Facebook represents an excellent marketing opportunity for businesses – especially those in competitive industries like tech and SaaS. However, with so many companies vying for the attention of a limited audience, it’s important to optimize Facebook ads in order to outplay competitors.
Discussed below are some of the key elements that you can put together in order to create the perfect Facebook ad. By following a few simple guidelines, you can maximize your ROI and introduce your products to a wider audience
Understanding Facebook
Advertisements
While there are some differences between the content of an advertisement and a regular social media update, both consist of the same basic elements. In fact, part of the reason that Facebook ads can be so successful is that many advertisements can blend in seamlessly with a user’s newsfeed. What separates a successful advertisement from your average post is structure and substance that are designed to make the most of a limited number of impressions.
While there’s no one recipe for success, there are some commonalities that will always come into play to create the perfect Facebook ad:
A successful advertisement will feature an eye-catching visual element, a hook to grab the user’s attention, the offer that you’re advertising, and a clear call to action. But before you even start creating the content for your advertisement, you need to determine and understand the type of people that you’d like to reach.
Identifying Your
Target Audience
A large part of what makes social media marketing so powerful are the tools and customization options provided to advertisers. Facebook is in a league of its own when it comes to setting your target demographic, and choosing the correct audience is just as important as content if you’re hoping to create the perfect Facebook ad.
When you buy an ad, you’re usually paying for a certain number of impressions. The difference between 1000 random people seeing your ad and 1000 people with a serious interest in your niche can have a massive effect on your CTR – an important metric to consider when measuring your Facebook advertising campaign. If you’re not targeting the correct audience you’re going to be paying more money for each click – massively reducing the effectiveness of your marketing campaign.
Establishing A Buyer
Persona
No matter the type of product you’re creating, there are bound to be people completely uninterested in what you have to offer. To create the perfect Facebook ad, you need to avoid that group and focus instead on the people who you expect would buy your product.
Chances are that your product appeals to a certain type of buyer. Are you providing a tool to increase efficiency for a corporate executive? Or is your product a lifesaver for the stay at home mom? Understanding the type of person that you’d like to reach with your advertisements can help guide the format and content of your posts. Once you’ve established that persona, you can dig a little deeper into the type of demographics that make up that “ideal buyer” and adjust your targeting accordingly.
With that said, you may find that you’re seeing significant sales from a market that you weren’t initially planning on targeting. It’s for this reason that the Buyer Persona must be guided by the actual appeal of your product rather than your initial vision. As you start to better understand the type of buyer who is interested in your product, you can tweak your advertisements until you’re marketing to that specific archetype.
Building The Perfect
Ad
Now that we’ve covered the key aspects of understanding your target audience, it’s time to get into the nuts and bolts of how to create the perfect Facebook ad. We’ll cover the major parts of a successful ad and discuss how to bring all of those elements together to keep your brand in the limelight.
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The Visual Element
When users are scrolling through their Facebook feed, the first thing that they’re going to notice are images. With social media traffic from mobile devices now exceeding traffic from computers, the digital marketing industry has shifted to put an emphasis on content that is optimized for tablets and phones – and in most cases that means ditching a wall of text for media-centric posts.
Getting a potential customer to stop scrolling and click on your ad can be a monumental task, giving businesses just a few seconds to capture their attention and make the most of that impression. Media is much easier to digest than text, making this one of the most important aspects to consider when striving to create the perfect Facebook ad.
“Visual Element” can refer to an image, but it could also be a video or a “carousel” style post with a collection of images. Facebook gives you many different choices for formatting, but the common thread running through all of them is some form of media.
A successful visual element should pique the interest of browsers and entice them to click. There are a variety of ways go about this and it may take a bit to find the perfect setup for your specific brand, but you’ll always want to make sure your media is formatted according to Facebook’s Ad Guidelines.
Prioritize professional, high-quality visuals that fit your brand aesthetic and pop off the page. Videos should be designed to get the point across in under a minute to avoid losing the customer’s interest.
The Hook
A picture or video on its own usually isn’t enough to secure a click. Once you’ve captured that initial interest, it’s time to “hook” users in and really maximize your Click-Through Rate (CTR).
The best way to create the perfect Facebook ad hook is to ask your audience a question. However, that question should be tailored specifically to your target demographic and with an implied answer of “Yes”.
To give a concrete example, let’s create a hook for a hypothetical carpool app. A potential hook could be a question like “Tired of wasting hours searching for a parking place?” Starting the ad off with this text identifies a problem the target audience is dealing with and implies a potential solution. The question also incorporates the idea of time savings, which will appeal to consumers looking for a better way to get to work or around town.
An effective hook takes that initial attraction from your visual element and provides a segue into the main aspect of your advertisement: the offer.
The Offer
While a quality visual element and tantalizing hook are critical, you can’t create the perfect Facebook ad without showing users what you bring to the table. The Offer in an advertisement is essentially the answer to the question posed in your hook.
In the simplest terms, the Offer is your opportunity to provide a solution to a problem and demonstrate value to the customer. Use concise and persuasive text that provides key information about your product and how it can improve their life.
To create the perfect Facebook ad you’ll need to make sure to avoid long walls of texts, so you’ll need to touch on the key aspects of your product or brand in a few short sentences. Cut out the fluff and focus on promoting what counts.
Using the carpool app example above, this is where we’d introduce the app and discuss the main benefits that it provides.
The Call To Action
If you’ve managed to keep users engaged through the first parts of your ad, it’s time to create the call to action. This could be something as simple as signing up for an email list, but is usually something tied directly to purchase like a redirect to an online store.
Facebook actually provides a number of “Call To Action Buttons” that you can add directly into your post, which provide a clear place for customers to click. There are a variety of options available such as “Learn More,” “Shop Now,” “Contact Us,” and more. These are valuable tools that have proven results, but it’s important to include a call to action in the body of your ad as well.
Provide a concise CTA that emphasizes the Offer’s benefits and that conveys a sense of urgency. Statements like “Book your dream vacation now – only 20 tickets left!” should be front and center as you create the perfect Facebook ad.
Fcaebook Ads for Retargeting
One aspect of Facebook advertising that is important to keep in mind when designing a marketing campaign is the idea of Retargeting. By putting a string of code on your company’s website known as a “Facebook Pixel,” you can install a cookie in the browser of visitors to your site.
This cookie feeds information back to Facebook and actually allows you to target ads toward audiences that have already visited your website and demonstrated an interest in your products. Facebook also allows you to retarget users that engage with your Facebook page, ad or even watched a percentage of your videos. Another powerful retargeting feature is creating Custom Audiences by uploading a list of your customers. Facebook can match between the details in the list with the actual user in Facebook.
There are a lot of ways you can use a retargeting audience. For example, it could be used in an Ad displayed to users who visited a specific page on your site, or even to would-be customers who added items to their cart but never actually checked out. It’s important to match the creative and text to the audience according to the user’s stage in the sales funnel. A different ad should be displayed for a user that didn’t sign up in comparison to a registered user that you are trying to convince to make a purchase.
You should always allocate a certain segment of your Facebook advertising campaign specifically for retargeting. A timely ad that offers customers who were close to making a purchase a slight discount could be all that it takes to close out that sale.
As with any other Facebook ad, proper A/B testing for retargeting campaigns will help you determine which types of ads work the best for your specific audience.
The Key To Successful
Facebook Marketing
The steps we’ve gone over should get you started on the journey to create the perfect Facebook ad, but the truth is that there is always room for improvement.
Creating the Perfect Facebook Ad is an ongoing process that requires endless testing: different images, placements, copy, call-to-action and more. The efforts ultimately lead to sales. So what are you waiting for? Start creating Facebook ads!
