With 2.80 billion monthly active users on Facebook, it has acquired a significant part of people’s lives. Having said that, with the introduction of Facebook ads, it has now become effortless for you to get your products across the right segment of audiences. But how can you make the most out of it?
To use Facebook ads to your benefit, it’s essential to have in-depth knowledge about its features, types of Facebook ads, benefits, and working. So, explore this guide to have a plethora of information about Facebook ads.
- All you need to know about Facebook ads
- What should be your objective while advertising on Facebook?
- What are the types of Facebook ads?
- How can you set up Facebook ads?
- What you should keep in mind while creating Facebook ads?
- Grow your business with Facebook ads
All you have to know about Facebook ads
Facebook ads are now one of the most effective tools to grow your business, create a loyal customer base, and generate leads and sales. The ads offer eCommerce retailers like you extensive targeting options. Now, you can reach your potential customers not only through location, gender, and age but by interests, behaviors, life events, and much more. Also, you can promote your products and services by using Facebook advertising tools: from text posts, photos, videos, etc.
When you advertise on Facebook, you can choose to place your ads in the following areas. There are the following ad placement options. Let’s explore them one by one:
Facebook & Instagram Feed
Your ad appears to people scrolling through their inbox, desktop or mobile feeds. Here are some of the places where your ad appears in the feed:
- Facebook news feed.
- Facebook Marketplace.
- Instagram feed.
- Facebook video feeds
- Facebook right column ad
- Instagram explore
- Messenger ads
Stories
Facebook and Instagram stories are one of the most popular ways to get your audience’s attention to your business. But, with getting your ad on the stories, you are one step closer to increase your reach across the platform. Here are some of the most popular types of ads you can use oin the stories.
- Facebook Stories
- Instagram Stories
- Messenger Stories
In-stream
In-stream ads are shown before, during, or after watching a video. Such kind of ad appears in the player environment of streamable content, and the duration of which can reach 15 to 30 seconds. There are two types of in-stream videos you can use for your business:
- Facebook in-stream videos.
- IGTV video
Facebook search results
Sometimes your ads are displayed based on your search result. Take it this way; you are a customer searching for a certain product; you went to the search bar and interacted with the different brands for few days. Thus, the Facebook algorithm receives a signal that you are interested in these types of products. According to this, your ads would be displayed on Facebook search results.
Messenger
In case you had an existing conversation with any brand Messenger sponsored messages: Your ads appear as messages to people who have an existing conversation with you in Messenger. Learn more about sponsored messages.
Facebook Instant Article
Facebook Instant articles are the native format that creates fast and interactive articles on Facebook. This type of ad placement helps in driving significant traffic to the businesses. Some of the few advantages of Facebook Instant article are:
- It loads upto four times faster than the usual mobile web. Thus providing a lower bounce rate and high engagements.
- It is estimated that Instant articles tend to grab 44% more traffic than the usual Facebook ads.
Apps
It can happen that sometimes your ads can appear based on your Friend’s preferences. This so happens in the form of:
- Audience Network: In this the Facebook algorithm tracks the user activity and displays the result accordingly.
- Audience Network rewarded videos: These are the video ads that people watch in exchange for a reward in an app (such as in-app currency or items).
Displaying your Facebook ads in these placements helps you to reach your target audience and grow your brand visibility across the surfaces.
When should you advertise on Facebook?
Facebook ads help you enhance your business reach by getting you through a likewise audience. But deciding when to advertise and what types of Facebook ads are effective can help you grow your business. So, let’s know the appropriate time when you should advertise on Facebook:
- Use Facebook ads to break into a new market. Launch a product and increase your exposure with the help of ads.
- Most businesses have a Facebook page where they showcase their products to customers. Through Facebook ads, you can have new customers come to your Shop and thus increasing your brand awareness.
- Amplify your product reach with Facebook ads. Because of ads, you will be able to attain more leads. Thus, making it easier to scale your business.
- Have direct interactions with your customers to build your brand image and enhance your customer loyalty through ads.
- Get to know more about your customer’s behavior and interactions through Facebook insights.
What should be your objective while advertising on Facebook?
Before creating an ad, you need to consider what your business goals are. It is essential to know what you want to achieve in order to choose the right objective. An ad objective is what you want people to do when they see your ads.
Take this as an example; you can boost your Facebook business page in order to increase the visibility of your products and services on your Facebook page. OR you can create ads that encourage people to visit your website. Dive down to know the major three categories that your objectives may fall under.
Awareness
The ads that aim at providing information about the product or services come under ‘Awareness.’
For example, you are about to launch your new business on Facebook & Instagram; you can take advantage of the awareness objective to increase your brand presence in the market and explain to the audience what makes your business valuable. Some of the objective under Awareness are:
- Brand awareness: Increase your business presence by letting people know more about your products and services or brand.
- Improve reach: Showcase your product to a larger set of audiences and improve your product reach.
Consideration
The consideration stage ads aim at encouraging people to think more about your business and seek more information about your products.
Take it as an example; You can use Facebook ads to tell stories about your brand and grab your audience’s attention by showing your brand’s unique features. Some of the primary objective in Consideration type of ads are:
- Traffic: Drive traffic to your Shop, or a website with the help of ads.
- Engagement: Reach people who are more likely to be interested in your products.
- Lead generation: Create ads that collect information like their name, phone number, email id from people interested in your product and services.
- Messages: Connect with more people, communicate with your existing customers through messages.
Conversion
The ads that encourage people to take a specific action, such as adding the products to a cart, making a purchase, registering to your site, providing their contact information, comes under the category of Conversion ads. These types of ads appear with the CTA button like “Shop Now” “Buy Now.” Some of the types of conversion ads are:
- Catalog sales: Show products from your eCommerce store to your Facebook Shop and generate sales.
- Store traffic: Promote your business via location so that locals can see your products.
What are the types of Facebook ads?
With the online business continuously evolving, now retailers and advertisers gain more opportunities to retarget their customers through ads. However, with so many different options available, it can be difficult for you to figure out the type of Facebook ad is effective for their business. So, explore the types of ads one by one:
Image ads
From driving visitors to your website to a quick creation process, image ads are right up your alley. These are the most common types of ads. You can use the image ads to show off your product, service, or brand.
Video ads
The video ads help educate your audience more about your product features using a video. Video ads can run down in your Facebook newsfeed, Facebook stories or can appear as in-stream ads in Facebook videos.
Carousel ads
A carousel ad uses a group of images. You can add up to 10 images or videos to showcase your product. You can use this format to highlight the benefits of your product or showcase different products in a single ad.
Poll ads
The Poll is a mobile-friendly ad that sparks a conversation by adding a two-option poll to an image or video ad.
Lead ads
Lead ads make it easy for people to provide their contact information through a form. These types of ads are great for collecting information about user’s preferences, subscriptions or allowing people to gather more information from you.
Dynamic ads
Dynamic ads allow you to promote your products to the targeted customers that are most likely to be interested in them. For instance, a person added a product to their shopping cart but did not make a purchase. Through dynamic ads, you can advertise your products to that specific person in their Facebook feed.
Slideshow ads
Slideshow ads offer an easy way to create short video ads from a collection of still photos, text, or existing video clips.
Collection ads
Facebook’s Collection Ads are a mobile-only ad format and are designed to appeal to mobile users. In terms of design, When users click, they’re taken to a large product feed, which shows them all the products in a relevant collection that they can scroll through.
Instant experience ads
Instant Experience ads are called Canvas. They’re mobile-optimized and are designed to capture the attention of your audience. Within an Instant Experience, people can watch engaging videos and photos, swipe through carousels, and explore lifestyle images with tagged products; all in a single ad.
Messenger ads
These types of ads appear on Messenger. When creating these types of ad, simply choose Messenger as the desired placement.
Stories ads
You can get your ads on Facebook and Instagram Stories. These story ads help in delivering your message in a fullscreen, immersive environment. Besides, you can increase your brand reach, awareness, lead generation, and much more.
How can you set up Facebook ads?
To run an ad on Facebook, you need to have a Facebook Ad Manager account. The Facebook Ad Manager is a unified ad creation tool that helps you create and publish ads across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Audience Network. The ad creation consists of three levels:
- Campaign level: You need to select your ad objective and the goal for your campaign.
- Ad set level: You select the type of audience you want to target, choose the ad placement, set the budget and schedule.
- Ad levels: Here, you have to design your ad by selecting the ad format, upload images video, add text, links, and more.
Having added all the details about your ad campaign, objective, ad placement, and much more; you can ‘Publish’ your Facebook ad and make it live.
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What you should keep in mind while creating Facebook ads?
Businesses like you bank their trust on Facebook ads to get significant results. The ads are high-performing, affordable, and can significantly uplift your business results. But for this, you need to have a certain audience engagement, which ultimately generates tons of leads and conversions. So here are some best practices to make your Facebook ads more engaging:
- Get additional engagements on your posts and products by boosting your Facebook page.
- Retarget your right audience by filtering out the results based on location, price, and other demographics.
- Use Facebook insights to know more about your product reach, engagements, and customer actions.
- Increase your business awareness by promoting your business locally.
- Use Facebook video ads for higher conversions.
- Implement a CTA button to your ad to get instant leads to your products and get more visitors to your Facebook shop and website.
- Use multiple images in a carousel format.
Grow your business with Facebook ads
As an eCommerce retailer, you might have multiple marketing goals. Facebook ads offer you different solutions with objectives to fulfill your business goals. With that said, through ads, you can now easily reach your customers by promoting your products across Facebook surfaces and grow your business reach effectively. Nevertheless, if you need expert guidance to scale your Facebook campaigns, you can schedule a free consultation with our Social Media Experts. We are happy to help you at every step.