Creating an effective ad for your Sales Funnel is vitally important.

A well designed ad can increase your conversion rates by 5X to 10X.

Ads that take prospects into your sales funnel can determine the success of your whole venture.  If an ad is twice as effective, your entire business will be twice as good at attracting clients.

Creating effective ads is time consuming, so many organizations fail to give this task the attention it deserves. 

If you follow these 5 steps, you’ll increase the effectiveness of your ads and ensure you’re not losing opportunities to get new clients.

Step #1 – Testing

While creating effective ads is a creative process, it’s also scientific.

You shouldn’t rely on your intuition when you’re designing new ads, you should test your ideas by running split tests (sometimes called A/B Tests).

A successful ad can easily outperform an unsuccessful ad by 5X. So testing your ads is vital.

We recommend you run one test at a time. Show two versions of the ad alternatively to people visiting your site until you have 10 conversions. If one ad outperforms the other by a ratio of 2 to 1 or higher, you can be confident you have a clear winner.

Step #2 – Be Methodical

You will need to test a lot of different ads before you arrive at a winner, so you’ll need to work through each element of the ads … one by one.

The color of the ad, the image on the ad, the call to action and other elements will each need to be split tested individually.

You may be tempted to start by using video ads, but this is a mistake. Videos take a long time to create, so you want to be sure that your messaging is working before you invest time creating a video.

We recommend using image ads, which are quick to create and implement on your site. Think of image ads (like banner ads) as your Beta Test.

Step #3 – Simple Tag Line

Image ads with a lot of wording don’t work, because people don’t read that much text. Resist the temptation to say too much.

Imagine you’re writing your message on the side of a city bus. You hope people will read the message as the bus drives by at 30 miles per hour. How many words do you think people will read?

Messages on your image ads should have fewer than 10 words, for the whole Ad Banner. And the words need to be in a large legible text.

Make your message very compelling.

Most people will look at your message in a second and decide whether to click – so don’t ask them to hand over any cash – it’s too soon!

You need a message that presents them with something they will want, without requiring ANY commitment from the prospect, except to click.

The image ad needs to be an offer for something Free, something compelling to the prospective client.

We like to test positive messages in some ads and negative messages in others. For example, “7 things that will change your life” and “7 things that you should be really worried about”. Depending on your market, an aspirational message might work better than a fear based message.

Offer the prospect free information that will entice them to click.

For example, if you’re selling a marketing tool you could say:

7 Things Digital Marketers Forget

7 Things Digital Marketers can do to get Amazing Results

5 Proven Strategies that Drive Traffic to your Ecommerce Site

We start each list with an odd number. Odd numbered lists have been proven to work better.

Never offer a large number of tips. 

You want the prospect to think they are getting valuable information. You want them to think they won’t need to invest a lot of time when they click.

Remember, the prospect is clicking your ad on a whim – they have virtually zero commitment at this point – you just want to provoke an action.

Step #4 – Compelling Images

Use compelling images on your Ad. 

You should test different images. We find images of people facing the camera are best. Human beings are naturally attracted to making eye contact, so try pictures of yourself or your team members.

Remember, you don’t need Hollywood models in your ads. You simply want your prospect to stop scrolling and read the tag line and react by clicking.

Step #5 – Clear Call to Action

A clear Call to Action is essential. 

You want the person to CLICK the ad. Put a button on the Ad that clearly indicates the desired action. The button needs to say Learn More, Click Here, Click Now, Start Webinar or some other directive message.

Subtlety does not pay in Digital Marketing. Your audience is making decisions in a fraction of a second, so you need to be unambiguous.

Conclusion

Creating successful ads requires a lot of traffic. You’re going to need to test a lot of ideas before you get to the perfect ad.

Ads also have a lifespan. If you run them for too long your prospects start to block them out, so your job is never finished. You should always be testing new ideas.

You’ll need a reliable way to drive a steady stream of traffic to your ads.

If you’d like to learn more about how MondoPlayer can help you drive targeted traffic to your ads for less than it costs to use paid ads, book a call with one of our team for a free consultation.

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