Chances are, and they’re pretty big, if you use Facebook, you’ve come across ads. More importantly for the purposes of this article, Facebook ads. Housing over 2 Billion users, Facebook has become an important element in every businesses strategy. A place to increase brand exposure, attract an audience and generate leads, ultimately sales. A haven to promote your services and products, you’d be silly to neglect what Facebook ads has to offer.

In this article, I’ll fill you in on the ins and outs of Facebook ads and how to utilize them to your benefit. Additionally, you’ll learn about how to implement video as well. Now doesn’t that sound like fun? It’s going to be much more than that my friend!

Why Facebook ads?

If this is a serious question, I’ll do my best to give you a serious answer. Despite the fact that the tools can seem overwhelming at first, they offer total control over your ads, and that’s neat. From targeting a specific audience to situation specific filters, Facebook ads lets you narrow it down.

Reach

With an audience of over 2 billion, you’d be silly not to take advantage of this market. Within the billions of people, inside lies your audience it’s just a matter of finding them. Reach out!

Targeting

Getting specific is key for your ads. Facebook allows for incredible targeting capabilities. In fact, you can narrow it down to anything from behaviors to interests, age ranges and even locations. This will help you comb through any unnecessary and questionable visitors.

Here’s a run down of some of these parameters:

Age and Gender – Should be based on your existing customers. If men aged 30-45 are the majority of your customers, start your targeting with that group first. Once you get more out there, start expanding.

Behaviors – Purchase behavior and intent, device usage matters as well.

Broad Category Targeting – Facebook is constantly growing this field. Broad categories include subjects such as Drama movies, and Home Garden equipment. Although this may seem like a great way to reach a large audience, these users usually cost more and spend a lot less.

Precise Targeting – If you’e looking to increase your ROI, this is what you should be focusing on. Facebook does an amazing job of letting you really “narrow it down”, the difficult part comes when you have to decide what to choose.

Focus on laser-focused interests. You’ll find that this is the best way to reach people who are genuinely interested in your topic, ultimately willing to spend more money on your product or service.

Leads Leads Leads!

Once you’ve played around with the comprehensive targeting tools and found your audience, you can duplicate them. Taking a custom audience and then reaching new people who fit within that audience, is a feature Facebook likes to call ” lookalike audiences”. Once you duplicate it however, you aren’t limited to the previous filters. You can edit and ensure that your newly duplicated audience is an accurate reflection of your buyers. Whoa. I KNOW!

Measurable

Simply put, Facebook ads gives you measurable results. Aside from impressions and clicks, you’ll also be able to see the conversions that you’re producing.

Engagement

With the right implementation, Facebook ads increases your engagement with your target audience. You know, likes, comments and interactions on your advertisements. It’s important to keep your audience engaged, you naturally build a strong connection with them.

Setting up is easy

You’ll start churning out quality ads in no time, why? Because the process is simple. How easy? It’s as easy as logging on to your Facebook and creating a business manager account. From there, you’ll be prompted to set a payment method and publish a campaign. But that’s not all. To get a better idea of how things work, you can experiment with your campaigns and find the lowest possible CPC (Cost per click). Which means? You don’t need an over the top budget to get started.

Actually getting started

We’ve talked enough about the inner workings, but what about actually creating your first advert? This is going to be fun.

This is where you choose your images and videos, text and where you’d like your ad to be displayed on Facebook. Remember, these elements could make or brake your ad so pay attention. Luckily, I’ve created a guide for you to help you get started.

CTA

When making an ad, you’re subconsciously making a decision as to what type of ad this will be. An ad that’s specifically designed to gain your prospect’s attention or ades that are designed to lead to a direct action.

Ideally, you’d want your campaign to handle both, but realistically speaking, that probably won’t happen. What’s key is deciding on a simple action that you want people to take. Let’s go over some.

• Awareness – Subscribing to your newsletter usually gets the job done, try that
• Intent – You’ll need something to catch viewers attention ” find out more” etc.
• Conversion – Actions that lead to revenue. Requesting a demo, adding a product to your cart or even downloading an app, these are all options that could convert.

Audience

As mentioned during the first section of this article, Facebook ads targeting abilities are extensive. Overwhelming at first, don’t let that scare you away. You can save a lot of time and money by being precise in your audience targeting. The solution you should stick with? Testing!

Lookalike audience – Use existing data to target similar prospects on Facebook. A perfect way to start your testing and sharpening your audience targeting. No matter what your goal is, do not forget to exclude custom audiences of users that have already converted.

Refine – Make sure to adjust accordingly for the best results. There are a few tweaks that could prove useful. You can get really specific or you can test broad audiences, adding more specific ones as you go.

Be specific!

Don’t be too ” Salesman”esque when presenting your headline. Use an informal tone and keep it relaxed.

Studies show that headlines that are clear and to the point work the best. People are simply tired of being sold something in an obnoxious and inauthentic way. What’s a good headline? It really depends on the situation. Some people enjoy a nice and slick clever headline while others want a straightforward product benefit.

To get better ideas, why not visit some of your favorite brands and see how they do things. Don’t copy, but pay attention. You’ll be surprised how much you can learn.

Choosing correctly

Let’s talk about choosing the right image to fit your campaign. Most people don’t know how to pair the two. I’m talking of course about the headline and the image used to create that much needed tension. Make it playful and down to earth. People need to know you’re a human being, a good sense of humor goes a long way in ads like this.

Using an image that doesn’t reflect your idea can turn off any potential customers. It’s crucial to have all of the elements in place.

Less is more

You have a blank canvas, but that doesn’t mean that you have to use ALL OF IT! Use text creatively. Facebook’s algorithm prefers ad images that contain less text so you’ll need to implement the philosophy of “less is more”.

As mentioned earlier, the best way to know how much text you should be adding to your campaigns is to simply test a few different versions of it. That way, you’ll be able to scrap the stuff that’s not working.

And finally, be consistent. The images you choose matter and staying consistent across your ads is important. Connecting on an emotional level is your goal.

Video ads

In general, Facebook is strongly emphasizing the importance to video ads. So if you’re still unsure if this is a medium you should be using, I can assure you that you’ll want to implement video ads.

By embracing video you automatically bring in better organic reach and in turn, higher engagement rate when compared to other content types. Why is Facebook allowing for this? There’s no other way to put it, people are watching more videos than ever. To put it into perspective, it’s safe to say that on Facebook alone, 100 million hours of video are watched every single day. That’s incredible, and it’s definitely something you don’t want to miss out.

Do it the right way

It’s not just about placing a video ad. Make sure your ad is interesting. Grab the viewers attention within the first 2-3 seconds, that’s when it counts. Facebooks newsfeed is constantly overflowing and is crowded, users are constantly being bombarded with videos. You want your video to stand out right? Right.

Facebook video ads

Although adding sound to your videos could add flavor to your ads, it’s not always recommended. Focus on creating videos where you don’t need to rely on sound to get the message across. That way, you’ll always attract the attention to users who keep their volume on mute by default, and there’s a high percentage of people who do that.

Test again and again!

I think by now we’ve established that testing is crucial when it comes to Facebook ads and video is no exception. Test different versions of your video to see which one stands out the most and attracts. Tweak and refine them for the best results.

As a business owner, it’s your duty to get the best out of these ads while keeping the costs within reason.

There’s no doubt that adding video as part of your ad campaign will improve your ROI. While at the same time, building a stronger connection with your audience, don’t neglect this factor!

The Final Word

Facebook is without a shadow of a doubt probably the best platform for growing brands to advertise. But there’s an art to it, so not everyone is going to get it right the first time around. Facebook Ads may seem overwhelming at first, but don’t let that scare you away. Approach this with an open mind and take your time. Prepare a strategy and use some of the tips that I listed to get better returns on your campaigns. Each tip will help you utilize the system the way the professionals do, increasing your ROI at a lower cost while also increasing conversion rates.

Using Facebook ads shouldn’t be a matter of “should I do it ” but more of ” how should I implement it “. You have endless options to focus on what you need. Get started as soon as possible and make it a staple of your marketing plan. Don’t forget about video!