Digital Advertising 101 – Facebook Explained.

Here at Make we want to help you get the most out of your digital advertising.

Once you have a website or a campaign ready to go what exactly should you do next? Where exactly is the best place to start advertising what you are offering?

Our aim is to take the guesswork out of this process, so in this Digital Advertising 101 blog series we will go into detail about the pros and cons of each channel and how to get started on the channel you select.

Facebook does a lot to help marketers find their ideal audience online as its targeting capabilities are quite advanced. It allows people to get in front of their perfect audience on a regular basis.

Facebook can help you achieve three campaign objectives: awareness, consideration and conversion. These objectives help to build brand awareness, send traffic to your website and increase engagement and create online conversions.

This is how to use Facebook’s services to make the most out of your advertising.

Video ads:

Facebook’s video ad options range from short mobile videos to longform promoted videos that are designed to be watched on your computer or mobile device. Because there are so many options, it is vital that you know what you want to achieve.

Facebook video ads are one of the best ways to ensure people remember your brand as it’s a strategy that works to engage and convert website visitors, to push leads down the funnel in email marketing campaigns, and to fuel engagement.

Make’s expert advice:

When considering video ads, consider the goal of the campaign. There are a plethora of options from conversions to brand awareness so always have this in the back of your mind when creating the video to ensure it aligns with the goals.

Also consider video placement, videos are placed on many different locations around the Facebook & Instagram platform from stories to feed which have different specifications so ensure the creative team make different variations of the videos to maximise the ad real estate.

Keep them short! Average video watch length is 10 seconds and Facebook suggests between 5-15 seconds so keep them short and capture your audience in the first 3 seconds.

Single image ads:

Single image ads on Facebook are your best option when you want to create an ad in mere minutes, as you can create a photo ad directly from your Facebook Page by publishing and boosting your post.

If you have a tangible product to promote, a photo ad is a great place to make it stand out in feed. As well as the image, a Facebook photo ad also has 125 characters of text and a link description, meaning you have more than just an image that you can utilise.

Make’s expert advice:

It’s tempting to put your branding and key message in a large font all over your image but Facebook reviews each ad and part of that review is the amount of text on the image. If your image contains more than 20% text, it will either not run or will have the reach and impressions reduced. Try to get the key messages in the copy of the message and only highlight small amounts of text in the image.

Some marketers have a tendency to right off single image ads as they were one of the first ads and newer ad formats have taken precedence over their importance however they can still perform well and out-peform other ad types. With their speed of creation and hugely reduced cost, they can be a very cost effective marketing tool.

Carousel ads:

Facebook carousel ads are a format that allows you to display up to 10 images or videos on “cards” within a single ad. They are effective because they encourage people to interact with your ad and they work well to showcase different features of a product.

They can also be utilised to showcase different features of a product or to explain a step-by-step process. The options are endless!

Make’s expert advice:

One of the default options within the carousel ad is to optimise ad placement where Facebook changes the order of the ads based on performance. If you have a specific order that you wish the audience to view the carousel make sure this option is turned off.

Carousel ads open up many design possibilities, to encourage the user to engage and read the different carousel cards try adopting a background that flows through from card to card or have elements that carry over from one card to the next.

Experience ads:

Facebook Instant Experience is a full-screen experience that opens after someone clicks your ad on a mobile device. They load instantly, they’re mobile-optimised and they’re designed to capture the complete attention of your audience. This allows people to watch engaging videos and photos, swipe through carousels, tilt to pan and explore lifestyle images with tagged products, all in a single ad.

Make’s expert advice:

When creating experience ads be mindful that the content is static not dynamic. They can be a great way to showcase different products, just remember the prices are manually entered so will need to be updated if product prices have changed.

They are a very immersive ad style and are great to form part of a strategy but they are not available on all platforms so if your strategy involves desktop advertising then instant experience ads could form part of the overall plan but will need to be used in conjunction with other ad types.

Facebook advertising can be a great marketing channel for the right business. 

Just as it’s important to know your goals before running an ad campaign, it’s important to measure your results so that you know whether you’ve hit your targets. This is a great way to track what worked and what didn’t so that you can improve going forward.

After a week or two of learning what works for your business, you’ll be able to generate a steady source of conversions.