Tips for Creating Effective Facebook Ads
Most business owners get frustrated because they don’t feel their Facebook ads are delivering results. So to save you time, I’ve compiled a list of tips from Facebook directly that should help you create more effective ads.
*Disclaimer: These tips won’t ensure success because each industry and target audience is different. Aliro Marketing suggests that you always test variances of your ad to see what works best for your business. For example, maybe the image resonates well with your audience, but you’re not using the right words in the text, or vice versa. Always be testing!
Choosing the Right Objective:
1) Choose the right objective/goal for your ad.
Brand Awareness: Engagement (Boost your posts): Reach as many people as possible and drive engagement with your ad.
Get more clients:
Conversions (Increase conversions on your website): Create ads that encourage people to visit your business website.
Optimize your ad to get people to take specific actions on your website, such as signing up for a newsletter or buying a product.
Install a conversion-tracking pixel on your website to measure your results.
Add a call-to-action button like “Shop Now” to encourage people take that action on your website.
Recommended image size: 1,200 x 628 pixels
Text: 90 characters
Headline: 25 characters
Link description: 30 characters
Your image should include minimal text.
Drive sales:
Engagement (Get people to claim your offer): Create ads with a coupon, discount or other special deals.
Create limited-time discounts and promotions that people can claim in your store or on your website.
Use location targeting to attract customers who are near your business.
Recommended image size: 1,200 x 628 pixels
Offer title: 25 characters
Text: 90 characters
Your image should include minimal text.
Targeting/Target Audience:
1) Understand your target audience. Speak directly to their motivations or address the barriers preventing them from becoming your customer. Communicate the role of your business in their lives, and why you should matter to them. Consider having different versions of creative for different audiences to ensure you are speaking to what motivates each group.
2) Create & Install a Facebook Pixel on your website to help Facebook learn more about the people coming to your website and to track the effectiveness of your Facebook ads.
3) Targeting: can be location, age, gender, interests, buying behaviors, demographic info (just married, divorced, moving, education level, income level, etc.), if they’re already connected to your page or not, or use custom audiences.
Custom audiences:
Custom Audiences are target audiences of people you already know created from information you provide or from information generated on Facebook’s products. You can create Custom Audiences from customer files, or the Facebook pixel.
A subset of Custom Audiences is Lookalike Audiences. A Lookalike Audience is a target audience you create from a “source.” It finds other people on Facebook who are the most similar to the people in the source.
You can include or exclude people in a Custom or Lookalike Audience from your target audience.
Can I use multiple options at once?
Yes. You can mix and match these options as you see fit.
However, we recommend not using too many at once. It may lead to an audience that’s too small and specific to be effective. Keep in mind that within any target audience you create, we automatically try to find the people likely to get you the result you told us to optimize for in ad set creation. Because of this, you don’t have to worry about refining too much. Monitor the “Audience Definition” panel to the right of your audience creation options. If the indicator needle is in the red section of the dial, make your audience broader. If it’s in the yellow section, be aware that a large budget may be required to reach a significant portion of a target audience that broad. For most people, an audience that puts the needle in the green section will work best.
Targeting specifically essentially means that you’re giving us a relatively strict set of parameters to work within while finding the best people to show your ad to. These parameters can take the form of demographic targeting or Custom or Lookalike Audiences. They may lead to a potential audience that’s smaller, but hopefully also to one that’s more interested in what you’re advertising than a larger and broader audience would’ve been.
For example, a children’s toy store located in Springfield may want to target specifically. It could target people who live near Springfield and are parents.
Targeting broadly essentially means that you’re mostly relying on our delivery system to find the best people to show your ad to. This approach can lead to us finding potential customers you never would’ve known about otherwise. It’s also a good approach if you’re not sure who you want to target. If you target broadly and then check Audience Insights or ads reporting, you can learn more about the types of people we found for you and how they reacted to your ads.
For example, a business running a large-scale brand awareness campaign may want to target broadly. It could target people 18-65 years old in the United States.
Neither type of targeting is inherently superior to the other. Our delivery system is always optimizing for the result you care about no matter how specific your audience is, and you have to use at least a few basic targeting parameters even if you’re using a broad approach.
Designing and Using the Right Image:
1) Images need to be visually appealing. EX. use contrasting colors, use vibrant colors, very little text, something that stands out from the newsfeeds.
2) Use people front & center in image – makes it more relatable when seeing a person.
3) Show people using your product. To create attention-grabbing ads that feel like a familiar part of someone’s social fabric, show images of people benefiting from your product, instead of just the product itself.
4) Try not to use any text on the image; if you have to, it needs to be small and only cover 20% of the image, or less if possible.
5) Tailor the image to your ad goal.
Images for awareness: the ad should tell a story about why you started the business. This shows the real people and personalities behind the brand. It also highlights the values of the business, and its products, without focusing solely on selling anything in particular.
Images to get people to click and take an action online: Be very clear about what they’re getting out of that click. You also need to make sure that, once they’ve clicked through, their path to completion is easy and apparent.
Ex.: Sona MedSpa knows that free consultations are a big way to drive conversions. When people come in for the free consultation they most often end up buying a service. Is there a comparable ‘gateway’ product or service that you find gets people to visit your website?
6) Landing pages are incongruent with the ad. Image is not on landing page, message on landing page not clear, call to action on landing page not clear, color scheme & branding is different from the ad.
There are several nuances to running an effective Facebook ad campaign, but these tips should get you on the right path. As mentioned before, just keep testing! Even the experts run several different versions of 1 ad to see what resonates best with their audience.
Remember, Facebook ads are not a science, there’s no right formula for success, but keep at it, and you’ll get better each time you run a campaign.
