When it comes to making Facebook ads work for your business, many entrepreneurs have a hard time getting past the first hurdle: Getting your ad approved. Especially for businesses in risky niches—like weight loss programs, real estate agents, money coaches, and e-commerce businesses, for example—writing ad copy that doesn’t send up red flags can be a significant challenge.
But rest assured—regardless of what niche you’re in, it’s totally possible to write ads that pass Facebook’s checks with flying colors. In fact, that’s exactly what we do here at Storybird Ads every single day. We work with businesses in a wide range of industries (including all those “risky” industries mentioned above), and our ads never get rejected.
So if you’re feeling burnt out by Facebook’s policies and wondering how you can write ads that actually get approved, engage your audience, and convert readers into clients or customers, keep reading. I’m about to share with you the single BIGGEST change you can make today that will help you create high-performing ads and stay on good terms with Facebook.
Most business owners think of their ads as their chance to promote their product or service. It makes sense—you’re paying to put the spotlight on your business, so why wouldn’t you take the opportunity to sell? However, this kind of thinking frequently causes ads to get rejected. Facebook has tons of rules about the language we use around selling, and if you break one, your ad won’t even make it off the ground. Period.
So how can you avoid this? Through the power of EMOTIONAL MESSAGING.
Emotional messaging is the art of crafting ads that focus on your ideal client’s emotions rather than your offer. Instead of directly promoting your products or services, you’re talking about your potential client’s feelings and experiences. You’re targeting the emotions that would influence someone to want to work with you and offering a solution.
Emotional messaging is powerful because it creates a bond between you and your prospective customer. Instead of feeling like they’re being talked at or sold to, the person reading your ad feels heard and understood. By exercising empathy in your ads, you build up that crucial “relationship building” with your audience.
From a more technical perspective, Facebook views emotional messaging as a vehicle for engagement rather than a direct attempt to sell. You’re not making any promises—you’re simply highlighting a problem, being empathetic, and offering a potential solution. This means you pass their copy check and your ad gets approved. Make sense?
Here’s where people sometimes go astray: When I talk about writing emotion-driven ads, I don’t mean that you should be making people cry. Well-crafted emotional messaging is much subtler and more powerful than that.
Instead, put yourself in your ideal customer’s shoes. Remember: You are not your audience. Spend some time figuring out what makes your ideal client tick. Get in their head and discover—what would make them want to buy something FROM YOU specifically? And on the flipside, what might cause them to NOT want to work with you?
You probably think you’re already doing this, but I’d encourage you to get really specific here. Move beyond generalities and think about the EXACT triggers that are likely to elicit an emotional response from your ideal client.
To help you visualize exactly what you should be doing, let’s walk through a quick example. Let’s pretend you work in the music industry and you want to help musicians increase their online following. Based on my experiences looks at people’s ads and funnels every day, about 85% of business owners would write something like this:
10 Secrets to Build a Great Following Without Spending a Lot of Money or Time
3 Untold Strategies to Increase Your Following & Revenue in the Next 30 Days.
Now, ask yourself . . . If you were a musician hoping to gain traction online, would you click that? My guess is, probably not – this is not because its a totally cliche heading, but also because there are too many people selling the same heading to the same niche. Neither of the options above get at the heart of a musician’s struggle—and to be honest, both of these headlines bore me out of my mind.
Using emotional messaging in this copy means digging deeper to understand what kind of pain your client is actually dealing with. Yes, he wants a bigger online following . . . but why? What is missing from this musician’s life that he thinks having a bigger online following could fix? What are the things he worries about on a daily basis?
The answer here is: Support and money. Most aspiring musicians are low on cash, they only have a small network of fans, and they struggle to book shows. Your ideal client would go to any length to showcase his talent to the world.
So you craft a new headline that uses emotional messaging to capture the pain that your musician is feeling:
Show Your Family That Your Music Is More Than a Hobby—Here’s How
That’s a headline that would stop any musician in their tracks. Anyone who’s pursuing music as a career knows the struggle of getting people to view their work as a “real career.” And how can they get their family and friends to take their music career more seriously? By growing an online following. That’s your chance to offer your solution.
Messaging like this is what triggers your potential client to make a decision. And since you followed all of Facebook’s rules—there are no claims here, just emotions—they can’t reject your ad. That’s a double win for you.
The above example is not even a guesswork. This exact change shifted a client funnel from breaking even to making 10x ROI within the first month of working with us.
As you can see, mastering emotional messaging puts a lot of power back in your hands. Shifting your perspective to focus on emotional value rather than retail value might take some practice, but when you get it right, THAT’S where your revenue and conversions are.
Vidya Ravi is a highly sought after Facebook advertising marketer who made her way in the competitive field by being a no-nonsense, tell-it-like-it-is, results driven power house. She has scaled multiple businesses to 6 and 7 figures with amazing ads strategy and customer-first marketing. With close rates of up to 80% on cold audience and ROIs up to 42x for clients, their Facebook ads agency is one of the best in the industry.
