Contents
- Why advertise on Facebook?
- Types of Facebook ads
- Facebook ads: Guidelines & Examples
- How to advertise on Facebook: Placing your ad
- Facebook advertising tools
- Facebook ads best practices
- Facebook advertising campaign ideas
01. Why advertise on Facebook?
At last count, more
than two billion people were using Facebook. And those users are highly engaged
with the content posted on the network: More than 800 million people like
something on Facebook every single day.
Of course, when it comes
to getting the biggest bang for your advertising buck, too large an audience
can actually be a bad thing. After all, you only want to pay to expose your
brand to people who might be interested in doing business with you.
Fortunately, Facebook offers multiple layers of targeting, so you can focus
your Facebook ads on exactly the right audience for your business to maximize
ROI.
We’ll get into the specifics
of targeting Facebook ads later on in this post, but for now keep in mind that
Facebook’s huge, global audience combined with the ability to target your ad by
demographics, location, interests, and behaviors allows you to access the exact
people who are most likely to want to buy your products or services.
02. Types of Facebook ads
Facebook offers 10
campaign objectives based on what you want your ad to accomplish. For each of
those objectives, you can choose various ad formats based on your chosen goal
and target audience.
Before we dig into some
specific Facebook ad examples and the technical requirements for each format,
let’s take a quick look at how the different types of Facebook campaigns align
with business goals:
- App installs: Encourage installations of your mobile or desktop app.
- Brand awareness: Introduce your brand to a new audience.
- Conversions: Get people to take a specific action on your website (like subscribe to your list or buy your product).
- Engagement: Expose a post to a wide audience to increase the number of Likes, comments, shares, or photo views; increase your number of Page Likes; promote an event.
- Lead generation: Get new prospects into your sales funnel.
- Reach: Expose your ad to as many people in your audience as possible.
- Product catalog sales: Connect your Facebook ads to your product catalog to show people ads for the products they are most likely to want to buy
- Store visits: Drive customers to brick-and-mortar stores.
- Traffic: Drive traffic to a specific webpage.
- Video views: Show your video to a large audience to increase brand awareness
03. Facebook ads: Guidelines and examples
Now that you understand
the various Facebook campaign objectives, let’s explore the various Facebook advertising
formats.
Photo Facebook ads
- Facebook ad specs: One image plus text
- Campaign types: All except video views
- Facebook ad image sizes: 1200 x 628 pixels
- Text limit: 90 characters
- Headline text limit: 25 characters
Note: Since Facebook doesn’t
want people’s newsfeeds to be filled with text-heavy images screaming for
attention, you need to keep your text overlays to less than 20 percent of your
image. (This also applies to video thumbnails.) In fact, the less text there is
on your image, the more widely it
will be distributed.
Video Facebook ads
- Facebook ad specs: One video plus text
- Campaign types: All
- Facebook ad image sizes (thumbnail): Minimum width 600 pixels; match length to video aspect ratio
- Text limit: 90 characters
- Headline text limit: 25 characters
- Facebook ad dimensions: Video aspect ratio of 16:9 (full landscape) or 1:1 (square) for all objectives; other aspect ratios available for specific campaign types
- Maximum video length: 120 minutes
Video ads can create
massive engagement—if they’re done right. A video about bread could be, well, a
little boring. Not this one! At the time of writing, this Facebook video ad for
Dave’s Killer Bread had more than 2,500 shares and more than 1,200 comments.
Slideshow Facebook ads
- Facebook ad specs: A video automatically created from up to 10 still images
- Campaign types: All except post engagement and product catalog sales
- Facebook ad image sizes: 1280 x 720 pixels
- Text limit: 90 characters
Active wear company
Carbon38 found that compared to Facebook photo ads, Slideshow ads saw an 85 percent increase in
return on ad spend and had a 40 percent higher click-through rate.
Facebook Carousel ads
- Facebook ad specs: Up to 10 photos or videos plus text
- Campaign types: All except post engagement and product catalog sales
- Facebook ad image sizes: 600 x 600 pixels
- Text limit: 90 characters
- Headline text limit: 40 characters (for images) or 25 characters (for video)
- Maximum video length: Two minutes combined
The knitting and crochet
supply site Kittery uses Carousel ads to re target potential customers with
products they have already viewed on the Kittery website, resulting in a 3.4 times return on ad
spend.
Facebook Collection ads
- Facebook ad specs: A mobile-only ad format that showcases multiple products or features
- Campaign types: Conversions, traffic
- Facebook ad image sizes: 1200 x 628 pixels
- Facebook ad dimensions: Video aspect ratio of 16:9 (full landscape) or 1:1 (square)
- Headline text limit: 25 characters
- Maximum video length: 120 minutes
Facebook Canvas ads
- Facebook ad specs: An immersive ad format incorporating text, up to 20 photos, and video
- Campaign types: Brand awareness, conversions, engagement
- Facebook ad size: Full screen
- Facebook ad image sizes: 66 x 882 pixels (header); 1080 x 1920 pixels (full-screen image)
- Text limit: 500-character text bock
The Montana Office of
Tourism Development used Canvas to highlight the region’s stunning scenery and
ski destinations and increased their
click-through rate by 7.5 times.
Facebook
Lead ads
- Facebook ad specs: A pre-filled lead form that makes it easy to connect people with your business
- Campaign types: Lead generation
- Facebook ad image sizes: 1200 x 628 pixels
- Headline text limit: 45 characters
- Button text limit: 25 characters
Maserati USA used lead ads to collect 21,000 leads, resulting in sales of 127 vehicles
04. How to advertise on Facebook: Placing your ad
If you already have a
Facebook business page (and you should), you can head straight to the Facebook Ads
Manager to create your Facebook ad campaign. If you don’t yet have a business
page, you’ll need to create one first.
Step 1:
Choose your campaign objective
Choose your campaign
objective based on the most important metrics for your business and your goals for this particular ad.
Keep
in mind that for conversion-oriented objectives you can pay per action, but for
exposure objectives you will pay for impressions.
Step 2:
Target your audience
Remember: Effective
targeting is key to maximizing ROI—and there’s no shortage of ways to target
your audience on Facebook. In addition to targeting by location, gender, and
online behaviors, you can hone your audience based on the following:
- Connections: You can target people who are either connected or not connected to your Facebook Page. If you want to reach a new audience, under Detailed Targeting, choose select “Exclude people who like your Page.” If you want to promote an offer or new product, select “People who like your Facebook Page” to reach people who already know your brand.
- Custom Audiences: You can build your own audience of people who have already interacted with your business on or off Facebook. Facebook has a good step-by-step guide on how to do this.
- Lookalike Audiences: This lets you target people who are similar to your existing most valuable audiences. Here’s how to set-up a Lookalike Audience
Step 3:
Set your budget and schedule
Next, you decide how much
money you want to spend on your Facebook ad. You can choose a daily or lifetime
budget, then set the start and end dates if you want to schedule your ad in the
future, or choose to place it live right away.
Step 4:
Create your Facebook ads
One option is to promote
an existing post. If you would prefer instead to create a new ad, first choose
your ad format, then enter the text and media components for your ad. Making
sure you conform to the Facebook ad image sizes mentioned above for each
format.
05. Facebook advertising tools
Hootsuite
Ads
Rather than placing each
ad manually, with Hootsuite Ads, you can create and test
hundreds of ads in minutes, automatically boost budgets based on performance
triggers, and control who can create and edit campaigns.
You can also choose
organic posts to promote directly within the Hootsuite dashboard, so you can
extend the reach of your best-performing content.\
AdEspresso
While Hootsuite Ads is an
enterprise-grade solution, AdEspresso by Hootsuite is
a self-serve social ad management solution designed specifically for small and
mid-sized organizations. It also allows you to create ads and monitor the
results directly from the Hootsuite dashboard.
06. Facebook ads best practices
Keep these important
strategies in mind to make the most of your Facebook advertising efforts.
Experiment
with audience targeting
Start with a narrow
audience and then broaden it slowly by adding one interest category at a time.
For example, you could start with an audience specifically interested in “Napa
Valley wine tours” and then broaden after a few weeks, adding “wine tasting,”
“food and wine,” and so on. That way, you’ll have a good idea of what’s moving
the needle.
If you have a local
business, you can target your audience by zip or postal code. This is also
helpful if you know a particular city or neighborhood converts well.
PRO TIP: Mikie Basi, a digital
marketing strategist at Hootsuite, offers this advice: “Always test different
types of targeting to find the best audience for your products. Experiment with
interest categories, friends of followers, and website audience lookalikes. Run
them in separate ad sets to determine which is the top performer.”
Rotate your
ads regularly
“Ad fatigue”—or reduced
engagement—can occur when people see the same ad too many times. Rather than
bombarding your audience with the same ad over and over, switch it up so they
are exposed to different elements of your brand offering. Facebook recommends switching your ad
once every one to two weeks.
Test
everything
Facebook ads are a perfect
venue for learning what resonates best with your audience, from ad format to
image style to hashtags to length of copy and tone of voice. Since testing is
such an important topic.
Use a
Facebook Pixel
A Facebook pixel is a
small piece of code that can have a big impact on your Facebook advertising
campaigns. Once you place the code on your website, it will allow you to track
conversions, remarket to people who have viewed a product on your website, and
create lookalike audiences.
We’ve got a blog post to
help you get set up with the Facebook pixel: The Facebook Pixel: What
It Is and How to Use It.
Include a
call to action
You know what the goal of
your Facebook ad is—but do your viewers? Including a call to action (CTA)
ensures that the people who see your ad understand what the next step is in
developing a relationship with your company. Check out our guide on how to create effective
CTAs.
Use
top-notch photos and video
You know what’s a turnoff?
Blurry photos. Or pixelated photos. Or jumpy videos that make you feel motion
sick. Your words are important, sure, but your visuals are what will first grab
viewers’ attention and create the first impression.
Make sure you comply with
the Facebook ad image sizes for each format, specified above, for the best
results. These
free stock photo websites can help you source high-quality images to use in your
ads.
If you sell a product, Facebook recommends that you try using photos showing people using and benefitting from your product, rather than an image of the product all by its lonesome.
If you sell a product, Facebook recommends that you try using photos showing people using and benefitting from your product, rather than an image of the product all by its lonesome.
07. Facebook advertising campaign ideas
Raring to go but not sure
what you should promote with your Facebook ads? We’ve put together three
campaign strategies to get your started.
Facebook
advertising strategy 1: Collect an email
Unless you’re a marketing
magician, it’s pretty hard to get people to buy from you the first time you
wave to them in a Facebook ad.
For products that take
longer to sell, email is your best friend. Facebook makes it pretty simple to
collect new email leads. With software such as MailChimp, you can send out
automatic emails (say, one email every few days). This helps you build trust
and introduce people to your brand before you pitch your product.
STEP 1: In Facebook Ads Manager,
choose “Lead Generation” as your campaign objective.
STEP 2: When you create your
lead form, choose fields that align with the fields on your email list. Keep it
simple: first name, last name, and email address.
STEP 3: Use the tool Zapier to
automatically send email sign-ups from your Facebook campaigns to your email
provider, such as MailChimp. You’ll need to sign up for a Zapier account and
connect Facebook to Zapier. Here’s
a step-by-step guide for MailChimp users.
STEP 4: Do a quick test to make
sure data is passing between Facebook and MailChimp.
STEP 5: Launch your ad campaign
and watch the emails come rolling in. If you want to get more sophisticated,
you can set up a custom automated email sequence in your email provider for
Facebook leads. Below is a quick email strategy to use. You can sequence these
emails a few days apart:
Automated Email No. 1—Share something really
valuable that connects to the problem your product solves (example: a food
truck could share a map of all the best restaurants in the city). No product
pitch. Just value. You’re training prospects to open your emails.
Automated Email No. 2—Tell an interesting story
that connects to your product. For example, the food truck could talk about how
they couldn’t find a good Pho/Italian fusion restaurant and so quit their
corporate jobs and created their food truck, Pho Get About It.
Automated Email No. 3—Share another valuable
resource (such as five mistakes people make when cooking spicy chicken at
home). No product pitch.
Automated Email No. 4—Make an offer such as a
discount for their first visit.
Automated Email No. 5—Make the same offer again
but tell an interesting and useful story as the lead.
The goal is always the
same: train people to open your emails by offering valuable content and then
make the occasional product pitch.
The Milwaukee Bucks NBA
team used
this strategy to
boost its season ticket sales. The team ran lead ads targeted to Custom
Audiences of past season ticket holders, fans of their Facebook Page, and other
existing leads.
They also used lookalike
audiences modeled on current season ticket holders, while excluding current
ticket holders so they would not waste ad exposure on people who had already
purchased their tickets.
Finally, they used
interest targeting (sports fans) and location targeting to make sure people who
saw the ads would be interested in the team and able to make it to the games if
they bought tickets.
The collected leads went
directly into the team’s CRM and kicked off a series of emails. After the email
series, sales reps followed up in person with those who had not bought tickets.
The
results? The team saw a 25 percent higher email
open rate than usual and more than double their usual email
click-through rate, with 33 percent of leads buying the advertised ticket
packages and 20 buying upgraded tickets
Facebook
advertising strategy 2: Convert a proven piece of content into a video ad
Every brand has a few
killer pieces of content that drive the lion’s share of traffic each month.
Adapting that content into a short video aimed at Facebook audiences can be a
great way to repackage top content for Facebook ads.
STEP 1: Distill the key ideas
from your content piece into a few key points you can express in a few words
each, or think about ways to convey the same key messages through your visuals.
Make sure your call to action matches your video content.
STEP 2: Use one of these social video tools to create your
video, or create a slideshow video ad in Facebook Ads
Manager.
STEP 3: In Facebook Ads Manager,
select “Video Views” as your campaign objective. Upload your video directly to
Facebook and push the campaign live.
PRO TIP: What types of videos
work best on Facebook? How can you take someone from a video view to a lead or
sale? We created a video strategy kit for marketers, showing what types of videos work best on social media and what
to measure.
Facebook
advertising strategy 3: Drive a direct sale
If you have a good
product, there’s no reason why Facebook can’t generate direct sales. But when
asking for a direct sale, you need trust—so if you’re an unknown brand with an
untested product, it’s probably best to test the first two Facebook advertising
strategies first.
If you’re confident that
people will buy your product directly from a Facebook ad and you have a proven
product with sales, test this strategy and be sue to measure your results.
STEP 1: In Facebook Ads Manager,
select “Conversions” as your campaign objective.
STEP 2: Next, Facebook will ask
you which type of conversion event you want to track, such as adding products
to a shopping cart or adding payment information. Since you’re trying to drive
a direct sale, select “Purchase.” You’ll need to install a Facebook Pixel to track a visitor from your Facebook ad all the way
through your shopping cart process to purchase.
STEP 3: Create your ad with
simple and clear copy. What do you offer and how is it different? Give people a
reason to buy from this specific ad. For example, maybe you bundle another
product as a freebie, or include a training webinar. You want people to stop
what they are doing and click from your ad to your shopping cart.
STEP 4: Wait and track. Give
your campaign at least two weeks before making any
changes to copy or
creative. Depending on your traffic volume, this should give you enough data to
make an educated decision about what’s working, or what changes you might want
to test.
Charge Cords used Facebook
ads to drive direct sales from new customers, using Custom Audiences to exclude
people who had already bought from them in the last six months. They used
Carousel ads with eye-catching product shots and compelling ad copy, along with
a Shop Now call-to-action button. As the campaign continued, they updated the
Custom Audience to target people who had visited the Charge Cords website.
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