The Ultimate Guide to Leveraging Facebook Ads

Since a US Senate hearing essentially forced Facebook’s hand to change the type of content shown in users’ news feeds, brands have seen a sharp decline in their engagement on the social media platform.

As reported by The Sydney Morning Herald, Facebook’s pivot to prioritize content from friends and family have caused publishers up to 50 percent in traffic decline.

But because of the fact that the social media giant still has a massive 2 billion users, it’s virtually impossible for brands to not tap into the marketing possibilities that Facebook advertising techniques still holds. As such, the slow death of brands’ organic reach forced businesses to be more considerate of their Facebook Ads spend and strategies.

This article discusses the different types of Facebook Ads campaigns and provides tips on how to best leverage Facebook Ads, along with a few of brands’ best practices.

First off, what are Facebook Ads?

They’re basically ad content that can appear in News Feed on desktop or mobile, and in the right column of Facebook on desktop versions.

The content can be paired with news about social actions that a users’ connections have made (such as liking a page). Then, when users take action on Facebook Ads, their friends can also be shown news about those social actions.

Recommended: Basic Advantage and Disadvantage of Facebook Ads

How does it work and why should you use it?

As pointed out by Shopify, Facebook has a unique value proposition in that apart from being a place where people connect with friends and family, it’s also a platform where businesses can generate curiosity, interest, and ultimately, sales of their products – both with previous customers and those who would’ve otherwise not even know about your brand. It’s a platform where you can showcase your product to the world, and how it can bring additional value to someone’s life.

Instead of answering a demand like you would on Google AdWords, Facebook Ads allow you to generate it.

3 Types Of Facebook Ad Campaigns

1. Awareness stage

In this type of campaign, the goal is essentially to increase your Facebook page visibility, which would then eventually result in increased engagement and getting impressions from users who don’t currently follow you on Facebook.

Some of the things you can do at this stage include:

• Boosting your posts
• Promoting your page
• Reach people located near your business

2. Consideration stage

As noted by Big Commerce, this stage is any part of the funnel when users take the next step by performing actionsthat ares akin to asking brands to give them more information.

This kind of ads are intended to accomplish things like:

• Sending people to your website
• Get them to install an app
• Download content
• RSVP to an event

3. Conversion stage

Basically, this stage is where the goal is to get quantifiable revenue-generating activities. Some of the things that can be accomplished at this stage include:

• Increasing conversions on your website
• Increasing in-app engagement
• Having offers claimed
• Promoting product catalogs

10 Tips On How To Make Facebook Ads that Work

1. Showcase high-quality images

You want people to pay attention to your image—not its quality. So focus on using high-quality imagesa to call people’s attention and encourage them to engage with you.

2. Grab their attention

Images with high color saturation usually stand out against Facebook’s white background. You can use tools like Pixc Photos or Pixelz to remove your image background and give it a bit more pop.

3. Mind your specs

In the same vein, you need to be mindful of Facebook’s recommended image width of 600 pixels. You can’t have the best quality image if your image ends up getting resized.

4. Keep images fresh in their eyes

This is particularly important when you’re targeting the same audience for an extended period of time. If they keep on seeing the same image, it will slowly fail to grab the customer's attention and your engagement will inevitably drop. When you notice a drop in engagement, consider changing up your photos.

5. Minimize image text

Facebook disapproves ads using images with text covering over 20 percent of the image area. Use your words wisely. You can use Facebook’s text overlay tool to determine if the ratio of text-to-image is high or adequate.

6. Keep it short

It’s hard enough to get people to notice you in Facebook’s ocean of content; it’s virtually impossible to have them read an essay about your brand. Around 25 characters for the headline and 90 characters for the body copy is generally recommended.

7. Think of a compelling headline

Just like how a good email subject line could spell the difference between an email getting read and deleted, your facebook ad headline could be what grabs your audience’s attention or what keeps them scrolling mindlessly. Think of a compelling one that uses creative yet simple and direct language to let them know exactly what you want them to do.

8. Include product in the headline

Similarly, you want the name of your product (or brand) in the headline for audiences to know exactly what you’re selling (and who’s selling it).

9. Tell them what makes you unique

What value can you add to someone’s life? Why should they choose you? Be it the top notch quality of your product or its unequaled price point, make sure you let them know what separates you from the rest.

10. Stay on brand

This means being consistent in your branding (color scheme, images, and voice) across different channels, so not only can audiences recognize you, they are more likely to trust you. Say, you have a Facebook ad with an image (or video), make sure that the designated landing pages contain the same images, color schemes, and voice.

Examples Of Successful Facebook Ads Campaigns

Check out some Facebook ads examples that really successful by their own way. You also get to know how does facebook personalized ads really works.

1. Worldwide Breast Cancer

It may not seem like a good idea to make light of such a serious topic, but that’s exactly what global charity Worldwide Breast Cancer’s #KnowYourLemons campaign did.

Using colorful images of lemons to represent breasts, they were able to build awareness on the importance of checking for signs of breast cancer, whilst alleviating the anxieties surrounding it. Amazingly, with just three Facebooks posts, the campaign was able to reach 7.3 million people.

How they did it

The imagery of lemons representing 12 different symptoms to remind women to regularly check their breasts wasn’t only a playful spin, it also cleverly sidestepped censorship rules. The equal parts playful and catchy hashtag #KnowYourLemons also made performance tracking that much easier.

2. Visa’s appeal to the youth

Global payment tech company Visa set out to target younger audiences by promoting its online and mobile payment ecosystem. Using quick videos like this, their campaign saw a seven-point lift in ad recall, 4.7 times video views, seven times lower cost per video, and 83 percent on average of videos watched.

How they did it

Visa did a great job of showing the interesting things and fun places their audience could go to using Visa’s products. And in videos just under 15 seconds, they were also able to show how easy it was to use. It’s not easy for an established brand to rebrand itself as a cool brand, but that’s exactly what Visa was able to accomplish.

3. Kitterly’s stitched up strategy

Knitting and crochet e-commerce company Kitterly optimized all their marketing goals (awareness, traffic, sales) for conversions, varying offers depending on their targets with “View Content,” “Complete Registration,” and “Purchase.” They also used a variety of Facebook Ads—link, carousel, and video to both retarget and personalize ads for each individual’s experience.

What they were able to achieve was impressive—3.4 times return on ad spend, 2.2 times increase in revenue, and 24 percent more web sessions.

How they did it

Essentially, Kitterly stuck to conversion as the goal, but with different CTAs to ensure that too much wasn’t asked from cold audiences. They also tapped into several targeting methods, and let their testing guide them into what works.

Takeaway:

As with any marketing campaign, setting clear goals is key to measuring any modicum of success. As well, with the plethora of options and features Facebook Ads provides, you need to continually experiment, test, and measure elements of your marketing campaign to determine which one works best for your brand.

Have you thought about using Facebook Ads? What are some of the goals you’d like to accomplish using it?

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