Facebook ads can work really well for people who sell on Teachers Pay Teachers and are trying to sell similar products on their own websites. Or they can fail spectacularly. Here at Karen Nelson Digital, we’ve spent the last year studying both types of ads. We’ve uncovered four things that help our Teachers Pay Teachers clients have more success with their Facebook and Instagram Ad campaigns when they are selling products on their own websites. Here’s our best Facebook ads advice for Teachers Pay Teachers.
1. Understand the Facebook shopper’s frame of mind.
If you’re used to selling on Teachers Pay Teachers, you’re used to people coming to TpT and searching for a product that they need. Your product rises to the top of the search results and you get the sale. Learning how to master the TpT search engine is how most successful sellers find their early success. When teachers are searching on Teachers Pay Teachers, they are ready to buy. They have a problem and they’re just looking for the right resource to solve that problem.
A person who finds your site through a Facebook ad is coming from an entirely different perspective. The person who visits your website after seeing your Facebook ad is more than likely in relaxation mode. They were surfing social media, maybe even also binging their favorite Netflix show at the same time. They are very possibly trying NOT to think about lesson plans and teaching. Getting them to click off of Facebook is a huge win. Convincing them to think about lesson planning in the middle of their surfing & binging is going to be hard. You’re going to first need to remind them of a problem that they might be having in their classroom. And then you’re going to need to convince them that YOUR CURRICULUM can solve that problem so well that they need to buy it immediately!
In marketing, we call this “buyer intent.” Someone who has pulled up the Teachers Pay Teachers website and started searching for resources has much more buyer intent than someone who sees your ad while they’re binging Bridgerton on Netflix. When a potential customer has less buyer intent, the seller has to do a lot more work.
2. Worry about your message more than about keywords.
Facebook ads don’t care about keywords. Google cares about keywords. Teachers Pay Teachers cares about keywords. Facebook ads care about messaging. When you are writing the words to go on your Facebook & Instagram ad (the copy) and when you are writing your product descriptions on your website, you want your words to convince people that your product can solve their biggest teaching problems. Your product and the solution it offers has to be better than Bridgerton because that is what you could very well be competing with. Writing Facebook ad copy is part science and part art. If you want more details on how to write good ad copy, you can grab my Ultimate Guide to Facebook and Instagram Ad Copy here.
3. Update your product pages with Facebook shoppers in mind.
Facebook & Instagram ad shoppers are skimmers and that is how they are going to approach your product pages. They aren’t going to read every word. They may not even scroll down. And, most importantly, at least 90% of them are going to be on mobile devices. When you are creating your product descriptions here are some things to consider:
- Put the problem your product solves and how it solves it at the very top of your product description with just a short sentence.
- When you describe your product in detail, replace long sentences with short bullet lists.
- When you do use sentences keep them short and break them apart to make them easy to skim.
- Use bigger fonts or bold and italic to emphasize features that are important to your customers.
- Consider using a testimonial near the top of the product description. Testimonials are often your best salespeople.
- Preview your product pages on mobile. See how much content shows up on your phone screen before you have to start scrolling. Make sure that the most important information (that problem & solution) shows up near the very top of the page!
4. Invest in your organic Facebook & Instagram presence.
Our most successful Facebook & Instagram ad clients have a strong organic Facebook and Instagram presence. “Organic” means content you post on Facebook & Instagram that you don’t pay for. If you aren’t consistently posting to your Facebook & Instagram pages already, consider investing in someone to help you grow your organic social media presence before investing in Facebook ads. Even posting strategically a couple of times a week can be enough to give your Facebook ads a boost.
If you’re feeling brave, “Go Live” on Facebook or post a video to IGTV. Not only do videos appear to curry favor with the Facebook gods, they are also a fantastic source for audience building when it does come time to run ads.
5. Consider Your Pricing
Profitable Facebook ads are a numbers game. Generally speaking, when we have high click through rates, high purchase conversion rates and high product prices, coupled with lower Facebook ad audience costs, we can predict that we’re going to have a profitable campaign. If we’re not profitable, we try to make changes that will impact those key metrics. Some metrics are easier to change than others. Nearly all of the curriculum creators we’ve worked with knock it out of the park in terms of click through rates, purchase conversion rates and inexpensive audience costs. Where they often struggle is with product prices. Sellers who are able to do one of these two things had the most success:
- Create more expensive (greater than $50 products) that were still very desirable.
- Combine smaller products into larger, higher-priced bundles that sold for greater than $50.
It’s not a hard and fast rule. We’ve seen profitable campaigns with lower-priced items and we’ve seen campaigns for higher prices items fail. But our most successful campaigns are selling products in the $40-$150 range.
Looking for more Facebook ads advice for Teachers Pay Teachers?
Check out these resources:
How to Add the Facebook Pixel to Your Teachers Pay Teachers Store
The Easiest Facebook Ad Campaign: A Course for TpT Curriculum Creators
Facebook Ads in One Day Workshop for TpT Curriculum Creators
Facebook Ad Management Services for Established Sellers who Own Their Own Websites