Hey! Are you ready to talk Facebook ads?

I’ve been running an ad that’s been so effective for my brand that I thought, “Man! I have to tell people about this!”

In this blog post, I’m going to break down this high-performing ad, explain what makes it so engaging to our users, and show you how you can recreate the same ad for your brand (by using my Social Proof Ad Template).

Let’s get started.

What Makes This Ad So Powerful?

This is a Facebook ad that I’ve been running for my $62 million ecommerce brand, BOOM! by Cindy Joseph:

What is so compelling about this ad? Why is it resonating so deeply with our audience?

For a number of reasons, but I want to look at three in particular.

1. Social Proof

When you’re scrolling through Facebook, you can immediately see what this ad is:

It has 5 gold stars, a quote in the body copy and in the video headline, and face-to-camera video creative…

This is a customer review.

More specifically, it’s an ad that’s leveraging social proof for our brand and products via a customer testimonial…

And when it comes to reaching new customers, there’s nothing as powerful as social proof. Of course you think your’re great, but for new customers who have never interacted with your brand, they want to hear what other people think about you.

2. Amazing Video Headline

First, let me say that we did not come up with this headline. One of our customers did.

It was taken from an interview, and I believe it’s one of the best pieces of copy we’ve ever produced through user-generated content:

“My husband of 40 years was like, Woah!”

To understand why this headline is so powerful, I need to give you a bit of context about my brand.

BOOM! by Cindy Joseph sells pro-age makeup and skincare, going against the anti-age and anti-wrinkle messaging that wants women to believe they lose value as they age.

Recently, we held a photoshoot for our “Women of the Pro-age Revolution” content series, where I cast over 100 women to participate, and sat with them for 8 hours a day to ask them about their experiences as women and their relationship with makeup and skincare.

Something that came up again and again in these interviews was that most of the women in our community don’t feel sufficiently acknowledged or desired by the men in their lives.

And this headline — “My husband of 40 years was like, Woah!” — speaks to this exact pain point.

It touches on an experience that many our customers are having, and that’s exactly what good advertising does:

In advertising, you speak to a group of people — through copy, image and video — who are sharing a collective experience. The goal is to stop them in their tracks and get them to say, “Wow, this resonates with me. This is what I’m going through. I want to know more.”

And that’s exactly what this amazing headline does so well.

3. Headline Changes with Video Copy

In our previous ads, we kept a static headline at the top of our videos.

But not in this ad. As good as the headline is, we decided to periodically change the headline according to what was going on in the video.

It goes from “My husband of 40 years was like, Woah!” to “BOOM! is the world’s FIRST pro-age cosmetic line!” to “Makeup in just 3 sticks?” to, finally, “The message is catching on!”

This strategy allows us to highlight important pieces of copy in our video to make a greater impression on viewers as they watch.

Changing our video headline copy has increased engagement and is working extremely well.

Now, I want to give you a 3-step process to creating an effective social proof Facebook ad that you can use in your campaigns (including my Social Proof Ad Template).

3 Steps to Creating Your Social Proof Ad

1. Listen to Your Customers

I say this a lot, but only because it’s so, so important —

You have to listen to your customers: Answer support tickets, interview them, read customer surveys… anything you can do to get to know your audience and hear about their experience.

What I find incredibly interesting is that the customers who have consumed your message will often feed that message back to you in their own words. This is the most authentic interpretation of your brand, and it’s pure gold.

2. Mine Your Customer-Generated Content for Ad Copy

Once you’ve gotten to know your customers, you want to use this insight in your ad copy (as well as in your email copy, product page copy and throughout your marketing).

The best way to do this is to take what the customers actually said — I’m talking about direct quotes — and stick them into your ads like we did above.

Here’s another ad where we did the same thing:

Holy moly — you can’t ask for a better testimonial than that!

Seriously, that might just be the best customer testimonial of all time. I want to frame this and put it on my wall.

Regardless of our copywriting skills, we as business owners could never write copy this good. This is straight from the mouth of a woman who’s having the experience that our brand is built around, and she’s literally touching on our entire philosophy… in just one ad!

And if you’re doing a good job with your messaging, I bet your customers will do the same thing for you.

3. Use My Social Proof Ad Template

Once you have a great review or testimonial from one of your customers, you can use my Social Proof Ad Template to turn that content into a compelling piece of advertising:

Let’s start at the top and work our way down:

• Social Proof (5-star Rating): Hopefully, if your customer gave you a review that was good enough to include in your ad, then they also gave your product a 5-star rating. We love including these ratings at the top of our ads because, due to the prevalence of Amazon, customers have come to expect them when looking at products.
• Long-form Story Social Proof: A good review or testimonial usually comes in the form of a story, so include this story (or an excerpt) from the video in the body copy of your ad. That way, people who don’t want to watch the video can still read it.
• Content CTA: We like to include multiple different ways to engage with the CTA of our ad, so at the bottom of the body copy, we include this CTA link.
• Mobile (Square) Canvas: We love using the square canvas because it takes up more space on mobile screens, and it allows us to use headlines and captions in our videos, which have proven to increase engagement.
• Benefit Affirmation: The review in this ad has been going on and on about the benefit of using our product. Now, at the bottom of the ad, we like to affirm this benefit with some copy of our own. In this case, “Wow ‘em With BOOM!” affirms the headline, “My husband of 40 years was like, Woah!”
• Social Proof: And because you can never have enough, we like to close with a final bit of social proof — namely, that we have over 70,000 5-star ratings for our products.

I hope this has been helpful!

Now, go talk to your customers, mine your customer content for great ad copy, and use my Social Proof Ad Template to create some powerful ads!

This has been Ezra Firestone. See you in the next one.

Highlights:
0:20 Listen to your customers
1:50 The Goal of Your Ad
2:10 What Makes This Ad So Powerful?
3:10 Social Proof
4:20 Mine Your Customer-Generated Content for Ad Copy
5:50 Benefit Affirmation