One of the main reasons that Facebook ads don’t convert is that they’re often focused on what you want to gain from a new customer instead of what they could gain from you.

The most successful ad strategies focus on the latter. Putting yourself in your customers’ shoes can go a long way in understanding where, when, why, and how they make their online shopping decisions. It’s this empathy that will help you unlock more conversions and ultimately more profitable ad strategies.

The good news is you already have access to many sources of information that can help you create effective messages. We’re going to walk you through three simple ways you can turn existing customer data into compelling ad copy.

1. Look at how your organic Facebook content performs

Facebook comes equipped with its own analytics tools that can help you better understand which posts have the furthest reach, highest engagement, and best click-through rates. The best part is that these analytics tools are free, easy to access, and relatively straightforward to understand.

Looking at how well your unpaid Facebook content performed over the last quarter will give you a better understanding of the topics and products your existing audience is naturally drawn to.

Leveraging these insights can help you build ad copy that better reflects what your users are interested in, making it more likely that they will want to actually complete a purchase.

What to look for

Once you’ve exported your Facebook post insights for the last quarter, create some high level content categories you can use to tag similar posts. After you’ve tagged your content, you can easily sort and filter through different topics or product categories to compare reach, engagement rates, and click-through rates. A few things you’ll want to keep an eye out for:

  • Any product categories that have really high click-through rates
  • Specific content types that are shared widely by your social audience
  • Content types that have generated lots of comments from your audience
  • Topics that have highest engagement rates
  • Types of multimedia that have highest engagement (video, photo, photo galleries)

These trends and patterns will help you adjust your ad copy strategy so that it’s more in tune with the things that your existing social audience already loves and finds valuable. This value will then also give new shoppers more reasons to engage with your Facebook ads when they see them.

If you notice that there isn’t a lot of variety in the content you’re sharing, don’t sweat it. Just start switching up your content over the next few weeks to try something new and see what resonates.

Ways to use this insight

  • If you’ve been heavily promoting a particular product but discover your customers like  another product more, test out an ad set focused on this particular product
  • If video content is more widely shared by your audiences than other forms of content, work more video content into your ads
  • If you notice a particular blog topic had really high engagement, promote it to generate more awareness of your brand with new shoppers

While there are many other ways that you can use these insights, this gives you a good starting point. The big thing to focus on is what customers are already engaging with and how you can work more of this into your ad strategy. By focusing on what customers already love, you’ll be more likely to connect with new like-minded shoppers who are looking for that same value.

2. Take a closer look at your site traffic

When it comes to driving more on-site conversions, sometimes you’ve got to go back to go forward. Gaining a better understanding of how existing users navigate your site and consume on-site content will give you lots of unique insights that can be translated into winning Facebook ad copy.

Spending a little bit of time in Google Analytics will open your eyes to trends in past site visitor behavior that should inform how you build your campaigns.

Understanding where customers enter your site, where they spend the most time, and ultimately which navigation paths lead to conversions.

What to look for

Google Analytics can be a little overwhelming if you don’t know where to look or what to look for. The main section you’ll want to pay attention to is the “Behavior” tab, which houses content navigation and event tracking for your site. Once you’re there, spend some time looking around the site content section for:

  • Pages with the most views
  • Which pages users spend the most time on
  • Pages with the highest number of new visitor sessions
  • Where users are most likely to enter your site on
  • Peaks in page views or organic traffic
  • Which pages have the highest conversion rates

Knowing where your site visitors focus their time and which pages actually drive more conversions gives you a solid understanding of the products, topics, and calls to action that are driving on-site behavior. Dialling in on these topics and products when you’re building out your ad copy will help you bring the content new shoppers are looking for to the forefront.

Tip: If you haven’t set up Google Analytics event tracking, you can learn more about that in this article.

Ways to use this insight:

  • If you notice a particular CTA is driving higher conversions, consider adding this CTA to your Facebook ad copy
  • Incorporate the meta descriptions from posts with high organic search volume into your Facebook ad copy
  • If there’s a natural peak in page views for a particular page over the last month, consider amping up ad spend to capitalize on timely interest in that product or topic
  • Add Facebook Pixel tracking to pages with the highest views so you can retarget them with content they’re more likely to engage with

Even though this will look different for every business, the main takeaway here is to get a better understanding of what content customers are naturally drawn to and which content is already great at driving conversions. Using Facebook ads to drive more site traffic to these high-traffic, high-performing pages will increase the chance that your next organic user will be converted to a paying customer.

3. Comb through your email analytics

One of the best ways to stay in touch with new and prospective shoppers in between purchases is email marketing. Sending emails regularly can help you build relationships with your customers and help you learn more about their needs and values along the way.

Every email that you send out to your customers gives you a few places to look for ad inspiration, like your subject line and the main body of your email content. Watching how customers engage with this content will give you subtle content cues you can work into your Facebook ads.

What to look for

If you’re using an email service provider, it likely comes equipped with great reporting insights that will make it easier to review performance. A few of the trends that you’ll want to look for include:

  • Email subject lines that have the highest open rates
  • CTAs within your email that have the highest click-through rate
  • Subject matter that is shared widely by your customers
  • Email copy that your customers spent the most time reading

Email subscribers have opted in to receiving communication from you, which means they already see value in staying engaged with you. That makes the insight that you gather from this group even more valuable.

The type of content that highly engaged customers naturally gravitate towards will help you discover more about what they find valuable.

Working topics your email subscribers already love into your ad strategy puts your customer first, making them more likely to convert.

Ways to use this insight:

  • Filter out any email subject lines that had higher than average open rates and repurpose this copy for your Facebook ads
  • Use high performing CTAs in the link description areas of your FB ads
  • Look at the type of content that is driving more engagement —  is it specific topic or products?

The patterns and trends that you uncover will definitely not be limited to the tips we’ve listed above. The trick is looking for clues that will give you more insight around the type of content that drives behavior with groups of customers that have already engaged with you. Uncovering value here will help you attract customers with similar value through your Facebook ad campaigns. When it’s easy for customers to spot the value they stand to gain, they’ll be more likely to convert.