Because of how long it’s been around, younger generations like to dub Facebook as the “vintage” social media platform. Having produced $114.93 billion in ad revenues, however, the last thing Facebook is is ineffective and irrelevant.
Facebook enables education marketers to reach prospective students worldwide and influence their enrollment decisions. With nearly 3 billion active users, making sure your ads are seen by the right audiences takes experience and expertise. So we’re sharing some of Grow Enrollments’ tried and tested techniques to make your FB ads click-worthy.
The Basics: Have a clear profile of your ideal audience
Facebook’s reach is astronomic. This means you can sell to anyone with access to the internet, but it also opens your ads up for low-quality leads if you’re not setting them up right.
One of the foundations of a successful Facebook ad is how relevant it is to the audience you want to reach. Your copy, designs, and strategies must always be personalized to answer this ideal audience’s needs and desires. Using generic, one-size-fits-all language to appeal to a broader audience will only end up with you not resonating with anyone.
Be as detailed as you can with your demographic and psychographic data to make the most out of Facebook’s audience parameters. Who are you targeting? What’s the goal of your campaign? What problems do these students have? Where are they in the enrollment funnel? Your understanding of your audience will allow you to create strategies that meet and answer their needs.
The Objective
What do you want to achieve with your ads? If you want prospective students to visit your website once they see your ad, traffic is your best-fitting objective. Or if you want your ads to be seen by as many prospective students as possible, reach is the way to go.
Setting the right campaign objectives is key to getting the results and data you want. Facebook has divided ad objectives into 3 categories:
Awareness
made for ads intended to get as many audiences familiar with your business and services.
Consideration
ads that are optimized to generate a specific action like comments and clicks. Consideration ads will be shown to audiences who are most likely to take the action you’ve set.
Conversion
ads that are designed to find and be shown to people ready to buy the product or service you offer.
The Visual Appeal
You are competing for your audience’s attention, and your competition isn’t only other education companies. Your prospects are seeing an overwhelming amount of content online–from wedding announcements, tear-jerking pet videos, baby pics, to upcoming Black Friday sales.
The everyday consumer has evolved to be able to sort hundreds of thousands of digital content into what’s relevant and irrelevant to them in the span of seconds. So, how do you take up real estate in your audience’s limited attention span? One way is through high-quality, emotionally-persuasive images.
Associate your brand and education as an overall positive experience by featuring attractive, smiling people in your ads. As much as possible, avoid using stock photo images that make your ads seem artificial, detached, and generic.
The Perfect Opening Line
Another key ingredient to a click-worthy ad is that first headline. On average, 8 out of 10 people who see your ad will read only the headline. Facebook recommends you keep your headlines under 40 characters.
A good rule of thumb is to keep your headline short and clear. The combination of an attention-grabbing image with an emotionally-moving headline will nudge your lead closer to converting. This same rule applies to the rest of your ad copy.
Be direct by stating your unique value in simple, understandable language, present an irresistible offer in the form of time-limited discounts, and add a strong CTA relevant to your offer.
The Power of Social Proof
Students and parents seeing academic and career success stories from alumni go a long way with cementing your company’s credibility and helping you secure those enrollments.
Real stories from students who have the same pain points as your intended audience make powerful ads material. Keep your testimonials short but heavy-hitting.
The Personalization
Ultimately, click-worthy Facebook ads come from how well you translate your understanding of your audience’s needs into your design and copy.
You can continuously improve your ads’ performance through testing. Experimentation will go a long way with generating data that gives you insight into what gets the best response from the audience and the best time for posting.
Although Facebook marketing is a tough and crowded arena, you can create winning ads any time by focusing on your audience’s needs over talking about your brand in your ads.
Ads that prioritize providing value and creating genuine engagement with audiences stand out in an ocean of ads that only push to sell. Want to know how you can utilize the full power of Facebook ads in your marketing mix? Grow Enrollments’ crew of education marketing experts can help! Call us today to learn more.
