Facebook Ad Templates
According to recent stats, Facebook has 1.94 billion users. Although there aren’t official numbers released, it’s estimated that Facebook makes over 4 billion dollars each year from advertising. These two stats mean that Facebook is the ideal place to advertise your business.
How Facebook Ads Are Displayed
There are a few different sections of Facebook where your ads can be seen. The three most common ad locations are in the user’s news feed, within the user’s mobile app, and on the right side of the user’s screen (only relevant to desktop users). Here are some examples of ad placement:
Your ads may be featured on the mobile app or Messenger within Instant Articles, which is Facebook’s content platform. It could also be displayed during videos like Facebook Live or Video on Demand.
You can preview how various ads appear by checking out the Facebook Ads Guide. It breaks down each element of the ad so you can easily visualize what your ad would look like:
You can click on the options above the red arrow to preview what different advertisements would look like.
How to Target Your Facebook Ads
There are plenty of business owners that complain about not making money from their advertisements. They may tell you that Facebook ads are a waste of time and money. They might say that they never broke even on their costs.
But the majority of people criticizing didn’t know how to use the platform correctly and that’s why they never saw a return on their investment. The power of ads on Facebook lies in the ability to target users.
Demographics
Facebook lets you to target users by their demographics such as gender, age, education level, and politics.
You can choose to have your ads shown to people who meet certain behaviors. For example, you can target an ad toward men or women who have a marriage anniversary coming up in the next 90 days. That can be helpful for flower shops or jewelry brands looking to advertise.
You can target users by location. If you own a local food market, you might want to target customers who just moved to the area since they may not be aware of your store. The same is true of other service-based businesses like hair salons or spas.
Interests
Another way you can narrow down your audience is to check their interests. You can have Facebook ads displayed to users who are interested in fitness, business, or any other niche you choose. This increases the chances that the people who see your ad may actually click through to your website.
Uploading Your Customer List
You can target your Facebook ads to your customer list. Since these users have already made a purchase from you, they already know and like your brand. All you have to do is remind them about your products and that’s easy to do with Facebook.
Gathering Lookalike Audiences
Facebook can look at your current fans and followers to determine what they have in common. Then the Facebook ads manager begins to search for users who have similar interests and matches them for you. This means you spend less time defining your demographic and more time focusing on your business.
Retargeting Website Visitors
If you’re not familiar with the phrase ‘retargeting visitors’, it means showing the user an advertisement for a product that they researched or clicked on previously. For example, one potential customer visits your website and clicks on a beautiful blouse. She’s not quite ready to make the purchase yet. She just wanted to do some initial research.
With retargeting, you can make the same blouse appear in the potential customer’s social media account. Now, she’s had some time to think over the purchase. She clicks through your advertisement onto your website and buys the item. That’s how retargeting works.
Facebook allows you to retarget your visitors so you can encourage them to buy your product. This is a smart idea because most customers have to be exposed to a product or brand multiple times before they make a purchase.
Tips for Advertising Effectively on Facebook
Before you spend money on a Facebook advertisement, sit down and think about what your goal is for this ad. Do you want to raise brand awareness? Get users to subscribe to your newsletter? Buy your product?
If you’re not sure, look at your business. What are you currently focused on? Have you recently released a new product and are busy promoting it? Are you working on growing your mailing list of potential leads? When you know what you’re doing with your ad, then it’s more likely to succeed.
Focus on the location of your advertisement. Some brands think they’ll get more for their advertising bucks with if they treat their tiny right side advertisement the same as they would an ad in the news feed. This can result in headlines that are too long and pictures that are difficult to see. Since the ad isn’t properly formatted, it doesn’t perform very well.
Headlines are one of the most important elements on your Facebook ad. Yet many businesses and brands only include a headline as an afterthought. Without an engaging headline, users will just keep scrolling.