One of the biggest mistakes small business owners make is to sink money into Facebook ads without understanding what makes an ad get results.
No matter how many five-star reviews your Facebook business page has, or how attractive your images or videos are, if you don’t capture people’s attention with a solid offer, your ad will fail to get the clicks.
This article and its examples focus on better Facebook ads for martial arts clubs but can be applied broadly, regardless of your niche.
What is an Offer?
Your offer is the focus of your Facebook ad copy.
For a martial arts club, your programs are your product and your offer is a way to package up your product or service that meets a specific need of your prospect.
It’s not enough to say, “Hey, I teach martial arts. Come sign up.”
So what? So do dozens of other dojos in your neighbourhood.
Think of your offer as a targeted deal.
This deal needs to be enticing enough for a prospective student to click on your ad link. Keep in mind that your offer isn’t targeted to everyone, only to your target audience.
Here’s an example of an offer for martial arts clubs:
Get a free karate gi when you try a free class in June.
Get 1 month free membership when. you sign up for a year.
Refer a new member and get 1 month free membership.
Having a good offer is the most important aspect of writing any Facebook ad.
How to Create a Basic Offer
Creating a basic offer involves getting inside your target audience’s head, anticipating what they want, responding to their objections and overcoming hesitancy by removing risk.
Understand Your Target Audience’s Needs
What is your target audience’s #1 problem?
You are not offering a martial arts class, you are offering a solution to a problem.
Consider this scenario:
Jane takes public transit at night to go to and from work. She has wanted to learn self-defence for years, and because of a recent rash of violent crimes in her area, she’s finally ready to take action. She knows nothing about martial arts and isn’t very physically active.
Her initial online search turns up pages and pages of martial arts and Krav Maga businesses that teach self-defence.
Overcoming Objections
People who don’t practice martial arts or know much about martial arts often have the impression that:
- Martial arts are good exercise for seniors (tai chi) and kids (karate) but not for learning real fighting techniques or…
- Martial arts is kicking, grappling, takedowns and submission moves designed for fighting (kung fu, jiu jitsu, judo).
Jane might have a laundry list of objections that are specific to martial arts that you need to anticipate.
She may be intimidated by martial arts, she may not see the direct relevancy of martial arts and self-defence, and most likely she doesn’t see how learning self-defence through martial arts is any different than learning self-defence at the community centre.
Using proof, anticipate your audience’s top objections. For example:
- Other self-defence classes focus almost entirely on the physical side of self-defence. Martial arts as self-defence heavily emphasizes the mental aspect of dealing with confrontation.
- Testimonials are another way to overcome objections. Solicit specific testimonials from current students: What did karate at ABC Martial Arts Club teach you about self-defence?
Determine your target audience’s main objection and address them in your offer. If their objections go unanswered as they read your Facebook ad and your landing page offer description (if they make it that far), they will probably continue their search elsewhere.
Offering Risk Reversal
Offering a risk reversal means ensuring your prospective student can back out of whatever you are offering, without a penalty. You can address this with a free trial class offering or guaranteed money back if they change their minds within the first month of membership.
Risk reversal could be your actual offering.
However, note that even with a full money-back guarantee, people don’t want to waste their time. You need to convince them that the reason you are offering a full refund, for example, is because you know they will like your product so much, they won’t need to use it!
A Limited Time for Your Offer
Your offer is perceived to be more valuable if there is a limited time frame it is valid. If a time-limited offer doesn’t make sense for your martial arts business, create some other limitation.
For example, many dojos offer a free trial week with no obligation to join. This offer is always available to prospective students.
An example of a limited-time offer is: Receive a free karate gi when you sign up for your first trial week.
How to Write A Facebook Ad That Gets Clicks
Your Facebook ad has three main components:
- The Hook
- The Intrigue
- The Click
The hook is what initially draws your prospect in. It needs to be specific enough for your target audience to read the rest of your ad. Depending on the ad format you choose, in a Facebook ad, your hook is the text that appears before clicking in to read the rest of the ad.
You have a limited number of characters for your hook before ellipses appear, followed by “See more”.
Follow best practices and avoid click bait. Tricking someone with a headline that has nothing to do with your ad or offer is pointless and you will not get good results.
Once they click “See more”, the ad itself needs to be intriguing and interesting for them to read it all the way through.
The click is the final call-to-action that links to either your offer landing page on your website or your Facebook page.
From the hook to the intrigue to the final click, each sentence of your ad needs to flow from one to the next in a smooth transition. The focus needs to stay on the main idea presented in the headline.
For example, take this headline:
Why Most Self-Defence Techniques Fail
The opening line or sequence of your ad can’t be:
For over 20 years, ABC Martial Arts Studio has taught karate to people of all ages and skill levels.
Our instructors have nearly two decades of experience teaching martial arts and self-defence.
The fact that you have kids and adult classes for beginners and advanced martial artists has nothing to do with why self-defence classes fail. When you finally address how other self-defence classes fail, you’ve already lost your audience.
Your headline did the heavy lifting of getting your prospect to click on your ad, only for them to be let down by the first line.
The other reason this ad fails is because of its not focused on the prospect’s needs, it’s focused on the martial arts business. The ad needs to put the prospect at the center.
A better opener would look something like:
The reason why most self-defence techniques fail to work in real life is because they emphasize physical technique.
But the #1 issue most people have when faced with a threatening situation is freezing up.
The end of the ad is a brief call-to-action to click into your offer landing page.
Register for a Free Trial Class.
BOOK YOUR SPOT NOW
When you preview your ad, you’ll get a sense for how many characters the hook can have before it gets truncated. The body of the Facebook ad is typically under 150 characters.
3 Strategies for Writing Martial Arts Facebook Ads
There are multiple ways to write Facebook ads and they all follow the best practices: the hook, the intrigue, and the click.
Concise & Intriguing Facebook Ad Copy
The first style relies on concise copy meaning a great hook or headline, often great imagery, and body copy that is short and teases your offer.
This style is great for audiences that are familiar with your niche. For example, if you are targeting Facebook users who have liked one or more of your posts about martial arts.
If your audience is already familiar with what you do and therefore understand the value of your offer, you have less objections to overcome and therefore you can afford for your ad to be brief.
In other words, you don’t have to work as hard validate who you are and what you do.
Longer & Persuasive Facebook Ad Copy
When your audience is “cold” and not as familiar with your niche, they don’t know who you are and what you do, much less trust that your offer is worth their time and money.
They will have objections that you will need to address before they are willing to spend time reading your offer.
Longer means roughly 200 – 250 words, while sticking to the format: Hook, Intrigue, Click.
Video Facebook Ads
It’s worth trying a few different styles of ads to see which ones work best. This includes testing how your audience responds to a video ad.
The martial arts video ad has a lot of potential to provide your target audience value on the spot. For example, if your offer relates to teaching self-defense, your video could demonstrate some techniques that potential students will learn in their first class.
Another way to use video for martial arts Facebook ads could be video testimonials of current students.
Use the Facebook Ads Library to see how other martial arts business owners are designing their Facebook Ads. Model your ad after ads that have been running for multiple months or years. A Facebook ad that’s been running for a long time is most likely bringing in revenue for that club.
Setting Your Target Audience in Facebook Ads Manager
One important point not yet discussed is getting your ads in front of the right people. In other words, determining your target market in the Facebook Ads Manager.
If you have run Facebook Ads before and have a Facebook page set up for your martial arts school, you have an advantage. You have the option to create groups such as Facebook users who have Liked one or more of your past posts, users have attended past events or who have taken advantage of past offers. You can use analytics information from past Facebook ad campaigns to see what worked and what didn’t.
If you don’t have that data, you can use information from past and current club members to estimate your target audience in Facebook. For examples your current students will give you an idea of age group and gender demographic, and maybe even common interests such as hobbies, other sports played etc.
Creating a Landing Page for Your Facebook Ads Offer
It is important to differentiate a Facebook ad from its landing page. The call-to-action link in your Facebook ad typically links to a landing page on your website that is specifically designed and written for that offer.
Your Facebook ad is successful if it gets your prospect to click into your landing page. It doesn’t need to explain the details of your offer. Its sole purpose is to get the user to click.
Think of it as a hand-off. The Facebook ad creates just enough intrigue or curiosity to make potential students click in and your offer landing page picks up where your ad left off.
This means you need to maintain a common thread between the two. If your Facebook ad has the headline, “Get A Complimentary Karate Gi with a Free Trial Sign-up”, and your landing page makes no mention of this, you will lose their attention and they will leave your site.
Designing and writing a landing page offer is a big topic. Good copywriters who know how to write an effective landing page that converts spend years of trial and error perfecting these skills.
If you’re a small business owner or entrepreneur and can’t spend thousands of dollars on advertising, don’t fret. Focus on creating a great offer that speaks to what your new students want and follow these steps for creating your landing page.
- Make sure the transition from the Facebook ad to your offer landing page tells the same story. In other words, when someone arrives at your landing page, don’t confuse them by rambling on. Stay on point with your offer
- Include testimonials from current students, if possible.
- Create multiple calls-to-action throughout the landing page but not too many. At minimum, have one CTA near the top and one at the bottom.
Support Your Offer with a Facebook Page
Create a Facebook page for your martial arts studio and solicit positive reviews from your current members. Some audiences who view your ad may click in to view your profile and reviews.
If they see an active page with lots of interesting photos and positive reviews, they are more likely to value your offer.
If you’ve done your homework with keywords and long-tail keywords, FAQs for your niche etc, use this information to create an optimized Facebook page.
Measuring Your Facebook Ad Performance
Use Facebook pixels with Google Analytics to track your Facebook ad performance.
After your ad has run its course, compare its performance against effective ads in the past.
If the ad performed poorly but still solicited some engagement, pick the one element that you feel was the weakest, improve it and run it again. Better yet, run two ads simultaneously with one factor changed such as a photo or headline, and compare results.
If the ad generated no leads, dump it and start again.
From offer creation to running the final ad, you must test, learn and improve and repeat this cycle.
Summary
If you are a martial arts small business owner, follow these steps to write better Facebook ads:
- Create an offer that appeals specifically to your target market.
- Incorporate a hook, intrigue and a clear call-to-action in your ad.
- Create a landing page for your offer.
- Measure your ad performance, make one change and retest.
If you see poor results, confirm whether it’s your ad or your landing page that’s underperforming. Scrap the ads that perform poorly and don’t get clicks into the landing page. Otherwise, improve on any ads that result in some traffic to your offer by making one change at a time.
Follow these best practices and the Facebook guidelines for ad creation for your next Facebook ad campaign.
Remember that all the components don’t have to be perfect or even great to get results. Get the offer right and incrementally make improvements to everything else.
