According to HubSpot, the number of businesses that consider Facebook to be critical to their business has increased by 75%.
Why?
Because Facebook has a total of 1.44 billion monthly active users. That’s 1.44 billion opportunities for you to market your business and gather leads for your post-click landing pages.
It doesn’t matter whether your target audience is stay-at-home moms or CEOs. Chances are they log into their Facebook accounts daily. This is the primary reason there are 30 million businesses with active pages on Facebook.
Businesses use their Facebook pages to update their audiences about product releases, feature upgrades, and contests among other things. (We do this, too. In fact, we even have an Instapage User Community on Facebook).
The problem is that just posting on Facebook isn’t enough for you to get leads for your post-click landing pages. This is where optimized Facebook Ads come into the equation.
In this post, we’re going to break down Facebook advertising for you, from explaining how to set up Facebook ads to showing you examples of great ones. You’ll know everything about creating optimized Facebook ads after you’re done reading this post.
What are Facebook ads?
Facebook ads offer users a powerful and unique way to reach their ideal customers. With Facebook ads, you can reach people based on location, age, gender, interests, and much more. In addition to the ads, you also get access to tools to understand how your ads are performing giving you a chance to make them even better.
You can read more about Facebook tools here.
You start with your ads by choosing a budget. Facebook uses an ads auction system where you let them know how much you’re willing to bid to have your ad shown to the audience of your choice. These bids are based on the cost per click (CPC) on your ad or the cost per impression (CPI) of your ad.
Facebook also gives you the choice of pausing your ad campaign at any time.
Your ads appear in front of your audience on both their mobile and desktop interfaces. You can display your ads in their newsfeed or on the right-hand ads column. As far as the placement of the ad goes, Facebook gives you a lot of options.
After you’ve targeted your ads and have decided on a budget, you can then begin to create your actual ad.
The Anatomy of an Optimized Facebook Ad
Your optimized Facebook ad should have all of these components to generate the most leads.
Make it visual
Don’t create a bland ad with just copy. Make your ad visual by including a relevant and eye-catching image. Your ad image should get your visitor to feel something. When in doubt, always go for an image that is a close up. Use smiling people or happy animals, and your visitors will want to click on your ad. (Really. This basically always works, regardless of relevance).
Try to use multiple photos in your ads. Facebook will display different versions of your ad for different people, and you’ll be able to ascertain which photo gets you the highest CTR. Think of this as Facebook A/B testing.
Make it relevant
Want your ads to do better on the social network? Make them relevant. With Facebook’s recently launched relevance scores, your ads get into big trouble if they don’t rank well on relevance.
According to Facebook, the relevance score is calculated based on the positive and negative feedback they expect an ad to receive from its target audience.
The more positive interactions Facebook expects an ad to receive, the higher the ad’s relevance score will be. (Positive indicators vary depending on the ad’s objective but may include video views, conversions, etc). The more times Facebook expects people to hide or report an ad, the lower its score will be.
Ads receive a relevance score between 1 and 10, with 10 being the highest.
The more relevant your ad image, copy, CTA button and post-click landing page are to your audience, the higher your relevance score.
An Enticing Headline With Your UVP in it
To get your visitors to click your ads, you need to create headlines they can’t say no to. Work in your Unique Value Proposition in your ad headline to let your users know from the start what’s different about your product or service.
You can even add social proof in your headlines. For example, if you have a help desk software, instead of saying “Best Helpdesk software out there” – which let’s face it, doesn’t sound believable – you could craft your headline in this way, “Super Awesome User has responded to 20% more customer tickets with our HelpDesk software.”
A Clear Call to Action Button
Without a clear CTA button, you are abandoning your visitor, because he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do next. Don’t do that. Add a sense of urgency on your button to increase your CTR- with copy like “Buy Now & Get 20% Off” or “Free Trial Offer Ends Today.”
Examples of Optimized Facebook Ads
NatureBox
The image in the ad is very enticing, plus with the big free trial sticker, you know just by looking at the image what you’re going to get when you click on the ad. The headline has NatureBox’s UVP in it – wholesome snacks that they deliver monthly.
The copy mentions the price of the shipping and lets the visitor know they get to sample 5 snacks for free, which is awesome.
All in all, this ad works.
Jetsetter
The headline tells the visitor from the start what they’ll be getting when they click on the ad, which is saving up to 40% on luxury hotels on their next vacation. Now this offer is something a lot of people will say yes to. (I know I will).
The image depicts a serene luxury hotel room, which helps the visitor visualize their next vacation, something we all crave. Want to vacation in style in Santorini Island? Click this ad and off you go.
OutBound Engine
The headline is clear and to the point. Automate your marketing and spend the rest of your time relaxing. The image reinforces this message with the woman clearly enjoying herself in the pool.
The copy explains why you need automated marketing in the first place, and the CTA button tells you that by clicking it, you’re going to learn more about the service.
This is an effective, optimized Facebook ad.
You now know what it takes to create a Facebook advert that works, which is great, but that’s not all that you have to do. You need to connect your targeted Facebook ad with an optimized post-click landing page. Want to know more about Facebook post-click landing pages? Here you go.
Want to know how to create your Facebook post-click landing page using Instapage, read about it here and get a free copy of our digital advertising reference guide.
