Today we are going to dive in to some media production. The goal is to create the messaging around the product/offering that we intend to sell with our business.
This is going to take some creative thinking, but we deafeningly don’t want to over-think this step. Perfect is the enemy of good here, and we are shooting for good enough – which might actually be a little less than good..? I’m not sure…
Anyway, as we create some example ads to place in front of our target demographic, we want to move quickly. Spending too much time before we start testing will result in fewer test runs of our ads. And fewer data to work with at product launch.
So, what are the elements of good ad content? How do we know if we’re on the right track? Let’s get organized and follow this outline to get the answers we need to make good Ad Copy and Visuals.
- Who will be receiving your ads (audio/video/text)?
- What are the goals of your ads
- How are others accomplishing this same goal?
- How can you learn from their implementation?
- What consumer behaviors do you need to keep top-of-mind when sharing your message
- When do you make the call to action? (trick question)
Who will be receiving your ads?
We have been working through our target demographic and our dream customer since the first day. While we might not have the names of the people that will be receiving our ads, we should have a pretty good idea what type of people they are.
When preparing your ad copy, it’s very important to keep in the front of your mind the image of of your target customer. In marketing, an imaginary person who represents all your real customers is called a persona. This person is the perfect combination of customer characteristics that help you remember what your customer is like and what they like.
Action Item: A good way to keep your persona front and center is to actually have a picture of a person that you can look at. Let’s do this together. head over to unsplash.com and grab a picture of a person. Think of a male and female names for the people you who will represent your target customer. Search for the the word ‘persona’ and see who comes up.
Next, find the person that appears to match the names you have selected most closely. I picked the names Brandon and Ciara. And here are the pictures I’ve selected for the personas:
Now, think of some characteristics that these individuals have that make them your target customer.
Brandon is 23 years old and works part time and goes to school full time. He likes to play video games with his friends, and goes on the occasional date with girls that he meets while studying in the cafeteria at his university. He owns an iPhone, and a MacBook, and listens to alternative music.
Ciara is 21 years old and works full time and is in her last semester of college. She studied Computer programing with an emphasis in 3D design. She is happily single because she is too busy for dating right now with college ending and her job ramping up. She fined the time to occasionally play console video games with some of her guy friends who are dependably available for a late night game of Fortnite when she’s in the mood to join. She owns an iPhone, Watch, AirPods, and a desktop PC that doubles as a workstation for 3D design and high end PC gaming.
What are the goals of your ads?
Now that we have an idea of who are target demographics are, we can make goals around the response we’re hoping for when they watch/read our ads. Specifically, what will I need to say to Brandon and Ciara to get them to act? And what specifically am I hoping they act on?
For this exercise, I want them to tap a link that is in an ad in their Facebook news feed. This link will take them to an app download page that will have them download an iPhone app. The app is designed to be a companion to their desktop or console Fortnite game.
I will need to create a message that makes tapping that link a no-brainer. To make the move to tap the link and download the app, there are things they need to feel and think before they do what I’m hoping they’ll do.
How are others accomplishing this same goal?
I had an interesting experience the other day when I was trying to answer this specific question about the fortnight app idea. I was doing research trying to find where of the existing Activella first published their work, and I wasn’t having much success through Google. fortunately, Facebook to the rescue!
As part of a commitment to be more open about how your data is being used for marketing purposes, Facebook will now tell you what adds have been run via various Facebook business pages.they also provide information about the type of business that is running the advertisements. You can imagine this is particularly valuable during an election here where unnamed entities can abuse the user data that Facebook provides to advertisers.
I wasn’t interested in the political aspect of this new future, I just wanted to know what type of advertisements were being run by some of the other competitors and my target market.
How can you learn from their implementation?
It’s important to note that not everything that shows up often in your newsfeed is something that is ejective with the higher in quality. With enough money, you can brute force your way in front of millions of people on Facebook.
But, you can still learn from those with deep pockets. One of the best ways to create your marketing and sales funnel is to go through as many of your competitor’s sales and marketing channels as possible. You don’t need to go through all of them, but as you identify some of the more successful brands, you should become a customer so that you know what experiences you should be creating for your customers. Attention to how you are treated, what type of offers are made to you, and how there pricing and value ladder are configured.
There are some built-in tools that you can access through facebook’s website that are filled with rich data. One specific tool is the Facebook Ad Library. This library contains all the ads that people are currently running on Facebook, as well as a history of ads that ran previously but are no longer live.
This resource can be incredibly valuable if you are trying to get an idea of the type of creative content you need to make to get the attention of your target audience.
As an example, I went into the Facebook ad library and searched for Fidget Spinners. I was able to find a product that was running ads back in August of 2018. The Facebook Ad Library listing included a video with links to shop for the fidget spinner that was featured in the video. In addition to seeing what was part of the ad, Facebook also shows you how much was spent on the ad as well as how many impressions the add had. An impression is counted if the ad is in the news feed of a person using Facebook or Instagram. The particular ad had between 5-6k impressions and the brand running the ad spent less than $100 total.
What consumer behaviors do you need to keep top-of-mind when sharing your ad message?
As we discussed earlier, creating advertising messaging that is conversational and nature and speaks directly to your various personas is the only way to market these days.even the big name brands are delving into this market and trying to maintain their foothold bye creating messaging and providing value they traditionally I have ignored.
Fortunately for all of us entrepreneurs in the world, authenticity comes naturally. Which, ironically, makes you seem more authentic. It’s a virtuous cycle. be yourself to be authentic, and be authentic so you can better serve your customers.
When do you make the call to action?
There have been many examples of individuals who missed out on great opportunities because they simply forgot to ask for them. Keep in mind that anyone watching an advertisement is subconsciously waiting for some sort of invitation or call to action. Your call to action should be communicated just as naturally as you communicate your offer.
Once you master death, they will blend into the same single message. And that is, you have something of value and you would like to offer it to them. If done right, your only question is, “where would you like me to deliver it? “