A lot of times when businesses and marketers are developing or researching strategies to improve their ad campaigns, most resources will focus on new features, cutting-edge strategies, and the hottest, newest technique out there. While it’s often both helpful and valuable to stay up-to-date with this information, it’s also easy to get lost in it all.

While modern techniques are important, sometimes simple classic sales techniques can improve your Facebook Ads.

As anyone who has ever worked in any kind of sales can tell you, there are plenty of sales techniques they’re taught over and over to help close sales, increase the amount the customer spends, and how to turn first time customers into repeat clients.

These techniques are easily adaptable to fit almost all fields, and they’re shockingly effective. I worked in sales in a high end jewelry store for almost two years, and the reliability of these classic sales techniques were incredibly high, even in that short amount of time.

Though Facebook lacks the rapport building that you can have in person with customers, many classic sales techniques can still be applied and adapted to improve your Facebook Ads campaigns and their overall success. The classics are, after all, classics for a reason.

Here are 4 great classic sales techniques that can improve your Facebook Ads…

1. Perfect Partners

These items are presented as perfect matching partners, all of which you can purchase to complete your outfit or set.

This was the very first thing I was taught when working in sales, even before upselling and the feature-benefit technique, and it is both easily applicable and highly effective in many Facebook and Instagram Ads.

The perfect partners, or “perfect pairs,” technique focuses on presenting a customer with an item that directly complements the item they’re interested in.  Not only can it make the first item more appealing, it greatly increases the chance that the customer will walk away with both pieces instead of just one (even if it’s not right away).

If, for example, you have a customer who is looking at an engagement ring, you show them the matching wedding ring for either the bridge or the groom—or both. If you’re selling a sofa, you can also show a rug that matches it, and a tackle box can be shown with a fishing rod.

You can utilize the perfect partners technique in several different ways on Facebook Ads. The first is to obviously feature both products in one image. This creates a “set” mentality from the get go and can make an image more visually dynamic. Using language in the creative like “set,” “match,” “complete,” and “pair” can help drive this message home. You can also use Facebook’s carousel ads to feature different products that work well together, again using creative that highlights this.

Levi’s used a carousel ad to show the complete outfit (the “perfect pair” together), as well as the different pieces broken apart.

However you choose to use perfect partners, it’s a great and classic sales technique that is easily adaptable—and just as effective—on Facebook Ads.

2. Feature-Benefit Selling

The feature-benefit selling technique is another popular one. You list a feature (“this pot is made of stainless steel…”) and then explain how and why that specific feature benefits the customer (“…which means that it’s more resistant to corrosion and heat damage, making them long lasting and durable!”). This helps highlight why your product is special and unique—even if it’s a pretty standard feature—and makes your product look that much more appealing.

Feature-benefit selling is highly applicable on Facebook Ads, but it comes with a challenge; the amount of text you feature on ads requires you to be more concise than a salesperson would be when mulling over how exciting each feature is with a customer. It is, however, still doable.

Feature: “hold two diamonds in basket settings” Benefit: “to show off the stones’ luster.”

Instead of elaborating on the features and benefits in a typical fashion, you can focus more on the quick bullet points in Facebook Ads. For example, saying “Long lasting, corrosion-resistant Stainless Steel Pot!” sums up both the feature and the benefit in a way that is more concise, while still getting the point across.

Image carousel ads again provide a great way to feature multiple features and benefits by altering the image and descriptions to fit the different characteristics and their respective advantages.

Explaining why your products are the right choice is a big part of selling, and the features are a big part of that. It can be tricky while writing copy, but feature and benefit selling is an age-old sales technique for a reason, and can work well on Facebook Ads.

3. Capturing Lead Information

When I was working in sales, one of the biggest things they hammered into our heads was to always get the customer’s information. If they purchased from us, we would get it in the system. But if they didn’t, we should always try to get as much information as they would give us, including what items they were interested in, when they wanted to be contacted (like for sales, or when new bridal sets came in, etc.), any big dates (anniversaries, birthdays, etc.), and their best contact information.

Facebook’s Lead Ads has made capturing lead information easier than ever before, and this will be especially true as they become available for desktop users instead of just mobile users.

Even if you aren’t using Lead Ads, however, you can still get valuable information from users. If you take them to a landing page, you can request the information there.

This ad focuses on lead generation, which is import for long term sales and customer acquisition, and leads to…

This landing page, which captures some initial information about the potential customer, as well as providing a service to them.

If you take them right to the product’s page, you can have a lead capture box somewhere on the page, or further down the sales funnel, that offers them a discount or other incentive if they leave the necessary information.

Lead information is everything, and many Facebook Ads campaigns are created solely to capture this information and to increase customer acquisition. Making sure you do your best to get the information whether it’s the focus or not, however, can make a huge difference in your business, off and on Facebook.

4. The Follow Up

Following up is an important part of any salesperson’s relationship with a client or customer. You’re making sure they’re happy while showing them you’re still invested. By doing so, you’re keeping yourself and your business in the forefront of their minds and building loyalty.

So following up traditionally isn’t practical or really even possible with Facebook Ads. It can, however, be adapted in the form of remarketing.

Once a client has purchased from you, they’ll often be likely to do so again if they were happy with the first item. Running remarketing campaigns showing customers similar items or items that would complement the original is a great way to adapt a follow up campaign to a version suitable to improve your Facebook Ads.

To do this, you can utilize custom audiences made up of users who have purchased from you; you can even narrow it down to users who purchased certain items from you. From there, you can tailor the creative in your ad to appeal specifically to them and the new product you’re promoting. I once saw an ad that said something along the lines of “Thanks for your last purchase! If you liked [item 1], we think you’ll LOVE [item 2].” It was highly effective, and I’m pretty sure I ended up being a conversion.

This is a good place to make use of those perfect pairs we talked about earlier, as well as to take advantage of any lead information you captured along the way. I once advised a jewelry company I created Facebook Ads for (separate from the original one I worked with) to run custom audience ads to those who had special events coming up that month, such as anniversaries.

If you have enough users who have an anniversary, birthday, or special event coming up, you can create a custom audience using their email information and target them specifically, much like you do for holiday shoppers. You just have to get the information first. This is useful both on and off Facebook.

Another example of a traditional follow up can be as simple as “hey, you haven’t purchased this item yet– are you still interested?” This can be translated directly into a remarketing campaign for users who visited a page or added an item to a cart without purchasing, created with Custom Audiences from a Website.

The follow up, when adapted to become clever remarketing, can be a great way to increase your sales and improve the success of your Facebook Ads campaigns.

Final Thoughts

A large percentage of Facebook Ads are created and run with the focus of selling. Because of this, taking a look at classic sales techniques and adapting them to fit Facebook Ads can be just as helpful as the newest and latest online marketing technique. These sales techniques are all highly adaptable and customizable depending on your business, your audience, and your campaigns, so long as you keep them in mind.

What do you think? Have you used any of these classic sales techniques to improve your Facebook Ads? What’s worked for you when you’re trying to sell more? Leave us a comment and let us know what you think!