This morning I read an interesting âunderdogâ article about how a 16-year old, Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa or âPraggâ for short, beat the world #1 Magnus Carlsen (31) at a game of chess⌠AND he was playing as black âď¸ !
(If you donât play chess, the black pieces play 2nd after a white piece makes the first move. Normally the player who goes first has a slight advantage.)
Even so, Pragg was still able to get the win and heâs now the youngest player to beat Carlsen since he became World Champion in 2013.
What makes this win so interesting (to me anyway) is that he was able to remain âcool & collectedâ while under pressure from facing the best player in the world (who made some mistakes that presented opportunities for Pragg).
Now, if you feel like an âunderdogâ when it comes to running Facebook⢠Ads to your own offers, andâŚ
If youâve ever felt the pressure of your ad spend going up each day with little to no sales to show for itâŚ
Youâve probably experienced the opposite of âcool & collectedâ.
Maybe more like⌠âhot in the face & ready to pull your hair out!â
Especially when it feels like you are just donating money to Facebook⢠(aka ad spend) without any sales in return, not to mention the frustration of feeling like all of your efforts have just been a waste of time.
So how was Pragg able to remain cool & collected?
The truth is heâs not so much of an underdog after all. Heâs actually a grandmaster himself and became the youngest international master in history at the age of 10.
In other words, he was prepared.
Which is the opposite of what most people do when they start running Facebook⢠ads to their own offers.
They put minimal thought into their ads and then wonder why very few people are clicking through and even less people buying (if any at all).
The first step to being prepared to run ads to your own offers is to first be informed about how the platform works.
We covered that in Part 1 of this series.
A quick recap:
Thing #1 – Facebook⢠wants users to spend more time on the platform. The more time they are on the platform, the more ads they can serve to that user.
Thing #2 – A large portion of your potential customers arenât already aware of the right solution to solve their problem for their very specific situation.
Thing #3 – With the recent privacy updates to many smart phones, Facebook⢠no longer gets all the data it used to get so for this reason your ads arenât always being shown to the right people (which can lead to some marking your ads as âspamâ if they get tired of seeing your ad that isnât relevant to them)
The solution to this as revealed in Part 1 was to create what I call a âShareable Solution Adâ.
One, itâs an engaging ad so that people stop scrolling and actually read your ad, giving Facebook⢠exactly what it wants.
Two, it gives your customers a better understanding of their problem and therefore as a result also makes them more open to trying your solution becauseâŚ
âIf you understand their problem better than they do, it is a small leap to assume that you must also know how to solve it!â
And three, it provides people who are not in your target audience with âsocial currencyâ which increases the likelihood of them sharing your ad instead of reporting it or choosing to âhideâ your ad.
How Do You Write A Shareable Solution Ad?
Start your ad with an âinsightâ into a specific problem your product solves.
An insight is simply a piece of information or knowledge that gives the readers a new or different understanding of their existing problem.
Most people in your audience will already have an existing assumption or belief about how their problem âworksâ.
However, if they still have their problem, it is highly likely that their existing assumption or belief, while probably seen as âcommon wisdomâ, is actually incorrect and therefore holding them back from solving their problem in the first place.
There are several different ways to provide an insight, but one of my favorite ways is to âredefine the problem.â
In short, the frame isâŚ
âThe problem isnât A, itâs actually B, and hereâs why.â
You can deliver that insight in just a few sentences or a few paragraphs.
In my tests, Iâve found that short and to the point insights beat out longer ones.
Works even better if each insight you create for your individual ads is targeted to a subgroup of your audience instead of the audience as a whole.
This way, that subgroup immediately recognizes your ad and engages with it because you are talking about their specific & âuniqueâ situation.
From there the rest of the ad is fairly straightforwardâŚ
The âredefining the problemâ insight introduces a new problem (B) which then opens up several new questions for the reader.
So the transition from your insight to the rest of your ad where you promote your product is now as simple as sayingâŚ
âSo in order to solve that problem (or to answer those new questions that have now popped up as a result of the new or different understanding of the problem) you have created [name of product] that helps with [x, y, and z] which helps them with âBâ which in turn solves âAâ.
Then you end with a call to action of clicking to learn more or to purchase the product.
Hereâs what youâve just accomplished with this processâŚ
Youâve engaged a very specific subgroup of your entire audience with something that looks like âtriviaâ (not like an ad) which gets them to stop scrolling and read your ad. (Facebook⢠loves that.)
Youâve redefined a problem for that subgroup and have taken them from being frustrated and in some cases feeling hopeless that they havenât been able to solve their problem to feeling excited and even hopeful that they can now actually do something about their problem with this new insight or understanding into what the real problem is.
And third, to the people who are not in your target audience but who are still seeing your ads anyway, youâve just given them âsocial currencyâ. Many people like to be seen as or at least perceived as being âknowledgeableâ, âusefulâ, âa source of wisdomâ etc⌠and therefore even if on a subconscious level âhigher statusâ.
Your ad is now something they can share on their timeline or in a message to everyone in their group of friends who IS part of the subgroup you are targeting and as their reward they are now seen as knowledgeable, useful, and a source of wisdom/value to their friends.
If you do this right, you can start seeing your Share to Reaction ratios as high as 60+% meaning that up to 6 out of 10 of the people who react with a like or a heart or something else ALSO share the ad.
That gets you more traffic, more social proof, and in turn more sales!
You donât have to get it perfectâŚ
1 – List out the different subgroups that exist within your audience.
2 – Pick a subgroup and list out their existing beliefs or assumptions about how their problem works.
3 – Pick three of those incorrect or misinformed beliefs or assumptions and write three different insights. Short insights are fine.
4 – Write your transition and short product promo at the bottom showing how your product solves the new problem or questions you have introducedâŚ
And those are your next 3 ads.
Test them out and see how they convert for you.
Your first attempts may not be perfect, but just keep going and soon enough youâll stumble on a winning ad that gets you sales like crazy!
If you have an online business that could use some more front-end sales and want to receive more articles like this in your inbox…
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See you next timeâŚ
-Eddys Velasquez
P.S. So I shared a picture of tacos in Part 1 and promised to reveal why I used it. To be honest, it had nothing to do with the post itself but Iâve found that food tends to grab peopleâs attention and stops even busy people in their tracks â even if just for a second. âOh, that looks good!â Sometimes it gets them to stop just long enough to read the first line of your ad, and then the next⌠and before they know it, theyâve read the whole thing.
Do with that what you will đ
