How to create the perfect Facebook Ad for your business
It’s no rocket science; creating the best ad is detrimental to the success of your Facebook marketing initiative. You might have got your ad targeting spot on, but without the right ad, you will fail to make the final impact.
Before you go ahead and read this blog on ad creation, you should definitely check my previous blog on getting your target audience right.
There is no shortcut to creating the perfect ad as this by no mean a one shoe fit all situation. The key lies in continuously experimenting to know what works best for your business and your target audience.
#1: Creative
Ad Format
70% of the content consumed on Facebook today is in form of videos. While Videos are the most preferred type of ad creative used, you should definitely experiment with others too.
The first step in choosing the type of creative for you comes from understanding your target audience. If you are target audience is premium in nature (i.e high-end phones, higher age group, top-tier cities and other interest and behaviour factors signifying high-end user) then Videos should definitely be your best bet. If not, you should definitely take into consideration user device, access to mobile network etc while deciding on your ad format.
Slideshow ads might come as a saviour to many as they are easy to create and also consume lesser data than video ads and hence render well in low end phones and at lower internet speeds.
There are many other smaller factors that you should consider if you want to run video ads effectively. I will be covering most of that in my next blog, so make sure you hit the follow button once you are done with this blog.
Design for Mobile
77% of Facebook content is consumed on mobile. Keep both video and static images in 1:1 aspect ratio as this provides a larger real estate(78% more than the traditional 16:9). Also, make sure all your subtitle and captions are readable on phone.
Keep an eye on Image Text Rating
Facebook prefers ad images with little or no text. This is where video and slideshow formats thump static images. Facebook considers the text only in your thumbnail and not in the actual Video. As Facebook allows you to custom upload thumbnails you can keep the text limited here or go for a thumbnail with no text whatsoever.
You can come to a more informed decision on giving up on text in your thumbnail by looking at the percentage of your target audience who watch your video on auto-play. If most of them watch the videos have auto-play on, your thumbnail pretty much becomes insignificant.
A poor Image text rating results in under delivery of the campaign and also higher CPM. Make sure you use the Facebook text overlay tool to check the Image text rating of your creative.
Read more about the same here.
#2: Ad copy
Keep it short and strong
While you might be tempted to write a nice good introduction for your business, it’s key to keep the text and description of your short and simple. I have seen advertisers often ignore the basic character limits on Ad copy without realising the negative impact it has on the campaign CPM.
I recommend keeping them short as possible. This is another big reason to use videos or slideshows as these formats allow you to communicate more visually and depend less on the Ad copy.
Here is a great article that not only covers ad copy but also gives you insights on what worked well in 2017 on Facebook.
Optimize for placement
Facebook Ads are rendered differently on different placements. Here you can clearly see the difference between how an ad is rendered differently not only on Desktop and Mobile but also Facebook and Instagram. So make sure you are looking at all previews before launching your ad.
#3: Relevance Score
Relevance score (out of 10) is calculated based on the positive and negative feedback Facebook expects an ad to receive from its target audience. The more positive interactions it expects an ad to receive, the higher the ad’s relevance score will be.
It’s important to note that ‘Relevance score’ does not determine how good your creative and ad copy is, but how that particular ad is performing for a given target audience. A particular ad might have a poor relevance score for one audience and might work really well for the other.
The simplest example; if you are using a creative with a male model across two campaigns, one targeting men and other targeting women; you might notice that the relevance score is high for the ad used in the campaign targeting men and low for the other.
Two key things to ensure that you have a maintain a good relevance score:
- Be aware of your target audience: Have the creative and ad copy curated for every target group, or user persona that you’re targeting.
- Avoid creative saturation: Refresh your creatives regularly to ensure that your audience is not seeing the same ad too many times. Keep an eye on the frequency for every ad. The viewers or target audience might not react to your content, but they might just get pissed, as well.
Relevance score has a smaller impact on cost and delivery in brand awareness campaigns since those ads are optimized for reaching people, rather than driving a specific action like installs.
While there is no fixed benchmark to what is a good relevance score, having worked with multiple accounts, I have found that a relevance score of 6+ is good for an account with high spends while for one with lower spends the score can be as high as 8 or even more.
#4 CPM & CTR
CPM and CTR are impacted by multiple parameters; your ad being one of them.
As explained in the previous section, CPM is heavily affected by the ad format, Image text score, character count of ad copy and relevance score.
While you relevance score might be good thanks to high engagement rate, you might still see a low CTR. A powerful call to action along with the right creative is key to get the CTR right.
Note: For campaign objective where you are prompting the user to leave Facebook(Ex: app install, click to website etc) make sure you look at Link clicks and not Clicks. Here is the difference between the two.
You might also want to look at what you mean by outbound links here.
#5 Result/Click Ratio
You might have achieved the lowest CPM, a high engagement rate (relevance score) and a good CTR but still see poor Cost per Result due to a low Result/Click ratio. Unless you are running a campaign for brand awareness or those optimized for reaching more people or clicks, you should definitely keep an eye on this number.
You can easily make the mistake of creating a click-bait ad while setting the wrong exception. For example, in an app install ad, after clicking on ad the user might find a large disconnect to what was shown in the ad and what the app was really about and hence not install it.
#6 Look for constant inspiration
The most important aspect of getting the Facebook ad right is to continuously innovate and also learn from others.
For example, check out how a carousel ad can be used in multiple different ways.
Facebook creative hub is very useful to keep track of what a few of the industry leaders are leveraging Facebook ads after visiting the playstore or appstore.
Do drop in your feedback on what you thought of the article. Also, if you have any more tips or suggestions on the topic do let us know in the comments section.