How to create engaging facebook ads

How to Create the Perfect Facebook Ad in 10 Minutes

It’s easy to get confused with Facebook advertising. From behavioral targeting to pixel tracking, Facebook offers a bewildering number of targeting options, advertising best practices, and ad formats.

In this article, you’ll learn the five elements of successful Facebook ads. I’ll walk you through each step. These lessons are based on things we’ve learned at Hootsuite running paid social advertising campaigns.

Bonus: Download a free guide that teaches you how to turn Facebook traffic into sales in four simple steps using Hootsuite.

1. Create a simple CTA with one clear action

The perfect Facebook ad is clear about the action it wants the prospect to take.

Every campaign or ad format in the world can be boiled down into two types: ads designed to engage your prospect’s attention and ads designed to drive a direct action such as sale, app install, or lead.

In a perfect world, your campaign does both. But in most cases, you’ll either get one or the other. Brand awareness is valuable. It’s a smart strategy that builds your business over the long-term. But too many campaigns try to mash brand awareness and direct response together. Unless you’re a marketing genius, it rarely works.

As such, creative brand awareness campaigns are better served with CTAs related to content consumption such as following your Facebook page, subscribing for more content, or collecting email subscriptions. And direct response ads are better served answering common buying objections than trying to engage or entertain.

An excellent example of a direct response ad comes from the company AppSumo. As you can see below, the ad has one clear goal: get you to immediately buy the product.

The ad doesn’t waste time—it tells what the product is, what the deal includes, and uses a timed offer to give you a compelling reason to buy right away.

Mailchimp is the undisputed champion of brand advertising. Their genius is that they let brand awareness campaigns simply build the brand. Their Facebook ads never try to get you to watch one of their weirdly brilliant videos AND sign up for a free trial. It’s not that Mailchimp doesn’t do product-specific ads, either. Lots of their ads aim to drive sales or get customers to try a new feature. But they keep these two worlds—brand awareness and direct response—completely separated.

Conversely, an ad that tries to do both is is likely to fall flat. If you have ad copy that speaks to the core value of your product (brand awareness), don’t ask people to buy or sign up right away. Instead, use your CTA to encourage people to take a smaller, more location action such as “watch a video to learn how the product works.”

Decide on one simple action you want people to take. The easiest way is to focus your ad on one section of the purchase funnel. Pick one from Hootsuite’s social media marketing funnel:

Awareness, affinity, and consumption: stick to first handshake CTAs such as boosting followers, reading other pieces of content, or subscribing to your email.
Conversation: focus on engagement metrics such as boosting shares, increasing comments and tagging, or generating positive mentions.
Intent: focus on next step CTAs such as “learn more” or driving content downloads.
Conversion: focus on actions that lead directly to revenue such as adding products to a cart, requesting a sales demo, downloading an app, or signing up for a subscription product.

2. Use an audience targeting strategy that helps you refine over time

The perfect Facebook ad doesn’t randomly combine audience targeting. It uses testing to refine targeting precision over time.

Facebook offers an endless list of audience targeting abilities. It’s easy to get confused. And even easier to just give up, adding random interest and behavior categories and hoping that Facebook will magically match you with customers.

You can save a lot of money and time by being intentional in your audience targeting.

The trick to audience targeting is to improve your insights into what works over time.

Here’s a simple path to start.

Begin with a lookalike audience.

Lookalike audiences are powerful because you can use existing data (such as people who purchased a product from your website) to target similar prospects on Facebook. This gives you a solid platform to start testing and refining your audience targeting.

How do you create a lookalike audience in Facebook? In your favorite Facebook ad tool, follow these steps.

Navigate to the Audience section of your ads manager.
Click Create a Lookalike Audience.
Choose create custom audience and then choose customer file.
You can then add an Excel file of customers—for example, your email list or a list of customers from PayPal.
Choose the country where you’d like to find a similar set of people.
Choose your desired audience size with the slider.
Click Create Audience.

If your goal is to target the most potential lead prospects, you should create lookalike audiences targeting one to two percent of a country’s population, instead of aiming for 10 percent. And for best results, don’t forget to exclude custom audiences of people who have already converted.

If the steps above confused here, here’s an article with more information on how to create a lookalike audience in Facebook.

Later, refine with nuanced targeting.

After you run your first campaign, you can then adjust your audience targeting strategy by adding the tweaks below. Add these one at a time to see if they make an impact. This article from AdEspresso by Hootsuite explains how targeting works in Facebook.

First, choose target location. Then add on interests. Then demographics. Narrow your audience by adding required categories—such as the user must be interested in X and also must like Y or Z. Experiment with behaviors as well.

Under behaviors you can target specific device owners, people who are having an anniversary within the next two years, for example, or users who have recently made a business purchase.

Another approach is to start by testing broad audiences, and then adding more specifics as you go, getting a more refined and higher converting audience every time.

3. Write a clear and conversational headline

The perfect Facebook ad doesn’t annoy people with boring benefits or wordy sales pitches. Use a conversational tone and relax on the sales tricks.

At Hootsuite, we’ve found that headlines work best when they’re clear and conversational. This minimizes annoying people with overt advertising in their personal feeds.

Sometimes a good headline is a clever phrase. Other times, it’s a straightforward product benefit. There are no true hacks to writing headlines. And even the old advice that headlines must contain benefits—not features—is as the British say, rubbish.

My recommendation is to follow brands that really have mastered the aesthetic and social codes of Facebook and Instagram. A few personal favorites: Chewy.com, MVMT, and <>. You’ll notice these brands tend to have a much conversational approach to headlines, rather than traditional benefit-focused copy.

As an aside, your headline in a Facebook ad is typically the “text” field in the ad builder, not the “headline” field. Zuck and I see eye-to-eye on many things. But it’s clear that engineers—not copywriters—built Facebook ads.

As you might have noticed in Facebook’s ad builder, the ‘headline’ appears in the third position in the ad under the image. This would make the headline the second thing you read in the ad—so not a headline at all.

If you enter copy in the “text” field, treat this as your headline. It’s the first thing your prospects will see and the “headline” functions more like a subhead for additional information.

4. Use an image that has creative tension with the headline

The perfect Facebook ad has a clever or creative tension between art and copy.

Amatuer advertisers on Facebook make a predictable mistake. The image and the headline do not have any creative tension. For example, if the headline is “make money in your sleep,” you’ll see a stock image of a person in pajamas, holding handfuls of cash. Or if the headline says “become a social media jedi” you’ll see a social media manager dressed as a jedi.

Here’s a helpful rule for stronger art direction. If the copy is literal, make the visual playful. If the visual is playful, make the copy literal. This creates contrast and interplay between the art and copy.

For example, Slack’s famous campaign has an abstract image. The headline is copy is straightforward, explaining the metaphor. This would be a much different campaign if the image was also straightforward and literal such as a person in an office getting a high-five. It’s the tension between the image and headline that makes the ad interesting.

Another example comes from Zendesk. Imagine how horrible the ad below would be if the image was replaced with a smiling team of support agents. A literal headline and a literal image that makes for lifeless advertising.

If you need to be visually inspired, you can use AdEspresso’s free ad tool. It lets you spy on competitors and find successful examples of Facebook ads.

If you can’t afford a custom photoshoot, here are 21 free stock photo sites.

5. Use the description area to remove friction for your CTA

The perfect Facebook ad knows that asking people to complete an action always creates buyer anxiety.

Your final step is to write the description for your CTA. This is the News Feed Link Description. Use this space to anticipate common buying objections.

For example, if your CTA is “Download your report” a common objection might the audience questioning the value of the report.

As you can see below, the Dollar Shave Club uses the description area to answer common objections to their subscription package.

So you can add some specific details such as a teaser of the content. If you’re asking for a direct sale—such as adding a product to a shopping cart—you can mention free shipping or return policies.

Join our webinar bootcamp series on Facebook ads

We’ve launched a complete (and free) Facebook advertising bootcamp series. Each 30-minute tutorial covers different aspects of building successful Facebook ad campaigns. You’ll learn advanced tactics and targeting best practices from real advertising pros.

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How to Create Engaging Facebook Ads (with Examples)

Facebook has more than 2.6 billion monthly active users, making it the world’s largest social network. And since Facebook’s audience spans practically all industries – from e-commerce and finance to gaming and travel – there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be using it as a marketing platform.

This article goes over the top ways to make your Facebook ads more engaging so they can deliver a higher ROI. We’ll also show you examples from real companies that are using advertising in the ways that work best.

How do I create engaging Facebook ads?

Engaging content that attracts your audience and gets them to act is key. The goal is to make your Facebook ads scroll-proof, meaning people won’t scroll past them.

Here’s the good news: You don’t have to be a graphic design wiz to create engaging Facebook ads. Facebook ads are more about strategy than design, and you can showcase your brand and capture your target audience without having to take a Photoshop course.

Here’s what you should do:

Assess your goals
Prioritize video ads
Prioritize Stories ads, too
Choose your imagery wisely
Be savvy about text placement and length
Make your offer impossible to ignore
Don’t hide the numbers
Add a strong CTA
Create different versions of the same ad
Pay close attention to sales or conversions

Assess your goals

What is your current business goal? What’s the goal for the product or service you’re promoting in your ad? Are you promoting your brand as a whole because your business is new or you’re new to Facebook and need to get your name out there?

Next, think about what you need your viewers to do for the sake of your goal. Do you want to get more viewers to your Facebook profile so you can increase your number of followers? Do you want people to click your ad and go to your e-commerce shop? Would you like people to sign up for your mailing list?

When you know your goals, you can create Facebook ads with the correct intent that cater to the proper audience, are designed with the right concept in mind, and use the correct format.

Prioritize video ads

Video is possibly the most powerful way to market today, with both brands and consumers saying that video content makes a bigger splash than any other type of content.

Here are three tips for creating compelling video ads on Facebook:

Use vertical (or square) videos – just not landscape. Most people watch videos with their phones held vertically. If you create video ads in this format, they’ll see more of the video covering their screen.
Keep video ads to 15 seconds, max. That way, people are more likely to watch the entire clip. Start off with the most intriguing part of the video, too.
A majority of Facebook videos are watched without sound, and only 29% of consumers say they always watch a Facebook video with sound on, which means that more than 70% of people may keep the sound off. Captions, text, and graphics that tell a story sans sound will deliver your message even when the video’s muted.

Prioritize Stories ads, too

Don’t overlook Facebook Stories ads, either. HubSpot found that 70% of consumers watch Facebook Stories more than Instagram or Snapchat Stories.

Here are three tips for creating compelling Stories ads:

Stories content is known for being authentic and even a little bit unkempt. Yes, you can take tons of time to create a perfected Stories ad, but consider making it a little less polished and a little more real. It’ll blend in so well with other Stories that the user may not realize they’re watching an ad right away.
Add movement to a static Stories ad. There are freebie templates that you can use to quickly and easily animate your ad.
Take advantage of the fact that Facebook now owns Instagram. If your Stories ad is performing well on Facebook, consider running it on Instagram, too. You could reach a whole new segment of your audience that way.

Choose your imagery wisely

Since you won’t be using video in every single ad, follow these best practices for using images in Facebook ads, whether you’re running a single-image or carousel ad:

High-res images are best. Don’t bother with a shot that’s blurry or poorly lit.
Choose images with a single focal point. You have to convey your message quickly, and you don’t want so much noise in your image that the purpose gets lost.
Use contrasting colors. They’ll stand out in the Facebook feed more, making your ads pop.
Test different angles and versions of the same subject. Discover which one gets the best reaction from your audience.
Use an image that’s in harmony with the copy. Whatever image you choose, it has to complement the ad copy. Otherwise, your ad will look disjointed, and people won’t understand what you’re trying to tell them.

Be savvy about text placement and length

Yes, you can spice up a Facebook ad with a small amount of eye-catching text, maybe in an interesting font, and in a way that adds to the image. However, for the most part, avoid using text on your ad images. Instead, add relevant text to the dedicated headline, link, and text boxes.

Using too much on-image text can prevent your Facebook ad from being approved. You can use Facebook’s Image Text Check tool to see if yours will likely pass or not before submitting it for approval.

In addition to knowing where to place your ad text, know how much to include overall. In general, people are scanning fast on Facebook, and you need to communicate your message just as quickly. Keep your text concise and clear and limit it to above the fold.

Make your offer impossible to ignore

If nothing else, remember this: Your ad can be weak, but it can still perform well if your offer is good enough. Similarly, you can have an ad that’s strong in every other way, but if the offer itself isn’t strong, it isn’t going to perform well.

The best offers appeal to a person’s emotional side. It makes the user believe that they’re making the choice to buy from your company, not that you’re trying to force them to make that choice. Here’s a great example of an ad that sells without trying too hard to sell:

This ad does a few things right. First, the copy reminds the reader that their pet has a sensitive tummy – and most pet owners will do whatever they can to make their furry friend’s life healthier and happier. Second, the image goes right to your emotional side by making you cringe at the idea of cleaning up after yet another accident.

Also, remember that your offer and your CTA are different. The offer is what you’re promising the user; the CTA is the next step they have to take to get (or get closer to) what you’re offering. In the example above, the company is offering you the chance to make your pet’s life – and your life – better. The CTA is the “Find out why…” sentence combined with the “Learn More” button.

Don’t hide the numbers

Not every ad is going to have a price tag front and center, but if what you’re offering has to do with numbers — a discount, reward points, or a specific price — don’t hide the information. Today’s customers aren’t fooled by mysterious wording. They know your products are going to cost something, and they don’t want to do the extra work to find out how much that is, especially when your ad is specifically promoting a certain discount or dollar amount.

Look at these two ads from Ulta, both of which are upfront about the numbers associated with their offers:

The first says exactly how many points you can earn by downloading the app. Instead of, “Earn points just by downloading…” you know you’ll earn 50 — you don’t have to guess if you’ll earn 1 point, 5 points, or 500 points.

The second ad is also clear, stating how much of a discount you’ll earn depends on what you purchase (an item versus. a service).

If these ads didn’t clarify the offer, one of two things could happen. First, the customer could assume the offer is better than it is, then be disappointed when they find out the details. Or, the customer could assume the offer is a lot lower than what it is – 10 points or 5% off, for example, – and never move forward.
If a customer isn’t going to be happy with your offer, they’re not going to be less unhappy if they click through your ad and end up on your landing page, so don’t bother trying to fool them into taking the next step.

Add a strong CTA

Don’t assume the viewer knows what to do next – tell them.

Even a brand awareness ad with a lighthearted lifestyle feel can have a CTA like, “Like us for more inspiration!”

When you’re promoting an event, launch or sale, though, a strong CTA is even more important. An engaging ad solves the problem of, “Why should my audience care about this?” A CTA takes it a step further to answer “What can they do about it?”

There are all sorts of CTA buttons to choose from when creating a Facebook ad. Consider running A/B tests to see which buttons encourage people to take action the most. The CTA can be repeated within the content, too, like in the description text area.

Create different versions of the same ad

Let’s say you want to run an ad to promote a new water bottle your shop is selling. You probably have more than one type of customer who’d be interested in this water bottle. If it can easily attach to a backpack, college students will be interested. If it can attach to a backpack and it’s made of durable material, college students and hikers will love it. And if it’s easy to flip the cap open, drink and shut the cap with one hand, then busy moms or professionals on-the-go will also want to know about it.

You can’t reach all of those people with one ad, though. Create your ad to promote your water bottle, then create versions of it to appeal to the target audience. The wording and imagery you use in your college student-focused ad will be different from what you use to appeal to hikers, etc.

Pay close attention to sales or conversions

Vanity metrics such as likes, shares, and even clicks may give you an idea of how your ad is performing, but none of that matters if you’re not making sales or converting customers. What matters most is whatever matters most to your brand, which is probably earnings from sales. (Though, if you earn money another way, like through affiliate marketing, then it would be something like newsletter subscriptions).

An ad that gets a lot of clicks is not necessarily an overall successful ad. For example, you could create a compelling yet misleading ad that could get tons of clicks. If the user isn’t taking the next right step, though, like signing up for your newsletter or buying a product, the ad isn’t actually successful.

A high-performing ad moves the customer through the sales cycle, not just to the start of the next step. If the user clicks your ad and then doesn’t do anything after that (maybe because your landing page isn’t set up to convert) what’s the point of running the ad in the first place?

Engaging Facebook ads make all the difference

With so many regular Facebook users and a portion of them right in your target audience, why would you willingly miss out on reaching them?

The answer is you wouldn’t.

With these tips, you can create noticeable Facebook ads that engage your audience so they take the next step, whatever that next step may be.

Setting up Facebook Ads: A Step-by-Step Guide

Contents

1 What is Facebook Ads Manager
2 Overview of Facebook Ads Manager
3 Creating an Ads Manager Campaign
- 3.1 Campaign Level Selection
  - 3.1 Campaign Selection
    - 3.1 3.1.2 Budget selection at the campaign level
  - 3. 2 Ad group level
    - 3.2.1 Dynamic creatives
    - 3.2.2 Offers
    - 3.2.3 Budget and schedule
    - 3.2.4 Audience choice
    - 3.2.5 Communications
    - 3.2.6 Types of playing
    - 3.2.7 Optimization and show
    - 3.2.8 Strategy Betting
    - 3.2.9 Type of delivery
    9000 9000 3.3
    - 3.3.1 Advertising format
- 4 Working with Acquisition and Retention campaigns
  - 4.1 What goal should I choose for a retargeting campaign?
  - 4.2 How to work with acquisition campaigns?
- 5 Conclusion
In this article, we will not only take a detailed look at the process of setting up Facebook ads from the technical side, but also analyze how this knowledge can be applied to create acquisition and retention campaigns. Let's take a look at Facebook Ads Manager first.

What is Facebook Ads Manager

Ads Manager is a free tool from Facebook with which you can create and manage ads and measure the effectiveness of their results.

In the advertising account, you can create, view and edit advertising campaigns, ad groups and ads themselves. You can use Ads Manager on both desktop and mobile devices. Please note that not all ad objectives and features are available when creating campaigns on mobile devices.

You can promote posts using the "Promote Post" button below the posts on the business page, but you will have less targeting options if you do so. We recommend launching and maintaining advertising campaigns using the advertising account in the desktop version. nine0003
You can access Facebook Ads Manager using one of 3 methods:
1. Using the direct link www.facebook.com/ads/manager.
2. In the top right corner of any page on Facebook, by clicking on the drop-down list and selecting “Manage Ads” from it.
3. Using a mobile application for IOS or Android.
Advertising campaigns can be run from a personal account. Thus, you can create only one advertising account and, accordingly, only one Facebook Pixel. To create more than one account and more flexible management of all pixels, pages, applications, we recommend using Facebook Business Manager. nine0003
Facebook Business Manager is a tool for managing all Facebook resources and sharing them with other users. In Business Manager, you can manage apps, pages, and ad accounts. You also have the ability to upload product catalogs, create posts, add payment methods, and more. For efficient management of all projects, you can create multiple cabinets.

Find out more: Facebook Business Manager: full overview of features and capabilities

If you are creating an ad on Facebook for the first time, you will also create an ad account.

To create it, you will need to specify its name, the company that will control it, time zone, payment method and currency.

Account currency is the currency used in the ad account for billing. Facebook writes that it regularly adds new payment methods. The Ukrainian hryvnia is not yet available, but the supported currencies are the Russian ruble, euro and US dollar. Once every 60 days, you can change the currency to pay for ads on Facebook, provided that you do not have a current balance. But when you change the currency, you will have a new advertising account created. In some countries (such as Brazil, Nigeria, and Venezuela), the ad account's company country must match the currency. nine0003
By creating an ad account in Business Manager, you'll have your campaigns, ads, and billing information all in one place. You can also share it with other people so they can manage your ads.

To prevent your advertising account from being blocked by the Facebook administration, it is enough to follow the advertising rules, which you can read here.

Overview of Facebook Ads Manager

Now let's take a closer look at the functionality of the advertising account. nine0003

1. Top navigation bar

Here you will find sections such as "Audiences" and "Analytics", you can set up reporting and set automatic rules, edit settings and much more.

2. Search and filters

The search will help you find the campaigns, groups or ads you need, and the filter will leave those campaigns that you plan to analyze using specific metrics: the names and goals of advertising campaigns, gender and geography of the audience, recent changes etc.

3. Button to create an advertising campaign

With this button you will start the process of creating a new advertising campaign, which we will describe in detail in the next section.

4. Ad account overview

Here you will find general information about your ad account, such as: reach or amount spent on all ads created, a detailed breakdown of the amount you spent on ads in the last 7 days, and any spending limits that you have set for the account. nine0003
5. Overview of advertising campaigns

In this tab, you can create and manage advertising campaigns: duplicate and edit existing campaigns, set up columns, and split the results according to the required metrics.

6. Overview of ad groups

Here you can create new ad groups within an existing campaign, edit, duplicate and view results.

7. Overview of ads

In this tab you can create new ads within an existing group, edit, duplicate ads, view their results. nine0003
8. Columns

Select one of the columns with the metrics you need or customize them yourself.

9. Campaign Breakdown

Here you can break down existing campaigns based on factors such as age, gender or placement.

10. Date Range

With this feature, you can set a specific date range so that advertisements are shown only for a certain period of time. nine0003

11. Campaign results

Here you will see the results of your active and inactive campaigns according to the selected columns.

Reports

Create standard or custom reports, export performance data as Excel or CSV files, and share reports with users who work with your ad account. You can also filter out those campaigns that you want to pay special attention to. If you need to send them to colleagues or a client, you can create a shortened link. nine0003

Creating an ad campaign in Ads Manager

As we mentioned in the first section, you can start creating an ad campaign in Ads Manager using the "Create" button.

Campaign level

At the campaign level, you can name the campaign, define the budget, purchase type and select the advertising objective. Let's take a closer look at target selection.

Target selection

The first step is to select a target. It is chosen according to your tasks - what you want to achieve. Choosing the right target will help you get the most effective results. nine0003
What are the goals?
1. Brand awareness
2. Coverage
3. Traffic
4. Involvement
5. Application settings
6. Video views
7. Lead generation
8. Messages
9. Conversions
10. Sales of goods from catalog
11. Point visits
The target list is subject to change. If you have a new ad account or use its functionality infrequently, you may have fewer options. With its active use and taking into account many other aspects, you will probably be the first to receive all updates to the advertising account. nine0003

The goal you choose is also your way of optimizing. If you select the "Traffic" goal, the algorithm is optimized for those users who are more likely to click on the site, if "Application Installs" - for those who are more likely to download the application.

A little test of practical understanding: Let's say you've posted a blog post and published it on your business page. You want to promote it to increase the reading of the article.

What advertising goal will you choose? nine0003
1. Involvement
2. Traffic
3. Conversion
If you select Engagement, you will get interactions: ads will be optimized for those who like, share, comment, and make any other interactions. This means that if 9 out of 10 interactions are likes, then with this chosen goal, you will get a lot of likes for the article, but not transitions to the site.

If you want to get readers, then you should stop at the "Traffic" goal. In this case, the algorithm will be optimized for those users who click on the article. nine0003
If you want blog subscribers, for example, then your goal is Conversion. It will allow you to optimize impressions for those who subscribe to your blog. To do this, you need to use Facebook Pixel. About what a pixel is and why you need it, read our article.

⇨ The target is selected for optimization, but it is important to understand what you need to optimize for.

Another situation is also possible - adjacent goals with the same result.

For example, your task is to get leads. These can be collected through goals such as Lead Generation and Conversion. What to choose in this case? Let's simulate:

First, let's look at the cost per conversion:

↳ Lead Generation goal — $1. Goal "Conversion" - $3.

In this case, it is logical to choose the Lead Generation goal.

Next, we proceed to the analysis of the validity of leads:

↳ "Lead generation" - 10%, a valid lead will be $10. The “Conversion” goal is 50%, a valid lead will be $6.

Lead Generation loses in cost per valid lead.

But the analysis does not stop there, if you control the unit economy and end-to-end analytics. nine0003
The average check for valid leads through the Lead Generation objective, for example, may be higher, but CLV lower. Then, if we measure the average check and we have a one-time purchase, then perhaps the goal of "Lead Generation" can be more cost-effective. In any case, measure everything in terms of money.

If you're measuring results by taking into account the total amount of revenue for a customer, then you should stick with the Conversions goal.

⇨ The main point of your campaigns is profitability. Therefore, it is important to test the goals and see the results for different metrics. nine0003
Campaign-level budget selection

Budget is the amount of money you will spend showing ads to people. It is also a price control tool.

By setting the budget at the campaign level, the system spends it automatically on the best results among all ad groups within the campaign.

But the best results for the system may not necessarily be the best for you. Let's imagine that you have created several personas, and the results in groups of some persons are more expensive than the results in others. In this case, the system will spend the budget on the group with cheaper results. But after analyzing the groups, you can see that the cheaper groups have much lower CLVs. To manage this, set a budget at the ad group level. nine0003
Ad group level

For example, select the "Conversions" goal at the campaign level and start creating an ad group and give it a name. Next, select the place where you want to drive traffic - website, application, Messenger or WhatsApp. Having determined the required entry point, the system will request clarification. For example, if you select "Website", the system will ask you to select a Pixel with events to track and optimize for conversions.

Next, Facebook suggests creating dynamic creatives or offers. nine0003

Dynamic creatives

You just need to upload images, headlines and other creatives, and the system will automatically create combinations, selecting several components (for example, images, videos, headlines, descriptions, etc.) for a given audience. You can read more about them here.

Offers

Offers are discounts that you offer Facebook users to encourage them to make a purchase online and/or offline. When a person sees your offer in the feed, a person can not only like it and leave a comment, but also save it in the Offers tab. Facebook will remind the person of the saved offer up to three times, depending on their personal notification settings. nine0003

Budget and schedule

Here you define how much you want to spend and set the period for which the ad will be displayed. The budget can be set daily or immediately for the entire duration of the advertising campaign. If you select "daily budget" your bid can be correlated throughout the week, and if you select "lifetime budget" - throughout the entire period. You can also set an end date for your campaign, which will be disabled automatically.

Audience Selection

Next, we move on to choosing the target audience: create a new one or use the saved one.

When you create a new audience, you include or exclude the collected audience lists for retargeting or look-alike audiences.

You can also specify socio-demographic (social) targeting:
- Location
- Age
- Floor
- Languages
- Detailed targeting. Here you can select all the interests, demographics, behaviors and other parameters you need. nine0006
When creating multiple ad groups and using detailed targeting in them, audience saturation is possible. This issue can occur if you are targeting with different conditions by including and don't use exclusions. For example, the same user can simultaneously be included in an interest group and in a group who visited the site. How to prevent the problem of audience attrition in advance, read our article “Audience satiety: How to avoid early and correct it in time”. nine0003
Relationships

You have the option to include, exclude, or target friends of users who follow your business page or use your mobile app. You can also include or exclude people who checked in to the event.

Types of placements

Placements include 2 categories: device types and platforms.

In device types, you can select desktop and/or phone to select the devices on which ads will be displayed. On the platforms, you define the ad zone (location) where your ad will be shown - on Facebook, Instagram, Audience Network or Messenger. When editing placements, you can select not only certain devices and platforms, but also configure additional settings. nine0003

Platforms and device types can be separated into different ad groups for content customization and testing. But we recommend combining them for more effective optimization. However, it is important to see how ads will look on all devices beforehand at the ad level.

Optimization and display

Next, we move on to choosing the option to optimize ad display. It will help the system understand how to deliver your ad. If you select "Conversions", the algorithm will select the audience that is more likely to make the specified conversion on the website. Delivery options depend on which advertising objective you are using. nine0003

When creating a Facebook ad campaign with the "Conversions" ad objective, you can choose the following types of bids to optimize: your ads with different intensity to all users from your targeting. "Impressions" - with a frequency of up to 4 per day, "Daily reach among unique users" - up to 1 per day.

"Link Clicks" or "Landing Page Views" - optimize impressions for those who are more likely to click on a link or view a landing page.

"Conversions" - optimize ad impressions for those who are more likely to make the set conversion on the website.

Bid strategy

One of the important steps in setting up an advertising campaign is choosing a bid strategy.

In order for the right audience to see your ad, you must win an auction with other advertisers. In the Facebook auction, the ad with the highest "total value" wins. The total value is not the amount you are willing to pay to display your ads. When determining this indicator, 3 factors are taken into account:

Rate
Approximate frequency of actions
Advertising quality and relevance

Rate is how much you are willing to spend. It controls the cost per result in case the auction wins and the impression is completed.

There are 2 bid strategies: Low Price and Target Price. Read more about them in our article How to Choose a Facebook Bid Strategy.

Delivery type

This parameter determines how fast your ad will be shown. You can use standard mode or set up accelerated impressions to get results faster. In the second case, your bid will be raised in order to get a higher place in the auction and get more impressions. nine0003

Ad level

Let's start creating an ad creative.

First you need to choose from which page the advertisement will be shown. If you have specified Instagram as one of the placements, you must also specify the desired account here.

Ad Format

Facebook offers several ad formats to choose from. Choose the appropriate format depending on the purpose of promotion and content.

Upload your own photos or use stock. On the right, you can find the image parameters recommended by the social network for the best selection of pictures. You can create up to 6 ads at the same time. You can find all the recommendations from Facebook on creating creatives in the "Creative Center" section.

All ad settings occur on the left side of the page. On the right is a preview of your creative in different placements.

Next, you fill in the required fields: title, text, link to the site, call to action, etc.

When the ad is ready, click the "Confirm" button and your advertising campaign will be sent for moderation.

It is important to remember that the effectiveness of an advertising campaign is determined by the communication in your creatives - the settings only correlate the cost per result. The target audience makes decisions according to what they see in the advertisement.

Working with Acquisition and Retention campaigns

We have analyzed the creation and setup of an advertising campaign from A to Z. But how to apply this knowledge correctly and get effective results?

If you have a website or mobile app, before launching an acquisition campaign, start by setting up a retargeting campaign.

For this you need:

Install Facebook Pixel or Facebook SDK.
Create a funnel for retargeting.
Set up the necessary events for the approved funnel. nine0006
Create saved audiences to distribute them to ad groups in campaigns.
Create an advertising campaign with the advertising objective you need.

Why start with retargeting? While you are setting up an advertising campaign for a cold audience, you will be able to start communicating with existing traffic.

Retention (retargeting campaigns) is a system promotion. And its task is to reach all relevant users/visitors and lead them to the final goal. At the same time, each stage of the funnel needs to be improved by increasing the Conversion Rate. In the case of acquisition campaigns, it is important to test in order to find the most profitable cost for achieving the goal. nine0003

What is the target for a retargeting campaign?

If you are sure that your audience is of high quality, then the percentage of the target audience tends to 100. In this case, you do not need to worry about the type of delivery and optimization of the advertising campaign. In this case, the goal is to reach everyone. Choose the Reach objective to reach everyone in your sample and get a lower CPM.

If someone has already worked with the sample before you and you are not sure about its quality, then stop at the “Traffic” goal and optimize for clicks to reach only those who are more likely to want to receive your offer. nine0003

If the audience is of poor quality, then select the "Conversions" goal and optimize for conversions. You will lose volume, but at the same time you will not spend money on inappropriate impressions.

To be sure that you have chosen the right goal, we recommend testing and analyzing the results. The selection of an advertising goal for retargeting is the search for the ratio of the optimal price per result to the number of results received.

If you're getting sales for, say, $10 per unit for the "Conversions" ad objective, but your KPI is $15, try switching to the "Traffic" ad objective. The cost per result will likely fall while still being within the KPIs, but sales volumes may rise as more people see your ad. nine0003

If you don't plan on active promotion, it's definitely worth launching retargeting campaigns. This will help you reach the entire loyal audience and lead the funnel to the result for a penny. Most of the spending is always on acquisition campaigns. If you don't have enough budget, run only retargeting campaigns.

How to work with acquisition campaigns?

Planning and implementing acquisition advertising campaigns is completely different from retention campaigns. nine0003

The first stage is testing. Persons are created, a number of messages for each of them, a list of target groups, and saved audiences (targeting combinations) are loaded. Additionally, saved audiences are created based on data, and not only on portraits of the target audience (lookalike audiences from the database, lookalike audiences from events, etc.).

When testing is in progress, you need to move on to stabilizing the results and optimizing them. How to do this, we described in detail in the guide “Optimizing and scaling Facebook advertising campaigns”. nine0003

Conclusion

With the help of this article you will be able to create and set up an advertising campaign without any experience with Facebook Ads Manager. In the process of improving your skills, you will understand how you can manage the settings to get more effective results from communication with the audience.

Important points we would like to recap:

Decide how much value you want to bring to your business by launching an advertising campaign. This will help you choose the right advertising goal and optimization method. For example, you shouldn't drive traffic to a website without conversion optimization if you have a specific goal of selling something or getting a lead. nine0006

Research your target audience to select the right communication strategy. Compiling various insights that you will use in an advertising campaign will help you find exactly the way of communication that will allow you to get the most profitable result.

Set up an advertising account and specify the correct currency, otherwise you won't be able to change your choice later — after changing the currency, you will create a new advertising account.

Install Facebook Pixel or SDK to track the events you need and optimize ad impressions for them.

Before launching acquisition campaigns, start working on creating retargeting campaigns.

Create saved audiences for acquisition campaigns to target the same target groups in order to nurture a need for your product.

Do not forget about satiety and audience overlap, so as not to get bored with advertising and not lose loyalty, which is very long and expensive to restore. nine0006

Effective results for you! 🙂

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15 tips to get the most out of your Facebook and Instagram ads

There are many tips on how to maximize the impact of your Facebook and Instagram ads. Many life hacks are basic targeting guidelines rather than effective ideas that can improve results. But there are also tried-and-true tricks that can really increase your ROI on your Instagram and Facebook ads and increase engagement. nine0003

Here are 15 proven ways to improve your Facebook and Instagram ads, covering everything from campaign optimization to design and copywriting tips. Internet marketers, putting them into practice, achieve noticeable success without much risk, and, interestingly, not all of these ideas require an increase in budget.

1. Use the Fast Take-Off (FTO) method.

Accelerated display of ads at the campaign start stage has undeniable advantages:

gives fast results;
allows you to collect data for advertising analysis before campaign optimization;
allows you to quickly determine the effectiveness of an advertising campaign.

When setting up a new campaign, a budget (daily or total) is assigned that is 200-300% higher than planned. After gaining 10,000+ impressions, you can work with statistics. Algorithms require at least 24 hours to optimize campaigns. Give the system that time, get the results, and change the budget back to the planned one. nine0003

2. Collect the maximum number of reactions with one post

There is an option "Use an existing post" in the "Ad settings" section of Facebook. With its help, you can collect all the interactions with the post involved in different advertising campaigns, with different audiences and bids.

3. Determine the type of ad correctly

There are many placements for advertising on Facebook and Instagram - a single image, a carousel, a collection, stories, etc. If there is not much time to test different methods, it is tempting to use someone else's experience. But not everything is so simple, the carousel allows one to achieve the maximum effect, while others break records with ordinary graphic advertising. nine0003

Therefore, even if the deadlines are running out, you need to test at least three options:

text-graphic;
video;
carousel.

By evaluating relevance scores and CPCs in each case, you can choose the option that delivers more social media conversions at a lower cost.

4. Create a really valuable offer

Making advertising attractive to users is your main task. The only way to get people to spend their most valuable resource (time) on getting to know the message and clicking on the link is to prove its usefulness. Without first explaining what the product is good for, you can't expect people to want to look at it at all. nine0003

Value orientation implies:

indication of a specific benefit for the buyer;
unique advantages not available from competitors;
time-limited discount or bonus;
quality presentation of information.

5. Take care of an individual ad schedule

If your field of activity is not sushi delivery, it is unlikely that your ads are relevant to Facebook and Instagram users around the clock. Ad reports will give you accurate information on which days of the week and hours you have the most conversions at the lowest cost (Facebook Ads Manager - "Columns" - sampling by time per day). nine0003

The ad performance overview can and should be used to set up an individual display schedule.

6. Use smart planning

Large-scale long-term campaigns often lead to a natural effect of user burnout - people simply get tired of looking at the same ad for weeks.

A couple of advertising creatives, which will be shown on different days, will neutralize the negative effect. This could be, for example, 3 separate banners placed in different ad groups - one design on Monday and Friday, another on Wednesday and Saturday, and a third on the rest of the week. nine0003

7.

Videos allow:

to involve the user in long-term interaction;
convey strong emotions and moods;
demonstrate more benefits of the product (brand) than a static image;
get maximum audience reach;
achieve high engagement and click-through rates.

Video Creation Kit provides tons of tools for creating videos with templates, photos, logos, text overlays. You can turn static images into spectacular slideshow animations. nine0003

8. Advertising creatives are not the only way to grab attention

There are a number of working ways to make an ad worthy of the audience's attention, such as including numbers in the text, or even better, in the headline. According to a study published by Moz, a number at the beginning of a title increases the likelihood of a link being clicked by 36%.

Another relevant option to raise interest in the publication is to use symbols and emoji. This method has an additional advantage - it structures the advertising message and makes it easier to read. nine0003

9. Add Captions and Subtitles to Videos

Instagram and Facebook statistics claim that additional captions in stories can increase the number of views by 10% and 12%, respectively. This fact has a completely logical explanation - by default, the sound in the settings is turned off, moreover, many users, in principle, prefer to watch the tape without sound, so subtitles and captions are effective. They allow you to immediately understand what is at stake.

10. Ask people questions

You have the opportunity to encourage people to interact with the brand by asking them questions, encouraging them to express their point of view. According to Facebook, such actions increase engagement, positively affect response and conversions. When testing certain variants of questions, you should analyze user behavior and draw conclusions.

11. Keep texts as short as possible and talk about the offer in the first line

To recognize an advertisement in a post, modern users need 2-3 seconds on desktop and only 0. 4 seconds on mobile. A quick view puts forward new requirements for the text - it must be as capacious and understandable as possible. nine0003

It should also be taken into account that social networks cut off the text, and not everyone will unfold it. USP should be placed at the very beginning, so that even with a cursory glance at the advertisement, the user sees it.

12. Be mindful of the content in Stories

This placement was created in a special full-screen vertical format (9:16) that creates an immersive effect for the user. The hallmarks of content in Stories — spontaneity, conciseness, and liveliness — allow you to attract and hold attention. nine0003

When advertising in stories, you should strive for maximum authenticity - for this you can use stickers, but in moderation so as not to distract the user from the message itself. Audio accompaniment will enhance the effect of advertising; stories with it, as practical experience shows, are more effective than silent ones.

13. Combine static images and motion elements (video)

Facebook claims that ad campaigns with a mix of static and video performance indicators in the vast majority of cases (86%) gave the best results. Experiment with different formats - static pictures, animated texts, Boomerang or GIF formats. Track which product demo grabs attention and drives more sales. nine0003

14. Exclude converted users from showing

People who have already seen your ad, clicked on it and even left a request, absolutely do not need to be re-imported. Moreover, if you continue to show ads to them, it will bring more negative things - you waste your budget for nothing, annoy users with intrusiveness, and distort the statistics of campaign results.

The way out is to make a special audience of completed conversions and exclude it from the actual ad groups. nine0003

15. Don't get carried away with long videos

Users save their time and don't have patience, so too long videos are more likely to be thrown in the middle.