3 steps to create profitable Facebook ads every time

Do you treat Facebook (Meta) advertising like a slot machine?

You pull the handle–launch an ad–and hope for the best.

If so, you’ll burn cash.

Facebook advertising should be more like a slot machine you can rig in your favor.

Here’s how:

Step 1: Find an ad that works

Go to facebook.com, login, and start scrolling through your feed.

What do you see?

A bunch of stuff your friends and family post. What else?

Maybe something like this:

See that little “Sponsored” line at the top left?

That means this is an ad.

See the “29K” for the number of likes at the bottom-left?

That means the advertiser pushing this ad has most likely spent a lot of money putting that ad in front of people–which means this ad works.

(There’s a small chance that the advertiser drove up the number of likes using bots or fake accounts, but don’t worry about that. You’ll find out cheaply and quickly enough whether the ad really works.)

You can safely assume that ads with a lot of engagement–likes, comments, and shares–perform well, otherwise the advertiser wouldn’t keep spending money to put that ad in front of people.

So, step 1 to creating profitable Facebook ads every time is to find ads that work–in any market.

Screenshot them. Write down the name of the pages (top left) for those ads.

To find more ads from the advertiser, go to Facebook Ad Library (https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/), select “All ads”, and enter the name of the page you found in your feed.

Look at what ads they’re running.

If you see any ads that are similar which keep getting repeated again and again, those are winners too. (They wouldn’t keep creating variations of those ads if they didn’t make money.)

Now you have multiple profitable ad ideas.

Step 2: Model the ad

Forget creativity.

Leave that to broke artists.

Instead, model what works.

Look at the image the advertiser uses. Create a similar one, as close as possible, that fits your brand and product.

Same typography. Same colors.

If the winning ad contains a video, analyze it scene-by-scene.

Write down the script. Make notes about who or what is in each part of the video.

Then recreate a version that fits your product and brand.

Lastly, model the headline (line below the image or video) and post text (text above the image or video) to fit your brand and product.

Always use real information (real testimonials, real facts, real benefits).

But, don’t get creative.

Model what works.

Step 3: Test it cheap & fast

Don’t listen to agencies.

Test ads cheap and fast.

You don’t need to spend a lot of money.

If an ad doesn’t make a sale after spending 1-2X the price of your product–$100 in ad spend on a $50 product, for example–kill it.

Try a new ad.

By modeling what works, you rig the advertising game in your favor. You let other companies spend thousands of dollars testing ads–you cherry pick the proven winners.

"Picasso had a saying -- 'good artists copy; great artists steal' -- and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas." –Steve Jobs, 1996