By: Zahra
In the ever-changing world of technology, advertising for a business has become much more different than compared to the past. Traditional advertising like posters and billboard advertising just don’t affect consumers as much as they did in the past anymore.
In the new age of technology, if a business owner doesn’t know how to advertise his/ her brand digitally, they will not be able to compete in the long run. Social media marketing, especially Facebook, has become a big part of this digital marketing ecosystem, and they help you increase your brand’s recognition. Facebook advertising gets your ad in front of specific target audiences and helps you to connect with them on the world’s largest social network.
Before we start, you will need to know the different types of Facebook ads in order to get the best results. In this article, you will know everything you will be taught how to know to kick start a (moderately) successful Facebook ad campaign.
Types of Facebook Ads
Before you start, you may want to make sure that your Facebook page has a good user experience (UX) design and can help portray a strong branding for your business. It means that all the information and pictures on your page must be clear, properly thought out, uniformed and have an easy-to-understand brand concept.
Generally, there are around 9 types of Facebook ads available (as of writing) for one to choose from. They serve different purposes and aim to create a different kind of conversion for the audience that the ad is being served to.
1. Image Ads
Image ads are the most commonly used ad type and are also a great way to start your Facebook advertising. You need just a few clicks to choose an image that can boost your ad. Facebook even has an arsenal of free stock photos for you to choose from to make sure that you have the variety you need.
Though image ads are simple, it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t put any thoughts behind them. The images that you use for your Facebook advertising should be relevant and be able to attract your target audiences’ eyeballs when they are scrolling through the hundreds of content fed to them on a daily basis.
2. Video Ads
Video ads are one of the most engaging types of Facebook ad. In a time when a video is easily created with the use of a smartphone with a reasonably hi-res camera, almost everyone can create video content.
Your video should represent your brand, show the unique selling point of your products or be interesting enough for people to want to continue watching it. It is good to keep it short and engaging so as to effectively put across the message you want to your audiences.
A video can also be a gif-like graphic or simple animations that helps to explain your product and brand.
3. Slideshow Ads
Slideshow ads are a collection of photos, texts, or video clips that gives you a way to create short video ads. Even if you do not have your own images, this Facebook ad option gives you the ability to choose a few photos and put them together for you easily.
If you are looking to have something moving in your ad but couldn’t afford the time or money to hire a videographer to do the job, a few great photos that do justice to your product won’t hurt!
4. Video Poll Ads
Facebook is bringing the capabilities of poll stickers to its video ads. A Facebook video poll can be fed to your target audience in a minimally disruptive way to quickly get their opinions and aims to create the interaction that a video is unable to do so.
Interestingly, although video poll ad is a function that is relatively new to Facebook’s advertisers, researches have shown that it has the potential to attract more leads than a regular video ad.
5. Leads Ads
Leads ads, though can will be fed to desktop users, are specifically designed for mobile devices since they do not need a user to type much (or event at all) to give you their contact information.
It increases the user experience (UX) and makes a user more receptive in providing the advertiser with certain pre-filled up information in exchange for something i.e. free samples, brochures.
6. Messenger Ads
Facebook Messenger ads allows you to reach out to users on Facebook messenger platform. When you are creating a new ad, just choose Messenger as your desired placement, and select Facebook feed.
There is also this option on when creating your Facebook feed named “click-to-messenger”, that enables a user to open a Messenger conversation with your Facebook page when they see your post. This allows people to have a one-on-one conversation with one of your customer service reps.
7. Collection Ads
Collection ads are the type of ads that targets only mobile devices. This ad type allows you to showcase up to five products to your target audience so that they can click to buy easily.
Collection ads give people the ability to buy your products without leaving Facebook, enhancing the user interface and user experience (UIUX) design. It offers easy shopping that doesn’t require a great internet connection.
8. Dynamic Ads
Dynamic ads show specific products that they think will interest the users most. For example, if a customer has recently visited a product on your website and then abandoned it (leave without buying), dynamic ads for that product will be shown by Facebook on their Facebook feed.
You will first need to create your product catalogue and start your campaign once, and it will keep finding the right audiences for each product for as long as you want it to.
Facebook even has an e-learning course on how you can create a dynamic ad to encourage more advertisers to use this function, signalling their desire to capture a bigger share of the booming e-commerce ad dollar pie.
9. Carousel Ads
Carousel ad or multi-product ad is another type of dynamic ad that propagates a collection of multiple products from your online store; with each product having its own image, caption, URL, and overall information.
How to Advertise using Facebook?
If you have a business page on Facebook, you can easily select the Facebook Ads Manager or Business Manager option to set up your Facebook ad campaign.
If you don’t have a business page, you must create one before you can start advertising.
1. Choose your Objective
Log into Facebook Ads Manager and click on the Campaigns tab, then click Create to start a new Facebook ad campaign.
2. Name your Campaign
Give your Facebook ad campaign a name that best describes who you want to target or the product you are selling. You can also choose to set up an A/B split test or not.
3. Set Up Your Ad Account
If you are new to Facebook advertising, you can see a button says Set Up Ad Account. Click on it and enter details like country and time zone, then click continue.
4. Target your Audiences
The next step is building your target audiences. Select your target location, age, gender, and language. You will see two fields to choose your audiences, detailed targeting, and connections.
>> Detailed Targeting: This field helps you to include or exclude people based on their interests and behaviours.
>> Connections: This field allows you to target or exclude people who have a connection (liked or following) with your Facebook page.
5. Choose Facebook Ad Placements
If you are creating your Facebook ad for the first time, you may choose automatic placement. It allows Facebook to automatically place your ads across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and their partners’ platforms.
6. Set your Schedule and Budget
The next step is deciding the amount of money you want to spend on your ad campaign. You can choose a daily or lifetime budget, and set the start and end date for the campaign.
7. Create your Ad
The last step is creating your ad. Choose your ad format and enter the text component for your ad. When you are done, click on the confirm button, and you will receive an approval email once the ad is approved and running.
Facebook is the largest social platform in the world and a great tool for advertising your brand. Although this article may give you the basic of launching a Facebook ad campaign, much is still needed before you can be really successful in digital advertising.
There are quite a few good hands-on digital marketing courses in the market, and choosing a good one can help one achieve that objective. Find out about our diploma in digital marketing programme too, taught by current practitioners in the industry.