Similarly, the social media giant also hosts one of the most effective advertising ecosystems, making it a powerful tool for marketers to connect with their audiences.
However, that also means that you can’t advertise on Facebook without facing serious competition. Over six million businesses use Facebook ads to get their messages across.
The constantly evolving algorithms also make standing out a particular challenge, even more so if you want to connect with consumers organically.
However, not all hope is lost.
After all, this platform singlehandedly revolutionized advertising by giving small businesses an even footing against the big fish. Now everyone can find the right audience and advertise to them, which weren’t possible with traditional advertising norms that require large budgets and high-end productions.
In this guide, we’ll learn about popular ad types as well as advanced strategies to accurately target the customers and generate sales.
So let’s dive head-first into Facebook ads and find out how you can excel at making ads that get your business the attention it needs to succeed.
Related reading:
- 10 Best Free Tools to Make Picture Quotes for Social Media
- 7 BEST Free Social Media Scheduling Tools to Schedule Social Media Posts
- 7 Tips to Get Started with Social Media for Your Small Business
Types Of Facebook Ads
When you create a Facebook ad, you have the option of choosing from 11 different advertising styles, all of which offer a unique focus to help you grow your business. There is a common misconception that Facebook ads are solely used for sales, i.e., revenue generation. However, with the exposure the social media platform offers, you can utilize Facebook advertisements for various purposes.
These include objectives such as brand awareness, providing key information, or offering important updates regarding the brand.
Here’s what you need to know about the general setup for some of the most popular ad types, including specifications for each:
Image Ads
Image ads are a great way to grab your consumer’s attention, even more so if you’re just getting started with Facebook advertising. They are easy to create – you can boost an existing post turning it into an ad automatically, or you could build a new creative from scratch.
Image ads may look simple, but that doesn’t imply your ads have to be boring.
A captivating Facebook ad creative appeals to its audiences. As such, keep your ads bright and colorful so that they immediately grab the audiences’ attention. Consequently, also consider creating advertisements that stand out in your users’ newsfeed.
Take this Starbucks ad, for example. Not only is the visual aesthetic appealing to the eye, but the minimalistic design confidently frames the products in a fun “get yours now” type of way.
Here are some specifications to keep in mind when creating Facebook image ads:
- Recommended size: At least 1200 x 628 but there is no maximum size restriction
- Image ratio: 9:16 to 16:9 (with no link) and 1.9:1 to 1:1 (if there’s a link)
- Text: 125 characters
- Link Description: 30 characters
- Image can’t be more than 20% text
- Image file types: .png or .jpg (GIFS fall into the category of video ads)
- Headline: 25 characters
Video Ads
Approximately 500 million Facebook users watch at least 100 million hours of video content on the platform daily. Facebook’s video ads can run both in the News Feed and Stories, and even pop up as in-stream ads during longer Facebook videos. And now that we know 300 million users watch Facebook Stories daily, video ad content is a must-have.
Source:Sprout Social
Not only can video ads showcase your products/services in action (think quick demos and product displays like the one in the image above) but it can also highlight the buying benefits that can’t be effectively communicated with image ads.
We know they work because a survey of a segment of Facebook users even found that 48% of users claimed to have purchased products/services after watching a company’s video.
Similarly, video ads can also be used to highlight positive customer testimonials and build trust in both your brand and the quality of your offerings.
Need more captivating ad creatives? Animated GIFs are a fun way to include graphics that capture users’ attention and explain the quirks of your brand.
Don’t know where to start? PosterMyWall offers easily customizable video poster templates that you can match to your brand’s messaging and theme. Use these templates to build your own video ads with little to no effort.
- Text: 90 characters
- Aspect ratios: 16:9 to 9:16
- File size up to 4 GB max
- Video content can go up to 120 minutes long. That said, 15-30 second videos prove the most effective
Carousel Ads
78% of American consumers say they discover new products from Facebook. Whether you need to highlight the benefits of a single product or an entire collection, a carousel ad is the ideal ad format to bring your offers to the spotlight.
They offer up to ten image or video slots for your ad and encourage audiences to interact with your promotion. This way, you get ample ad space to effectively convey your brand story – which also makes them popular among e-commerce advertisers.
Here are some tips to keep in mind when you create Carousel ads:
- Use images and videos that connect to engage your consumers. Ideally, you should use visual content that is aesthetically similar (such as color schemes, same shoot images).
- Images used in carousel ads that display too much text get less engagement. So get your ad approved before you launch it.
- Leverage product imagery when you need to target customers who already know and recognize your brand. On the other hand, use lifestyle imagery to reach out to prospects who are strangers to your brand.
- Showcase your best-performing carousel cards first. Facebook’s carousel format allows you to test multiple creatives simultaneously and place them based on performance.
- Pair your carousel ads with a landing page. So if you’re a business with a large inventory, your carousel ads should lead customers to product pages. But if you have a smaller catalog, use carousel cards to take them to smaller product segments.
Here are some specifications to keep in mind when creating Facebook Carousel ads:
- Recommended size: 600 x 600 or 1080 x 1080 pixels
- Text: 90 characters
- Link Description: 30 characters
- Headline: 25 characters
Tip: Would you click on your own ads? Before you launch your Facebook advertising, use Social Media Mockup Generator like Canva to visualize your Facebook marketing campaigns.
Simply drag-and-drop your image into the placeholder, you’ll be able to create Facebook Carousel ad mockups in seconds and preview how your design looks like in Facebook.
Creating A Custom Audience
Facebook Custom Audiences allows you to have a laser-like focus on people who matter the most to your brand.
For every campaign you create, you’ll have the option to pick one of your pre-defined Custom Audiences to target. You can also create a new one at any time.
Here, Customer Lists can be created using “identifiers” such as the consumers’ email, phone number, or address. This enables marketers to find the audiences for their ads.
Additionally, you can create a Custom Audience of consumers who have subscribed to your weekly newsletter or visited your website recently. Then, you proceed to encourage these individuals to follow your Facebook business page.
Also, try improving your conversion rate by selling to active subscribers (especially to those who click-through). Not only will they have heard of your brand, but they’ll stand as engaged users who frequently participate in your posts. Consequently, you can create a Custom Audience of audience members who have already made purchases from your brand.
By targeting people who already know your brand, you will have an audience that’s more willing to listen to your message. This could be anyone that has visited your website or liked a boosted post but yet to engage with the brand in a meaningful manner. Here are a few things you will want to keep in mind for whenever you create Custom Audiences on Facebook, so you can ensure you’re targeting the right people:
- To create custom audiences, you need to have a Facebook Business Manager account. If you have not created one already, you’ll see a prompt encouraging you to do so.
- Custom Audience requires a minimum of 20 people to sample so that Facebook can serve ads to them. Try expanding your email list or running ads to send traffic to your web before you set up Custom Audiences.
- You might not be capable of pulling in all of your customers and prospects into a Custom Audience. Why? Not every website visitor is logged in to Facebook when they come across your site. Likewise, subscribers might’ve joined your email list using a different email than the one tied to their Facebook account. It’s important to know that small Custom Audiences are to be expected in these circumstances.
Retargeting Ads, When They Work Best
There’s plenty of reasons why prospects abandon carts. Sometimes they forget to make it through or don’t have their credit cards handy, so they choose to make their purchase another time.
If they added a product to their cart, there’s a good chance the prospect wants to buy the item. Your job as a marketer is to send them soft reminders with a targeted Facebook ad to complete their purchase. And do this before they have the opportunity to research a better offer from a competitor.
That’s retargeting for you!
A retargeted ad is basically like dropping by and saying, “Hey, remember that product you wanted to buy earlier? Well, it’s now or never!”
Facebook Pixel is a tool you can use to achieve this goal. Use it to serve powerful ads to audiences whose actions demonstrate an interest in your products and services.
How does it work? The Facebook Pixel is a snippet of code that marketers can insert into the back end of all relevant pages they want to track. From there, you can create audiences and remarket your products they showed interest in.
Not only does the retargeting pixel drive and decode key performance metrics specifically to help you determine ROI, but it also aids in optimizing your Facebook marketing initiatives.
So, if your advertising goal is to drive visitors to a landing page where you sell the product, you might want to install Facebook Pixel on the product, checkout, and “Thank You” pages – as you’ll have to track three different groups during the campaign.
Users Who Click-Through But Don’t Progress To The Sales Page
This audience segment comprises of people who click on your ad and will evaluate your campaign landing page – and still don’t make a purchase. Here, the Facebook Pixel categorizes them so that you can target them with customized ads that re-engage their interest in the post-click landing page.
Users Who Click Through To The Sales Page But Don’t Make A Payment
These are people who enjoy the benefits of your products/services but are afraid of giving out their credit card information. In this event, the Facebook pixel on your website’s checkout page will find them and draw them back to your site to complete the purchase.
At this stage, advertising a small discount or a freebie could potentially seal the deal and convince them to go back to your site and check out.
Users Who Make It To The Checkout Process
The final Facebook pixel is one that appears on your “Thank You” page, where it categorizes customers to exclude them from your other retargeting ads. It ensures that you aren’t frustrating consumers with ads that no longer apply to them as they’ve already claimed your offer.
Ad Creative And Copywriting
Your Facebook ad copywriting determines the success of your digital ad campaigns.
If a user scrolls through their feed and your ad doesn’t catch their eye, they won’t click – and they definitely won’t convert. Remember, your goal isn’t to sell. Instead, it’s about convincing users to click-through and dive into your offerings as a whole.
Try to be concise and clear about why they should click. Here, freebies and discounts do well to entice audiences to follow through on your CTAs (Calls to Action). 39% of users say they follow Facebook brand pages specifically to receive special offers.
Facebook ads have several fields where you can place the text. However, we recommend you put the UVP (Unique Value Proposition) in the ad image itself, so users get the message right away.
As a best practice, you should aim to have several different ad descriptions and headlines before you start designing creative. This ensures that you have different options available when finalizing the post, as opposed to hurrying to put together a description when posting content.
With alternatives on offer, you can easily choose the best-fit that aligns with your post.
Facebook offers a ton of great options for automated ad copy, especially if you’re targeting News Feed and Mobile Ads. You can easily pick CTAs from those provided by Facebook. These CTA buttons are incredibly effective at helping brands increase their CTR (Click-Through-Rate).
So if they match your product advertising, we strongly suggest you consider them.
Take the DoorDash ad above, for example. Not only does the copy make a clever pun that hits home, but it also effectively highlights the perks (free delivery) involved in placing orders through the app.
Test One Ad Element at a Time
When it comes to testing the effectiveness of your Facebook ads, split tests should be an integral part of your strategy from the get-go. Given that it allows you to create variations of which ad performs best at a given moment, you can easily change different elements at a time and see what works best.
For instance, you can take your best ad and make copies of it. From there, you can create varying headlines for each copy that you can test.
Once you determine which headline receives the best response, you can continue to make further copies and try a different element, such as the image or description.
Likewise, you’ll also want to test different placements, audiences, and delivery optimizations on differing campaigns as well. Facebook offers spectacular native split testing features that allow you to A/B test multiple creatives, placement options, and audience criteria.
Consequently, you can also choose multiple delivery optimization choices, allowing Facebook to test your theories and see what works.
Wrapping It Up
Approximately two billion Facebook users follow at least one small business on the social media platform.
With Facebook Ads, you have the opportunity to ensure that your business finds its fair share of followers and attracts them using the right incentives. Familiarizing yourself with the system and its best practices can help you leverage it in your brand’s favor.
Ultimately, the key to effective Facebook advertising is constant experimentation. Use multiple audiences, placements, and ad creative to get better results – which makes it all the more vital that you have a strong Facebook Ad strategy before getting started.
It’s an intricate process, no doubt about it. But it’s also one of the most rewarding, which makes it crucial that you don’t scrimp out.
However, at the same time, it is important to remember that you can only succeed in online marketing by testing new and interesting ways to connect with your audiences. Keep applying what you learn, and don’t assume something will work for you just because you heard it delivered for someone else.
Every business is unique. Only you know how yours works and what your customers and prospects respond to. Use this information to build Facebook ads, and your audience will come calling!
