Tips for Creating Facebook Ads That Actually Convert

The Pros and Cons

Before spending money on Facebook ads, outline what you hope to gain in terms of a return on investment. Ask yourself: how will more visibility on Facebook benefit my business?

For beginners, Facebook makes it easy to use images and videos within an ad, to track campaign performance, maintain a budget, and select targeting options. Facebook’s cost per click (CPC) is currently $0.51, making it one of the most cost-effective online advertising channels.

Unfortunately, the low cost of entry for Facebook ads and the increasing number of businesses using Facebook limit the chances of your ad standing out. Grabbing people’s attention is difficult in a crowded market. More expense must go to acquiring higher-quality visual content and copy.

Facebook also doesn’t allow advertisers to choose a specific hour of the day or day of the week to run their ad.

Choose Advertising Placement

Facebook offers ad placement in seven areas across the platform, including within Instagram and Facebook Messenger. Consider your goals, objectives, and budget when selecting the placement that’s right for your business.

According to Facebook, your options for ad placement are:

• Feeds: Your ad appears to people scrolling through their inbox, desktop, or mobile feeds. This can include the Facebook and Instagram feed, Facebook marketplace, Facebook video feeds, Facebook Right Columns, Instagram explore page, and messenger inbox.
• Stories: Your full-screen vertical ad pops up in a user’s Facebook, Instagram, or messenger stories.
• In-stream: Your ad appears before, during, or after Facebook video content.
• Search: Your ad is placed next to relevant Facebook and Marketplace search results.
• Messages: Your ad pings in as messages to people who have an existing conversation with you in Messenger.
• In-article: Your ad appears in Instant Articles within the Facebook mobile app.
• Apps: Your ad is shown as videos users can watch in exchange for a reward in an app (such as in-app currency or items).

Choose Advertising Type

Facebook allows you to choose your ad placement as well as your ad type. You can create ads that send people directly to your website, the app store, or select one of many other customisable options.

The 11 types of Facebook ads include:

• Post Engagement
• Instant Experience
• Video
• Event Responses
• Offers
• Lead Generation Ads
• Page Likes
• Slideshow
• Carousel
• Collection
• Image

Clicking on the green button on your Facebook ads dashboard prompts you to choose the type of ad (the “objective”), the audience and budget (the “ad set”), and the creation of the ad itself (the “creative”).

Facebook Advertising Tips

Keep your information short. A user should be able to tell what your ad is about instantly. Include your offer and price upfront, so users don’t have to go digging. Include target keywords in both the Facebook ad manager tool and your ad copy. This tactic will help with lead generation and will drive higher conversions.

Marketer Karen Jones suggests in her blog post, How Facebook Advertising Performed vs. Google Ads, that a well-built Facebook ad should include a URL above the image or video and should make use of a short tagline or sales phrase.

The most important part of your ad is the image. Create your own high-resolution photos or use ones from open-source platforms like Creative Commons.

Unless you’re a famous brand, no one will know or recognise your logo, so take advantage of your ad space by only using high-quality content. Facebook users will scroll right by a blurry, dark, or stretched out image.

In his blog post, A Deep Dive Into Facebook Advertising, marketing manager Fred Perrotta advises brands to: “Use close-ups of attractive faces that resemble your target audience and [images] of people facing to the right. Users will follow the subject’s line of sight and be more likely to read your ad text.”

Take note; Facebook ad images are small (100 x 72 pixels), so crop your content if necessary.

Optimise for mobile. As mentioned above, a significant majority (more than 90%) of Facebook users only log in using their mobile devices. If you’re running sales or specials that end soon, include this information in your mobile ad copy and target these users with urgent calls-to-action.

Keep in mind that mobile-focused strategies for Facebook won’t perform if the webpage you’re routing to isn’t also optimised for mobile devices.

Advertise with urgency. In her blog post, The Psychology of Urgency: 9 Ways to Drive Conversions, Marketing consultant Lana Burgess argues that strategic use of urgency can significantly impact a business’s conversion rates on Facebook.

When building ads for mobile, Burgess suggests triggering impulse and frequent buyers by experimenting with the following incentives:

• Set deadlines
• Use countdown timers
• Highlight flash sales and insinuate future price increases
• Emphasise scarcity
• Write time-related copy (“Don’t delay!”) to prompt action

So, don’t wait! Start by setting clear advertising goals for your business. Goal setting will help measure results and understand whether your campaigns are hitting the mark.

If you decide Facebook is the right place for your business to buy advertising space, the tips above can help you build a campaign that specifically caters to the platform and its users.

Featured image: Social Icons via unsplash

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