If you wish to reach out to your target audience in the quickest way possible, Facebook ads are the way to go!
However, the organic reach of Facebook ads has trickled down significantly over the past few years. Thus, several organizations have to shell out big bucks for paid promotion. Naturally, content marketing teams are pressed to make smart and strategic decisions for maximum impact and to extract the highest possible ROI.
To help you in this quest, here is an elaborate guide on how to make your Facebook ads stand out as a brand:
Identify the Campaign Objectives
Before you even start the conceptualization of the Facebook video ad, it is essential to know why you are creating it in the first place. If you start spending on social media ads without having any clear goal in mind, it will only result in the loss of money and time.
Typically, social media advertisements serve the following purposes:
- Boost traffic
- Boost visibility
- Boost engagement
- Boost lead generation
- Boost sales
While a single campaign cannot address all these goals, organizations must prioritize and choose the high-ranking issues to attack first. Implement a SMART strategy and build on it to determine the metrics that will define the performance of your campaign.
Create an Ideal Customer Profile
To ensure that your ads are directed at the ones that will bring you more business, you need to start by defining what your ideal customer looks like. A perfect buyer’s persona answers the who, why, what, and when of your business goals.
Typically, demographics like age, sex, and location play a vital role in narrowing down your intended buyer. The audience persona does not necessarily have to be a single pool but can be further segmented into various verticals.
For example, if you’re a property dealer in Coachella Valley, California, you will have to run real estate facebook ads for your local regions to reach your target audience. Further, you will have to address customers who can indeed afford to purchase a household in the said locality.
Types of Social Media Ads
Next, you need to identify the social media platform that is apt for your audience.
You need to identify a suitable ad format, which could be in the form of podcasts, videos, images, etc. There are several types of ads, such as stories, carousel ads, collections, promoted posts, bumper ads, and so much more!
Sounds confusing, right?
If you’re struggling with narrowing down to an ad format for Facebook, here’s a pro tip: Consumers love videos.
Visual content is the best way to grab your customer’s attention. For instance, you can post videos as Facebook video ads while use images of the video in your Instagram stories. Just make it a point to give the recycled content a few tweaks to avoid duplicate content, and you could reuse it for other social media campaigns.
Create the Ad
As stated previously, video is the best way to engage your audience. So now is the time for some lights, camera, and action.
You do not need any high production value videos to connect with your audience. Interestingly, something as simple as a slideshow with music can help strike a chord with the viewers.
Do play close attention to the script or the content that will play out in the video. If things are fun and casual, you can add a dash of humor. Conversely, if you wish to maintain professionalism, you could keep things strictly work-related.
Ultimately, your Facebook ad should be in conformance with your brand voice. Additionally, ad creators must make use of a consistent brand logo or other related markers so that even though they are cross-posted on other social media platforms, they can be traced to your company.
Most importantly, optimizing ads to play on mobile or load quickly, even for devices with slow internet speed is a must. Almost 98% of Facebook users access the app through a mobile phone or a similar device. You do not want to miss out on the opportunity to convert them into customers.
Facebook image ads support .JPG and .PNG formats with an image ratio of 16:9 to 9:16 (if you include a link, crop the image to 1.91:1). The recommended size is 1200 x 628 pixels and 1080 x 1920 pixels for stories.
Thus, the size of the ad must abide by the dimensions stipulated by the platform. An image that you may use as a Facebook cover photo would naturally not fit in your Instagram story – So, optimize.
The ideal Facebook video ad must not be over 4GB, with a video ratio of 16:9 to 9:16. The length of the video ranges from 1 second to 240 minutes. Typically, it must show your product in action so viewers can see for themselves as to how the product operates and its final result.
Include a CTA
Make your ad stronger with a hard-hitting call-to-action button.
The CTA doesn’t necessarily have to be in your ad design, but must also be present in social ad caption. Through CTA buttons, viewers can seamlessly navigate to your official website without having to hunt for it separately. Highlight these CTAs with glitter, emojis, and arrows to encourage the users to click on it.
Track Performance and Report
With your ads circulating all over social media, you need to analyze how well your ad campaigning is going. It brings us to the moment of truth and the fruit of your labor – tracking ad performance. Facebook’s Ads Manager does an excellent job of tracking and reporting results.
Make use of the KPIs identified during the planning stage to measure the results. Some metrics that you could look out for include Impressions, Views, Clicks, Click-Through Rate (CTR), View rate, and Cost-Per View (CPV).
The value addition offered by the ads may be measured against these KPIs and reported accordingly. The report will also shed light on the targets that you have hit and the targets that you have missed out on.
In that way, you are in a better position to determine whether these ads are paying off or otherwise. As a consequence, you may modify your budget on the various ad campaigns.
Closing Thoughts
It is crucial to test out the many strategies to hone in on what is best for your business. The practical experience that companies gain through trial-and-error methods offer expertise in establishing the best practices for future campaigns. Hence, be unafraid to test and reengineer your Facebook ad campaigns constantly.
At the same time, be aware of not falling into the complacency trap as using the same thing over and over may no longer grab your audience’s attention. In this case, remember to shake things up and repurpose your ads!
Leave a Reply