Seriously. The possibilities are huge, so no wonder more and more businesses and organisations want to use Facebook ads.
The question is usually how to use them as effectively as possible. What are the options and, maybe even more important, what do they bring in? What ad formats are there, and which one do you use when? And once you’ve made those choices, how do you reach the right audience? WELL?
In this blog we’ll clear that up. With our experience, we can tell you exactly how, which, where, when and at what time to use Facebook ads.
The Facebook ad platform offers a huge number of advertising options. Depending on your goal and your audience, we can set up a targeted campaign. Below we go through the possible objectives and the ad formats that go with them.
Below you’ll find all 13(!) advertising options with their ad formats:
Oh, and before we start: always keep the 20% rule in mind!
This means the image in your ad can’t contain more than 20% text. That’s how Facebook wants to prevent loud, ugly ads. So the less text, the better! How do you check this? Well, with THIS handy Facebook tool!
1. Page post engagement
Got an important message or a super creative Facebook post? And you want your whole community to know how great that post is? Page post engagement makes that happen. Promoting a post on Facebook gets more people to see your Facebook posts. That way you increase engagement with your post and get more likes, comments and views. Originality is still key here, of course! And don’t forget the 20% rule: only 20% of your image can be text.
2. Page Likes
Want a bigger community and more reach on Facebook? Give your Facebook page more body by starting a ‘Page promotion’. Like a post, this type of ad shows up in your audience’s timeline. A ‘Like Page’ button is added to the ad. In the end, you want your chosen audience to like your page, so your Facebook page’s reach grows. But watch out! Be specific. You’d rather have 100 active, loyal followers than 1,000 people that don’t give a f…
3. Website clicks
You generate clicks to your website with the ‘Website clicks promotion’. Want more valuable visitors on your website (who doesn’t)? And do you know exactly which audience you want to send there? Then use Website clicks! The Website clicks promotion lets you send people on Facebook straight to a page on your website. By using a specific landing page, you show your audience more targeted information, so they’re more likely to reach your goal (newsletter sign-up, conversion, you name it).
With Facebook’s very extensive audience targeting system, you can choose veeeery specifically who you want to send to your website. Great, right! You want this.
4. Website conversions
You drive conversions on your website with the ‘Website conversions’ ad. Want more people to buy something or request information, for example? A Website conversions ad drives those conversions. With the Facebook Pixel you can drive, measure and optimise the conversions your Facebook campaign generates on your website. This ad shows you exactly how much a conversion costs. Ideal, right?
5. App installs
You generate mobile app installs with the ‘App installs’ ad. Got an app, but not quite sure how to reach your audience? The App install ad encourages the right audience to download your app. The ad shows an ‘Install now’ button to make it clear that it’s an app and can be installed right away. And, as we said, Facebook lets you choose your audience very specifically :) !
6. App engagement
You can boost app engagement with the ‘App engagement’ ad. This ad format lets you convince people who already downloaded your app to use it more, for example by highlighting part of the app in the ad, or telling them how to win extra points and so on. That way you encourage people to use your app more and take certain actions.
7. Local promotion.
Local promotion is handy when you want to reach more people near your business. The goal is to grow awareness in the area and eventually bring more people to your physical store. You can drive this by adding a ‘Get directions’ button to the ad. So did you just open a new physical store, for example? Let the neighbourhood know you’re there!
8. Event promotion
Organising a sick event soon? The special event promotion makes it easy to promote your Facebook event and gets your audience more triggered to sign up. When they sign up (or say they’re interested), they get notifications about the event, and that’s what you want!
9. Offer claims
Generating offer claims is an effective ad format when you have a discount or other offer for a set period. Select your specific audience and decide how many people can use the offer. Facebook makes it easy to measure how many people used your promotion! Play with the content and discounts and find out what works best for your business!
10. Increase video views
Increase video views: Got a video about your business or product? Then you can choose the ‘increase video views’ objective. This objective makes sure your video is promoted the right way on both desktop and mobile. You can upload a file of up to 1 GB and add a descriptive line to it.
11. Leads!
Generate leads: This new ad format helps you generate specific leads, like filling in a form or signing up for a newsletter. Collecting leads is actually pretty simple: people click the ad, Facebook automatically fills in the available details, and finally the visitor submits the form and boom, the lead is in.
12. Improve brand awareness.
This objective shows your ads to Facebook users who are likely to pay attention to your brand. You can use both image and video ads for this.
13. Promote a product catalogue
Facebook lets you promote products people already viewed on your website. This is also called dynamic remarketing. Visitors who viewed products on your website but didn’t convert can be shown very specific ads featuring the products they looked at. That makes this ad format super relevant and a huge conversion booster. Another plus of this ad format: the ads are generated automatically. Nice, too ;)
Watch out: the 20% text rule!
This rule means the image in your ad can’t contain more than 20% text. That’s how Facebook wants to prevent loud ads. How do you check this? With this handy tool: Facebookcheck.
Targeting options
I’ve been talking about your audience all along, but what are actually the options for putting together the right audience? Facebook works with several main categories for targeting:
Location: you can target a specific location, but you can also choose a radius around a certain place.
Demographics: you can target on these demographic characteristics: age, gender and language. Besides these standard characteristics, you can also select on: relationship, education, work and life events.
Interests: name it, and you can probably target that interest on Facebook. Besides the interests people list, Facebook also looks at activities, education, job titles, pages people like, and so on.
Behaviour: you can also target people based on their device, their digital activities and whether they just got back from holiday.
Connections: want to reach people who like your event, for example? The ‘Connections’ option lets you select people who like your page (or their friends), use your apps or like your events. This is also where you’ll find the options to exclude people.
Those were the options for now!
Did we spark your interest and can’t you wait to advertise on Facebook? Get in touch, and we’ll explore the options together.
Key takeaways
- Facebook has 13 different advertising objectives
- Always keep the 20% text rule for your ad image in mind
- Choose the ad format that fits your goal and audience
- You can target by location, demographics, interests, behaviour and connections
- Reaching the right audience decides the success of your campaign
