What I learnt creating Facebook ads for multiple startup companies

I worked for a marketing agency that focused exclusively on Startups. Often these companies had a new product or service that had never existed before.
This meant it wasn't always clearly known:

• Who was the customer?
• Does the product solve their pain points?
• How to communicate customer empathy in a message they will understand, and will drive them to action?

How we gathered data to answer these questions was;

• Look at similar companies (traditional ones solving problems the old way) to see what content the customers were interested in.
• Write content articles on the website similar to that, but make sure it's unique though and not plagiarised.
• Run FB ads that link to that content.
• Test for conversion rate, CTR.
• Repeat with next content.

Once it's clear which article has the winning content based on the FB CTR, add that as the main question/pain point to target the customers.

Then start to work on the FB ads themselves....

What I found was that a picture was truly worth a 1000 words.

Having a unique, eye-grabbing image and not just some plain old ordinary image could make a huge difference. People scroll down their feed, and subconsciously are looking to avoid ads. Something that stands out and grabs their attention will do much better.

Something controversial, or polarising (within reason) will also get the users engaged in the article. They will then share it with their friends. Whether they hate it or love it, still creates engagement. It might be a topic they have argued with their friends or family about, and now they find a company with enough balls to make a statement on that topic, is of itself novel to them. Even though the landing page may not be quite so polarizing, the clickbait is enough to create engagement.

Then, use words that compliment the image itself. Or leave a question in the user's mind, so that they want to click to find out.

Words should always create resonance with images, this is true across the board from Youtube thumbnails to ads.

Feel free to drop a FB ad here. I can share my thoughts if I have anything useful to offer.

Thank you for your advices

Your advice is very helpful

Thanks for the insights. I really like what you said about how people have arguments about controversial topics already, and when they find a company that has a similar/opposing opinion they're more likely to engage with the ad.

Something I like doing is reading reviews from competing products to get a sense of what the customers are saying and how they are saying it as a way to generate ideas for ads and other forms of copy.

Thank you for your advice

Very useful tips!