ad agencies will have to learn to experiment, risk failure, and pivot quickly. In effect, they will have to stop thinking like ad agencies.

Digital Spark Marketing’s Firestorm Blog

Need some help in capturing more customers from your marketing strategies? Creative ideas to help the differentiation with potential customers?

Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.

Call Mike at 607-725-8240.

All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.

When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.

Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.

Are you devoting enough energy improving your marketing, branding, and advertising?

Do you have a lesson about making your marketing strategy better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?

Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.

Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on, and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on Facebook, Twitter, Quora, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.

Social media ads can earn you the biggest returns

Best Facebook ads … focus on Facebook relevance score

Secret Facebook ad design factors … reverse psychology

Create multiple versions of the headlines or ads

Best Facebook video ads … the “Learn More” button

Pay attention to mobile traffic

Promote a deal

The custom landing page

The bottom line

It is a simple concept. People don’t read ads, they read what interests them. So if you are going to design winning advertisements, you are going to have to create an interesting copy. Like, reverse psychology ad campaigns.

And, oh by the way, it must be more interesting than the millions of other advertisements out there. Now that is a daunting task, isn’t it?

It has been said that advertising is the price to be paid for being unremarkable. That may be true, but I have noticed, despite the growth in online marketing, that even remarkable businesses also advertise the old fashion way.

Here is a short video that gives a summary of how reverse pskchology works.

It is a key component of your marketing campaign, for awareness or consumer education of your value.

According to Nielsen, there are 27,000,000 pieces of content are shared each day. And Statistic Brain says that our average attention span has dropped from 12 seconds in 2000 to 8 seconds – one second less than a goldfish!

We check our phones 150 times per day. We check our email up to 30 times an hour. And the amount of information in the world continues to double every 18 months.

All this available information and data is creating a battle for customer attention between brands, publishers, and every one of us who creates content. But more importantly, its forcing businesses to think and act like publishers and creative designers.

Rosser Reeves, the accomplished advertising executive credited with coining the term “unique selling proposition,” once said, “The people who read and remember your advertising may buy less of your product than people who are not aware of your advertising at all.

When marketing thinkers talk about “the death of traditional advertising,” they may not only mean the shift to digital but a much larger transformation to alternative methods of genuinely reaching the consumer.

To accomplish these goals amid overwhelming noise in the digital world, it often takes the most daring ideas.

This is largely tied in with reactance theory, the idea that people who feel their sense of control is being taken away from them will grab it back by not doing what they are asked.

Here are seven examples of advertisements that leveraged reverse psychology.

Little Caesars

Little Caesars’ “Do Not Call” campaign by Barton F. Graf 9000 tempts customers by forbidding them to call and order pizza. Of course, this only plants a seed of curiosity about the reason.

The long series of warnings against calling to order from Little Caesars or visiting ForbiddenPizzaWebsite.com culminate in your house being haunted by ghosts.

Maybe something more creative or brand-relevant would have been a better choice, but it’s fairly cute, and if customers are hanging around until the end, that’s a lot of time in front of Little Caesars’ messaging.

The Troy Public Library

In a sneaky and anonymous move, Leo Burnett Detroit launched a fake political campaign to save Troy, Michigan’s public library.

The city faced aggressive campaigning against the small tax increase needed to keep the library open, so the agency decided to turn things around by creating a fake group that posted its message widely on social media: “Vote To Close Troy Library On Aug.2 – Book Burning Party On Aug. 5.”

After sufficient outrage ensured, the agency finally dropped the hoax and revealed the true message behind the campaign:

“A Vote Against The Library Is Like A Vote To Burn Books.” In six weeks and with a budget of only $3,500, Leo Burnett helped turn out 324 percent more voters than expected, with an overwhelming majority voting to keep the library open.

Patagonia

In 2011, Patagonia drew attention when it ran a full-page ad in The New York Times on Black Friday, declaring “Don’t Buy This Jacket.”

The ad calls on consumers to rethink consumerist behaviors and instead make purchases only when necessary and with sustainability in mind.

The brand’s move toward transparency helped consumers see Patagonia as an environmentally responsible choice, given the consumer actually needs a jacket.

Get Covered Illinois

To encourage young people to sign up for health insurance, Get Covered Illinois used reverse psychology, as well as a little dark humor, to show what really comes with the choice to live without coverage.

The fictitious “Luck Health Plan” involves no annoying paperwork, but also no doctors, prescriptions, or benefits of any kind. The slogan? “You’ll be OK. Probably.”

The Oakwood school

At the height of the recession, fundraising for private schools wasn’t at the top of most people’s to-do lists.

But with the help of numerous celebrities, “Don’t Give,” a tongue-in-cheek ad for The Oakwood School, showed why donating should remain a priority.

The Miami Hurricanes

The Miami Hurricanes football team knew it had an attendance problem, so instead of pushing overpriced season ticket packages on its fans, it unveiled “Two-Game Mini-Plans.” The full ad featured in South Florida newspapers read “Go to fewer games” in large bold letters.

This attention-grabbing move helped the team poke fun at its relatively low popularity while still celebrating its fan base and offering a practical deal to encourage a larger audience.

Lady Gaga

One day after the release of her single, “Applause,” Lady Gaga appeared in a promotion, declaring “Lady Gaga is no longer relevant.”

Seemingly attempting to beat critics to the punch, Gaga’s video says “Ever since ‘Born This Way,’ she’s a flop,” and even instructs fans not to buy her single or her new album.

“Give her no A-P-P-L-A-U-S-E. DON’T dance to the song at all,” the video’s text states, seemingly daring fans to just try to stop loving her music.

The bottom line

Need some help in capturing more customers from your marketing strategies? Creative ideas to help the differentiation with potential customers?

Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.

Call Mike at 607-725-8240.

All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.

When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.

Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.

Are you devoting enough energy improving your marketing, branding, and advertising?

Do you have a lesson about making your marketing strategy better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?

Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.

More reading on advertising from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:

Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on, and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on Facebook, Twitter, Quora, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.