An effective online marketing strategy is a non-negotiable aspect for business owners who are seeking growth and ROI. A key player in the digital marketing world is advertising on social media channels.

Facebook advertising, in particular, has helped thousands of businesses sell their products to target demographics unique to their business. If you don’t know how to advertise on Facebook or have only used it to curate your social media posts, there are steps you can take to transition into the Facebook advertising world.

Are Facebook Ads worth it? Read on to find out how to use Facebook effectively as part of your digital marketing strategy.

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How to Advertise on Facebook

Advertising on Facebook starts with deciding on a goal or objective for your display advertising.

How do you want to increase brand awareness? Do you want to:

• Create more engagement?
• Get more views?
• Sell a specific product or line of products?

From there, you can select an audience based on the people you are trying to reach with your product. For instance, if you are selling a car in Texas, you would want to target people who are located within a certain distance. If you were to target people out of state, it is unlikely that they will travel to another state to purchase a car unless they REALLY wanted that car.

You can also get more granular with your targeting and select metrics such as age, occupation, marriage status, gender, and more. Through Facebook advertising, you can study how these metrics perform over time and see who is engaging with your ad once it’s placed, so you can optimize as necessary for future ads.

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Facebook Ads Guide: Choosing a Format

After choosing a goal for your display advertising, as well as selecting the best audience for you, you can start to think about which ad format you’d like to use. There are different types of Facebook ads and each can be successful formats, depending on the type of ad and what message you are conveying.

These ad formats include:

Photo Ads

With a photo ad, the advertisement will appear as a high-quality image, with a call-to-action for the consumer.

Facebook’s guidelines require ads to contain 20% or less text on the image you are advertising. So be sure to utilize Facebook’s Text Overlay Tool, which makes it quick and easy to determine if your image will pass Facebook’s guidelines. The recommended image size is 1,200×628 pixels, with a 45 character headline.

Photos are essential for Facebook advertising because they will help paint a picture for your content and leave a lasting impression on consumers.

Video Ads

Facebook users watch roughly 100 million hours of videos each day. Consequently, videos are an excellent way to feed pertinent information to consumers because it’s an engaging medium. Facebook allows you to upload up to a 4 GB video, or up to 120 minutes long. However, you may not need a video to be at the maximum length to convey the desired information.

An additional feature of Facebook video ads is continuous looping, which will cause the video to play on a loop on the user’s feed. You can also add captions to videos to enable users the chance to read the video content without requiring them to listen to it.

Stories appear at the top – and sometimes in between posts as you scroll down – of your Facebook feed. They can create an impact on your audience because they remain at the top of Facebook’s timeline, which attracts more users to click on them out of curiosity.

Messenger Ads

Messenger ads are a fun way for users to interact with your business and see ads for products that match their interests. These ads can reach people at the scale of your preference while targeting more specifically with individual users once they express interest.

These could contain a targeted promotion or discounts that are sent on a wide scale. With this type of Facebook advertising you can reach more people, but be sure you’re readily available to respond to those who would show interest.

Carousel Ads

Carousel ads enable users to scroll through various images or videos within one single frame on their feed. These are especially effective if you are trying to portray various products.

If you would like to use the carousel option, you can display up to 10 images and videos, as well as place separate links throughout the collection.

Facebook guidelines suggest an image size of 1080×1080 or 600×600 pixels, as well as an ad copy text of 90 characters, and a link description of 30 characters.

Slideshow Ads

In a similar fashion to carousel ads, slideshow ads will move on their own and can portray several images or messages to the user in a matter of seconds. This Facebook advertising type can include up to 10 images.

Facebook recommends keeping the images to 1,280×720 pixels and that all images are consistent in ratio to avoid cropping.

Collection Ads

Collection ads are another great way to showcase a variety of products within a collection. For instance, you can showcase one large image on top, with smaller photos of other items in the collection below it.

Adding links to the products posted within the ad is recommended too. This makes it easier for people to browse through various products in a more immersive way, similar to online shopping. The recommended image size is 1,200×628 pixels and images should not contain more than 20% text.

Playables

Playables work well for app downloads and games because they allow users to interact with the ad and complete an activity.

A common example of a playable is the popular app-based game Angry Birds, which shows a brief playable ad where you can play the game while the ad is running. At the end of the playable, the user is taken to the app download section of their smartphone or computer, where they can directly download the app.

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How Often Should You Post Your Facebook Advertising?

Selecting your ad frequency gives you the power to decide how often you want to display your ad within a specific timeframe. It is often recommended that you start out with a more modest frequency and only increase if necessary so users are not bombarded with messages.

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Setting a Budget

Once you have your objective and ad format planned out, you can start thinking about your budget for your ads to go along with your Facebook ads strategy.

There are two different types of budgets you will set within Facebook ads:

1. Daily budget

Your ad will run on this budget and will cap out when this budget runs out each day.

When you choose this amount, keep in mind that there may be some days where a higher percentage of the budget is spent and other days where the budget will be lower based on the opportunities to present the ad to the best users.

2. Lifetime budget

Your lifetime budget is the amount you will spend during the entire duration of your Facebook ads running.

Ideally, your budget will be spent evenly during the lifetime of your campaign, but you can set specific goals or expectations if you have those in mind for your ad campaign.

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Finding Your Audience on Facebook

According to Facebook research, there are over 1.65 billion people who use Facebook daily, so you can see why it is valuable to advertise here to find potential customers. In addition to the sheer number of users on Facebook, the average person spends about 50 minutes on Facebook and Instagram daily, so there is a large window where you show your ad to these users.

Facebook advertising also has tools you can utilize to target your customers based on various interests, metrics, and locations. Within the data platform, you can select between current fans of your Facebook page, new fans, or both. You may also choose to run an A/B test with different audiences to track the data and see which segment performs best.

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Types of Facebook Ads That Perform Well

If you’re considering throwing Facebook ads into your advertising rotation, you might be wondering what types of ads work well. The best way to create content for your ads is to think about it as if you’re creating a post for Facebook.

Some types of posts that you can turn into ads are:

1. Testimonials

Testimonials and reviews of your products and services are a great way to promote your business to new audiences and build trust by showing what someone else thought of the products they tried.

You can also add a link to your website where customers can check out your products or offer some type of discount or trial offer.

2. Engaging, fun posts/questions

Engaging with your audience in a fun and interesting way is important to keep your audience interested, rather than always bombarding them with promotional posts.

These types of posts are also a great way to encourage people to share your page or posts with their friends and family, which could, in turn, lead to direct sales.

Promoting these posts through Facebook advertising is also a great way to reach new users through the Facebook algorithm.

3. Blog posts

If you have an updated blog on your website, Facebook ads are a great way to promote any new blog posts and attract users to your website. You can also add a call-to-action button on the ad to ask what users think or notify them about new products or services on your website.

Rather than turning on blog post comments on your website, businesses can utilize the Facebook comments section to better monitor and interact with their customers.

4. Product advertisements

What better way to promote your new products than to utilize Facebook ads?

Here, you can choose high-quality images and share important information regarding where to find the products, their availability, and more for users to access at their fingertips. Using the ad formats mentioned above, you can decide which one will work best based on the types of products you are promoting.

Users can scroll through the ad to preview products that are likely a good match for them based on pre-entered targeting data and can purchase through the ad.

5. Videos

Sometimes you need more than a picture to showcase a product or service. Perhaps, you want to walk users through how to complete an action on your website. This can be especially effective if you need to display various messages to target your audience if there are multiple aspects to your product you would like to showcase.

Videos can vary in length and format and the best way to find what works is to test out different formats and see how your audience receives it.

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2019 Facebook Advertising Trends

Each year, Facebook releases a look at some top trends we can expect to see for the following year, ranging from popular keywords to topics users will be interested in.

For 2019, some of these topics and trends include:

• Intermittent Fasting (4.9x growth)
• Detoxification (7.6x growth)
• Self-Care (1.6x growth)
• Stationary Bicycle (1.7x growth)

You can use these trends to help you come up with relevant content for your blog posts, social media posts, and Facebook advertising strategy.

The full Facebook IQ report can help you better understand top consumer trends and behaviors, as well as drive more traffic to your posts because you’ll have access to what types of content are currently relevant.

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Are Facebook Ads Worth It?

Facebook advertising is a great tool to add to your marketing strategy because it allows you to target specific audiences that will likely have an interest in your products and services. The layout of Facebook ads is simple to follow. It walks you through the process of selecting your ad objective, choosing your audience segment, and creating your unique ads.

You can also utilize Facebook’s data and analytics along the way to make optimizations and adjustments to directly impact your specific goals. The most impactful tactic that Facebook employs is that they continuously update based on the changing media habits of users around the world, which is vital for advertising.

How do Facebook ads compare with other platforms; for example, Google vs. Facebook advertising?

These platforms are not as adversarial as you may imagine since you can use them to target your audience in different ways. Google ads use search terms and keywords to help you find new customers. In contrast, Facebook ads target users based on their interests and show relevant ads on their Facebook newsfeed.

These platforms can be used concurrently. Google reels in potential new customers, while Facebook helps customers reach out and connect with you.

So, are Facebook ads worth it?

Absolutely!

We recommend trying out Facebook advertising in 2019 to take advantage of their unique audience targeting segmentation and user-friendly interface.

Are you planning to use Facebook advertising anytime soon? Or have you actually started testing it out?

Let us know about your experiences in the comments below!

The post What Can (Should) Facebook Advertising Do For You In 2019? appeared first on Ad Wizards.