We are increasingly willing to release ads on popular social media sites. Before you burn through your budget on these activities, it’s worth taking a look at some tips to help increase the effectiveness of your efforts.

Facebook and Instagram ads – table of contents:

  1. Test and optimize
  2. Facebook and Instagram Ads – Ad Manager
  3. Initialize generosity
  4. Keep learning
  5. Work with the customer groups you already have
  6. Go mobile
  7. Remarket with dynamic ads
  8. Watch for the news, trends and make your clients think
  9. The rider and the elephant

As of recently, Facebook and Instagram have merged their advertising solutions and now anyone who has a Facebook account and works with tools like Ad Manager can create ad campaigns on both social media platforms.

facebook and instagram ads infographic

Test and optimize

These are the most important and basic principles of advertising on all social networks. Thanks to the fact that all changes are made instantaneously, we have the opportunity to compare the impact of different factors on the effectiveness of advertising.

And the following factors are:

  • graphic, size of the graphic, its content,
  • text, text length, call to action,
  • use of various advertising formats (e.g. whether it is one photo, several photos – the so-called multiproduct ad – video or maybe a collage),
  • target group (its precision, compatibility with our potential group of customers, matching ads to people),
  • use of current elements, etc.

In short, every comma matters. By testing on “a living organism”, we can create an analogous ad with different graphics or the same graphic with different text.

We also get advanced statistics so we know how the ads are performing. Review these statistics and make business decisions based on them. It’s very easy to burn through your budget with careless investments.

Facebook and Instagram Ads – Ad Manager

Although it is quite a complicated tool, learn it and use it to your advantage. Ad Manager provides additional features and helps in managing the budget.

Among the special MR options that are changing (for now) are (for instance): new goals, e.g. lead generation, which is discussed below, the ability to target by specific interests, additional formats (e.g. multiproduct or video slideshow), the option to create a “contact us” action button, the ability to write longer headlines and ad texts than before, the ability to use special characters (e.g. emoticons), the ability to target e.g. by the mobile software used, better narrowing of target groups. If you haven’t set up ads on Instagram yet, you’ll find them right in the Manager under Ad Placement.

Initialize generosity

I am a proponent of Gary Vaynerchuk’s economy of gratitude. It can also be used in advertising, where before we ask our audience to buy a product or perform some action, we can offer them something completely free.

Do you sell shoes? Set up an ad on the landing page, where after sharing an email, someone will receive a free e-book about fashion trends. In this, way we can advertise many models of shoes, and what’s more – we already have an email, that is leads to use for the future.

Mail, in addition to the newsletter, can be a powerful advertising tool. By customizing audiences, we can create an advertising group with people who have downloaded our ebook. The conversion rate of such a group will be higher because these are the people who have already responded or filled out a form (and also got to know our brand). Higher conversion means also better financial deals offered by Facebook.

Keep learning

The new advertising formats give a really wide range of possibilities. For local companies there are geotargeted ads, for different brands, there are ads on Instagram, for better optimization the settings of pricing parameters change.

Every few weeks Facebook releases new features for you to use. Among the changes so far we can find there is a redesign of the manager’s interface, merging the conversion and remarketing pixel into one. Also, more precise targeting, better ad optimization, multiproduct ads, dynamic product ads, geotargeted ads, ads for lead generation, or ads on Instagram.

Work with the customer groups you already have

The majority of e-commerce uses target groups based on demographic and behavioral characteristics. However, you can expand your reach and seek such recipients who have already had contact with our brand. This can be done using, among other things, conversion pixel (ads on website visitors), ads based on Facebook applications, or the possibility of uploading custom audiences. It’s much better to nurture leads that have already encountered our company and convince them to buy, rather than constantly relying on strangers.

Go mobile

It is estimated that about half of Facebook users use mobile devices to view their timelines. This means that creating ads targeted at tablet and mobile users is downright essential.

First, remember that mobile ads display differently. Long videos, small images, or targeting ads for android users on iOS devices are out.

Second, mobile users are less likely to click on ads. And certainly, if they go to a site, they expect it to be optimized for mobile devices.

Thirdly, mobile and tablet formats have enforced specific solutions, e.g. lead ads that allow you to fill in a form with data from Facebook. It is worth using them.

Remarket with dynamic ads

Facebook also provides another interesting format – mainly for online stores – namely dynamic product ads. Dynamic product ads are currently available in external tools such as Fasttony.es, but they will probably soon enter the Power Editor. Thanks to this, instead of showing an ad for the product visited by a given person, we can define a set of ads displayed to the user.

Watch for the news, trends and make your clients think

Ads that relate to current events, seasons, times of, day, and so on always have higher conversion rates and more clicks. Among the standard ideas for using so-called current events are sporting events (games, Olympics, athletes’ successes), time of day (morning, afternoon, evening), seasons, parts of a day (breakfast, lunch break, after work, bedtime), life events (wedding, engagement, birthday, new job, moving, trips – you’ll find them all in the demographic selection panel), political and social events, important and well-known dates (The Independence Day, holidays, new school year, vacations), weather (especially for local ads).

People are much more willing to watch ads that ask questions or arouse emotions such as discussion or challenge typical thinking, encourage to contemplate. This is especially advisable if we care about generating engagement on our fanpage.

The rider and the elephant

The rider is our rationality – he sets the goal and tries to direct the elephant. The animal is the emanation of our emotions. And we know full well who wins. While man has the tools, the beast can ignore anything if it has an opinion.

It is the same when designing ads. Tend to both the rational side and emotional needs. This can be easily achieved by writing a text in the language of benefits (here I recommend reading Cialdini and his rules of influencing people, including that people are more afraid of loss than looking for profits), or by choosing graphics that will stimulate our senses.

When advertising a hotel or a travel destination let’s choose a beautiful photo of the beach or a nice interior, and in the content reach for a longing for the sun (especially now, in winter). Advertising a new cream can present a shapely face on the photo and describe the benefits of using it (do not waste time and take care of your skin!). These are just illustrative examples to make a point.

Facebook ads used well, can be a great tool in social media strategy. Unfortunately, it often turns out that people burn through their budgets investing in ineffective forms, not caring about their audience, or poorly targeting content. It’s a pity because they only lose money unnecessarily. Fortunately, creating ads and managing them well is not as difficult as it may seem after reading this article, is it?

If You want to know how to make a good Facebook Ads, click here

You can also join our Facebook community and follow us on Twitter and never miss a thing!

Facebook and Instagram ads - 9 tips & tricks zofia lipska avatar 1background

Author: Zofia Lipska

With over 10 years of experience in digital marketing, Sophia not only knows the rules of this industry but above all knows how to break them in order to achieve outstanding and creative results.