If a digital marketer has ever told you it’s impossible to create a weight loss ad on Facebook, they are either not telling you the truth or are terrible at their job.
Making a successful weight loss Facebook ad campaign is far from impossible. Facebook doesn’t outright ban submitted weight loss ads.
It only rejects weight loss ads that don’t follow its policies. It will do this to any ads, regardless of segment, that don’t adhere to its policies.
Chances are, Facebook may not accept your weight-loss ad on the first try.
Don’t let that get you down.
Just follow these 7 tips, not only for Facebook to accept your weight loss advertisement, but also to boost the advertisement’s effectiveness.
If Facebook still rejects your weight loss ad, even after following these tips, consider contacting the OppGen Marketing team for more assistance.
1. Follow Facebook’s Weight Loss Advertising Policies
Facebook gets the final say in determining whether or not they will display an ad.
Weight loss is a segment that Facebook is particularly stringent about when it comes to accepting or rejecting an ad.
Thankfully, Facebook’s advertising policies are clear about what’s acceptable and what is not (1). Here are the policies that are most likely to affect whether or not your weight loss ad will be accepted:
Unsafe Supplements
Some weight loss plans include dietary supplements. While these supplements may not be unsafe, Facebook determines what’s a safe or unsafe supplement “in its sole discretion.” (2)
Even if your weight loss program includes supplements that are safe, Facebook may still determine they’re unsafe.
It’s in your best interest to avoid mentioning supplements in your advertisement or landing page. Instead, save that conversation between you and any prospects who contact you for more information.
Personal Attributes
Ads cannot have content that implies personal attributes, such as a person’s race, sex, medical condition (physical or mental), disability, and more (3).
This means you’ll have to get a little creative when writing ad copy to avoid implying that the person seeing the ad is struggling to lose weight.
Here are two examples of potential weight loss ad copy. Which one of these examples is Facebook more likely to accept?
- Example 1: Get back in shape with our weight loss program.
- Example 2: Are you struggling with obesity? Give our weight loss program a try.
If you said Example 1, you’re correct!
Example 1 doesn’t make any assertions about the person viewing this ad.
Example 2, on the other hand, will likely get rejected based on the personal attribute policy. Example 2 assumes that whoever’s reading that ad is obese.
One easy way to avoid implying personal attributes is to avoid any mention of “you” or “your.”
Still, it’ll take some work and a bit of creativity to work around the personal attribute rejection, but doing so will help you become a better writer and advertiser in the long run.
Misinformation and Misleading Claims
Misinformation and misleading claims are two similar but fairly different things.
Misinformation is false information (4).
Some people may share or advertise misinformation because they – may not know any better or because it is what they believe; it is not always done out of an intent to sell a product. Whenever Facebook’s fact-checkers debunk a claim in a submitted advertisement, that ad will be rejected.
A misleading claim is more complex than misinformation (5).
Misleading claims may have some truth to them, but they’re presented in a way that’s too good to be true. A misleading claim, particularly with weight loss, may use exaggerated results or expectations (i.e., “Lose 50+ pounds in a month!”).
You may have an outlier whose story you want to include in an ad. In that case, include an asterisk at the end of the claim and a disclaimer at the end of the text (i.e., “results not typical” or “results may vary”), which might read something like this:
“I lost 17 pounds in 1 month!” — Jenn P.*
Get back in shape with our weight loss plan.
*Most of our clients lose 1-2 lbs. a week. Results may vary.
In this example, Jenn’s testimonial catches attention because it’s an impressive result. However, this result may not be a realistic result for every user.
The disclaimer goes a bit further than just adding “results may vary” — it includes the weight loss experience of most clients.
Even though that’s not as impressive as Jenn’s 17-pound weight loss in one month, it shows transparency and that your program works.
In this case, Facebook will probably accept the ad, and because the ad is so compelling you may have more prospects reaching out to you.
Non-Functional Landing Page
Facebook’s ad reviewers look at more than just the advertisement submitted to them. They’ll also review the landing page.
Facebook lays out crystal clear guidelines about landing page issues that’ll result in a rejection (6).
Here’s what we recommend: Hiring a reputable marketing agency to create customized landing pages for your weight loss clinic. We can take the time and hassle off of your plate by navigating the landing page creation process for you.
Personal Health
This is the biggest policy area that affects weight loss ads.
Generally speaking, weight loss advertisements are highly visual and often include some sort of “before and after” pictures.
Unfortunately, Facebook does not allow “before and after” photos, which means you’ll have to get creative with your images.
Facebook also rejects ads with unrealistic results and imagery that attempt to “generate negative self-perception.” (7)
Image-wise, stick to photos and videos of people being active, trying out healthy eating habits, or eating healthy foods.
If you desperately need to include an image of someone’s toned body, that is fine, but it cannot be zoomed in on a specific part.
2. Set an Objective for Your Weight Loss Facebook Ads
What do you want advertising on Facebook to do for your weight loss clinic?
Before going any further, you need to have an objective in mind.
Having an objective will help you to determine the ad copy, the visuals, and the ad format, all of which will help you create weight loss Facebook ads that work (8).
Objectives can be viewed through the levels of the marketing or ads funnel, from awareness to conversion
It’s possible to run multiple campaigns with different objectives — just be sure you’re marketing to the right people.
If you’re running bottom-funnel ads to top-funnel prospects, you may alienate cooler prospects who might have been likely to move further down the funnel later on.
If you’re not sure what your objective should be, request a complimentary strategy session with us.
Increased Awareness (Top of the Marketing Funnel)
For people who’ve started a new weight loss clinic or program and want consumers to be more aware of its existence, a brand awareness ad campaign is usually the best way to go.
This means targeting people at the top of the marketing funnel. The goal here is not to get consumers to your website. It’s about letting them know about the existence of your weight loss services.
For increased awareness, the metric to focus on is reach––how many people in a target audience see an advertisement.
Note that reach is not the same as impressions.
Reach counts the same user once. This means if one user sees an ad twice, that user will only be counted once.
Impressions do not take individual users into account. Instead, it counts every view. If one user sees an ad twice, that will count as two impressions.
Increased Interest (Middle of the Marketing Funnel)
Increasing interest is the next step in the marketing funnel.
Once your prospects are aware of your weight loss program, you want them to become more interested in it.
The more interested they become, the more they’ll research your weight loss program and start to consider doing it.
There are several different types of interest-based ad objectives:
- Traffic: Use an ad to send more people to your landing page, website, or blog post. Having more website traffic doesn’t necessarily lead to more people joining your weight loss program, but it can help you retarget more prospects through other methods (i.e., Google Display Ads) and make them more likely to convert.
- Lead generation: Use an advertisement to help collect more leads for your weight loss clinic through newsletter sign-ups or a promotional program download.
- Engagement: Target your advertisements to people who are most likely to engage with your posts. Engagement metrics include likes, shares, and comments, all of which can expand your reach and spread even more awareness (and hopefully bring more people through the marketing funnel).
- Interaction: Connecting with consumers on Facebook through messaging and replying to questions and comments on your Facebook page and advertisements can enhance their experience with your weight loss clinic and make them more likely to convert.
- Remarketing/retargeting: Remarketing (aka retargeting) is one of the most powerful advertising strategies for people in the middle of the marketing funnel. You can use remarketing ads to get in front of prospects who make it to your landing page, but don’t take any action on it. To remarket on Facebook, we recommend using the same visuals but different ad copy for people who meet the criteria.
Increased Conversions (Bottom of the Marketing Funnel)
A conversion is when a prospect takes a desired action. What that action is will vary and depend on what a business’s goal is. Examples of conversions include:
- Submitting information via contact form for more information
- Signing up for newsletters
- Registering for a program
- Downloading an app
- Making a purchase
If your goal is to increase the number of conversions, then you’ll focus on creating an advertisement that’s designed to get prospects to convert.
3. Target Your Audience
If you want to meet your objective(s), you have to know your audience.
If you don’t have that narrowed down, your ad isn’t going to draw in the people you’re looking for.
Facebook ads are either charged by cost per click (CPC) or cost per thousand impressions (CPM).
If you want to get the most value out of your weight loss ad, you need to make sure it’s getting in front of the right people, especially if you’re going down the CPM route.
Once you’ve defined your target audience, you can have Facebook display the ad to particular people, based on the following demographics:
Age
Facebook’s ad policy requires all weight loss advertisements to target people who are at least 18 years old (9).
Sex
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that there is no significant difference in the prevalence of obesity between men and women for all age groups (10).
So for your center or clinic, men and women could both be worth targeting. However, men and women respond differently to weight loss ads.
The data shows women are more likely to convert and undergo a weight loss program, so you’ll need to come up with a strategy that is effective if you want to add more men to your program.
Location
If your weight loss program is only available at one location, you’ll want to target Facebook users who live nearby.
But if your weight loss program is based on a phone app or can be done remotely, you can target people in different locations.
The CDC has a map that shows where adult obesity is most prevalent in the United States. This is a helpful resource you can use to target users living in other states.
Interests and Behavior
Facebook’s ad targeting can also target users by interests and behavior.
Interest-based targeting relies on pages a user has liked on Facebook, topics they post about regularly, or articles they share.
Behavior-based targeting is a little more complex; it tracks users’ behaviors, such as related products they’ve purchased and the devices they use to browse Facebook.
Lookalike Audience Targeting
The lookalike audience targeting option is one of our favorites. Facebook will target new people who are similar to your current clients in terms of shared interests and other similar traits.
4. Write Facebook Weight Loss Ad Copy
Content informs design, so once you have your audience in mind, you can start writing copy.
Don’t think too much about the ad format; you’ll probably have to go through a couple of revisions.
Be sure to follow Facebook’s ad policies, as discussed in the first tip — not only are their policies helpful for prospects but they are actually helpful for creating high-quality advertisements.
Also, keep an eye on the character limit while you write the copy. Depending on the ad format you select, you can expect the following limits:
- Text: 90–125 characters
- Headline: 25 characters
- Link description: 20–30 characters
You may have to play around a bit to be sure the ad copy fits the character limit, but you’ll get the hang of it in no time.
Emojis are one way to circumvent character limits and can also catch the viewers’ attention. Just make sure you know when to use certain emojis — nothing says you don’t know more than using 😂 instead of 😢 does.
It’s also possible to include image text, but don’t use too much or make it too large. Facebook will reject ads containing too much text in the image or video.
Thankfully, Facebook has a tool that makes it easy to determine whether or not you’re using too much image text.
5. Use High-Quality Visuals
No matter how great your ad’s copy is, it is not going to get anywhere without high-quality visuals. Visuals, in this case, can be static images, GIFs, or videos.
Think carefully about the visuals you decide to use — they should be consistent with your brand and landing page for a seamless lead conversion. If you can work in colors that are in your logo, do that.
Images and videos also must be a certain size and uploaded in certain formats. Take a moment to review the file type and size requirements for what the ad you have in mind requires (11).
If you’re struggling with creating FB ads, consider contacting a team of ad creatives to write copy and design ads to make your weight loss program stand out.
Last but not least, it’s worth taking the time to create and run ad tests to see which visuals and ad copy work the best for your market and connect with your audience on Facebook.
Our weight loss marketing program includes A/B testing, and we can discuss that in more depth over our complimentary strategy call.
6. Choose a Format and Location for Your Weight Loss Ad on Facebook
Once you’ve finished writing copy and have a few high-quality visuals to choose from, you’ll want to select an ad location and ad format.
Luckily, Facebook also offers an array of options.
You’ll want to choose one that works best with your ad copy and visuals.
Keep in mind that not every single ad format is an option for weight loss program advertisements.
For example, a collection advertisement works best for viewing physical products that are for sale.
Also, not every single format works in every location. You can place image and carousel ads in Facebook’s right-hand column, but video ads can’t go there.
The following ad formats are ones that are most likely to benefit weight loss services and programs:
Image Ads
Image ads use a single image to catch a prospect’s attention, along with text. These ads need powerful, high-quality images and well-written copy in order to be successful. Image ads can be interactive if you have access to a camera that can take 360-degree photos.
Image Ad Location
Single image ads have the most location options of all Facebook ad formats. Each location has unique specifications for image resolution, file types, text, and more, so always review those before sending an image ad for Facebook to review (12).
- Newsfeed
- Right-hand column
- Instant articles
- In-stream video
- Marketplace
- Facebook Messenger
- Facebook and Messenger Stories
- Facebook search results
- Audience Network (native, banner, and interstitial)
Carousel Ads
Carousel ads are great for several things:
- Displaying multiple testimonials at once
- Telling a story frame by frame
- Explaining a step-by-step process
- Showing the benefits of your weight loss program
You can use up to 10 images or videos in an ad, and each image or video can have a different link and text below it. Another option you can utilize with carousel ads is to use a single image and divide it up into different parts.
Carousel Ad Locations
Carousel ads also have specifications that differ depending on their location (13).
Carousel ads don’t appear in as many places as image ads do, but their powerful ability to tell stories or share multiple testimonials makes up for the smaller range of locations.
- Newsfeed
- Right-hand column
- Instant articles
- Marketplace
- Facebook Stories
- Facebook search results
- Audience Network (native, banner, and interstitial)
Video Ads
Most video ads on Facebook are no longer than 15 seconds (though they can run much, much longer), which means you need to make an excellent pitch and grab prospects’ attention quickly.
You’ll want to make sure your ads have high-quality film and look like they are professionally edited. Better yet, have them professionally edited and produced, if possible. Interactive 360-degree video is also an option.
Video ads don’t have to only contain video; slideshow ads are another form of video ads that use static images instead of video footage.
Video Ad Locations
Video ads and carousel ads have the same number of locations on Facebook, but they don’t populate in the same areas.
Carousel ads can be small enough to be placed in the right-hand column whereas video cannot. Once again, the specifications for video ads vary from location to location (14).
- Newsfeed
- Instant articles
- In-stream video
- Facebook Marketplace
- Facebook and Messenger Stories
- Facebook search results
- Audience Network (native, banner, interstitial, and video)
Instant Experience
When someone taps to open an ad on a mobile device, it may go to a full screen view that lets you browse images and weight loss products, watch a video, fill out a form, or a combination of all or some of these. Facebook calls this an Instant Experience (15).
Facebook makes it easy to create an Instant Experience using its pre-designed templates. You can find one that aligns with your objective and customize it from there.
If you want to include an Instant Experience, you’ll have to have a strong hook to pull people in — basically, you’ll have to present them with a solid reason to click on the ad in the first place.
7. Entice Weight Loss Prospects With a Value Proposition and Clear CTA
Ask yourself, “What is my advertisement offering? Is it something that would make me want to click on the ad?”
One of the best ways to get people to convert is to offer them something of value. This might be a free consultation, a discount on their weight loss plan, and so on. Get creative with what you’re offering people. If you’re not sure if it’s an offer of value, ask a friend or relative if the offer is something worth looking into.
The call to action (CTA) button on a Facebook ad can be customized, so don’t feel like you have to stick with what it started out as.
In fact, it’s better if you change it. If you’re trying to get people to sign up for a program, make sure it says “Sign Up.” If you want people to learn more about it, have the CTA button say “More Info.”
Want to Get More Weight Loss Ads Approved on Facebook? Contact Us
For more tips on how to create successful weight loss ads for Facebook, contact us today.
We also offer a free digital audit, so don’t hesitate to fill it out so we can show you the areas where your weight loss clinic can improve its digital presence.
Sources
- Facebook Advertising Policies
- Unsafe Substances Policy
- Personal Attributes Policy Guidelines
- Misinformation Policy
- Misleading Claims/Unrealistic Outcomes Policy
- Facebook Landing Page Guidelines
- Personal Health and Appearance Policy
- Ad Objective
- Target Audience Age Limit
- CDC Survey
- Types of Ad Formats
- Image Ad Specifications
- Carousel Ad Specifications
- Video Ad Specifications
- Instant Experience Specifications
