There's a lot to comb through if you're looking to master Facebook advertising. Honestly, it's pretty overwhelming.
Which brings us to the purpose of this article. Where to start ?
Well, we've done the groundwork. We've sorted through our Facebook ads, and brought out the best of the best. The perfect diamonds in the diamond field. The best.
Consider this blog a gateway to the most comprehensive Facebook advertising training manual in the world. Each tip, useful on its own, links to a quality, in-depth resource on how to implement that tip in your facebook advertising strategy new or existing.
Does this seem feasible to you? It's the case ! Let's grab it and tear it apart.
Types of Facebook Ads
1. Create an immersive experience with Facebook Canvas ads
If you have ever seen demonstrations of Facebook Canvas Ads in action, you may have been interested in the feature. But put off by the creation process which seems to take a long time. Canvas ads are a mix of video, still images, text, calls to action, and other interactive elements. Is the time spent worth the final product?
The statistics say yes.
When done well, advertisements Canvas can be very attractive. 53 % of users who open a Canvas ad view at least half of it, and the average viewing time per ad is impressive: 31 seconds. The reason ? The ability to mix multiple ad types (carousel ads, video ads, single image ads, etc.) allows for unparalleled storytelling capability. You can really immerse the user in your brand experience.
The actual creation process is also extremely modeled. Just drag collateral items into the Facebook UI and drop them in the right places. The models are as follows: Get New Customers (best for customer acquisition), Sell Products (best for e-commerce), and Showcase Your Business (best for brand awareness).
The other big value proposition of the Canvas ad format is the speed. Your products and registration forms open directly in Canvas, and it's almost instantly. There is no need to redirect people to landing pages that load slowly. Customers seamlessly bypass a critical step in the purchasing process.
2. Showcase your products with Facebook carousel ads
The carousel ads are custom designed to display multiple products (or multiple parts of the same product) in a single ad.
Carousel ads give advertisers the ability to display up to 10 images or videos, with 10 different CTAs, in a single ad and link to different landing pages from each carousel panel. They are effective on both desktop and mobile, and are available for most Facebook advertising objectives. So if you're not aiming for online sales, don't feel like your hands are tied.
3. Expand your reach with ads on page and message engagement
Do you already benefit from a significant number of likes on your company's Facebook page, but are you struggling to reach the majority of your followers? This is a common problem for many businesses.
No matter how engaging your Facebook posts are, Facebook's algorithm only grants limited exposure to your organic posts. So, if you have 100 likes on your page and you post something organically on your account, it's possible that only around 20 of your followers will see that post. Engagement ads for page posts offer a solid solution.
To set up engagement ads, simply choose the “Engagement” marketing objective. In this case, engagement includes comments, shares, likes, event responses and offer requests. By running engagement ads, you give your content an audience with people who already like, comment, and engage with it. You can also choose from Facebook's proverbial array of targeting options to get your content in front of new segments of the population who might be just as likely to like, share, etc.
4. Facebook Video Ads: Everyone Does It, And You Should Too
What's so great about Facebook video ads? First, buyers who watch videos are 1.81 times more likely to purchase than those who don't watch videos. On the other hand, the implementation process is as simple as setting up an advertising image. It's the creation of the video itself that could deter advertisers from getting into the video ad game. But even these advertisers could soon find themselves at a disadvantage. Views of branded video content on Facebook increased by 258 % in June 2017, and more than 500 million people watch videos on Facebook every day.
Facebook video ads can be up to 240 minutes long, so there's no real limit to the amount of storytelling you can fit into an ad spot. That said, it's best to keep it short and add captions. According to Facebook, captioned video ads increase video watch time by 12 TP3T on average.
5. Keep It Simple With Facebook GIF Ads
Common sense dictates that the shorter a video is, the easier it is to get prospects to watch it in full.
It turns out the statistics say the same thing:
This is exactly what GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) allows. Why make a 5-minute video to tell your brand story when you can elicit the reaction you're looking for in less than 10 seconds? GIFs are halfway between images and videos. These are essentially very short videos that loop, but don't require as much time and resources to make.
GIFs look great on cell phones and are easy to make. Using GIPHY's GIF Maker – or a more advanced tool like Snagit – you can easily download and crop videos into exportable GIFs.
Facebook GIF ads should be soft and subtle, but enough to grab your prospects' attention.
6. Earn leads with Facebook Lead Ads
Like canvas ads, facebook lead ads are a mobile-only solution. They were created so advertisers could avoid sending prospects to clunky mobile landing pages. Lead forms are great for collecting names and job titles, phone numbers, addresses, demographics—virtually any information that can be used to market or re-market your business. products. And because your form opens directly in the Facebook app, your prospects don't need to go to your website to provide this information.
Lead ads are cheap, effective, and most importantly, the contact information you collect can be used to create leads. custom remarketing audiences and the like.
Your Facebook Ads Account
7. Find insights with Facebook Analytics
Facebook Analytics is packed with useful features that allow you to see how prospects and customers interact with your website, app, Facebook page, and more. At F8, Facebook's annual developer conference, Facebook officials announced a number of new features for the already comprehensive Analytics suite. Among these, the following were essential:
- A new mobile app: Like Google Analytics, you can now review your paid social campaign metrics on your smart device.
- Of the auto-detected funnels: use artificial intelligence to find recurring paths users take on your site or app.
- Personalized information: add events in Facebook Analytics to generate personalized information.
Of course, no meaningful tracking can take place without the Facebook pixel.
Facebook Pixel is a simple snippet of code that, when implemented on your site pages, allows you to track conversions. Whether it's site traffic, content downloads or product purchases and attributing them to your ads.
8. Structure your account the right way
Are you confident in your AdWords skills and think it will translate into success in Facebook ads? Not so fast. AdWords and Facebook account structures have key differences, which are important to understand to get the most out of each platform. First, Facebook budgets are controlled at the ad set level, as opposed to the campaign level, which allows for much greater control over how much you spend on specific audiences. Our recipe for a successful account structure looks a little like this:
- Choose a campaign based on your specific marketing objective. If you want to drive traffic to your homepage in addition to app installs, create two different campaigns.
- Distribute ad sets based on fine-tuned targeting and budget.
- Circulate these ad sets through your existing campaigns to determine where your lowest cost per acquisition (CPA) is.
9. Don't worry if you're on a budget
To have a successful Facebook campaign, it's not so much about having a huge budget as it is about optimizing the one you have. With small budgets, optimization becomes more and more important. And to fully optimize your new or existing campaigns, you need to be very good with Google Analytics.
Audience targeting on Facebook
10. Master Facebook remarketing
You know that booze cruise deal that follows you all over the web? What about that pair of stylish shoes you added to your cart but forgot to buy? This is remarketing. Remarketing is so effective because it allows you to target users based on an action they have already taken on your website or social accounts. This way, you have the advantage of knowing how they have already interacted with your brand, and what part of the funnel they are in.
11. Familiarize yourself with Custom Audiences
For a more granular understanding of Facebook remarketing, you should familiarize yourself with Custom Audiences. Custom audiences allow you to target five different user segments:
- The customer file: Match email addresses, phone numbers, and Facebook user IDs to existing Facebook accounts and target those accounts.
- Website traffic: target people who have visited your website or specific pages on your site.
- Application activity: target people who have launched or interacted with your app or game.
- Offline activity: target people who have interacted with your business in-store, over the phone, or through other offline channels.
- Commitment : create a list of people who engage with your content on Facebook or Instagram.
With each of these segments, you have the option (highly recommended) to add behavioral, demographic, and interest targeting to refine your audience. Don’t just show your ads to prospects and customers who have already interacted with your brand. By adding traditional Facebook targeting to these lists, you will be able to reach the most qualified prospects.
Knowing how to create and run campaigns using Custom Audiences is the essence of Facebook remarketing. For tips on how to get the most out of your custom audiences and for information on how custom audiences will change in the coming months. Due to GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), Facebook is implementing a Custom Audiences permission tool which will ask you to provide proof of consent before using Custom Audiences (more information on this later).
12. Experiment with similar audiences
Facebook lookalike audiences fall between layered targeting (behavior, interest, and demographics) and remarketing (using custom audiences). Creating lookalike audiences involves leveraging the information you would use to create custom audiences to create audiences with similar characteristics, but representing a new segment of potential customers. These prospects have not yet interacted with your brand. But they are similar to those who did it.
13. Implement the Facebook Pixel
Here's a Facebook ads tip you don't want to miss. What is the Facebook pixel? Back then (2015), advertisers had to install multiple pixel codes on their website to track different conversion metrics. Every new landing page for every new promotion required a new pixel. A sustainable practice in small doses, but quite cumbersome as your advertising strategy became larger and more complex. Enter Facebook Pixel.
Like Custom Audiences, Lookalike Audiences are best used in conjunction with layered targeting. Adding layered targeting to lookalike audiences is an effective way to control audience size. For example, if you're concerned that your lookalike audience isn't qualified or is too large for your budget. Facebook also gives you the ability to manually increase audience size on a sliding scale of 1 to 10…
And thus create new audiences based on your initial audience. This option gives you the opportunity to reach new prospects. Prospects that are increasingly different from your original audience, but similar enough to be worth exploring.
14. Leverage audience data for audience building
Audience Insights is a tool that allows you to extract self-reported Facebook data (information provided by Facebook users when they fill out their profile) and third-party data (information such as household income, purchasing behavior, etc. obtained with external partners) to create new audiences. Where exactly does this data come from? Facebook gives you three options: get information from all Facebook users, people connected to your page, or an existing custom audience.
From there, like the process of creating a custom audience, you're going to want to overlay your audience's interests (like competitor pages!) and behaviors to refine your insights as much as possible.
15. Targeting behaviors, interests and demographics on Facebook
If you're a new business with marginal website traffic, you probably have few remarketing options. If so, your best option will be what's called manual, or layered, targeting. Manual targeting is the process of creating audiences based on:
- Behaviors: Reach users based on their purchasing behaviors, intent, device usage, and more.
- Interests: Reach users by looking at their interests, activities, pages they liked, and closely related topics.
- Demographics: Reach users based on location, age, gender, language, relationship status, and more.
The way it works when creating audiences with layered targeting is to start with broad targeting and then gradually move to more qualified and refined subsets. Since you're starting from scratch, your CPA will likely be a bit higher than if you were remarketing to a custom audience. But still, when done correctly, layered targeting can be an effective way to improve your sales funnel.
Create Effective Facebook Ads
16. Become Familiar with Dimension and Specification Requirements
What's worse than sending out an ad only to realize that part of the main image was cut off due to incorrect specifications? Probably several things, but you still shouldn't do it. Here is a brief summary of the ad specifications you should be aware of:
- Image ads: Size: 1200 X 628 pixels. Ratio: 1.91:1. Text: 90 characters. Title: 25 characters. Link description: 30 characters.
- Video Ads: Format: .mov or .mp4. Ratio: 16:9. Resolution: at least 720p. File size: 2.3 GB maximum. Thumbnail size: 1200 x 675 pixels. Text: 90 characters. Title: 25 characters. Link description: 30 characters.
- Carousel ads: Image size: 1080 x 1080 pixels. Image/video ratio: 1:1. Text: 90 characters. Title: 40 characters. Link description: 20 characters.
- Slideshow Ads: Size: 1289 x 720 pixels. Ratio: 16:9, 1:1, or 2:3. Text: 90 characters. Title: 25 characters. Link description: 30 characters.
If you follow these specifications, your ads will display correctly.
17. Create relevant Facebook ads
The Relevance Score is Facebook's measurement of the quality and engagement level of your ads. Your relevance score is important because it determines both your cost per click on Facebook and how often Facebook displays your ad. The relevance score exists on a scale of 1 to 10. 1 representing bad advertising, and 10 representing excellent advertising. The lower the relevance score, the less relevant the ad is to your audience, and the more you will have to pay to keep it in rotation.
Facebook evaluates your ad after it has been shown more than 500 times. However, this metric is not evaluated based on actual engagement, but based on what Facebook predicts will be engagement for your ad, based on the campaign objective and audience granularity. Some ways to improve your relevance score include hyper-specific targeting, testing, and creating great ads.
18. Not all Facebook ad placements are created equal
If the beginner advertiser opts for automatic ad placement, choosing to change the placement of your ads (see above) can have a big impact on the success of your campaign. You can run ads in four different places in Facebook:
- Facebook's mobile and desktop news feeds
- The audience network
- Messenger
And within these placements, you have three different options for the types of devices your ads will be served on:
- Mobile only
- Desktop only
- All Devices
Depending on the devices you choose, some Facebook ad placements may not be available to you. Additionally, some placements work better when used in conjunction with specific campaigns (traffic campaigns, engagement campaigns, etc.).
19. Compare your competitors
It’s not always about aiming for the lowest CPA possible – sometimes it helps to have something (or someone) to compare yourself to. Enter our very famous Facebook advertising benchmarks:
We drew on data from our many clients, including 256 accounts (representing $553,000 in overall spending on Facebook) across 18 different industries, to establish benchmarks for the following four metrics:
- Average click-through rate (CTR) on Facebook by industry
- Average cost per click (CPC) on Facebook by industry
- Average conversion rate (CVR) on Facebook by industry
- Average cost per action (CPA) on Facebook by industry
Whatever your industry (apparel, education, healthcare or real estate), you can leverage the data we've compiled in our Facebook advertising benchmarks to compare the performance of your Facebook ads to those of your competitors.
20. Beware of GDPR
You've probably heard a little about the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), but you may not know the whole story other than the fact that, significantly, it takes full effect on May 25, 2018. You've also probably heard that Facebook has recently encountered some operational issues regarding the handling of user data. Naturally, Facebook has created a page to explain how it plans to handle the change in data regulations. Here are some of the things you need to know:
- You must ensure “a relevant legal basis (e.g. consent, contractual necessity or legitimate interests)” for your use of consumer data. Facebook itself will not be held responsible for the data that third-party companies illegally accumulate through its platform.
- Some potentially tough restrictions loom on the horizon when it comes to the Facebook pixel.
- If you are serving lead ads, you will need to link to your privacy policy to collect consent in real time.
- Facebook is developing a Custom Audiences permissions tool that will require you to provide proof of consent before using Custom Audiences.
When it comes to consent, that's the aim of the game. You have to tell the people on your site what you're tracking, how and why you're processing their data, and they have to agree. This seems simple in theory, but a little less so in practice.
That's all, friends...
Phew! These are some tips on Facebook advertising that we have included in this list. If you think you're ready to launch your Facebook ads or revamp your existing strategy, try following these tips.
With Geekworkers, you can also grow your Facebook ads campaign according to your needs. Our social network experts will be able to put in place a well-defined strategy to help you develop your brand image.
