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Meta ads how-to

Stop winging your Meta ads strategy

Plenty of teams say they have a Facebook ads strategy. Ask them to write it down and it’s usually a budget and a hunch. Benjamin Boman runs Meta lead ads for schools, training programs and service businesses every day, and he breaks a real strategy into seven decisions you can write down and test.

Ben is a friend, and he’s who we recommend for ads strategy and implementation. Below is his framework from the video, with a look inside his course.

  • 7 decisions
  • Lead gen on Facebook and Instagram
  • From Ben Boman of Hungry Bear

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Ben walks through all seven steps (14 min)

The framework

Seven decisions make a strategy

Ben’s point: “strategy” gets thrown around and rarely defined, and that makes the ads ten times harder to run. Work through these seven in order and write each one down. Ben built it for trade schools, courses and training programs, and it carries over to most businesses that sell through a conversation.

  1. 1TargetWho are you trying to reach?
  2. 2OfferWhat do you ask them to say yes to?
  3. 3PositioningHow do you frame the offer?
  4. 4CreativeWhich formats will you run?
  5. 5CopyWhat will the words say?
  6. 6FunnelHow will you capture the lead?
  7. 7Follow-upHow fast will you get back to them?

Step by step

How Ben works through each one

Each step ends with how Ben puts it into practice on client accounts.

1Target

Who are you trying to reach?

Most programs can help several groups of people, and each group responds differently. A gym can help women, men, older people, younger people, athletes. Split your market into its groups, then weigh each one on value, alignment and competition.

A group can be valuable but get little out of what you offer. Another can love your program but be expensive to reach. You have to choose.

Put it into practiceStart testing with the group that mixes value and alignment best: people who can pay and get the most out of it are the easiest to close. Then check how crowded that group is.

Weigh each group on three things

  • ValueCan they pay the price, and are they worth it to you?
  • AlignmentHow much do they get out of your program?
  • CompetitionHow many other advertisers are after them?

Ben’s gym example. Two groups, two different trade-offs:

Fit young men
Interest High
Competition High
Older adults
Money to spend Often more
Competition Low
2Offer

What do you ask people to say yes to?

Your offer isn’t necessarily the thing you sell. It’s what gets someone to engage with you. One tech bootcamp asks people to request information and book a call. A flight school in Sydney leads with a trial flight, and makes a point of how affordable it is. A K-pop academy offers a free video on how the industry works, then converts the people who watch.

Some offers are about your program; others are about a topic next to it. Both work.

Put it into practiceUse the offer you see most in your market as the baseline, then test one more. An offer few competitors are running can stand out and still bring in good leads.

Common offers for schools and programs

  • In-person tour
  • Admissions call
  • Low-cost trialLike the trial flight
  • Webinar or video trainingOn your program, or a related topic
  • Free downloadRésumé template, cheat sheet
  • Quiz or survey
3Positioning

How do you frame the offer?

Ben borrows Mark Ritson’s rule: you position yourself about something or against something. If your competitors are expensive, you’re the affordable one. If students care most about community or job placement, you build the message around that.

To find the angle, research what your market wants and doesn’t want, in their own words.

Put it into practicePick two or three angles. Test A against B and keep C ready. Ben’s favourite often turns out to be the loser. Skip the test and you might decide ads don’t work, when people just didn’t respond to that angle.

Where to find the angle

  • ReviewsRead Google reviews, yours and your competitors’. One parent praised a Dubai vocal studio for helping their young children love music. That’s an angle: kids, or the love of music.
  • CommentsComments on YouTube videos and social posts in your space.
  • Sales teamThe phrases prospects use on calls: “I was looking for X, and I hate the idea of Y.” Their problems and feelings become your lines.
4Creative

Which formats will you run?

An ad isn’t just an ad. It’s a before-and-after, a listicle, a photo with callouts explaining features, a meme. Video ads follow scripts like problem–solution, pain–agitate–solution or a testimonial. Each performs differently, depending on competition, novelty and clarity.

Benchmark what competitors run to set a baseline, then add formats from your own judgment so you’re not running the same thing as everyone else.

Put it into practiceRun five to ten ads at a time, with at least three different formats in each ad set (five is better). When you test two angles or two audiences, give each side three to five ads.

An A/B test, the way Ben sets it up

Ad set AMessaging angle 1
Ad set BMessaging angle 2

Three to five ads on each side, in different formats, running at the same time. You’re often surprised which angle people respond to.

From Ben's course: turning an ad image template into a finished ad in Canva
From the courseTurning a template into a finished ad image in Canva.
5Copy

What will the words say?

Copy has its own frameworks: pain–agitate–solution, AIDA (attention, interest, desire, action), before–after–bridge. One can beat another by a wide margin, so test them like you test formats.

Then there’s the hook: the first line of your copy, before someone taps “See more”, or the headline on the ad itself. Ben sorts hooks into two kinds, a method he learned from Liam Casey: curiosity and transformation. Two categories keeps each test simple.

Put it into practiceWrite five to ten variations and run them at the same time, so the A/B test tells you which one works.

From Ben's course: where each piece of ad copy appears on Facebook compared with Instagram
From the courseWhere each piece of copy shows up on Facebook and on Instagram. The first 80 characters do the heavy lifting.
6Funnel

How will you capture the lead?

The funnel is what most people picture when they think of an ads strategy, but it’s the second-last piece. It’s the mechanism that captures the lead, and it doesn’t have to be a landing page. It can be a Meta instant form, a Messenger or WhatsApp conversation, or a quiz.

Ben’s tip: a lot of people don’t realise you can take bookings with Meta’s instant forms, and it’s working well for his clients. Location matters too. Instagram messages might suit one country, while in places like Singapore or Kenya WhatsApp may be how people do business.

Put it into practiceMake the most common mechanism in your market test A and your best judgment test B. Lead volume and quality can differ a lot between the two.

From Ben's course: a Meta instant form with one conditional yes or no question
From the courseOne yes/no question on an instant form sends people who’d never buy to a dead end. Fewer leads, better leads.
7Follow-up

How fast will you get back to them?

Follow-up isn’t strictly an ads job, but Ben is blunt about it: if you can’t follow up, don’t bother running the ads. Leads go cold fast. Responsiveness drops sharply in the first hour, and after a day much of a lead’s value is gone.

Email alone isn’t enough anymore. People skim past it far more than they did five or ten years ago, so lean on SMS wherever you can.

Put it into practiceUse as many channels as the rules where you are allow. When lead volume is high, set up pipeline stages that tell your setters who to call first. And make call-back rate one of the company’s KPIs.

How fast a lead cools

First hourRespond now
Same dayStill warm
24 hours+Much is lost

Follow-up channels, from the minimum up

  1. Email automationThe bare minimum. Have it running before the ads go live.
  2. SMSThe next basic. It cuts through the email blindness.
  3. Phone callsOn top, as fast as your team can.
  4. Video messagesA personal touch that stands out.

Putting it together

Write it down, then test it

Once you’ve worked through all seven, you have a strategy your team can use to guide the ads and check whether Meta is working as a channel.

  1. Step 1

    Write all seven down

    Together they’re your campaign theory: target, offer, positioning, creative, copy, funnel and follow-up.

  2. Step 2

    Test the theory

    Run the whole plan, and A/B test parts along the way: the segment, the mechanism, the angle, the offer. That’s how you avoid leaving money on the table.

  3. Step 3

    Refine and repeat

    Your competitors are sharpening their creative, copy and funnels too. Run the process again for new ideas as you go.

“Facebook and Instagram ads is player versus player. You can’t just put anything in play and hope that it works.”Benjamin Boman

Ben’s course

Build your first lead campaign with Ben

The video gives you the strategy. The course shows you the build: every lesson is a screen recording of a real campaign, set up start to finish for a mobile dog grooming business, so you see every click.

Facebook Lead Ads Guide: get your first Facebook lead ad live

Facebook Lead Ads Guide

The workflow, templates and cheatsheet Ben uses with paying clients. Go from an empty ad account to a live campaign in one sitting.

$97One-time payment · lifetime access and updates · 30-day refund

  • 8 video lessons, 1 hr 6 min in all
  • Ad image templates you finish in Canva
  • The ad copy structure Ben writes client ads with
  • His campaign management cheatsheet, the one he uses on client accounts

Get the course for $97

What’s inside

  1. The 80/20 of lead gen on Meta6:39
  2. Research what offers competitors run4:55
  3. Set up your lead form4:01
  4. Structure your ad copy11:53
  5. Template overview4:30
  6. Create ad images from templates3:44
  7. Core walkthrough: build the campaign and manage leads22:29
  8. Manage lead ads after launch7:46

Built for you if

  • You sell a high-priced service that already sells: consultant, agency, clinic, contractor
  • You run a course, training program or coaching practice and need steady enquiries
  • You’re the marketing manager and want to understand the ad account, not just forward a report

Not for you if

  • You run eCommerce or SaaS. The course assumes a person closes the sale
  • You’re pre-revenue. Lead ads amplify an offer that already sells; they won’t find you one
From Ben's course: the lead form intro, with the offer up front
The form intro: the offer up front, no “show more”.
From Ben's course: building the ad in Ads Manager, with the naming system
Building the ad in Ads Manager, with a naming system that shows which image and copy is winning.
From Ben's course: the rule for when to cut a losing ad
Ben’s rule for when an ad has had its chance.

Get Ben’s courseOr have Ben run your ads

Meet Ben

More from Ben

Benjamin Boman at his desk

Benjamin Boman, Hungry Bear

Ben is a freelance media buyer. He has worked in marketing since 2012, much of it as a marketing manager in the US, China, Korea and Australia, so he’s also been the client trying to work out whether an agency’s numbers were any good. Since 2022 he has worked only on paid ads.

Today he runs Hungry Bear, a one-person ads practice, mostly on Meta with LinkedIn where it suits the offer better. His clients are schools, vocational programs, bootcamps and Pilates studios, and you talk to the person doing the work.

Start with the course, read the newsletter, or hand him the account.

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