How to Make Video Ads for Facebook Lead Gen Advertising
Broadly there, are two ways to go about doing Facebook video ads for lead gen.
Scripts
Organic winners
Let’s get into them.
1. Scripts are the base frameworks around which your ads are made, where you can add and change elements to improve the performance of your video ad.
Scripts are the sequence of themes or ideas that you go through in an ad. The most classic example being AIDA:
A - get attention, aka your Hook.
I - generate interest.
D - increase demand.
A - call to action.
Think of them kind of like a character in something like World of Warcraft. You can have all different classes of character, rogues, mages, warriors etc. Each is best suited to a certain purpose (in this case, an audience or product/service type), and each is modular in the way that you can change weapons and armour etc to make your character stronger.
But instead of armour and weapons, you have testimonials and hooks. You have different pitches or pain points, etc.
For the scripts themselves, there are lots of them out there, and you’ll need to research and test them yourself to see which ones perform best.
Anywhere, here are some easy ones to start with:
CPSPSC (Rolls off the tongue)
Call out / Hook
Problem
Solution
Problem #2
Solution #2
CTAThis comes from Derek DeMike (link).
As explained in his YouTube video linked to above, you start out with a hook and then use two different problems with solutions to develop that interest and demand from viewers.
This script is cool because it gives you a chance to address one main sales obstacle as the second pain point.
Andrew Hubbard’s Pain Agitate Solution
Hook
Agitate Pain
Introduce Yourself
Solution
CTAHe’s explained this on YouTube (link) that the script consists of:
Hooking the audience with a call out, curiosity, etc.
Developing the pain with empathy.
Introducing yourself and who you are, so they don’t feel like it’s coming from nowhere.
Presenting your solution clearly, how it solves that pain.
Finishing with a call to action.
This is a great workhouse framework that I like to use often.
2. Once you have your framework, you can write the ad script based on what you understand from your target customers.
This is where you introduce the good stuff you’ve learned about your customers through research.
For example, what are the main pain points? Perhaps you want to use them in your hooks.
What are some quotable things clients and prospects say that could be used to help communicate that you truly understand their world? Perhaps that can go into your engagement step of your script.
At this stage, I like to write out the script into a document table with 3 colums:
Shot description
Reference
Script
I got this idea from Dara Denny (link).
Here’s an example of Dara’s filled out:
3. Once you’ve finished your script, you can start planning the clips to be used for each part of the copy. For example, what video will you show for the hook? How much b-roll will you use, where and why?
If you are able to, or your editor can, add b-roll for key moments to demonstrate the product in action or maintain interest.
Then when it comes to thinking through hooks for your video, there are basically two kinds:
Audio and visual.
Audio hooks are what most people are familiar with. The worst example of these are those where the speaker says:
“Stop scrolling!”
An example of a visual hook is something like those ads where somebody throws a box at the speaker’s head, and you watch the video waiting to see the box land:
4. Once you’re finished writing the script and planning your clips, you can now film and edit your ads.
There is an alternative way to do ads which I’ve had success with, but you’ll have to test this for your particular account too.
Basically the technique is to reproduce top performing Tiktok organic winners as ads.
Why?
Tiktok is great at exposing content to audiences and snowballing them based on engagement. So if you find an organic banger, you get some clues as to the format and visual of videos that people naturally find engaging and interesting, making them great references.
To do this, first go to Tiktok and search for your topic broadly.
Then scroll through the ads, looking for those with interesting visuals and high views or engagement:
For example, this could be reproduced as an ad using the drawing on the page as a visual hook:
Or this video could be a cool reference for a ‘story’ style ad script:
Or even this, kind of infographic style ad:
Once you’ve rounded up a few reference ideas, you can build out a new script table like before start doing your own version - adapted to pitch your product or service.
The only issue I’ve had with this technique is that the qualification of leads coming in tends to be lower than ads that directly and clearly pitch the product/service from the beginning.
Quick-fire FAQ 🔥
When surveyed some friends for questions about making video ads. Here’s some questions that came up.
Where to get reference ideas? Tiktok is the best. You can also try YouTube shorts and screenshotting organic and paid video ads that catch your eyes when you’re scrolling social media. You can pay for something like Foreplay (link)(I promise it’s not a p*rn site).
How long should the videos be? 30-60 seconds is my rule of thumb based on a feeling. Haha. But you can test shorter or longer.
Voice over vs no voice over. I’d suggest voiceovers. I haven’t bothered testing no voice overs because I assume audio + captions gives you the best chance to communicate information.
Avatar/person vs not. This is something to test. I’ve had both work. For the avatar, I’d wager the ones that best connect with or represent the idealised self to the viewer perform best but I’ve barely tested this in isolation to say definitively.
Video size? Go with reels. I don’t see much benefit to running a square video which gives you less real estate to add information on your video (e.g. headlines, call outs, captions, avatars, etc).
This article is one of my free series of Facebook Lead Ad Tutorials. See the others in the series here:
Questions or feedback? Drop them in the comments below.
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loving the WoW analogies.
Very actionable, and clear. Thanks Ben!