In the digital age, having an online presence is more than a luxury; it's a necessity. A business lacking a website risks losing out on a vast pool of potential customers. This is where the
The second quarter of 2019 saw the average price of ads in Facebook’s services dropping by 4%. During the same period, ad impressions went up by 33%, largely due to ads on Facebook News Feed, Instagram Stories, and Instagram Feed.
These developments are good news for businesses and advertisers, especially those looking to expand their market by tapping the company’s billions of users on multiple platforms.
This article digs deeper into why businesses--including startups, small business owners, freelancers, and agencies--must include Facebook in their marketing strategies. It will also touch on some reasons why Facebook ads fail to convert users, what you can do to avoid these pitfalls, and a few examples of businesses who nailed their ads.
As of the third quarter of 2019, Facebook had 2.45 billion active users. According to Statista, Facebook was also the first social media to reach 1 billion users, which it achieved in 2012. Aside from its huge user database, here are a few more figures to inspire you to create an effective Facebook marketing strategy.
Facebook offers so many ways for you to reach your target audience. But in order to actually appeal to those users’ interests, there are a few things you need to do and mistakes to avoid. Remember that Facebook offers you the platform and the tools, but the strategy for a successful campaign lies with you.
When you create a Facebook ad, you will be asked about your objective, i.e., how you want to grow your business. Each option leads a specific pre-set information you need to fill in or choose from. If you choose the wrong objective, you will not get the results you’re targeting.
For example, if you want to promote your website, you can choose several actions such as “Apply Now,” “Book Now,” “Contact Us,” “Download,” “See Menu,” Shop Now,” “Request Time,” and “Sign Up.”
But if you want to create a form to generate leads, you won’t have the other CTA options. Instead, you have the option to customize the form and ask for customer details that will be useful for your campaign.
There are two ways you will be charged for running Facebook ads: cost per thousand impressions and cost per click. To get the most out of your money and campaign, you’d want to make sure your ads are being shown to the right people. Otherwise, you’ll be paying for impressions or clicks from individuals who are outside your target demographic.
Plus, you want to make sure your target audiences are not too broad, as doing so would run the risk of showing it to a lot of uninterested users. But neither should it be too narrow that it can only be seen by very few people, resulting in generating very little interest.
Your target users are more likely to click on your ad when:
When creating and revising your copy, ensure that these are powerful enough to capture your targets’ needs or to express some benefits. You would also benefit from making it conversational, so readers feel like the ad or video is connecting with them on a personal level. Use “you” instead of “we/us.” Then, create CTAs or offers that will “entice” them to act and click on your ad or fill up a form now.
When you come across an ad on Facebook, what’s the first thing that grabs your attention? Is it the persuasive copy? A powerful image? A short, impressive video that makes you want to know more?
Visuals can have a huge impact on your campaign. So if your ads are performing poorly, i.e., they are below the average CTR on Facebook of 0.9%, then you might want to experiment with different ad formats or other images.
Many users won’t buy or subscribe the first time they click on your ad. They may watch your video, click on an image, or go as far as adding items to their cart… then they close your page.
Through retargeting or remarketing ads, you can try to reach out again to these individuals who have engaged with your ad or shown some interest in your business. By doing this, you allow users to get to know your brand better and put it top-of-mind, or you continue to fuel their desire or interest in your offer. So if you are not retargeting them at all, then you are missing out on a huge opportunity to convert.
A successful ad campaign does not begin with creating the ads, nor does it end with running the campaign. It begins with having a clear objective, involves experimentation, and a willingness to keep improving until you find an ad that works for your target audience and objective. Here are some of the steps you need to take to increase your team’s chances of improving your ad campaign’s results.
Why is this important?
Being clear about your marketing objective is the first step in creating an effective ad campaign. When you know what your main objective is, you can:
Before you create an ad, Facebook Ads Manager will ask you to choose your objective.
Each Facebook ads objective is further classified into more specific goals:
If you want to get the best bang for your buck, zero in on your target audience. This way, you don’t waste time (creating a superb ad) and money (for click or impressions) on users who are outside your target market due to their location, language, age, interests, or other factors.
To ensure your ads will be shown to the right groups, you need to create a custom audience.
In your Facebook Ads Manager, click Settings on the upper left, move to the Assets column, and select Audiences.
In the next window, click the drop down menu beside Create Audience and choose Custom Audience.
The next window offers you several ways to create custom audiences.
You can choose from among Facebook sources if you want to select the audiences for your:
Aside from Facebook sources, you can use other data you may have, such as:
Here’s how you can install a Facebook pixel on your website.
If you have a Business Manager or Ads Manager account, proceed to the Measure & Report column and select Pixels.
Click Create a Pixel.
Then, fill in with your pixel name and website URL. In the next window, choose how you wish to install the pixel code, and follow Facebook’s instructions for finishing the installation.
Once you have these audiences, you can start using these during your ad campaign, or you can create an entirely new audience. For example, after creating your objective and budget, you can choose a custom audience (if you want to use one), or create a new audience by specifying your target users’ location, age, gender, or languages.
You can also include or exclude users based on factors like demographics (ex., job title, education), interests, behaviors, and connections.
This infographic by WordStream perfectly illustrates all the ad targeting options at your fingertips.
To help you analyze your campaign results later on, be sure to have each interest group as a separate custom audience.
Your users value their personal information. And if you want them to give you their details, even just their email address, which you can add to your drip campaigns, you must offer something valuable in exchange. This is where lead magnets come in.
A lead magnet is an offer you provide users in exchange for information, such as their names, email address, company/business, and contact details. Equally important, it’s one way to provide value to your target audience, helping you build trust and rapport while positioning yourself as an expert in your field.
Lead magnets can take a lot of forms, such as:
To be able to persuade Facebook users to give you their information, your offer needs to be compelling enough, something that they feel or know they truly need and may not easily get elsewhere. If you need ideas for lead magnets, you can browse comments or questions visitors leave on your page, website, or other platforms.
Once they give you their details, deliver your promised offer promptly. Moreover, ensure that your lead magnet is of high quality. Remember that you want to make a good impression with your newly acquired leads, even if they are not yet ready to purchase your product or service. If you serve them something poorly written or made, they may feel scammed and quickly unsubscribe from your list.
As your business grows, you may hire other individuals or companies to help you run, analyze, or tweak your campaigns. To enable them to do these without giving them access to your personal Facebook accounts, you can create a Facebook Business Manager Account.
Business Manager lets you run separate ad accounts and use different payment methods for each of your client or business. If you are running marketing teams, you can grant them role-specific access to business pages and ad accounts. It helps you stay on top of things, as you can easily track who is doing which tasks. Lastly, it gives you peace of mind. You don’t have to worry about granting others access to your/your client’s personal Facebook account, or giving them access to information and accounts beyond what their roles require of them.
To create an account, go to Facebook Business Manager and click Create Account. In the next window, type your business name, your name, and your business email.
In the next window, provide your business details, then confirm your email address. After this, go you Business Settings so you can:
✔ Start adding partners to share assets with or request assets from
✔ Adding your pages
✔ Adding ad accounts
✔ Providing other information such as:
A great visual--whether an image or a video--can go a long way in helping increase users’ interest and engagements with your ad campaign. These can grab their attention, help them quickly grasp your offer, and tap into their emotions.
When choosing an image or creating a video script, ask yourself:
But even before you ensure that your visual and ad copy complement each other, you need to first ensure your ad copy speaks to the pains, problems, needs, desires, dreams, or interests of your custom audiences.
Also, if you have several target audiences or buyer personas, create a different ad copy and visual for each one. For example, you can use one ad for entrepreneurs based in the U.S., and then another to target Latin America-based clients. If you are offering language as well as programming courses, you may need to use different images and ad copy for each, as these products will appeal to different individuals.
When you opt for video ads, be sure to include subtitles. This is to help target users easily follow and understand your ad’s contents, especially since 85% of Facebook videos “are watched without sound.”
Lastly, avoid including too many image texts, i.e., words embedded in the photo itself. According to Facebook, photos which have less than 20% text perform better.
Facebook offers a free image text check tool to help advertisers determine if there’s too much text on their ad. The platform does offer exceptions such as images of book and album covers, products, games, and posters. If your selected image doesn’t fall within these exceptions, eliminate texts on your ad image and incorporate the text in your copy instead.
There are many ways you can use images and videos in your ads. Here are a few.
Have you ever clicked on an ad you found interesting, then you were led to the advertiser’s home page? And from there, you just began to wander around, trying to figure out what to do next (or if you want to even do anything)? Or maybe, the sheer number of buttons you can click on quickly turned your interest into confusion, prompting you to leave the page immediately?
The same thing happens to many Facebook users who, after clicking your ad, is led to your home page with its multiple navigation options. They get confused, and leave. And you, the advertiser, just lost money and a prospective lead too.
This is why Facebook advertisers opt to have dedicated landing pages for their campaigns. These landing pages have a single purpose (conversion) tightly linked with their marketing objective.
Advertisers who create successful campaigns know how important it is to provide users with a seamless experience. So they match the ad--from the copy to the visuals--with the landing page. They put key points in their ad, then provide other relevant information within their landing page.
For example, if you are launching a new course, you create an ad that appeals to your target audience’s needs and a glimpse of a solution and how much it will cost them. Then in your landing page, you take your audience through more details on how your new course can help them. Then, you include more information about the lecturer plus some social proof. This social proof can take the form of client logos, client testimonials, or recommendations from influencers or respected professionals in your field. You can even add the regular price of the course, then its discounted cost if they register now, so users can further appreciate the value of your offer.
To keep users focused on your campaign goal, you need to minimize or eliminate navigation options on your landing page. Basically, the biggest, most visible button users must find on your landing page is your call-to-action (CTA).
If your goal is to get them to sign up for your course, use an appropriate CTA. Don’t present other options within your landing page, such as exploring other courses, watching other videos, reading your blog articles---these are pulling them away from your desired action (i.e., to sign up).
Also, try to experiment with different CTAs so you know which wordings or colors work better. For example, in a test done by HubSpot, they found that using the words “Click Here” or “Go” in the CTA generates higher conversions than using “Submit,” Download,” or “Register.”
Likewise, minimize the amount of information you ask from your target users. For example, do you really need to know their age or company then and there? By providing only a few fields (ex., asking just for their email address or first name and email) users are more likely to proceed with the conversion. They don’t feel that you are asking for too much details. and this puts them at ease. Once they’re in your mailing list, you can start continuing to build rapport and trust before asking them for more information or to avail of a product or service from you.
Marketing experts don’t get everything right the first time. They experiment through split testing until they find what works for their campaign or target audience.
There are several ways to test your ad or ad set. For example, you can change the copy while using the same visuals. Or you can change the visuals while using the same copy. Aside from these, you can experiment with different audiences or the placement of your ads.
Facebook lets you carry out split tests through guided creation, duplication, and quick creation.
For guided creation, start by choosing your marketing objective and in the next window, clicking the Split Test toggle.
In the next window, fill in the details for your ad audience, placement, and deliver optimization. At the bottom of the page, input your split test budget, desired schedule, and duration.
If you are using Quick Creation, just select the campaign objective, click the Split Test toggle, and select the variable you want to test. You can use this option to experiment with audience, placement, delivery, creatives, product sets, and the effects of edits you make on active ad sets.
If you want to compare an original ad set with a new ad set, you can use the Duplicate Ad Set option. You can also view more detailed instructions on Facebook.
Then let your campaign or tests run for a couple of days. This is to give it enough time to generate results before you declare the winning ads. Alternatively, you can ask Facebook to end the tests earlier than your selected duration when there is already a winning ad.
Another way to learn how to create great Facebook ads is by looking at the sponsored posts that grabbed your attention, piqued your interest, or better yet, got you to convert.
Below are just a few examples of ads and what makes them work.
This sponsored video ad is a great example of a persuasive copy combined with powerful visuals.
Here are a few things the marketers did well:
In a social platform filled with visuals, this image Entrepreneur used in its ad can stop users from infinitely, mindlessly scrolling through their home page.
Here are a few components that made this ad effective:
The only thing this ad may need to tweak is the $39 price below the image, which may confuse Facebook viewers.
The risk of renters causing property damages is real. Airbnb acknowledges this through their slideshow ad by:
This sponsored Facebook ad combines the power of a long copy with an equally convincing video. But note that when the ad shows up in Facebook users’ news feed, users won’t be able to read the entire copy. So what can make them stop scrolling and play the video?
Notice how the ad hooks audiences within the first four lines: the dreamers and the striving entrepreneurs, company employees, and writers. Here are a few more things this ad used to capture interest:
Udacity’s Facebook ad also conveys several key messages with very few words.
There are a lot more examples of effective ads that can inspire you as you brainstorm for your first or next Facebook ad campaign. You can always create your own compilation of amazing ads and list down what you think made each one effective.
Even as you are planning your next campaign, be sure to start using a Pixel so you already start gathering data about your visitors. Also, look at your data from previous or current campaigns and see if you can carry out retargeting campaigns.
If you are running your campaign but not seeing the results you want, follow the steps in this guide to split-test your ads. Remember that the successful campaigns you hear about are not merely products of luck, but are the results of careful planning, observation, audience/buyer research, execution, experimentation, and continuous improvement. And these are strategies you can always duplicate or learn from to increase your conversions.
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