5 Characteristics of a Best-Performing Facebook Lead Ad

One of the best ways to learn a trade is to look at examples of successes. Trying to dissect and  pick out what went right will help you apply the lessons in your own campaigns. So today we’ll be sharing with you the qualities of one of our longest-running Facebook Lead Gen Ads. The campaign was created in March 2019 and was retired on January 3, 2022.

Yes, that’s right. For more than 2 years, this campaign ran uninterrupted until only recently when it started to underperform.

So what made this ad stand the test of time and the impact of iOS privacy changes?

Although we cannot disclose the ad itself to protect our client’s privacy, we will share with you the key ingredients that drove impressive results. We will also provide you with helpful tips and strategies that you can replicate to run a successful Facebook lead gen ad.

1. Well-developed ad positioning

You might have come across the phrase, “Content is King,” in many digital marketing articles. In Facebook Lead Ads, content still holds the throne especially in this post-iOS era wherein hundreds or even thousands of detailed targeting were removed by Facebook and merged into a broad audience targeting.

With fewer options in audience targeting, the competition for ad space has become more intense and expensive. And only in developing a well-thought-out and researched ad positioning can you get that extra oomph you need to stand out from the crowd.

So how do you figure out your winning ad angle?

The answer is: creating a solid buyer persona for your brand. A buyer persona is the personification of your ideal customer. It is a refinement of the “rough idea” you have of who you want to buy from you—complete with name, age, likes, dislikes, and personality profile.

What are the goals that your ideal target audience wants to achieve? What are the pain points that your ideal target audience is experiencing? What challenges is he/she facing to reach his/her goals?

All of these questions should be covered by your buyer persona in order to develop a good ad position for your service or brand. If you haven’t started building your buyer persona yet, we have a data analytics-based template that you can use for free.

2. Scroll-stopping visuals and a persuasive opening line

The second characteristic is a visual that will make your audience pause and look at your ad. And don’t forget an opening line that will make them want to read more. It’s a no-brainer that it pays to create a good creative visual since it takes up the majority of your ad space. However, we notice that a lot of ads have a disconnect between the visual and the primary text’s opening line and headline.

Based on a poll done by our client in one of their classes, the majority said that what attracted them to our ad was the headline and persuasive opening line. This goes to show that content really is king.

If your primary text’s opening line is weak and doesn’t ignite curiosity, then all your effort in creating a good visual will go to waste.

So how do you make your headlines and opening lines pop? Here are some tips to improve them:

• Your headline should be actionable
• Try asking questions in your opening line
• Emojis are good but don’t overdo it

3. A timely, sticky offer

The third characteristic is an irresistible offer. Timing is everything, that’s for sure. But what do we mean by sticky offer? It is a power-up version of a product or service that sells itself to your Buyer Persona.

This means that you have to use timing together with a marketing message that will meet your audience’s changing needs and interests.

Here are our tips to make a timely and sticky offer:

• Leverage on emerging topics or opportunities that are relevant to your brand or business
• Personalise your marketing message per funnel stage
• Use your Buyer Persona to identify how you can reach your customers, what their current needs are, and how your product can benefit them

4.  Keeping audiences broad

In terms of targeting strategy, we recommend keeping your audiences broad. How broad you might ask? Our average audience size across the ad sets of our best-performing ad is around 300k.

The size can vary depending on your niche and target country. The key is to find a good size that’s appropriate for your campaign or ad set budget. This is especially relevant now given the changes brought by iOS 14.5, as Facebook is continually removing granular audience interests. As a result, advertising costs are becoming more and more expensive.

5. Excluding CAs to keep best-performing audiences from dying

Last but not least is to exclude custom audiences in your top-performing ad sets.

For our best-performing lead gen ad, we excluded our On-Facebook leads in our ad sets once we observed that 1. our ad set frequency is going above 3 and 2. an increasing trend in our cost per lead. Do note that any major changes you make to your campaign–whether ad set or ad–will reset its learning phase, hence we only recommend doing this if both conditions are met.

Excluding CAs will force Facebook to sample another audience pocket within your ad set, thus increasing your ad’s reach to new people.

And that’s it!

If you want to level up your Facebook lead ad strategy, we curated a guide based on our team’s many wins and challenges in running Facebook Lead Ads over the years.