How To Create Effective Facebook Video Ads
If you are looking for an affordable way to generate leads and sales quickly, Facebook ads are a great option. To create them all you need is an image, a little copy and a link to the page you want to drive traffic to.
The only problem with creating image Facebook ads is that you need to restrict the amount of text on the image to less than 20%. Exceed this and the reach of your ad will be reduced and you won’t get the most bang for your buck.
If you’re looking for an alternative ad option that lets you include more text you should try video ads instead, as Facebook doesn’t limit the amount of overlay text that can be added here.
Another incentive to run video ads is that they tend to outperform image ads. Agorapulse tested this by running a small ad campaign on Facebook. They used one video ad and one image ad linking back to the same page. The video ad generated 26 new trials for their product, while the photo ad generated only 14.
You can create Facebook video ads to drive more traffic and sales by following below steps.
How to create the videos
While creating your Facebook ad video, you have 2 options:
- Record something or
- Use a video editor and create an animated version.
There are many editing tools available. One of the most popular online editing tool is Crello.
On Crello, to create your Facebook video you need to go to their dashboard and choose a video format. They have 4 video formats: Full HD Video, Animated post, Instagram stories, and Facebook video cover.
If you want to just create an ad that will appear in the feed, you can go with Full HD video. This should work for Instagram ads as well. But if you want to create a video ad for Facebook stories too you can use Instagram stories. This lets you create vertical video ads for both Instagram and Facebook stories. (Crello also lets you easily resize the video.)
Regardless if you use Crello or another video editor, make sure to browse and select a template that will suit your ad message and brand best. Make sure you have a clear, engaging and simple copy that will capture your audience’s attention. You will have more room to add text so keep each clip short.
Things to keep in mind
The quality of your ad actually matters. Facebook recently announced new restrictions and increased penalties for brands that publish ‘low quality’ ads.
What qualifies as a ‘low quality’ ad?
- Engagement bait – Those “like this” or “share this” ads.
- Withholding information – A teaser that doesn’t share enough information. These are often spam.
- Sensationalized language – Ads using exaggerated headlines or command a reaction from people but don’t deliver on the landing page.
Basically, be mindful of your content and copy.
Setting up the video ad on Facebook
Then click on the blue continue button. Facebook will take you to a new page where you will be asked to set up the targeting for the ad.
If you already have a saved audience (i.e. a list of subscribers or people who have recently visited your website) you can retarget them. That’s an easy way to reach people you know are interested in your brand. Also, with Facebook’s new ad restrictions, using information that you own (outside of Facebook) is the best way to target your own audience.
If you don’t have a saved audience, you will need to create one. Your targeting options are location, age, gender, languages, demographics, interests and connections.
This data on who you should target should be set based on your buyer persona.
[If you haven’t got a persona, that’s another issue. A great way to start is by running a survey using a tool like SurveyMonkey to learn as much as you can about your audience.]
After that use this data to create an empathy map and the persona and then use them to set up the targeting for your ad. Don’t ever resort to guess work while targeting your audience.
Next choose the placement. Facebook gives you two options automatic placements and edit placements. If you have no idea which placement will get you the best result you should go with the automatic placement option, but if you already know you can go with edit placements and choose where you would like the ads to be displayed.
Here you can choose the devices you would like the ads to appear on and also set whether you would like the ad to appear on Instagram and Messenger.
After that, you can set a budget. You should always start with a low budget like $10 or $20 per day as this can help you test the effectiveness of the ad.
If the ad does well you can increase the budget later.
Finally, you will come to a page where you can select the format (single video or slideshow) and upload the video.
Upload it here and add the text. Be as descriptive as you would like to. Include information about both the video and the landing page. Also, add the headline and news feed link description.
After that, you can confirm and publish the ad.
If you find this process of setting up the ad complicated, you can use a tool like AdEspresso to simplify it.
Conclusion
The next step is to wait and see how the ad performs. If it does well you can increase the budget and if it doesn’t you will need to modify the video or the targeting to see if it improves results. As you keep running newer versions of the ad you will gain more insights which will help you better it and get more out of your spend.