Facebook sells a lot of ads – $13 billion worth in the second quarter of 2018. Obviously, all those ads are working very well for Facebook. Are you just as happy with the results of your Facebook ad campaign? Probably not.
It’s more common than you’d think to rake in conversions from non-Facebook ads but not get much except frustration from Facebook campaigns. Tweaking what worked well elsewhere doesn’t guarantee success on Facebook.
Keep these three points to keep in mind when you’re spending precious ad dollars on Facebook:
- Facebook plays by different rules.
- You’re competing for someone’s attention against their family and friends.
- Define success. Why are you running this ad? Will your campaign’s success be measured in likes, clicks, conversions, sign-ups or another metric?
Facebook Ad Components
On Facebook, less is definitely more. Be clear, direct and succinct. Make every word count. You need to connect in about 8 seconds or less. Current recommendations for ad components include:
- Headline: 5 words or 25 characters
- Text: 19 words
- Link Description: 30 characters
- CTA: Both CTA (Call to Action) usage and Facebook options are up in 2018 – choose wisely
Facebook Best Practices for Ads
1. Visual Content
Best practices for videos are similar to text recommendations: keep it short and as visually appealing as you can make it. Every day, Facebook users watch 8 billion videos.
- Understand and follow Facebook’s video ad requirements
- Keep the video short – many of the most successful videos are 1-2 minutes or less
- Don’t depend on audio to explain your video – 85% of Facebook videos are watched without sound
2. Relevance
Relevance is all-important for Facebook ads. Facebook users will completely ignore any ad they deem irrelevant. Your money will be wasted.
- Become very familiar with Facebook’s Relevance Score. Always analyze your results.
- Improving your relevance score should be a primary focus. Ads are treated more favorably, you’ll reach more people for less cost and monitoring your score will help you tweak your campaign.
3. Offer Genuine Value
Your value proposition has to make a genuine offer that will entice someone to click – and do this as concisely as possible. Why will a Facebook user want to visit your website? Your offer must be believable and attractive.
Incidentally, make sure your landing page matches the reason the user clicked. The information the user came for must be immediately apparent. A mismatch between the ad and landing page can sink your ad and is a fairly common mistake among those new to Facebook advertising.
4. A Strong Call to Action
Once you’ve managed to divert the user’s attention from friend and family news and pictures, you need a CTA that lets the user know what action to take, whether it’s “Learn More,” “Shop Now,” “Book Now” or another option. Link it with text that adds a sense of urgency, such as “Save X%” or “Offer ends in X”.
Killer Facebook ads, like much else in life, are usually the result of experience. The best ads take time, research, creativity, testing, money and a little bit of luck. Internet marketing, with all its frustrations, continues to offer a tremendous opportunity to anyone who does their homework and takes the plunge.
At BXP Creative, we live and breathe internet marketing, specializing in white label services for agencies. Do you need to put together a Facebook campaign and don’t have the time? Could you use some experienced, talented creative help, freeing you up to bring in more business?
Check out our creative design and development services. Got a tight budget? Not a problem.
Contact us today to learn more about how we can help your business.
