Be the viewer – Use Empathy.

People tend to forget the core of digital advertising once they become creators of Facebook ads instead consumers. Digital marketing’s goal is to build lasting relationships with your customer. You want the customer to trust in your business, refer you to others, and come back again.

Listing the properties and specifications of your product or service won’t create this relationship. For this reason, in your ads avoid:

• Dimensions
• Weight
• Color
• Material made
• Accessories
• Uncontextualized call-to-actions

All of the above are important to the product, but they don’t relate to the viewer and their needs. This is information the customer will naturally seek out on your landing page after they’ve started to be engaged in your product.

Instead, think about what problem your product solves and why they should buy it. Benefits are the reason we buy. We believe the product will help us do something better: live healthier, save time, stay safe, etc.

We buy for the benefits. Your Facebook Ads should reflect that.

Applying empathy to social media advertising looks like:

• Our weekly PDFs help you track your progress and continue improving.
• Communicate and exchange knowledge with others experiencing the same challenges as you.
• The extensive video library will keep you up-to-date and allow you to grow your revenue by 20%.

The main difference between the two is one states what you get and the other provides the why.

Relate & Connect

You want sales, and that means getting the customer to say “yes” to you. What’s going to make someone open the door on your digital advertising?
They need a connection to pull them in. Maybe it’s a shared experience. A common pain point. A goal to strive for. This connection show you “get it” and shows the customer you’re not just about sales.

You want this connection happening in your Facebook Ads. You need to create Facebook Ads tailored to your customer. Blanket statements and blanket ads don’t have the same ability to nurture a relationship.

Create tailor-made Facebook ads for your customers.

Getting someone to agree with you in a social media ad’s first sentence improves the chances that they will keep going. It is about capturing the attention in a fast-moving digital world.

Customizing your Facebook Ads is double win, if you think about it. If your Facebook ad is seen by someone you are not targeting, they won’t click on it and be a bad return on investments. You want to optimize every click on your social media ads.

Targeting your audience is also about providing relevant Facebook Ads. Relevant ads are best not just for the viewer, but for Facebook’s ad platform. Relevancy highly affects your Facebook ads performance.

Unless the people you are targeting know you or your brand, chances are they will not want to see your ad or not be engaged when it pops up on their news feed.

Take the few-second opportunity you have and make the ads relevant to them.

How can you make ads more relevant? Local businesses can target people in their area using:

• Name of the city
• Local Slang
• Names of Institutions (Colleges, Schools, Businesses, etc)

B2B Advertisers can use:

• Industry lingo
• Reference common industry pain points
• Talk about popular media sources, conventions, or industry events

Product advertisers can:

• Jump onto current trends (as long as it’s trending in the target audience)
• Talk about benefits
• Provide research and helpful information related to their products

Be simple. Be Clear.

Another common mistake people make is super complicated Facebook ads with sophisticated terminology, fancy words, and obscure buzzwords. None of that is needed.

Once you have connected through relevant ad presentations to the viewer, your next task is to provide one simple and clear Call to Action.

Examples:

• Join our Facebook Group
• Sign up for our Newsletter
• Get your offer.

Do not try to stack the CTA, it will not add interest. More than one CTA in a Facebook ad risks confusing the reader, which might drive them away or cause them to miss the important CTA.

Providing one CTA helps people understand what to do next

Focus on the benefits

People want to know what’s in it for them. Whether you’re pitching a product or selling a service, customers buy because it will somehow improve their life.

• This vitamin will make you feel better.
• This SAAS will save your back office team hours of time better spent with customers.
• This workshop will accelerate your learning and help you upskill.

It should be clear in your Facebook ad what the customer will get from furthering their relationship with your brand. If the benefit isn’t there, they have no reason to keep exploring.

Test Your Facebook Ads

No two audiences are alike. As you begin to apply empathy to your social media advertisements, test your assumptions about your target audience. Facebook’s ad platform enables you to run multiple ad sets to find the right combination of copy to generate results.

So write variations on your headlines, text copy, and CTA to see what is most relevant to your audience. Look at the performance results for every campaign. Use the data to inform your next campaign, and the one after and so on. Each Facebook ad set should grow smarter as you learn even more about your audience.