A few years ago, Facebook was a passive marketing tool. You could use it to promote your brand, connect with potential customers and cross your fingers that those people would make their way to your website or into a brick-and-mortar store.
The call-to-action (CTA) on a Facebook Ad (in the sidebar) is the “Title” text in blue at the top of your Ad. This is the essential part of your Ad. It’s an essential element of your Ad to convince people to click. If you have a good image, it will draw people’s attention. But the CTA is where people will make their decision to stop and click. The description text can help, but most people will have already decided to click before they read it.
#1: Include An Action Word
One way to think of your ad is to act like a motivational speaker. Your Ad needs to convince people to take action – click on it. To tell your audience to get off the couch and do something that will improve their life:
This CTA from one of Wishpond’s clients, The Barre Code, is an excellent example of this:
Another way to use action words is to focus on how people can do a routine activity easier or better. This can be either something in their business life, like making sales calls or creating landing pages, or in their personal life, like exercising or cooking.
Here are a few examples you can try:
- Convert More Sales
- Rank Higher on Google
- Lose Weight Faster
#2: Keep your Call-To-Action to the Point
You have microseconds of people’s attention to get them to understand and click on your Ad. So please don’t get all whimsical and cryptic in it. Make it something that a person can understand at just a glance.
Here are a couple of CTA examples proven to convert:
- Get started
- Sign up
- Claim my offer
#3: Promote a Benefit, Not a Product
The most prominent mind-shift online marketers need to have when moving from Google Adwords to Facebook Ads:
Lack of intent
Google Adwords is powerful because you can show them to people interested in buying your products RIGHT NOW. With Facebook Ads, you don’t have that same intent to capitalize on. You don’t know what people think about when they’re on Facebook (Spoiler Alert: It’s not you!). So you have to give them something to pique their interest. Something that gives your audience value.
Here’s an example of a great ad from Sleeknote:
Notice how they talk about the value that you can get from popups vs. talking about popups themselves?
#4: Ask a Question
Questions are a great psychological technique to get people interested in your Ad. They work for two reasons:
- They have a conversational tone that pulls people in.
- People tend to ask questions in their minds when they have a problem to overcome. They don’t just think, “Need more sales next quarter,”; they think, “How am I going to get more next quarter?”.
Here are a few examples of questions to use in your Facebook Ads:
- Need to Buy a V-Day Gift?
- Want her to notice you?
- Need Help w/ Uni Essays?
#5: Use Negative Words
This can be tough to get right, but it’s a powerful way to pique people’s interests. People are self-conscious by nature. They’re constantly worried about whether they’re making the right decisions. Capitalize on this fear by using negative words in your call-to-action. Negative words like “Stop,” “Suck,” and “Terrible” can stop people in their tracks.
This doesn’t mean that you should tell people they’re idiots. Instead, focus on things people are always trying to improve and plant the idea in their minds that you may have a better way to do something than they currently are. Yes, it’s just like Inception.
Here are two more examples:
- Is this the end of the Email?
- Email is dead. Now what?
#6: Keep it Short and Prominent (News Feed Ads)
In News Feed Ads, you have more flexibility with how much text it contains. But this doesn’t mean you should go nuts with it. In my experience, the exact opposite is the best practice. The shorter you can make your CTA, the easier it is for people to read it (and the more likely they will).
Here’s a recent News Feed Ad from Infusionsoft. While it’s a great case study for their company, it includes 105 WORDS over 627 CHARACTERS. When you have as much text as this Ad, most users will be overwhelmed by the wall of text and skip over it.
#7: “Free” is your Best Friend
The easiest way to get someone to click your Facebook Ad is to offer them something of value for free. It’s like saying, “Hey, check out what I have to offer. It’s free!”. For the majority of your Target Audience, they will have an (at best) mild interest in what you have to offer. So their likelihood of paying for it is probably zero.
Want to create effective Facebook CTAs? Here’s where to start Facebook CTAs and also check out our more products at My Sales Script.