Facebook Ad Campaigns: Best Practices For Brands
Social advertising is a powerful tool for brands when used properly. Are you ready to see your ads drive the results you want? Implement these tips to light a firecracker under your Facebook ad campaigns!
1. Identify clear goals
I harp on goals a lot, but they are so important. How are you making decisions for your brand when it comes to running your Facebook ad campaigns, if you don’t have clearly defined goals.
Do you want more people to know about you, to drive traffic to your website, increase engagement on your posts, people to visit your storefront, or increase in sales?
Here is a quick break down of Facebook’s ad objectives and the types of ads you can run for each:
Awareness
• Brand Awareness
• Reach
Consideration
• Traffic
• Engagement
• App Installs
• Video Views
• Lead Generation
• Messages
Conversion
• Conversions
• Catalogue Sales
• Store Visits
2. Refine your target audiences
Do you have clearly defined audiences for your Facebook ads campaigns? Good!
You have probably taken advantage of Facebook’s comprehensive core targeting (interests, demographics, locations, connections and behaviors), but have you done a deep dive into the custom and lookalike audience options? If not, you are missing out on opportunity for refined targeting!
Custom Audiences
Custom Audiences allow you to target people who have already shown interest in your brand. These audiences include using data from a CRM, retargeting people who have interacted with your website (requires a Facebook pixel) or people who have installed your app (requires a Facebook SDK).
With this capability you can send an ad to someone who added your product to their cart but didn’t purchase, enticing them to come back and convert.
Lookalike Audiences
Lookalike Audiences help you reach people who are similar to your current audiences. You can create Lookalike Audiences based on people who like your page, purchased something from your website, engaged with a post, etc.
These people are more likely to respond to your ad because their interests are similar to people who are currently connected to your brand.
3. Test everything
How do you know what audience, creative, copy or ad type delivers the best results? Did you create one ad campaign, with one ad set, one image and one copy variation and just let it run indefinitely? It may appear to have good results, but without testing every aspect of your ad campaign, you will never know if that is the absolute best you can do.
A/B Testing
Take advantage of Facebook’s A/B testing to find clear winners. I recommend testing one thing at a time so you know what change made the difference. For example, test 4 clearly different images with the same copy to the same audiences in one campaign.
These tips are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to all that Facebook ads have to offer. It can be overwhelming and my biggest advice for running successful Facebook ad campaigns is to have someone who lives and breathes ads in your corner…oh wait that’s us! (wink, wink)
Strong Facebook ad campaigns are born from strong Facebook ad images. Long before the written word, mankind used imagery to articulate a message and tell a story.
4. Use images that convert
Before children learn to read, they rely on pictures to help them interpret a book. It’s basic, deep-rooted and innate: human beings are tethered to images.
Knowing this should inform our ad designs as we work to capture the attention of audiences, and breathe life into our brand.
A. Use your image to create context
Your image is meant to create visual context. With a typical Facebook ad, you have about 25-40 characters for your headline and 125 characters for text. That’s not much.
Which is why your photo has to evoke a reaction, relay information, and round-out your message on the quick-draw.
B. Don’t be afraid to take your own photos
A professional photographer is maybe an unlikely option given most budget restraints. And it can be tough to locate a stock image that perfectly aligns with an ad concept.
Today’s smartphones and digital cameras are quite capable of producing high-quality photos.
Some suggestions for taking better photos:
• Be mindful of the lighting
• Take multiple photos at varying angles
• Utilize apps and/or filters to further refine your image
• Opt for landscape and square images, which are best for optimizing and accommodating Facebook’s various aspect ratio requirements
C. Don’t create cognitive friction
Cognitive friction occurs when a user experiences a mismatch between your ad and your website landing page.
This mismatch leaves the user confused, unsure that they are in the right place, and more likely to abandon their search for your information.
The image on your landing page should be consistent with your ad, reaffirming your audience they’re in the right spot.
D. Size matters
Knowing the type of ad you are going to run will impact how you adjust your image.
Facebook has some specific recommendations that you need to consider such as: a single image traffic ad will require a 16:9 ratio and a carousel ad will require a 1:1 ratio.
5. Video ad best practices
Data suggests that within the first 9-12 seconds of a video, your audience retention begins to drop significantly which makes the the first few seconds critical to seeing a higher video completion rate.
Here are some things to consider to peak users’ interest early:
A. Keep it short.
The most successful video average length ranges from 30-45 seconds.
B. Get to the point early.
You have a few seconds to capture your audience and entice them to keep watching.
C. Brand later.
Avoid using brand logos and taglines early in the video. [They’ll smell the sales on you.]
D. Don’t neglect the thumbnail.
Users are scrolling and autoplay may be disabled. Use the thumbnail to peak interest and create context for the video.
E. Leave them wanting more.
Just like the cliffhanger on the season ending of your favorite show, or the legend-level way to end a first date, always leave your audience intrigued and ready for more of your message.
It’s also important to hone in on a few the of Video View metrics:
3-second Video Views/10-second Video Views
These reflect the number of times the video was watched for an aggregate of those defined seconds or 97% percent of its total length—whichever comes first.
Video Percentage Watched
This is the average percentage of your video that people watched. The metric is calculated as the percentage of your video watched, averaged across all watches of your video.
Reviewing these metrics can help you qualify success of the overall campaign. From there, you may decide it’s time to pivot, shift gears, downgrade, upgrade, or stay the course depending on how well your strategy is performing.
6. Closing the deal with conversion ads
Facebook conversion ads allow you to reach people more likely to take desired actions on your website, which means more signups, add to carts or increased sales. Follow these steps and watch your website conversions grow.
Before you do anything with Facebook, I recommend you make sure your website is optimized for conversions and is user-friendly. The last thing you want is to send quality people to your website only for them to get confused or annoyed with your site and bounce right out.
Be sure your website explicitly states what the business does, uses trust symbols, and has writing and imagery that establishes expertise, confidence and trust.
Install your pixel
In order to launch any conversion ad on Facebook you must create and install a pixel on your website.
Why pixel?
1. Retarget website visitors. When you install Facebook pixels it allows you to retarget people who have visited your website(including specific pages) or taken actions on your site(add to cart, add payment info etc).
2. Target lookalike audiences of people similar to those who have visited and taken action on your site, including people similar to those who have purchased from your site in the past.
3. Track conversions. You will be able to more accurately measure the number of leads, purchases or any other conversion you set up.
Launching conversion ads
Now that you have a website optimized for conversions, and set up a pixel that allows you to target the right people and track conversions you are ready to create and launch your conversion ad!
Determine what you want people to do when they come to your site – collect leads, increase people who add items to their cart, or complete a purchase for example. Then, using your pixel, create custom and lookalike audiences along with interests you have identified to target the right people.
Continue through the Ads Manager ad creation steps and launch your ad.
Once your ad has been running you can start to monitor the results via Ads Manager, including number of leads or purchases, return on ad spend and purchase value.