How to Create Facebook Story Ads That Grab Attention and Get Leads on DEMAND!

“Humans think in stories. We are a storytelling animal. We don’t think in facts. We don’t think in statistics. We don’t think in equations. We think in stories.” -Yuval Noah Harari

Are you looking to start using Facebook Story ads for your online business? If so you’re most certainly barking up the right tree. And even better yet, you’re in the right place.

Stories have worked like crazy in every aspect of our human lives. Stories helped young tribesmen stay out of trouble, find food, understand shelter, and just learn how to stay alive in the habitat.

The stories of history were written for a reason. To show us how to avoid the mistakes of the past. So that future generations can learn. (Although some seem to never learn 😉

Over many decades, marketers and advertisers have known that using a story in your marketing works like crazy.

The reason is very simple and touches on that basic human psychology and how we’ve evolved as we just touched on above.

Stories are almost hypnotic to us humans. We get pulled in. We get taken away by stories because in our minds we immediately place ourselves as the character in that story (when done right.)

They work so well on Facebook (and other social media) because they simply tap into the main reason that people go onto Facebook in the first place…which certainly isn’t to be sold on your opportunity or to buy your products. Ask yourself, when was the last time you went on Facebook saying: “I hope someone tries to sell me something today.”

Yet so many people do exactly that. They immediately try to sell you their products and opportunity on Facebook. Almost shoving it down your throat. Giving you every fact in the world of why you need it. TELLING you that you need it.

In essence…spamming you!

And what do you automatically do? You reject them! You click away as quickly as possible.

What people go onto Facebook for is to be entertained and to be informed. Period.

If you don’t go on Facebook to be sold, then why do you go?

To see what your Facebook “friends” are doing. To catch up. To look (spy) at pictures. To watch videos. To find out about hot topics going on (News).  To see what people think about the latest hot topics. In fact, it’s been said that two-thirds of people get their news “stories” from social media.

In essence, it’s all for entertainment purposes. And what do stories do? They entertain us!

Don’t believe me? When was the last time you were on Netflix watching a movie or series instead of working like you were supposed to?

When was the last time you fell into the rabbit hole on YouTube?

Sure on YouTube you may have been there to learn something by typing in “How to”, however, that almost always leads to clicking on some entertaining link. As well, you can see in the stats that people who are entertaining and informative are the ones that get the most views, get shared the most, and people spend the most time watching.

Flying Under the Radar with Facebook Story Ads!

As you can see, people are basically addicted to the story. And because of that stories work perfectly on Facebook and other social media because stories help you get past people’s guard and covertly pull them in.

You pull the skimmers in with your first sentence or two, you hook them into your story, and then you ask them to simply click a link to learn more.

Stories also help immediately build know, like, and trust.

When you’re telling someone a story, you’re giving a piece of YOU. Through your story, they can see who you are. They can quickly get a sense of whether or not they connect with you or not. (Hint: Even if the story you’re telling isn’t about you.)

Some might not be interested in you or the stories you tell, but that’s okay. The sooner you can filter those people out, ultimately the better for you! Those aren’t the people you’ll enjoy working with or serving anyway.

Stories Make People Like YOU!

When you tell someone a story, you’re entertaining them. Which does what? You got it, it makes them LIKE YOU more!

Ever been to a party and seen someone being surrounded by other party goers? Usually, you’ll notice that those people are telling an entertaining story. People are drawn to them. They become more attractive.

We love people who are great storytellers. The greatest door-to-door salesmen of the past were almost universally storytellers.

Both of these elements of know and like help to build trust. Unless your story is blatantly untrue of course. People can smell that a mile away.

When you build that know, like, and trust, people then feel safe with you. They bring their guard don, and become much more likely to click over to your site, or to ‘like’ your page, or to reach out to you through messenger or email.

Here’s the great part…

Everything you just read above applies to any marketing platform. Emails, website copy, blogs, sales pages, commercials, YouTube videos, brochures, you name it. Story always sells.

A perfect example is the famous Wall Street Journal ad that begins like this…

Dear Reader:

On a beautiful late spring afternoon, twenty-five years ago, two young men graduated from the same college. They were very much alike, these two young men. Both had been better than average students, both were personable and both – as young college graduates are – were filled with ambitious dreams for the future.

Recently, these two men returned to college for their 25th reunion….

Dying to know what happens next? That’s probably why this sales letter, said to be the most famous sales letter in history, pulled in over $2 Billion in Revenue.

Why Use Facebook Story Ads?

It’s actually quite simple. If the story works so darned well, why not use it where people (your prospects) are spending tons of their time. That place of course is social media, and the big daddy of social media is as we all know Facebook!

Plus Facebook is one of the greatest places to target the EXACT people you want to see your ad. The FB Ad Manager lets even the most layman of marketers quickly pinpoint your target audience.

Put all that together, mix in some story, and you’ve got yourself a very good chance to profit!

And of course, if story sells, you can use it to sell almost anything, including your products, affiliate products, business opportunities, coaching, services (online and off), you name it!

The way that some of the most successful Facebook Story ad experts use these ads is for lead generation through free offers.

4 Simple Steps to An Effective Facebook Story Ad

Here’s the good news (it’s actually all good news), there are only 4 steps to writing effective story ads.

1. Grab their attention.
2. Suck ‘Em Into Your Story with an Opening Sentence.
3. Pull ‘Em into Your Story with your Body Copy by Joining In The Conversation Going On In Their head
4. Capture ‘Em Into Your Net!

We’ll go through all of those steps one by one in a minute, but there’s actually one important step before you ever start writing.

Who Is Your Audience?

If there’s one prerequisite for ALL marketing, it’s knowing your audience.

The right offer, to the right audience, is always the goal. And you’ve probably heard it a zillion times, but I’ll take the chance of being cliche here because it’s that important.

If you’re selling steaks to vegetarians or vegans, things probably aren’t going to go so well.

You could try to talk a vegan into buying a steak and tell them all the reasons that they’ll love it, and that they should switch to being a carnivore, but your chance for a sell dramatically decreases (to almost nothing!)

So sell steaks to carnivores, and sell veggies to vegetarians.

What Keeps Your Audience Up At Night?

As a marketer, your objective is to be a problem solver. Help people solve the problems that are causing them to lose sleep and stare at the ceiling all night, and you’ve likely got a customer for life.

So what’s your audience stressing about?

• Are they broke and they need to start making money before the next rent or mortgage payment is due?
• Do they already have a home business and they’re getting nowhere or struggling? 😉
• Are they women who need to lose dress sizes by summer?
• Are they men who need to bulk up before beach time?
• Is it someone with a health issue, and they’re concerned about what’s going to happen to them next?

You get the idea. The more you know about your potential prospect’s problems and struggles, the better you can craft your story to let them see that YOU can give them exactly that.

Why Would They Tell You to Buzz Off?

Just because you have a great offer, and a story, doesn’t guarantee that there will be objections. But the more you can answer those objections within your story, the higher your Story Ads will convert.

• Someone who’s broke may not think that your offer is real or that THEY can actually earn money on the side from home.
• Someone who’s struggling with their business may not be willing to plop down money for yet another solution to their problem that “isn’t going to work for me!”
• A woman who wants to lose weight by summer may not be willing to exercise. Or they may have “tried everything already” (which we know can’t be true)
• A person wanting build muscle might not have time to hit the gym, or might be intimidated to go to the gym because they feel scrawny, weak, or like they’ll look like a fool trying to lift weights.

The point is that your audience will have something that makes them question you, turn their nose up to you, or have a fear of some sort that will keep them from taking you up on your offer.

For instance, as a guy who’s a video marketing expert who teaches people how to get more leads more sales through video…I constantly get the objection of people not wanting to be on camera. That’s why came up with my “No Fear Video Marketing” course, for those exact people.

Knowing these objection ahead of time allows you to craft your story and marketing to address these objections in your story ad!

Now let’s get to the “How to” of actually putting your story ad together.

Quick Anatomy of a Story!

We could definitely dive very deep here, but that would take an entire article (or a series of articles) alone.

So we’ll do the quick version. Because frankly just like you don’t need to know everything about the engine to drive your car, you don’t need to know everything about a story to write an effective story ad.  

As you read forward, think of your favorite movie.

Stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Within those parts of the story, you have the hero in the story (the main character). That hero can be you, or it can be someone else.

Your hero will have their normal life, of which will get thrown into some sort of turmoil or struggle, and will\overcome that struggle.

Here’s What That Might Look Like…

• Regular hard working dad is broke and struggle to create success with his home business (his “normal” life)…
• One day he realizes that he doesn’t have enough food in the refrigerator to feed his baby, his wife is upset, and his bank account is heartbreakingly empty…
• He finds a marketing system that changes the game for him, he goes to work for 90 days, and has his first $5-Figure month.

You may or may not recognize that as my story. This was exactly what happened in my life. And you can bet I’ve used that story many times to show others what’s possible.

Elements of a Winning Facebook Story Ad…

Element #1: Grab Their Attention!!

So what grabs attention best on Facebook?

Think of YOUR time on Facebook. What makes you stop when you’re scrolling through your feed? If you’re like 99% of all other Facebook users (which you are), then you probably scroll through looking at pictures right?

That will be your main attention grabber! You want to choose an image that’s going to stop your potential prospects dead in their scrolling tracks.

One thing that us humans love (besides cute puppies of course, see my ad example below) are other humans. Is an instinctual appeal to humans because we’re always looking to connect.

So using an image of a person is always a great start. That, of course, can be YOU, or someone else who you’re story will be about!

Regular old lifestyle pictures work best on Facebook. Again people can smell a sales message a mile away. They want to see photos of people doing things people actually do. These are called lifestyle pictures.

You also want to let your prospect put themselves into your story right away. So using pictures of the end result (or even before and after pics) works extremely well.

• A person looking to earn extra money would likely be attracted to an image of someone who looks like a regular person who actually has enough extra money to do something fun or exciting. (traveling, beach, eating dinner out, etc.) Smiling and happy.
• A person who is struggling with a home business would probably be very interested in seeing a picture of someone who’s happily working, or enjoying the results of their success thus far.
• A busy guy wanting to gain some muscle would likely be able to insert themselves into a photo of another guy doing pushups with their kid on their back.

You get the idea. Speak to your audiences wants and needs, show them a scenario that they could have, and make it a real person (and it doesn’t even have to be YOU!) .

Element #2: Suck ‘Em Into Your Story with an Opening Sentence.

In your Facebook ad, your opening sentence will act much like your headline. Only you don’t want it to look like a sales message, so you need to hook them in with your first sentence.

• “I still remember it like it was yesterday…”
• “I’ll never forget the day I walked into the kitchen, my worried wife staring blankly into the refrigerator, saying the words “The baby needs food.”
• “It was one year ago today my 2-year-old daughter touched my belly, playfully pinched me, and said, “Mommy you’re fat!”

All those opening sentences above lead with a dramatic event and set the stage for what’s to come next. They leave you wanting to know what happens next (hopefully).

That’s what an opening sentence does. It sucks people in wanting to know more!

Element #3: Pull Them Into Your Struggle!  

If you’ve identified your market properly, then your audience will recognize and insert themselves in your story.

They’ll recognize the upcoming struggle that’s about to come in your story, and they’ll want to know how it ends. The body of your story ad should tell that story.

Here’s an example of how that might start…

“When my wife closed the refrigerator door, and looked at me, I immediately felt like the biggest loser in the world.

There was a total of $7 in my Paypal account, hardly enough to run out and buy the food we needed.

It shook me on a level I never thought I’d have to experience.

I knew at that moment something had to drastically change. I also knew that it was my fault that we were in this mess. Besides the immediately problem of getting food on the table, I promised myself that this would NEVER happen again.

That night was one of not just tons of serious soul searching, but the night of the most important Google searches I’d ever made.”…

Through the rest of the story, you can explain how the hero was able to find help, someone to help him learn to grow his business online. How he got busy, and for 90 days figured out how to create online videos that attracted endless prospects to him, changing his business forever, and therefore his family’s life (that’s a summary!)  

With a story such as the above, your prospects will be able to insert themselves and their own struggles. Plus it gives them hope and inspiration that they too can get out of their own mess with the same solution that the hero had found to grow the business of his dreams!

Element #4: Your Call to Action

Of course, the goal for all marketing should ultimately be to get a lead or sale. Your best bet is to always get the lead and their contact info (email, phone, or FB Messenger) to have permission to contact them over and over!

So you’ve basically got to tell them where they can go to get the solution to the problem that they just read your story to solve.

Simply and a link and remind them of the benefit that they’ll get when they click and leave their information.

Don’t assume that they’ll just click. You must tell them. People won’t usually move until you give them a reason to and tell them to do it. A simple “Click Below to [get the solution that you just read about]” will do.

It might look like this…

“Click below to see the marketing solution that changed my life in just 90 days”

“Click below to get the exact solution I used to lose those 10 extra pounds”

Using Story Ads on Facebook Can Absolutely Skyrocket Your Business This Year!

Sounds like a big claim but I’ve seen the results in my own business, in the business of clients, and many colleagues.

Your prospects are on Facebook. They’re active. Many are there marketing their businesses completely wrong and ineffectively. If you have a solution to their problem, you can become their hero.

Of course, there’s more to Facebook Marketing, such as tracking and other things that can help increase your conversions incrementally.

Here is an example of one of my best performing Facebook Story Ads for you to evaluate and emulate. This particular ad has generated literally thousands and thousands of leads and massive profits for my business.

Did you like that ad above?

Perhaps you even saw it yourself on Facebook and maybe we even met because of this ad. This example is an ad that has worked incredibly well and you can do something similar to work for you too.

If you got value from this post feel free to share it and leave me a comment below as I love your feedback.

You rock,

Mark Harbert

PS: Not Sure Where To Start For Generating Leads Online? I Recommend You Start Here