Five Facebook Ad Tips For Beginners
We've all seen Facebook ads pop up in our feed. Some Facebook ads have got your attention, some have got probably your attention for all the wrong reasons, and some you've scrolled right right past without even noticing them.
While there's no absolute right or wrong when it comes to creating your own Facebook ads for your business, there are some definite traps to avoid and tips to utilise (as well as some trends to try) to ensure you're seeing results and not throwing away your money.
Here are our top tips for Facebook Ads when you're just getting started.
Work Out What Your Objective Before You Start
While the very end result with your Facebook ads will likely be conversions, there's often a long customer journey to get there. Select an objective from the Awareness or Consideration columns for your Facebook ad. Try post engagement, traffic to your website or reach. If you're using videos for your ads, and have a little bit more experience with targeting and have run an adset before, you might want to try video views. Run these ads for at least 1 week, and see what sort of data you generate about your audience and ads. After a few more adsets with awareness or consideration objectives, you can use the data you have gained to refine your ads for a campaign that's much more targeted, and at a cheaper cost per acquisition.
Don't Just Use the Data Available Through Facebook To Build Your Audiences
When it comes to creating or targeting audience groups for your Facebook Ads, there is lots of data you can upload into Facebook to create custom audience groups. Even as a beginner, you might like to look at uploading email lists (only customer data you've acquired through your business or sign-ups, of course), website traffic and even Google Ads data. You can use this information to exclude audience groups (like people who are already members), include audience groups, or create and target lookalike audiences (audiences who are likely to like your service or product because they have similar attributes to those who already do).
• It can take up to 36 hours to fully process , so you might want to look at running your ads longer than this.
• Facebook won't let you target your ads to audiences of less than 20 people, and the list you upload must have at least 100 people on it. And ideally, you'd have a much bigger list than 20 to really see any results.
• Audience size is very rarely accurate on Facebook. When you look at the list of custom audiences, it tells you the estimated audience size, but it's not usually correct.
Optimise Your Creative For Each Channel
Running ads purely on Facebook? Make sure your images are the maximum allowable size and to the correct ratio (check out Sprout Social's guide here). Instagram Stories? Make sure your images or video are vertical and at an aspect ratio of 9:16. Sprout Social has a great guide to Instagram Ad Sizes that they update regularly.
Test, Test...And Test Some More
The best way to get the best out of your Facebook Ads is to test. Test the copy, test your creative, test your audience, test your ad type. As most people tend to mindlessly scroll through Facebook & Instagram at a rate of knots, you've got mere seconds to grab their attention. Test different copy: try different headings, dot points, short sentences, longer sentences and copy in different order; try using video (video ads typically capture engagement better than any other type of ad) or different types of imagery; test your ad running time, and play with your spend. The more you test, the more data you'll have access to, and the better and more cost-effective your future campaigns will be.
Need Help With Your Facebook Ads?
Whether you're struggling to find out where to start with your Facebook ads, or just too busy, at Lance Montana, we can help. From strategy through to implementation and even management of your Facebook ads, we can offer personalised assistance to suit your industry, business size and budget, so get in touch. Need more help elsewhere? We also offer web design, SEO optimisation, organic social media marketing and management, and many more services.