If you’re looking for inspiration for your next great Facebook ad, then we’ve got you covered with this post!
We’re diving into the Facebook Ad Library to give you tips on how to research the ads of your competitors and how to find inspiration from some of the most creative and effective Facebook advertisers out there. We’ll share some specific gratuities on how to get meaningful Facebook ad results, and we’re hopeful you’ll leave with a roster of thoughts that you can test today.
Let me know if this resonates with you: Social media sometimes feel like more art than science.
That’s a bit hard to admit since our Buffer podcast is called The Science of Social Media!
But it’s true-life. There are strategies and tactics, especially on the label back of things, that can be hard to measure and difficult to quantify. Still, we want to do our best to give you the specifics on what works and why — and we have an specially cool route of doing that when it comes to Facebook ads.
The commonwealth of Facebook advertising
You’ve probably heard public perception altering a little bit in recent months considering Facebook. Despite this change, the advertising potential of Facebook remains massive. When we talk about Facebook, we’re actually talking about Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Whatsapp — all the assorted properties that Facebook owns. This year, Facebook is nearing 2 billion customers on its platforms — that’s virtually 1 in every 3 people over persons under the age of 13 in the world.
Moreso, Facebook ads still get clicks. According to stats as of April of this year, the average Facebook user clicks on 11 ads in 30 periods .
Anecdotally, those click numbers sound great, though they have been better. Cost per click on Facebook is as high-pitched as 15 cents versus 12 pennies a year ago, and clickthrough rate for label ads was at 1.6 percentage at the start of the year and is now closer to 1.1 percent.
So the takeaway here is that Facebook has a huge potential audience, people still click Facebook ads all the time, and the rival is strong for “whos got” those clicks.
Now we can bring in the science!
Takeaway: Use Facebook Ad Library to see how other Pages are advertising
With this new tool, you can enter the epithet of any Facebook Page, and it will show you all the ads that the page has, both active and inactive.
The tool has a lot of aspects building upon political and issue-based ads in order to provide transparency on who pays for what. Marketers can benefit from it, of course, by using the tool to do some research and gain inspiration from the labels that are doing great things with Instagram ads.For instance, if you pull up Airbnb on the Facebook Ads Library tool, you’ll see that they currently have over 930 ads running in the U.S. alone. Additionally, you can see that they’ve spent $58,000 on political or issue-based ads since May 2018.
Fascinating stuff.
So we’ve threw some time into using this tool to come up with some best practices for Facebook ads together with some research on the’ net to see what other advice is right there. If you have any favorite ad lessons you love, feel free to share with us on social media using the hashtag #bufferpodcast. We’d love to hear them.
Tips for Facebook image ads
We’ve seen a got a couple of popular diversities of images in our Facebook Ads Library research. First, some successful labels use images that re-enforce the copy claims in the ad’s text and call-to-action. For example, Lululemon’s ads for a ventilated shirt present a humankind exerting while wearing the shirt — and gazing cool and ventilated while he does it.
Of course, it may not always be possible to come up with like-for-like images, specially if you don’t have a physical product. We find this a lot with our social ads at Buffer since we sell software.
In that case, we’ve seen a lot of brands go for either an attractive image that catches attention while pertaining somewhat to the image copy — for example, AirTable utilized a dog photo, which is always a winner. Or, if you can swing it, we’ve seen labels like Headspace have great success with illustrations and graphics.
Vibrant imagery can be really effective on Facebook. If you’re making graphics, you can do this with coloring, like The Guardian has with its ads. They placed their weekly publication on a bright yellowish background for some ads. We’ll link to it in the prove mentions so you can see it. It’s striking!
Get an in-depth view of global issues with The Guardian’s crucial weekly magazine. Subscribe today and get 6 issues for$ 6 with free worldwide delivery.
Posted by Guardian Weekly on Thursday, January 31, 2019
One way that seems to work well with testing which images could be ad-worthy is to use organic posts as a testing ground. A heap of our best good ads at Buffer have started as organic posts to our Page. We boost high-performing content — especially content that has high involvement rates — and we’re able to learn what type of visuals and facsimile resonate with the Facebook community.
Tips for Facebook ad copywriting
With image ads — and every other type of Facebook ad, truly — one of the most important elements after the visuals is likely to be your call-to-action. What words will you use to convince someone to click or tap?
You’ll find a lot of great inspiration with copywriting, too, when you spend some time in Facebook Ads Library. Here are a few of our favorite discoveries.
You can point your call-to-action to a Facebook Event. This comes with a cluster of benefits: people get to stay on Facebook rather than leave to a brand-new site, which may boost your click rate. Those who RSVP can act as a form of viral promotion since their “Yes” replies may send the event into their feed and surface the event on their friends’ feeds. And of course, in tying the even back to your Facebook page, you get the added bonus of extra exposure for your page itself, which will hopefully bring you some more follows.You can throw social proof in your transcript, sometimes even establishing the call-to-action as explicit as “See the reviews” or “1, 000 -plus Google Reviews .” And together with critiques, we’ve seen a lot of brands espousing the Instant Experience storefront, which allows people to stay on Facebook but still browse your products through its own experience that you can customize. Instant Experiences can be used with almost all Facebook ad formats-Carousel, Single Image, Video, Slideshow and Collection. The one thing to keep in mind is that it’s mobile-only for now.Ultimately, the best calls-to-action we’ve seen written are those that take you to a page that matches the text in the call-to-action itself, creating a sense of continuity for “the consumers “. Whenever possible, we highly recommend building a custom arrival page experience that matches the messaging of your ad.
Tips for Facebook video ads
Another popular type of Facebook ad is video. There are a couple of main tips-off we’ve noticed when it comes to video ads on Facebook.
First, labels create videos that can be effective with the tone turned off. Data shows that as much as 85 percent of Facebook videos are watched without audio, so it’s imperative that whatever video you use in your ad that it can get its point across through visuals alone. You can do this purely by visuals — say, if you’re a dres brand and want to show off your kits, or if you’re a food or cooking product and can be demonstrated your material at work in the kitchen. If you really do need terms, though, there’s ever captions. We’ve seen a lot of effective ads that go with captions to support the story of their ad.
Another common best practise is to use square video rather than landscape video. This is especially important when you reviewed and considered the viewing suffer across mobile and desktop — scenery videos merely don’t work as well on phones.
We moved research studies about this and found that square video outshone landscape video on every social media network in terms of video sentiments, involvement, and consummation rate.In some lawsuits, square video been instrumental in 30 -3 5% higher video their opinions and an 80 -1 00% increase in engagement .
If you happen to be running only a mobile ad, then you might consider a vertical format instead. Otherwise, we show preserving your videos square so that they work great everywhere.
Tips for Facebook carousel ads and produce ads
Carousel ads are another neat way to tell a story with Facebook ads.
One of the most efficient way we’ve seen this work is to visually tie the images together, either thematically by choosing similar images or quite explicitly by cutting up a single image into multiple frames or use graphic design components that carry over from one carousel image to the next.With carousel ads, you can apply many of the same techniques as with the image ads we discussed earlier: utilize images that relate to the copy, be vibrant, be committing.
That’s probably good advice for any visual you use on any of the different Facebook ad types.
Take Lead Ads for instance.
In addition to the visual marketing gratuities, we’ve seen brands actually make the most of this ad type by being smart about the space they set up the cause capture shapes. Facebook will autofill certain types of information, which constructs these contribute sorts as easy-as-can-be for the people signing up. Brands use this to their advantage by only asking for the essential information. We’ve seen some corporations merely ask for email addresses — say, if you’re wanting to send an e-book.For others, particularly those with brick-and-mortar locatings or regional events, we’ve seen simple forms with email, metropoli, and country.
As you’re scrolling through Facebook Ads Library, one thing you’re likely to notice is that many of the ads demonstrate text that says the ad you’re looking at has multiple versions.
Tool: Dynamic creative ads
This Facebook ads feature will automatically optimize and deliver the highest-performing combinations of visuals and copy. You simply commit Facebook a cluster of options to choose from, and Facebook will serve variants across its ad system until it observes the best-performing combinations. These combos then get served more widely as the winning ads.
You can apply dynamic creative ads to Conversion, Traffic, Video Views, Reach, Brand Awareness, and App Install campaigns. Pretty much anything you could hope for.
And when you’re coming up with options, the limits for creative are 10 images or videos and 5 options for each of body text, name, description, and call-to-action .
Tool: Text overlay
Another favorite tool of ours — and one we encounter put to good use very often in the Facebook Ad Library ads — is the Text Overlay Tool.
You can upload your ad to this tool, and it will tell you whether your ad contains a High, Medium, or Low amount of text. This is important because the amount of text can affect the reach of your ad.
Ideally, Facebook favors visuals that have little to no text. You’ll see this in the ads of top labels — they all have bright and stunning visuals with very little text.Still, if your ad image does need some text on it — say, with a brand message or tagline — you can test it on the Text Overlay tool first.
After uploading, the tool will give your image a rating of High, Medium, Low, or OK. High-text images may not run at all.Medium-text images may have much lower reach.Low-text images may have slightly lower reach.And OK images should extend as expected.
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About The Science of Social Media podcast
The Science of Social Media is your weekly sandbox for social media tales, insights, experimentation, and inspiration. Every Monday( and sometimes more) we share the most cutting-edge social media marketing tactics from labels and influencers in every industry. If you’re a social media team of one, business proprietor, marketer, or someone simply interested in social media marketing, you’re sure to find something helpful in each and every episode. It’s our hope that you’ll join our 27, 000+ weekly iTunes listeners and rock-and-roll your social media channels as a result!
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