A Brief Guide to Spectacular Facebook Ads

Are you advertising your business on social media? If not, you should be. Social media provides businesses with a unique opportunity to get noticed and connect with consumers. Facebook is especially popular, despite some of its hiccups lately. If you want to start advertising on Facebook, you do not just want to jump in and hope for the best. You want spectacular ads that will help you accomplish your goals. So what do you need to be doing to create stunning Facebook ads?

Why Advertise on Facebook?

First of all, why should you use Facebook when advertising your business? To understand the answer, you need to realize that the primary purposes of marketing are to make your business visible to consumers and convince them to become paying customers. Facebook gives you access to a massive audience. With almost 3 billion active users, there are many potentials there for you to tap into. While the size of your audience isn’t the only thing that matters, it does have a role to play.

Aside from having access to a global audience, Facebook also allows you to target specific groups of people. Not everyone will be interested in what your business is offering, which means finding the people interested is essential. Thanks to all of Facebook’s data about its users, you can target specific groups with your marketing campaigns. This is a great way to improve the effectiveness of your marketing.

What Do Facebook Ads Cost?

There are not any marketing methods that are 100% free. Every one of them will cost you in either money, time, or both. Still, prices are not always firmly fixed. The cost of advertising on Facebook is dependent on factors such as the timing (month, day, or even hour), your bidding strategy, your ad placement, its relevance, and your target audience. Overall, it would be reasonable for your average cost per click to be anywhere from $0.15-$1.05. It is quite the price range once you start looking at just how many clicks your ads could be getting, but given all the variables, it makes sense. Last year, the cost-per-like on Facebook fluctuated between $0.15 and $0.28.

Types of Facebook Ads

Did you know that there are different types of ads you can put on Facebook? The types of ads you can put on Facebook include:

Image ads – ads composed of a single photo with a caption.
Video ads – ads in the form of a video that can run in news feeds, stories, or in-stream ads in longer videos.
Poll ads – an interactive mobile-only format that encourages consumer interaction by prompting them to respond to a two-option poll.
Carousel ads – a series of up to 10 images or videos that are used to showcase multiple products or services or to highlight different features or benefits of a single product.
Slideshow ads – a type of video ad that uses far less data; a video comprised of a collection of photos, text, or video clips.
Collection ads – a mobile-only ad format that showcases up to five clickable images or videos that allow a customer to buy something without actually leaving Facebook.
Instant Experience ads – a full-screen format that loads faster than mobile sites outside of Facebook (previously called Canvas).
Lead ads – another mobile-only ad format; specifically designed to allow you to collect consumer contact information without requiring a ton of typing on the part of the consumer.
Dynamic ads – a type of ad that promotes targeted ads to customers who are most likely to be interested in what is offered.
Messenger ads – ads that use Facebook Messenger as the placement location so that they show up in a consumer’s messages.
Stories ads – mobile-only, full-screen vertical video ads.
Augmented reality ads – ads that use filters and animation to encourage consumer interactions with the ad and brand.

Facebook Ad Specifications

Keeping on top of ad specifications is essential when advertising on Facebook. It helps you put together ads that will work the way you want them to. The specs for text and objective will vary, depending on the type of ad you are running.

Image ads – Limit the headline to 40 characters and the link description to 30 characters. Body text should be limited to 125 characters. This type of ad works for any objective except for video views.
Video ads – Limit the headline to 40 characters and the link description to 30 characters. Body text should be limited to 125 characters. This type of ad works for pretty much any objective except for catalog sales.
Stories ads – There is no set character limit, but you should aim to leave 250 pixels of space free of text at the top and bottom of the ad.
Carousel ads – Limit the headline to 40 characters and the link description to 20 characters. Body text should be limited to 125 characters. This type of ad works for any objective except for engagement and video views.
Slideshow ads – Limit the headline to 25 characters and the link description to 30 characters. Body text should be limited to 125 characters. This type of ad works for pretty much any objective.
Collection ads – Limit the headline to 40 characters. Body text should be limited to 125 characters. This type of ad works for traffic, conversions, catalog sales, and store traffic objectives.
Instant Experience ads – Blocks of text can contain up to 500 words each, with 30 characters for the button text. This type of ad works for any objective except for lead generation.
Messenger Inbox ads – Limit the headline to 40 characters. Body text should be limited to 125 characters. This type of ad works for traffic, app installations, conversions, catalog sales, and messages objectives.

Must-Haves of an Effective Ad

Now that you are a little more familiar with some of the basics for Facebook ads, let’s take a look at what it takes to have an ad that will be effective. After all, there’s no point in running a Facebook marketing campaign if you do not think it will be effective.

Dedicated Landing Page

The ad you put up on Facebook is only the beginning. It is what catches people’s interest. Most ads will not be enough to convert a consumer into a customer by themselves (with collection ads being something of an exception). You need a dedicated landing page ready for consumers once they have clicked on your ad. The page should be targeted to the consumer based on their age, gender, and interests and should be focused on the problem you are trying to solve.

Performance Tracking

To make sure your ad is performing the way you want it to, you need to be able to track its performance. Facebook Ads Manager and Google Analytics are your allies in this. Facebook Ads Manager collects data on how people interact with your ads on Facebook, and Google Analytics can help you with data collected once people are on your site. Be sure to pay attention to your click-through rate.

Eye-Catching Image

You can have the best text in the world, but that is not what will draw attention to your ad. Any Facebook advertising specialist can tell you that the image that accompanies the ad will catch the eye of consumers first. Remember, people tend to be visual creatures. You need an image that will encourage them to pay attention to you. Make sure your chosen image is high quality and something you have the right to use. The image you choose should make sense within the context provided by the rest of the ad. Feel free to get a little creative with this. In many cases, it can be more effective to match a literal headline with a more symbolic image or vice versa.

Conversational Headline

Facebook is a place where people go to connect with other people. If you are planning to run a Facebook ad campaign for your small business, you need to think of your ad as something that comes from a real person. Part of what that means is making your headline more conversational and as straightforward as possible. That way consumers are less likely to find you annoying as they scroll through their news feed.

Clear and Simple Call to Action

Any ad should come with a call to action. It directs the consumer towards what you want them to do next. For your call to action to be effective, it must be clear and straightforward. Your call to action should make sense for what you are trying to accomplish with your ad. Make sure you clearly understand its purpose and use that to help you craft a clear call to action.

A Targeted Audience

No small business has an unlimited marketing budget, which means you need to make the most of every dollar you spend on your Facebook ads. That is why targeting is crucial for creating an effective Facebook ad. If you are not sure how to get started with targeting, you may find that creating a lookalike audience is an excellent place to start. Later on, you can refine your targeting further. Just make sure you use data as much as possible to inform your targeting efforts. It can be tempting to cast your net wide, but you will probably find that the more specific your targeting, the more conversions you can net.

A/B Testing

As much as you might wish it were otherwise, there are no guarantees when it comes to any sort of marketing. There are statistics and likelihoods, but any Facebook ad campaign will be subject to a certain degree of trial and error. To create an effective ad, you will need to do some testing. A/B testing is excellent for this because it makes it easier to identify the components of your ad that are effective and those that are less so. This type of testing, also called split testing, happens when you change a single aspect of the ad and see what happens as a result. This does two things for your ad: first, it helps you finetune your ad and make it more effective. Second, it helps keep your ad fresh, so it avoids ad fatigue more effectively.

Whether you are a nonprofit, eCommerce, or a traditional business, Facebook ads can do great things for your marketing efforts. This single platform allows you to connect with consumers, improve your visibility, generate leads, and much more. It is not an overnight thing, and it takes work, but the results can be even more spectacular than your ads. If you feel a little overwhelmed, then you can always hire a marketing agency specializing in Facebook ads or even a Facebook advertising specialist to handle all of it. You will enjoy all the benefits without putting in all the work yourself. If this sounds like a swell deal to you, talk to us today!