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TL;DR: Marketing trends will continue to shift A LOT this year…

Writing about 2024 marketing trends, I focused on the Big Five of trends, including Gen Z social media, UGC-style content, AI hype going down (I was wrong) and sustainability going up.

An important shift form the early 2020s is that marketing strategies, tactics, and channels have become increasingly differentiated among B2B v.s. B2C, virtual v.s. physical products.

Also, there’s a whole new space of AI marketing tools, the Everything Bagel Magic Powder to sprinkle on tasks that must become more efficient. Will we want to go on eating, daily, fast-delivery but low-quality dishes that all taste the same?

In 2025, I decided to do the annual fortune telling slightly differently…

As I failed to finalise my personal INs and OUTs list in time for the NYE (I got as far as hypocrisy: OUT and coconut: IN), I’m going to make up for this oversight in my business-realm predictions.

Opinionated as ever, here come my predictions for 2025 marketing trends in six categories.

My experience being primarily in brand, marketing, and growth strategies for Seed and A-round tech companies, the forecasts are probably most relevant to the techy-unicorny world.

However, there will be food for thought (bagels!) for marketers/founders in all industries.

Check this out (if you want to prepare yourself for 2025): Marketing Audit: Free Checklist of 95 Questions

And learn to become better in marketing from these 35+ TOP Marketing & Growth Newsletters that I recommend.

AI will be a huge marketing trend in 2025, as it was already in the second half of 2024.

The question is: do we actually want the resulting average-content tsunami to wash over our inboxes & feeds?

IN:

• More AI tools to automate more tasks & be more efficient. What’s done with the time saved with “efficiency” remains a mystery.
• More lame, inhuman, uncreative content flooding all social media feeds until, around 2027, the last human logs off their Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn accounts.
• A few actually useful AI tools that automate intern- and specialist-level tasks. Like AI-compiled media monitoring reports, AI-scraped + enriched lead lists.

OUT:

• Creativity + personality in advertising, social posts, sales pitches >> leading to worse results for marketing teams using AI tools.
• Manual reporting + spreadsheet’ing that leads to better understanding of what’s working and what isn’t.
• Engagement on social media and elsewhere. There is simply too much CONTENT.

Also IN:

• Ad creatives done with AI tools (the top Q4 2024 trend was UGC-style video ads) that perform worse than ads done by experienced graphic desigers.
• Democracy: more small brands able to launch digital ad campaigns without hiring an agency.
• AI-written marketing & sales emails that sound like your grandfather’s been let loose behind keyboard: awkward.
• C-level people’s inboxes flooded by 10x more spammy sales & marketing emails >> leading to new AI-powered inbox curation tools get lots of VC interest.

​

By the 2nd half of 2025, everyone is so tired of AI that we finally begin thinking with our own heads again.

Bad marketers will be unable to restore their creative brain cells. Good marketers get lots of job offers and/or a raise.

The key social media trend in 2025 will be: less is more. Think high-quality content that really makes people (you yourself) want to engage with it.

IN:

• All social channels: posts and videos that either a) entertain or b) teach something new and original get most engagement.
• Instagram & TikTok: More (big-)brand collaborations with celebrities + other big-name brands.
• Instagram & TikTok: Reels videos bring 90% or more of total reach. UGC-style videos continue to get highest engagement.
• Instagram & TikTok: Meme-style videos and images with brand insertions.
• LinkedIn: “Comment to get X” style posts get highest engagement. B2B creators give away even more valuable stuff. More people begin to give away free stuff until the entry level gets too high for most.
• LinkedIn: Even more C-level people building a personal brand. Errr, their marketing team building their personal brand >> more hiring for social media positions.

Big IN:

• Reddit! More of us resort to Reddit as the last humans-only social platform with trustworthy information.

OUT:

• All social channels: Easy growth for brands with unoriginal ideas/product that can’t hire a good social media marketer and/or agency.
• TikTok: Fatigue on both consumer + marketing team level >> fewer collaborations with TikTok content creators.
• Instagram: Brand accounts with mediocre content stop getting any engagement on their feed posts. It’s a MUST to do creative & fun Stories + Reels.
• LinkedIn: Video posts are out. We’re finally ready to admit the algos don’t love them.
• LinkedIn: Carousel posts that were bread-and-butter in 2024 get low engagement.
• LinkedIn: Personal-story style posts with overflowing fake emotionality. “I had tears in my eyes when reading your comments.” Please, get a grip on yourself and/or book a therapist consultation.

Branding in 2025 will take some interesting turns, from anti-AI storytelling to multi-million brand collaborations with film stars, pop artists, and top 1% social media creators.

IN:

• Anti-AI brand storytelling. “There is no AI” inside our product becoming a relevant value proposition to large customer segments.
• Brands with original—borderline insane—storytelling. Think Liquid Death and IKEA. Big props Bolt’s brand team who boarded the train already in late 2023.
• AI-powered (visual) brand generation. Unsure yet if this is a good or a bad thing. Certainly, we’ll end up with more of the same and boring. But more brands can launch faster.
• Big-name brand collaborations with movies, celebrities, other big-name brands. Developed as multi-million advertising campaigns, both online and offline.
• B2B influencer marketing. LinkedIn Content Creator is now a valid (and lucrative) job title.

OUT:

• AI-led brand storytelling. Guess what… Not everyone wants AI algorithms to choose what they eat, listen, watch.
• B2C influencer marketing. The ROI just doesn’t justify it, and people don’t engage with obviously sponsored content.
• Great product being enough to win new users’ attention & love. In the overcrowded, all products need an engaging brand narrative and strategy to get it before people’s eyes.
• Especially in B2B software: Best products no longer take over competitors’ clients. The first movers will lock in most users as it’s too time- and energy-consuming to change tools/things for just another 10% improvement.

A very sad OUT:

• Sustainability and CSR. We tried, people didn’t care, we were the people.
• Greenwashing is finally out. Everyone’s tired of being treated like an idiot by brands saying their product is sustainable because it’s packaged in recyclable cardboard box.

​

In 2025, we’re finally admitting our hypocrisy as consumers: “green” equals not buying. But instead of not buying, we’ll simply stop talking about fake sustainability nonsense.

On the bright side, second-hand and vintage apps + platforms will continue to thrive. It’s cheaper, more original, and delivered to your doorstep. And (!) things produced before Y2K (2000) have 10x superior quality v.s. current Big Retail output (same goes for luxury brands).

In advertising (both offline and online) there will be a drop in spending across platforms. Not only has the ROI of paid ads declined over the past five years – there is also less budget to spend.

IN:

• PR and publicity continues to be a high-ROI marketing investment. In case you have something interesting—or crazy—to say.
• Medium-size brands (in addition to household name brands) shifting to soft storytelling and brand campaigns v.s. performance marketing.
• Advertisements (online + offline) with huge IN YOUR FACE TEXT blocks on single-colour backgrounds as our collective attention span deteriorates further to invertebrate level.
• Google Ads continue to outperform other digital ad channels.
• More marketers launching Reddit ads, now that there’s a bigger audience on the platform >> buy Reddit stock NOW?

OUT:

• Digital advertising on Meta + TikTok keeps getting more expensive and less efficient. >> But is there a better option, especially for small brands? Organic social + top-quality content + cold sales seem like top contenders.
• Static ad creatives with clear messaging still outperform most video ads.
• As in any other year, advertisements with ultra-creative copywriting and design that perform worse than ads saying “get 20% your first order”—or better yet, ads saying “SALE.” Will creative teams and ad agencies ever learn?

​
​High-level OUT:

• Money. At times of shaky economy, companies will cut spending in all areas, and marketing is one of the first to take the hit. We’ll probably see more layoffs (specialist-level people replaced with AI) and advertising budget cuts.
• Growth. The cost-cutting festival will also mean slower growth for most companies. Especially as market is reluctant to spend.

​

Not to lose faith! Many successful companies were launched during recession. And it’s because of low competition, lower advertising costs, access to talent that they could expand so fast. Think Uber, Airbnb, Slack, Pinterest, Instagram in 2008.

In 2025, high-quality web and brand aesthetics become key to earning customers’ trust, as well as getting their attention in the first place.

Do not rely on AI for your creatives.

IN:

• Small brands using AI tools like Canva for marketing creatives and wondering why their marketing isn’t working.
• AI-generated photos and CGI animations that are, in fact, an improvement from stock photos & videos.
• Many cool aesthetic trends, from 3D to Y2K retro style to frosted-glass effects >> innovation won’t stop but is affordable to well-funded brands mostly.
• Template-based websites for small and just-launched brands that look better than what average branding agencies produce. Premium-level $100 templates on Squarespace, WordPress, WebFlow have gotten good.
  ​

OUT:

• AI design tools will eventually lose users as they fail to deliver high-quality creatives.
• Social media experts & paid social marketers who can’t use Figma. Hate to break this to you but Canva templates are just not good enough. They never were.
• Collaborating with large we-do-it-all agencies >> shift towards boutique agencies & freelance experts to work with high-level experts v.s. have juniors on your campaigns.

​

As I observed in a LinkedIn post, it was sad to see Adobe’s annual design trends report shift from cool stuff to AI stuff this year. For aesthetic inspiration in 2025, I recommend these two reports on Behance. One. Two.

Traditional blog-based content marketing is dead in 2025. Content marketers will need to diversify into newsletters and social media marketing.

IN:

• Newsletters! Brands launching their own Substacks or other-platform newsletters that are so good they compete with media publications. See more: 25+Best Marketing Newsletters in 2025.
• B2B brands publishing less but higher-quality content. Think extensive guides, free courses, trend reports v.s. 800-word blog articles.
• B2C brands launch their own media publications, either news-style or video platforms that compete with big media companies vis à vis quality and audience numbers. See
• Marketers using AI tools for content writing. Hate, no, happy to break this to you: no AI tool can write text 100% as good as one written by an experienced writer.
• BUT good writers can use ChatGPT (you really need no other tools) to accelerate their research + writing process.

All my predictions here are AI-free. I wasn’t even tempted to ask ChatGPT “what are the marketing trends in 2025?” It would simply scrape other blog articles, mostly by junior marketers. Would you really want to read those?

OUT:

• For most brands, publishing a blog for SEO purposes is passé. AI-powered search results kill lots of organic traffic, content marketing becomes more technical and complicated.
• People coming to your blog directly. Nope, you’ll have to work hard on marketing any piece of content to attract people to it: social media, newsletter, paid ads.
• Podcasts as marketing strategy is finally out. There are too many good established ones competing for the time we all save thanks to AI tools—and that we spend watching Netflix or YouTube…

Personal IN:

• Whenever googling stuff like “best toaster” or “best recipe for x” adding the word “Reddit” to the end of my query and trusting people in Reddit forums to get honest, human, useful information.

…

​Thanks for reading!

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The post 55+ Predictions for 2025 Marketing Trends appeared first on Marketing Fix blog.

Questions by Siim, answers and translation by Karola.

Read the Estonian version in TULI’s blog.

Years ago, while interning at a PR agency, Karola spotted a book on content marketing on one of the office bookshelves. This instantly sparked her interest in digital marketing. Little did she know where this road might take her. 

Presently, Karola has become one of the best-known marketers in Estonia. She’s got over 10,000 followers on LinkedIn and a popular marketing blog (the one you’re reading right now). Behind are the long working days as the Head of Marketing at Bolt, Scoro, and MeetFrank. For the past few years, Karola has been freelancing for companies across the EU and the US.

When moving to Paris, France three years ago, Karola re-found her literary calling. It had always existed, since early childhood. In 2022, she published two short stories in the Estonian literary magazine Looming and was awarded the annual Debuting Writer Award by the magazine. Karola has also written book reviews for the cultural weekly Sirp and for Looming. Currently, she is working on her debut novel and beginning her MA studies at the Royal Holloway University of London. The MA course is not in Marketing – she’ll be studying Creative Writing.

P.S. If you’d like to sign up for a monthly newsletter on Karola’s London life and reading recommendations, go here (and wait for 2sec for the popup).

How does it work? The more you write, the less you want to work on marketing projects?

That’s how it tends to be but marketing continues to interest me as a subject. I don’t live with the illusion that writing could be a sufficient source of income, not in Estonia and especially not in Western Europe. While I dislike the word ‘hobby’, that’s the relationship I want to maintain with literature and writing – to keep it pure in a sense. I’m not forced to write or publish anything unless I want to. If writing were to become my day job, it would soon become repulsive.

I once calculated the hourly pay of writing for an Estonian publication. Sometimes it is 50x lower than the marketing salary, sometimes 10x lower. It is a sad reality as for many talented people writing actually is the main source of income. Some newspapers and weeklies pay their collaborators incredibly low fees and, on a few occasions, I have declined their invitation to contribute a piece. That would mean feeding a system that doesn’t treat people fairly.

What is it about marketing that attracts you?

I like the psychological side to it. It’s a bit like a game. You build a world and then stand back and see whether it works. As I launched my personal marketing blog, I was thrilled to write on a variety of subjects, SEO-optimize the articles, and watch my blog grow to 100,000 monthly organic readers. It’s like playing a computer game where you can steer the outcome.

Were you at the right place at the right time? Back then, there were much fewer marketing blogs.

The blogs were there but as in many other industries, the problem arises when blog articles are written by content marketers without any actual industry experience. These copywriters aren’t practitioners but look for information in other blogs; they collect and compile the existing information but do not add anything new or of practical value.

A practitioner myself, I wrote about the tips and guidelines that were actually relevant. I happened to make it in a more logical and detailed manner than other blogs. My articles got published by many big-name marketing blogs in the US (Entrepreneur, AdEspresso, CMI, Social Media Examiner) as they were more insightful than those written by some random copywriter.

To speak of LinkedIn in for a second, I am often put off by – and this is done by a lot of Estonian marketers – people who rewrite some viral posts and fail to add anything new to the topic. I always try to share observations and ideas of my own. I won’t go commenting on the Barbie movie when it’s already been done a million times. There is a symptomatic lack of originality in Estonian (but not only) marketers’ personal brands.

I still hold the opinion that even in 2023 – especially now when so much content is created by AI – it isn’t all that difficult to succeed with a blog or on LinkedIn. But the quality has to be exceptionally high, there also has to be originality. You’ve got to have a personal opinion, an angle, and you have to do proper marketing for your content. It all takes a lot of time. It’s not the case of spending a few hours every week, rather you’ll be working on it 20h/week.

You have always been interested in literature. How did you arrive at writing?

When I left my job at Bolt, I fell into a deep identity crisis. I realized I didn’t want to dedicate my whole life to working 10-12h per day; getting old, dying without making anything meaningful with my one and only life. This raised the question: so what should I do? We’re living on a planet that wilts with every minute as climate change progresses. Should I go and work for Greenpeace? Should I so to say sacrifice myself and make something truly good?

I know there is not that level of altruism in me. Literature seemed like the right path forward: I’ve always been attracted to it, it’s occupied with the soul rather than the material; it doesn’t create new waste into the world but explores that which is human about us. I am interested in climate change as a topic, especially the question: how to live in this world as a human being while knowing that every day that you live and consume and breathe, you are destroying the very planet you’re living on. 

Fiction, and literature in general, holds the potential to analyze things more broadly, to see a problem from multiple angles. It doesn’t tell you what’s the one right answer but helps, in an abstract way, to look for those answers; it invites you to think along. Half a year ago or so, I began to dabble with my very first novel and it’s a hundred – ok, perhaps a million or billion or trillion – times harder than any marketing project I’ve ever worked on.

When I moved to Paris, I began reading more fiction and made my first attempts at writing. I read voraciously, learned and learned and learned. Only after two years did I feel daring enough to write one tiny short story. I am still haunted by the question of whether I’m ready. One could keep studying literature and writing forever. In marketing, there comes a point where you feel that you’ve hit the ceiling, that now it’s become boring. But literature is endless like the ocean: you swim, and you swim some more, and there might be some small island along the way but you’ll never reach the continent. 

There is also a beauty to writing on an everyday human level. Instead of messaging or sending pictures via social media to my grandparents, I write them letters. This means of communication feels a lot more meaningful and caring. Sometimes, I think that perhaps my grandparents have forgiven me for living abroad because I’m being cute and sending them all those letters. 

Is the environment a subject that marketing actually deals with?

I am highly cynical about this one. Just recently I heard an advertisement that told people to bring their old teflon pans to the store so they can get the new one cheaper and this is the greenest deal in the world. It is often sickening to realize how ignorant such messages are and how mindless it is to believe that buying a new frying pan can in any way be good for the planet.

Recently, someone shared on Instagram how they bought a new kitchen device for filtering water. The new machine has an iron filter instead of a plastic one so now they will never have to use plastic again. Had they thought about the ecological footprint of producing and transporting this new machine, they might as well have used the old plastic device forever.

In a similar way, it isn’t green to buy a new electric vehicle when the old car still drives. The electric car has to be produced and transported, the ecological footprint of electric batteries is very high. It’s hypocritical to tell people to buy ‘green’ as buying a new item is never green. What’s green is not buying.

Sometimes, I have told my clients not to launch another campaign where they plant a tree for each purchase. Because it’s plain greenwashing. This kind of tree planting isn’t green. These trees are not going to grow old and sequester carbon and even, if by some miracle they will, a single tree isn’t going to save the world. I have pushed back on quite a few greenwashing campaigns, shared some scientific articles with my clients, and explained the bigger picture.

Speaking of clients, I am offered a lot of potential projects but it’s not always easy to find the few I am willing to accept. I refuse all gibberish products and fast fashion, also food industry projects. Gambling and crypto are also a no-go. What I find acceptable are projects related to tech products, culture and education, as well as some medical and financial products. I also resist marketing any lifestyle products as I think most of these shouldn’t even exist in this world (laughs – ed.).

Last year, I was offered to join as a marketer in a project where they built an e-commerce algorithm that turns the search function more efficient and makes people buy more. The end goal was to sell the product to Amazon. I would have been given some shares in the company and, possibly, made a lot of money, but I found it deeply immoral to spend time on making people buy more things that they do not actually need. Add to this the fact that someone is building a product with the sole goal of selling it to Amazon and getting rich. 

On the other hand, I do realize that not all marketers have the luxury to choose which projects to accept, which ones to decline. I do not hold it against anyone if they do marketing for brands that are unethical in my book. Life requires compromise, sometimes we need to find a middle ground.

Aren’t you running out of products to market? Tech and digital projects also have a big ecological footprint.

Indeed, but there are many interesting recycling and re-using platforms, projects related to education and culture. Whenever possible, I try to buy things second-hand. And digital products still have a much smaller carbon footprint, however, it’s not non-existent. 

When was the last time you bought something new?

Very recently! I bought some film for my camera. Of course, I do slip sometimes and buy clothing and other stuff that I don’t really need. It is hard to resist at all times, especially when it comes to aesthetic preferences. I always feel guilty but nonetheless buy the thing. As a marketer, however, I prefer not to pour any more oil into the fire of increasing consumption; I am already part of the system as a consumer.

I suppose many readers would like to know how you manage to work for one half of the year and then take the other half off?

I’ve been incredibly lucky to have found the projects that allow me to work and live this way. For five years, marketing and blogging was all I lived for. Back then, it was super interesting for me and it still pays off, although my blog has fallen victim to neglect (laughs – ed.).

This year, I’ll end up having ca eight months of marketing work, not six. At one point, I was working on four projects at once, spending 60h/week behind the laptop screen. It’s just a highly concentrated effort. In a way, I still work full-time but it is simply more condensed and allows me to take a few months off.

You were living in Paris as a freelancer. This sounds like a dream for many people. Was this life how you imagined it?

It was a strange life. I was living on my own and during COVID, the lack of human contact was psychologically straining. On the other hand, I enjoyed working from home – I’m more efficient this way and can move in my own rhythm.

Was this how I imagined it? It was idyllic for sure. After a day of work, I went on a walk in the parks and by the riverside, eventually found friends, learnt to speak more fluent French. I had bars and cafes and boulangeries where people already recognized me and sent a Salut! my way from behind the counter. It was all very agreeable but, well, it was nonetheless a life where you’d have to work all day long. You can’t just go and walk around Paris all day eating croissants.

You’ve been working with both Estonian and foreign companies. Is it in any way different?

I was recently working for a client operating in Luxembourg, London, and Spain while expanding to New York. I admired the level of professionalism in the team’s communication, it was both polite and considerate. Even on Slack, people wrote in an organized way and only when they had a good reason for writing. The quality of meetings and presentations was top-notch. And this kind of environment makes you put in more effort, too.

International brands have a higher willingness to invest in marketing and develop large-scale campaigns. They’re not afraid of launching an outdoor campaign that costs half a million euros, or a million. Because they know that it will actually work. On the other hand, Estonian brands believe they can expand to New York by running Facebook ads for €10,000 and seeing how the market reacts. It will not react. Even a campaign that costs €500,000 and covers every 10th subway car in New York might not launch the market.

Estonian entrepreneurs are under the impression that as it was easy to launch in the Estonian market and make some profit there, it is just as easy to launch in any other market. Just run a bit of Facebook ads and done. A long time ago when Facebook ads were actually cheap, this could actually work, but it’s become a lot harder these days.

I’ve seen an Estonian brand expanding to a nearby country and for six months, they spend a low budget on Meta and Google ads. And it’s not going to work. If they spent the same budget in a single month, on one strategic multichannel marketing campaign, they’d achieve a much higher brand recognition. In the end, this one-month campaign would be a much more efficient way to spend the budget.

Another issue I see in Estonia and elsewhere is that the company’s management fails to give relevant input to all teams and employees. There are good and bad CEOs. A good leader knows where their company is headed, they’ve got a clear vision. A good leader knows that X budget or X runway allows the company to grow to Y and makes their team work towards that goal. And then there’s the opposite type of leader that tells “let’s try something and see where it takes us.” In the second type of companies, it is highly stressful to achieve any marketing results. You simply don’t know what to do. Each week, there’s some new idea and everything needs to be reworked, rebuilt from scratch. And none of the ideas and hypotheses are ever properly tested.

Prior to accepting to work with a company, I want to hear from the CEO their expectations to the marketing team. How else should I know where to focus and which goals to set for my team? Numbers are a critically important motivation for any team. Occasionally, when the product is truly good, I still accept the project and will create the company’s growth goals on my own.

However, this “let’s just try” attitude is not going to take you far. Results have to be thought through and strategy should stem from those high-level goals. Building a strong brand message takes months, sometimes years. You just can’t try a new one every few weeks.

I’s like to encourage other marketing leads and practitioners to keep pushing the company’s leadership to spell out what numbers they want to see. If a leader doesn’t know what they want, perhaps then they’re not a very good leader. The CEO might be a great product lead but if they’re incapable of thinking about growth and numbers, it can be disorientating and stressful for the rest of the team.

Let’s speak about literature marketing as well. How to get more young people to read, how to popularize literature? With literary magazines, the problem seems to be that although they’re state-funded, there isn’t any budget for marketing.

Certainly, all the literary magazines lack money. Seen from the state’s perspective, I don’t know… just organize one less sports competition and give that money to some magazine so that they can afford proper marketing (smirks – ed.).

Tiit Hennoste recently wrote in Sirp how in the 1960s, the budget for a single issue of Looming magazine equaled 35 average salaries. Right now, the magazine’s monthly budget is 3.5x the average salary. There is a lot of talk about valuing and preserving the Estonian language but, ironically, the Estonian language was in fact more valued during the Soviet times.  

Surely there should be a marketer working for each cultural magazine but there isn’t any budget for this. Värske Rõhk (a monthly Estonian literary magazine publishing younger authors) is fairly active on social media but I assume that it’s one of their editors doing the marketing on top of their actual job. The same with Müürileht (another monthly magazine) – for them, strong social media marketing has been one of the keys to building a large readership.

Naturally, you also need good content. Marketing isn’t just about posting, posting, posting. You need people to talk about your magazine, you need to get people excited about the articles. The quality needs to be extremely high.

In large countries, every author has an agent who finds interview and speaking gig opportunities, and maintains the writer’s website. On top, there’s the publisher that does all the marketing for authors and their books.

Do any Estonian writers have websites? Not that I know of. I do but I designed it myself, hired a developer, and had it set up. I myself design all of my blog’s visuals, write and post the articles, and do the marketing and analysis part. The actual writing of texts takes maybe half of the time required to maintain a blog. No wonder writers don’t have time or skills for all this.

In the Anglophone literary industry, all authors have a personal website, they’re on Twitter and on Instagram. I have looked for some well-known Estonian authors on Instagram. Nada. No profiles. I’m not saying that it’s the writer’s job to have a social media presence but it could be something that their publisher does. Of course, the publishers don’t have any money, either. The Estonian literary scene is very small, including print runs and sales. 

Yup. The timidity is interesting in the sense that the world is headed toward everyone’s life and profile being public, everyone has to build a personal brand.

I began to think about the term ‘personal brand’ and its meaning. What is it? In a way, the term signifies the productization of a human being. A living person is turned into a product that others can consume. What a sick concept, huh? Bring to mind how people speak about ecosystem services. A chanterelle grows in a forest and it’s nature’s service. A terrible discourse.

Recently, I have grown more sensitive to the language used in advertisements. I am constantly bothered by slogans that, were you to think about it for even a second, you realize are utterly idiotic. Ülemiste Keskus, a big shopping mall, advertised with the slogan “Everything you’ve ever dreamed of.”

I should like to hope that nobody’s dreams are on sale in a shopping mall. This is borderline insulting to the readers of the slogan and the store’s visitors. To say that all you can dream of is laid out in a random Estonian shopping center.

So you walk the street and think what the hell?

I think that it’s sad that nothing more meaningful is done. It’s basically insulting – above all, insulting to the brand that signed off on the campaign. Instead of shouting silly marketing slogans, people could think about the meaning of their words. Advertising language has become awfully sloppy and blatant. Marketers should give each word and sentence a little more thought.

Is there anything else that marketers could do better? Are there any trends to watch out for? 

It depends on the marketer’s role. When it comes to brand messaging, marketers should avoid overused slogans and use their own heads to think. There could be fewer social media posts, fewer campaigns, less noise. Try to really think about the brand and what you want to say, focus on organic marketing, on word of mouth. There’s no point in creating marketing campaigns that speak to no one, just for the sake of creating something.

For instance, let’s take the company blogs. Marketers and agencies create a ton of content for those but if you start to think why anyone should want to read it, well, you don’t really know why.  On social media, there is also an overload of meaningless posts, without any meaning or soul. You might as well leave that stuff unpublished or perhaps hire someone else (laughs – ed.).

I have this feeling that marketing is headed towards further brand-building. You can’t anymore rely on just Google and Meta ads, it’s become very expensive. I see many companies switching from paid advertising to organic social media. However, the latter is also often paid as you need to pay the content creators. 

Marketers should learn how to work with TikTok and how to hire influencers to create content that can later be used as ads. And it’s about time to master the art of Instagram Reels. Both of these trends can be difficult to stay on top of. You’ve got to break your comfort zone and learn new skills all the time.

Above all, collaborating with content creators and cross-posting on Instagram and TikTok are the two things worth testing right now. There’s also a lot of talk about AI but I’m not a fan.

Why? I didn’t ask about AI as I figured that there isn’t much new to say about it, anyhow. But perhaps you do?

AI tools can be helpful when creating visuals and that’s worth looking into it. When it comes to writing marketing copy, I wouldn’t ever use it myself. Texts written by AI bots, without any original add-ons, won’t even get you ranking in Google search.

Indeed, AI can be used to compile drafts or to collect talking points. But I wouldn’t go any further than that. You’ll lose originality as another hundred marketers have used the same AI for the same kind of text. And anyhow… If we, as humans, delegate the last of our capacity to think to AI, will there be anything human left in us?

Coming back to marketing trends, it is also worth mentioning that there’s been rapid economic growth for the past 10+ years. It was possible to successfully launch lifestyle products like sustainable toothpaste, there are a million small fashion brands now. Competition has reached an unprecedented height and as the economy begins to cool down, so will those small brands fail.

What might help is focusing on a specific niche and building a strong brand, a loyal audience. Instead of focusing on growth right now, companies should look into loyalty programs and community-building. Not so far in the future, there simply won’t be enough room in the market for everyone to stay.

So the relationship has to be more meaningful than just brand and consumer?

That’s it. And more than the simple fact that you sell your product cheaper than a competitor. You’ve got to have a high-quality product and a clear product-market fit. But even that won’t be enough: you also need a strong brand that attracts and engages people.

What I’m hearing is that often the problem isn’t bad marketing but there are many average products that are hard to sell?

Yes. One of the reasons why I reject new projects is that there isn’t yet a proven product-market fit. I decline a project because I know I wouldn’t be able to market and sell the product.

Marketing won’t save a bad product but it can certainly help to bankrupt you faster (laughs –ed.).

Autor: Siim Kera, TULI

The post Interview: Karola Karlson x TULI appeared first on Marketing Fix blog.

Many of the Facebook ad audits I’ve done happened during a 1h AMA (Ask Me Anything) call. This means that we managed to discuss all other marketing-related questions and do a quick audit. 

In smaller accounts, Facebook ad campaigns audit can be done fast, almost at a glance – in 15-30 minutes.

How? How to audit a Meta advertising account? What to check? How will you know what to improve?

This article will give you some pointers on how to conduct a Facebook ad audit. Bookmark it for later or open up your Facebook Ads Manager right away to follow along and audit your ads in 15-30 minutes.

Take a quick crash course in Facebook analytics by learning about these 15 Facebook ad metrics.

10 questions for Facebook ad audit:

Here’s a quick overview of the 10 questions that I always ask/check/review when auditing a Facebook advertising account. They’re based on my 5+ years of Facebook ads management experience and what I’ve seen working.

Ad campaign level:

1. Are the ad campaigns set up with the correct structure?
2. Does the ad account have remarketing and re-engagement campaigns?

Ad set level:

3. Are all ad sets optimized on correct goals? Is Facebook Pixel set up?
4. Do all ad sets collect enough conversions for algorithms to learn?
5. Which target audiences are being used? Are they optimal?
6. Does the account use Lookalike audiences and Custom audiences?

Ad level:

7. Are there static ads in all correct sizes?
8. Do your Facebook ads look overall attractive?
9. Do your video ads follow all of the best practices?
10. Is your ads’ post-click experience converting?

One of the questions – Do the ads look attractive? – can sound subjective. We’ll take a look at some 👍 v.s. 👎 examples to clarify what works and what doesn’t.

As you read further, I suggest that you open up your Facebook Ads Manager and follow along as we walk through each point. I wrote this guide with specifically small businesses and non-marketers in mind, and will try to share as much guidance as possible – so that even a person who hasn’t opened the Facebook Ads Manager once in their life can navigate through.

Ready to audit? 🕵️ If you don’t know how to access your Facebook Ads Manager, try this link: Open your Facebook Ads Manager.

You should land in a view that shows all your company’s ad campaigns. If you’re added to multiple Facebook ad accounts, you can navigate between them using the dropdown menu. 

Alternatively, if you don’t find your company’s ad account, you can ask your in-house marketer or agency to give you the access – it is possible that you’re not currently allowed to access the advertising account.

In case you made it, you should now see your company’s Facebook ad account. Let’s begin with the audit!

1. Are the campaigns set up with the correct structure?

The first thing that I always check during a Facebook ad audit is the campaign structure:

• Does the ad account have an optimal number of campaigns?
• Are the campaigns set up using the correct objectives and campaign types?
• Are the campaigns set up to run long-term or are they often paused and replaced with new campaigns?

The main mistake that I usually see is that the companies have too many or too few ad campaigns. 

A good amount is one prospecting, one remarketing, and one re-engagement campaign per country (or per region/globally if you work with small budgets).

Also, many companies make the mistake of launching a new ad campaign every time they change their ad creatives or launch a new marketing campaign. 

You should rather always keep on the same campaigns and ad sets (just change the ad creatives inside them), so that Facebook algorithms learn based on accumulating conversions.

I’m not going to get too much into detail, but I’ve written extensively on Facebook ad structure best practices before, so check out that article if you want to learn more. 

Just to quickly illustrate a good example: here’s the general Facebook prospecting campaign structure that I always use with my clients.

• There is one campaign with two ad sets: one with a broad audience and another with 1% or 5% Lookalike audience.
• Both ad sets have the exact same ad creatives inside them.
• Sometimes, I also add ad sets with special interest-based audiences (if I want to show these audiences different more targeted ad creatives).

Here are the top 3 questions to answer when reviewing your account on ad campaign level:

1. Do you have separate ad campaigns for different countries? – YES is correct, you should have separate campaigns for markets with different income levels.
2. Have you launched a new ad campaign for every new marketing campaign? – NO is correct, you should reuse old campaigns whenever possible.
3. Do your ad campaigns have less than 3 active ad sets per campaign? YES is correct, it is better to have fewer ad sets, especially if you’re working with small budgets.

P.S. Here’s something interesting that I learned over the past 12 months: Most of the recommendations I was given by Facebook’s official account managers (all big advertisers get a special support person from Facebook) to improve my clients’ Facebook ad accounts led to worse results v.s. what we were already doing with my clients. So maybe, even if your agency is telling you that “we do it like this because it is the best practice,” ask them to at least A/B test your other hypotheses too.

2. Does the ad account have remarketing and re-engagement campaigns?

Remarketing campaigns are a must-have for any brand, especially for any B2C company with an online store.

It is such a given that I wouldn’t even think about including it under the 10 points of this auditing guide if I hadn’t seen many ad accounts with no remarketing.

So… Are you running remarketing campaigns to reach past website visitors, landing page & blog viewers, last-minute shopping cart abandoners, repeat purchasers?

If you can’t see any remarketing happening on your Facebook ad account, ask your agency or ad specialist what’s up.

Another thing to review is how much are you spending on remarketing and is the budget split optimal? Learn more about seasonal marketing planning and budgeting.

With the brands that I’m working with, we usually spend ca 20-30% of the total advertising budget on remarketing.

Here’s the full-funnel breakdown:

• Prospecting campaigns: 60-80%
• Remarketing campaigns: 20-30%
• Brand awareness campaigns (optional, I usually mix these with prospecting): 0-10%
• Re-engagement campaigns (optional, I recommend to use these): 0-10%

The re-engagement campaigns target people who were active customers in the past, but haven’t used your product (or purchased from your store) for a while. If you want to reach those users via Facebook ads, make sure that these campaigns are set up as well. 

In this phase of your audit, ask these questions:

1. Do you have remarketing and re-engagement ad campaigns set up and actively delivering? – The answer, of course, should be YES.
2. Are the remarketing ad campaigns reaching all the correct audiences? Are some audiences left out of remarketing? Are you targeting web visitors, shopping cart abandoners, past purchasers, etc.?
3. Are your remarketing and re-engagement campaigns spending the optimal part of your total budget? It should be around 20-30% of the total spend.

3. Are the ad sets optimized on the correct goals? Is Facebook Pixel set up?

Assuming that the Facebook ad account that we’re auditing has both prospecting and remarketing campaigns set up, we can move on to the ad set level and continue the investigation.

To navigate to the ad set level, either click on a campaign (blue markup) or tick the box before a campaign and select “Ad Sets for 1 Campaign” in the navigation bar (red markup).

You will end up seeing all the ad sets under that specific ad campaign. To see how each ad set is set up, click on the tiny “Edit” text under its name.

Click on “Edit” to see how each ad set is structured

On the ad set level, you will be able to see who is the target audience + how the ad delivery is optimized.

Right now, we’re interested in making sure that your ad delivery is optimized on conversions (instead of Clicks or Impressions).

Scroll down in the editing popup window until you reach the “Optimization & Delivery” section. Make sure that you see “Conversions” here.

There are a few cases where ad sets do not need to be optimized on conversions. For example, if your campaign’s goal is to reach the maximum number of people.

However, if your ad campaign’s goal is to drive sales and bring you new customers (which is true for 95% of advertisers), your ad campaigns (and ad sets) should be optimized on those purchase events.

Another quick way to review all your ad sets’ optimization goals is to check what is counted as a result in the Results column.

Ideally, you should see down-the-funnel events here (such as purchases and registrations).

If your ad sets are not optimized on those events, there are two possible reasons for this:

• It is actually smarter to optimize on top-of-the-funnel goals like clicks or impressions as you only want to raise brand awareness instead of increasing sales.
• You don’t have the Facebook Pixel set up and you’re unable to optimize on Purchase or Registration events because Facebook isn’t tracking them.

Is Facebook Pixel tracking all the important conversions?

To make sure that all your important online events are tracked by Facebook, visit the Facebook Events Manager. You can access it under the 9-dot menu icon at the top left corner of your Ads Manager).

If your Pixel isn’t set up at all, you will see something like this. 👇 It means that you yet have to set up Facebook Pixel on your website / online product / mobile app (or all of them).

If your Facebook Pixel is properly set up, you should see a list of all the tracked events and the time when each was last received by Facebook.

Facebook Pixel is correctly set up

I have yet to see a business that wouldn’t benefit from Facebook Pixel setup, This means that you should definitely have your Pixel set up and tracking all the main events. If it’s not doing that, your ad account has a big deficiency.

So, to sum up, here are the 3 questions to ask in this audit stage:

1. Are your ad sets optimized on events such as Purchases or Registrations (v.s. link clicks or reach)? You should be answering this one with a YES.
2. Is Facebook Pixel set up for your advertising account? It better be!
3. Are all your important marketing conversion events being tracked via the Facebook Pixel?

4. Do all ad sets collect enough conversions for algorithms to learn? 

Facebook algorithms have a learning phase – a specific amount of clicks and conversions that are needed for the algorithms to understand who’s the best target audience for you.

Usually, new ad campaigns have worse results (higher cost-per-result) during the learning phase. So it is important that your ads pass the learning phase.

If your ad campaigns never pass the learning phase, you will never reach the full potential of your Facebook ads.

The main mistake I see on the audited Facebook ad accounts is that they have too many campaigns, and none of these reach the end of the learning phase. 

Either the campaign is paused and a new one started or there are simply too many different campaigns with too low budgets.

To check whether your ad campaigns get enough conversions, set the reporting timeframe of the past 30 days. Then review how many results each ad campaign and ad set has collected.

What is a good number of results that a Facebook ad campaign should collect in 30 days? Ideally, each of your ad sets should collect at least 50 conversions over 30 days. Usually, I expect to see even higher numbers.

Is the ad account using a correct attribution window?

Always check what’s the attribution window of your ad account.

The attribution window is the number of days between when a person viewed or clicked your ad and subsequently took an action. Having a different attribution window changes what results you see in your Ads Manager reports.

Facebook tracks conversions both via clicks and ad views:

• Click-through attribution: A person clicked your ad and took an action.
• View-through attribution: A person saw your ad, didn’t click it, but took an action within the attribution window.

By default, each Facebook ad account’s attribution window is set to 1-day view and 28-day click. However, it should usually be changed to 1-day click or 7-day click as you don’t want to give Facebook credit for conversions that actually happened without its help.

You can review your attributtion window under the Ad Account Settings.

Summing it up again, here are the 3 questions to ask in this audit stage:

1. How many results did each campaign and ad set collect in the past 30 days? If it’s lower than 50 results per ad set, you may need to increase your budget or lower the number of separate campaigns and ad sets. 
2. Are the ad campaigns turned off and new ones added frequently? That’s not good, reuse old campaigns whenever possible.
3. Are you using the optimal attribution window? E.g. 28-day click-through window is usually way too long and Facebook will attribute to ads the conversions that actually happened via other channels.

5. Which target audiences are being targeted? Are they broad enough?

The success of your Facebook ad campaigns largely depends on your target audience. You need to catch the attention of the right people.

As part of your audit, take a look at all of your campaigns’ target audiences.

Assuming that your ad account has both prospecting and remarketing campaigns, we’ll need to review both of them.

Let’s start with prospecting campaigns – the campaigns target a broad audience that haven’t yet heard about your product.

Your Facebook ad campaigns’ targeting is set up on the ad set level. To see which audience each campaign is targeting, navigate to its ad sets and click on the “Edit” icon under each ad set to see who’s targeted.

Here’s a list of the main Facebook ad targeting mistakes that I’ve seen companies making in their prospecting stage campaigns:

👎 Targeting very narrow audiences of fewer than 50,000 people. You want to keep some room for Facebook algorithms to do the optimization for you.

👎 Targeting multiple countries with very different purchasing power or language in the same ad set.

👎 Targeting the same audience in multiple ad campaigns, creating a large-scale audience overlap (we’ll discuss this in greater detail soon).

👎 Not targeting some of the most efficient audiences such as Lookalike audiences of top purchasers.

The last mistake leads us to the next question in our Facebook ads audit…

6. Does the account use Lookalike audiences and Custom audiences?

In addition to interest-based and location-based audiences, Facebook also allows you to create Custom and Lookalike audiences.

Every properly set up Facebook ad account should make use of all three audience types. 

Here’s a quick explanation:

• Custom Audiences let you target existing audiences (people who visited your website, past purchasers, etc.)
• Lookalike Audiences expand your ads’ reach to people who are similar to your existing customers.

Using these two additional audience types helps to reach more relevant audiences and drive up your Return on Ad Spend (ROI).

To review whether your Facebook ad campaigns are targeting Custom and Lookalike audiences, review the ad-set level audience targeting, just like under the previous point.

Also, you should make sure that there is no huge overlap between the audiences targeted in various campaigns. 

Audience overlap makes your campaigns bid against each other and amplify your Facebook ads cost.

How to audit if your Facebook audiences overlap:

1. Check which audiences your live campaigns are targeting
2. Navigate to the Audience Manager and select up to 5 audiences that you suspect might overlap
3. Select the “Show Overlap” 

Usually, Facebook ad accounts using a mix of Saved, Lookalike, and Custom audiences tend to have a higher risk of audience overlap.

If you encounter a high audience overlap, you can either pause one of the competing ad sets or use the “Exclude” feature to exclude an audience from any ad set.

In the example below, we excluded a Lookalike audience from an ad set targeting another Lookalike audience because they overlapped by 60%. And naturally, we don’t want to target people who already purchased, so we also excluded the Custom audience of past 60 days’ purchasers.

To wrap up this stage of our Facebook ad campaign audit, here are the 5 top mistakes to look out for:

1. Missing remarketing audience – You should always target Custom audiences of past website visitors, shopping cart abandoners, etc. with remarketing ads.
2. Missing Lookalike audiences – You should always test out 1% and 2% Lookalike audiences of top purchasers and later try more different options.
3. High audience overlap between ongoing ad campaigns – Make sure that different ad sets’ audiences don’t overlap.
4. Not excluding converted users – You shouldn’t keep showing sales-oriented ads to people who recently purchased or have an ongoing subscription
5. Not testing new audiences – When auditing a Facebook ad account that has been used for a while, it’s easy to see if the marketers are testing new audiences on a regular basis.

Here’s some good news: We’ve more or less covered the technical aspects of your Facebook ads audit and can now move forward to an arguably more engaging part: the visuals.

To view the ad visuals of a specific Facebook or Instagram ad campaign, click on a campaign name, then click on an ad set name, and you can see all the Facebook ads inside that ad campaign. You can see the full visual by clicking the “Edit” icon.

7. Are there static ads in all correct sizes?

In the example above, the ad visual only exists in one size: the landscape format. In our Facebook ad audit, that’s a red flag.

For your Facebook campaigns to perform well across the feed and stories placements, you need to have each one of your ad visuals in all three main formats:

• Newsfeed: 1080 x 1080 pixels
• Stories: 1080 x 1920 pixels
• Landscape: 1200 x 628 pixels

Why do you need three different sizes per ad? Mainly in order for your ads to look great and attractive across the entire Facebook ad network.

As you can see, missing a visual that’s optimized for Instagram Story placement can result in a very ugly ad creative.

This story ad looks fairly ugly.

Regularly, you also shouldn’t leave exclude any of the ad placements. It is a best practice to use automatic placements (this is set up on ad set level) and let Facebook algorithms optimize the best placements for you.

Use the Automatic Placements to scale your campaigns’ reach.

Here’s a more detailed guide on Facebook ad specs and size.

If your ad creatives are set up correctly in all three sizes, you should see different (and good-looking!) ad visuals for feed, story, and instant article placements.

Your feed and story ads should look different.

In my experience, 7/10 of the Facebook ad accounts that I’ve audited did not have all the correct ad sizes for each placement. And in 10/10 of cases the results have improved significantly after we fixed the mistake and added the ad creatives in all correct sizes.

8. Do your Facebook ads look overall attractive?

Based on all the Facebook ad audits that I have done, the most frequent reason for dismal Facebook advertising results are ugly ad creatives.

The most common mistakes include not having text in ad visuals, using stock photos, or design solutions that look like they’re straight outta 2000s.

Such a wasted opportunity and yet such a great opportunity to fix the campaign performance

If your Facebook ads make one of the above-mentioned mistakes, rest assured that it can be quickly fixed with some help from an experienced designer or Facebook marketing expert.

For example, this Meta ad example by Klarna is not painstakingly difficult to create – you just need someone with a good eye + experience in what works on Facebook. 

To better understand how some top brands’ Facebook ads look like, check out the following articles:

• 40 Instagram Story Ad Examples
• New Facebook Ads that Beat the Competition in 2020

9. Do your video ads follow all of the best practices?

Before we make sure your Facebook video ads follow all the best practices, there is one even more urgent question:

Do you even have any video ads in your ad campaigns?

Truth is, video ads aren’t always the best-performing ad creatives. But every advertiser should at least test videos to see how well they work.

Here’s rule number one of this Facebook advertising audit stage: Your Facebook ad campaigns should have either live or paused video ads.

If they’re paused, there’s a good reason to assume that they just weren’t performing too well.

Rule number two? Your video ads should follow these best practices:

• Clearly showcase your product.
• Be short (15s maximum) and immediately engaging.
• Feature written text and your brand’s logo.

Here’s a nice example by TransferWise: Their video ad is eye-catching, explains the product’s benefits, and doesn’t drag along for too long.

Your video ads do not have to be complex in order to work. They just have to be optimized for being shown on Facebook and Instagram.

Using TV-ad like videos usually doesn’t work because the videos are too long and slow. 

Rather, you should use flashy colorful video ads. Such ads can be created as a simple combination of animated image content and colorful text captions. Like the Delliveroo ad below…

When conducting a Facebook advertising audit, I usually evaluate video ads based on my gut feeling which comes from having seen videos that worked and didn’t work.

Not to lose hope! If you haven’t seen many Facebook ads before, a good way to understand if your ad creatives are good is to compare them against your competitors’ ads. 😉

To see the Facebook ads that your competitors are running, go to the Facebook Ad Library and type in your competitors’ brand name. Et voila! You can see a selection of their active Facebook ads. How do your ad visuals compare to what you see?

If your ad account is missing video creatives, give them a try. Or if you see that your current video ads more or less suck, create new ones that look better.

To learn more about creating highly effective video ads, check out how brands like Bolt, Spotify, Netflix, Starbucks, and Klarna are doing them. Or view the collection of 21 Facebook Video Ad Examples.

10. Is your ads’ post-click experience converting?

Sometimes, the reason for low Facebook ad results is not a poorly set up ad campaign or ad visuals. The problem might also hide in the post-click experience ( your website or App Store listing).

I’ve come across several cases where a company’s Facebook ads looked great and had a high click-through rate. However, there weren’t that many Purchase conversions. In a number of such cases, the problem laid either in a bad post-click experience or a mismatch between the messaging in the Facebook ads v.s. their landing page.

To see where your Facebook ads are leading people after they click, review the URLs in your ad-level setup.

Landing pages are an important gateway between your paid ad creatives and product. And the messaging + style of your Facebook ads should match with what your potential customer will see on the landing page.

For example, you don’t want to promise people a 50% discount and then take them to a landing page with no information about the discount. Or you don’t want to advertise a mobile app that provides Instagram filters and then take people to a website that promotes a product for Instagram Business account management.

Here are a few more questions for auditing your Facebook ad landing page:

1. Is your post-click experience simple and clear? You want the user to stay focused on your offer and not get too carried away.
2. Does your landing page mention a clear next step? – Is there a call-to-action on the landing page (e.g. “sign up” or “add to cart”)?
3. Is your promoted product visible on your landing page? People want to see what they’re buying, especially if they already saw it in your Facebook ads.

For example, this landing page by Doordash is in many ways the perfect ad landing page: it’s brief, the design aligns with Doordash’s’ CVI, the text mentions a clear benefit, and it is obvious that the next step would be to sign up.

Efficient landing pages are usually short.

P.S. If it looks like your Facebook ads and website pages look completely off, it is sometimes easier to start from scratch and redo both of them, so that you’ll get new better-looking ads together with a matching landing page that converts more visitors.

—

Alright, that’s it! Hope we managed to beat the 30 minute mark. If you found out that your Facebook ad account is not 100% perfectly set up, don’t feel down – look at it as an opportunity to improve your results.

If you have any comments or questions about the Facebook ad audit, reach out via LinkedIn.

The post 30min DYI Facebook Ad Account Audit appeared first on Marketing Fix blog.

We’ve done all the hard work for you, spending the past few weeks browsing around Instagram. And we found some inspiring stuff… 💎

This article features the following categories of Instagram stories:

• Bad examples of Instagram stories
• Good examples of Instagram story image ads
• The best Instagram story video ads
• Cool Instagram story examples

But first, a few words on the current state of advertising Instagram stories.

When scrolling through the IG stories to catch cool ad examples, 80% of all the ads were not optimized for the Instagram Story placement

This means that a lot of brands are missing out on the full potential of the IG stories ad placement

What about you?

Have you uploaded all the correct Instagram and Facebook ads size options to your campaigns? And is each of the uploaded formats following the specific placement’s best practices?

Either way, this article will give you plenty of good ideas on how to improve your Instagram story ads. On top of that, you’ll also see some nice examples of Instagram story posts by popular brands.

See more ad examples here:

• 215+Best Facebook Ad Examples
• 84 Best Instagram Ad Examples
• 100+ LinkedIn Ad Examples for B2B Brands

Quick tip: Create Meta ad creatives with AI tools.

Click on the GIF below to try the best AI tool for Meta ads generation. (2023 update & recommendation.)

Bad Instagram ad examples

Let’s start off by understanding how your Instagram ads should not look.

The following examples of the ads running in the Instagram stories use the old Facebook news feed image size (1200 x 628 pixels), others feature a square image with no copy nor clear call-to-action.

This is not to trash any particular brand’s ads.

The goal is to show you examples of ads that could be improved big-time, so that you can better asses your own Instagram (and Facebook) story ads.

Here’s a quick checklist to analyze if your story ads follow the key best practices:

• Are the ads in the correct size (1080 x 1920 pixels)?
• Do the ads have in-image copy and a call-to-action?
• Are you asking the viewer to swipe up – verbally or visually?

Good examples of Instagram story image ads

In general, video ads work better on Instagram than static image ads. 

However, there’s not always time and resources to create a video ad for every single campaign.

That’s ok – there’s also plenty of good examples of IG stories using a static image that are working well. You will see them up next.

#1 Bloomberg

This Instagram story ad example by Bloomberg Businessweek is great for several reasons:

• It has a bright background color that differentiates it from the regular posts from friends
• The text and illustration are placed almost perfectly (the text above could be slightly lower not to be covered by the logo and “sponsored” message)
• It has a clear call-to-action (Subscribe)

#2 Bolt Food

The Bolt food Instagram story example is also visually different from the regular Instagram stories. (I consider it a big success factor when it comes to getting your story ads noticed.)

It’s also clear what the ad is about from the first glance: food, delivery.

On top of that, it mentions the value proposition (cheap delivery) and hints that people are supposed to “swipe up.”

#3 Babbel

Babbel’s ad asks the viewer a question which makes you automatically engage with the ad. Once you answer “yes,” you’ll have enough time to explore the rest of the ad. 

Also, notice the layout of this ad – by mixing a solid color background and stock image background, the ad is split into 2 scenes.

Tip: Splitting your Instagram story ad visuals into 2 or 3 parts is a very convenient hack in case you don’t have a suitable portrait-format image.

#4 Udemy

This Udemy ad is a basic example of a Facebook ad visual adapted to Instagram Stories format.

You can use a similar approach of placing part of your Facebook ad copy in the Instagram story ad image to deliver the message.

#5 Fjällräven

A very simple Instagram story ad that showcases the products in a well-curated portrait format.

Tip: When adding copy to your Instagram story ad creatives, place it on top or in the middle – that’s the part of the ad people will look in the first place.

#6 Acadium

Here’s one good example of a square-format ad used in the Instagram story placement.

The ad image features relevant copy and the background color (added automatically by Facebook when you use an ad image in 1:1 or in landscape format) complements the above image.

#7 Khaite

#8 Dale Ventures

#9 The Economist

#10 The Sill

The best Instagram story video ad examples

Instagram story video ads is a great channel both for building brand awareness and engaging with existing customers.

In case you’lll get inspired by the upcoming video ad example, here’s a list of Instagram ad specs & sizes to follow.

Tip: According to Facebook, 60% of Instagram stories are viewed with sound-on, so add some background music to your video ads.

Read more about various Instagram story ad success stories here.

Let’s get to the best part of this article now – the Instagram story video ad examples.

❗❗❗NB: Due to the big size of GIF files, we have included a static image of each video ad and added a link to the GIF file, so that you can see the video.

#11 Deliveroo

This Instagram story ad is a good example of brand awareness advertising.

Here’s what makes this ad great:

• The colors – branded and differentiated from the regular story posts
• Custom text design that has has a high contrast with the background
• Fast-paced movement – you won’t get bored and swipe right

Tip: If you want people to swipe up after seeing your video, add a 3-5 second ending scene to your video ad with your logo and a clear call-to-action.

See the full video ad here.

#12 iDeal

The iDeal ad is a cool example of an Instagram story video ad split into 2 scenes. 

The first part of the ad is almost static and features the product and special offer message, The second part of the ad shows a fast-paced video that keeps the viewer engaged.

See the full video ad here.

#13, #14 AirBaltic

airBaltic likes to get their messages delivered.

If you won’t get their static image Instagram story ad (which is already a very good example of a brightly-colored ad with a clear message) …

Then you will certainly get the message after seeing their video ad. 🔥

Notice how fast-paced the ad is: a must-have for all Instagram story ads. Also, the font, colors, and content is different enough to keep on looking to the end.

The ad’s final scene has a green arrow icon pointing up that helps to emphasize the “swipe up” suggestion.

See the full video ad here.

#15 Netflix

The main thing I like about this Netflix Instagram story ad example is its plain promotion of the logo.

The ultimate brand awareness ad.

See the full video ad here.

#16 Acne Studios

If you’re lacking good video content to turn into Instagram ads, you can follow the example of Acne Studios. 

The below ad example essentially mixes together a range of product photos and solid typographical elements, creating an engaging video ad.

See the full video ad here.

#17 Artsy

Here’s another example of an Instagram story ad that uses images and typography, but has the effect of a video ad. 

Also, the black text on a white background contrasts perfectly with other posts that you’re scrolling through when browsing stories.

See the full video ad here.

#18 Milkshake

Here’s a list of things that the Milkshake ad gets right:

• Fast movement throughout the video
• Bright colors and well-placed copy
• The app frame (shows immediately it’s a mobile app)
• Logical storytelling throughout the ad
• Final scenes with a solid background and a clear call-to-action

See the full video ad here.

#19 Calm

Calm’s Instagram story asks the viewer to take a break (from anxiously scrolling through tens of stories).

That’s a very cool approach as their meditation app’s key benefit is learning to slow down and be more mindful. And that feeling is already created by their ad, making the perfect introduction to the app.

See the full video ad here.

Meta ads x AI tools: Save 10x time

Have you tried creating Meta ads with AI tools? We tested uploading a few lines of text, a logo, and an image. And look what we got: 50+ different ad layouts in 60 seconds. Try it here.

#20 H&M

The H&M Instagram story ad is the perfect example of brand awareness videos run by many large consumer brands.

The goal of such ads is generally to stay top-of-mind for a large audience.

The best practice with such ads is to open up by showcasing your logo, show well-filmed scenes in between, and also close the ad by repeating your brand’s name or showing the logo.

See the full video ad here.

#21 Slidequest

See the full video ad here.

#22 Harvard Business Review

See the full video ad here.

#23 Prequel

See the full video ad here.

#24 Favro

See the full video ad here.

#25, #26 KLM

See the full video ad here.

See the full video ad here.

#27 Udacity

See the full video ad here.

#28 Xoom

See the full video ad here.

#29 Vivo

See the full video ad here.

#30 Vogue Business

See the full video ad here.

#31 Biteable

See the full video ad here.

#32 Turkish Airlines

See the full video ad here.

#33 Bolt

See the full video ad here.

#34 Cowboy

See the full video ad here.

#35 The New Yorker

See the full video ad here.

Cool Instagram story post ideas

Last not least, I’ve come across some exceptionally nice branded Instagram stories.

Take a look and collect ideas for using various Instagram story stickers and polling options to engage with your followers. 

#36 Uber

See the full video here.

#37 Jump

See the full video here.

#38 Airbnb

See the full video here.

#39 MeetFrank

See the full video here.

#40 Starbucks

See the full video here.

Thanks for your attention and hope you got some inspiration to put into practice.

If you know some other brands with cool Instagram story ads, send a hat tip to marketing@karolakarlson.com or reach out on LinkedIn.

And if you want help with improving your Instagram ad campaigns, check out this page.

The post 40 Instagram Story Ad Examples in 2024 (Static + Video ads) appeared first on Marketing Fix blog.

In 2018, Instagram Stories exceeded Snapchat in DAU. Facebook had the toughest year ever. (But nonetheless remains the foremost destination for marketers looking to reach a wide audience at arguably low cost)

For me, 2018 was the most eventful year ever. A year ago, I was freelancing for several startups while growing this blog. 12 months forward, my focus has shifted 110% to working with Taxify’s marketing team. (We’ve grown from 10 people to 30 in just one year, and we’re hiring 🤭) From attending for the first time Cannes Lions festival to last-minute panic-troubleshooting a large-scale marketing operation with Taxify’s French team, 2018 presented plenty of opportunities for learning and growth.

This said…

I took a look back at all the marketing projects I contributed to in 2018 and realised there were some interesting key learnings, potentially useful for other marketers.

Heads-up: a lot of what I thought to be efficient in marketing turned out to work the opposite way. And there’s a surprising amount of obvious best practices that no marketing blogs write about. Go figure…

So, without further ado, here are some of my key insights from 2018 that might be useful to you as well:

1. Facebook ads get over-optimized all the time. You’ll get better results when you let them run in peace.
2. Run more-more-more A/B tests about every aspect of your marketing activities. 90% of them fail, 10% will improve your results signifcantly.
3. Measure everything you do. Yes, even things you think will obviously work. Because sometimes, they don’t.
4. Facebook video ads don’t work (a shocker!). It’s a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much. Read point 4 of the article for further explanation.
5. If you spend your time on marketing campaigns, also spend your 💸 on promoting them. + Focus on one big campaign rather than ten small ones.
6. Create all marketing campaigns, ads, emails, web assets, etc. first for mobile. Get over your desktop-skewed views.

If this list just sounded a bit click-bait-ish, you will find a more in-depth explanation on each of the learnings below.

+ I also did some digging in my notebooks and bookmarks, resulting in a list of the nice stuff I’ve been listening, watching, and reading in 2018. Scroll to the very end of the article for that.

1. Leave ad optimisation to the algorithms

If you’re using online ad channels to promote your product, you likely spend most of your 💸 with Facebook and Google.

Both Facebook and Google have increased their ad placement inventory significantly in 2018. Facebook recently added Facebook Stories ads on top of its existing placements while Google is expanding its Youtube video ad inventory.

Just take a look at all the Facebook ad placement options available in December 2018. A year ago, there were so much fewer ad placements to choose from…

On one hand, advertising on Facebook and Google is getting increasingly difficult.

You need quite a specialised marketing experience to play around with all the targeting, optimization, and placement options of main online ad platforms.

But there’s also good news – 2018 also brought about a wider use of AI and Machine Learning.

So…

Should you build an AI bot to do the Facebook advertising for you? – No.

Should you use third-party online tools that claim to optimise your ad campaigns for you. – No.

Just let Google and Facebook algorithms do their magic.

One of the articles I wrote in 2018 and like most is the one explaining that you don’t need to over-optimise your Facebook campaigns. Just let Facebook’s algorithms do it for you.

What happens if you optimise your Facebook ad campaign’s delivery schedule, placements, narrow down the targeting to 10k people or less?

I’ve mostly seen this happening:

So how can you set up Google and Facebook ad campaigns that will reach a wide audience interested in your product?

Try these best practices:

1. Spend at least $20/daily per every new ad set – algorithms need a lot of conversions to optimise your campaigns.
2. Optimise ad delivery on the right events – if you’re working with low budgets, optimise on landing page views. If you get at least 10 down-the funnel conversions daily per ad set, optimise on signups, etc.
3. Set up a single ad campaign with a single ad set and 1-3 ads while resisting the urge to fragment your campaigns into scattered low-budget ad sets. This applies to low-budget Facebook ad campaigns.
4. Don’t A/B test too many elements at once – you won’t have enough results to conclude the test. Here’s my take on Facebook ad A/B testing.
5. Don’t worry too much about the ad placements, custom delivery schedule, and manual bidding. Use Facebook’s default settings for all these things.
6. Set up Facebook Pixel to track your campaign’s results and optimise your ad campaigns on conversions. (So that algorithms can learn which type of audience converts on your offer and deliver it to more similar people)
7. Don’t make changes to your online ad campaigns too often. Adjust your campaigns 24h after setting them up (in case they’re not delivering yet), then let them run for 7 days minimum before making any further edits.

So, to wrap this up: don’t panic when your Facebook ad campaigns are not delivering amazing results 2h after publishing the campaign. Let them run for a while so that algorithms can start working their magic.

2. Run more A/B tests – 90% will fail, 10% will be game-changers

As someone lately explained to me, having 10 x 0.7% incremental improvements in your ad campaigns’ conversion rates results in 2x total improvement.

If you want to improve your marketing results, keep A/B testing new approaches.

However, be prepared to get demotivated once your tests show no significant improvement.

I ran 50+ A/B tests in 2018 and most of them showed either no improvement or negative results.

Quite disappointing, huh?

But that’s just fine.

The remaining 10% of A/B tests brought learnings that improved our marketing results big-time.

There’s an almost infinite pool of things to A/B test. And if you’re working with considerably low marketing budgets, you’re limited to a small number of tests.

So. What should you and what shouldn’t you test?

In my experience, the biggest improvements will come from optimising your online ad visuals. That kind of makes sense – your ad image is the first thing to catch people’s attention. (Also, the first thing that can cause ad fatigue is when people see the same visual over and over again for 10+ times.)

So, start by testing your ad visuals.

At Taxify, testing new ad visuals goes hand-in-hand with updating our branding.

This nonetheless means that you should ONLY test the visual side.

Think about your online ad campaigns as a collection of many different aspects, each contributing to the conversion – your ad image and copy, but also the landing page and later user experience of your product… And the emails you send out. Be on the lookout for ways to improve each step of the conversion funnel.

And don’t just assume that all the best practices shared across marketing blogs work in your case! We’ve discovered many best practices to be either useless or damaging to campaign performance.

Read more: 10 Best Practices for Facebook Ads A/B Testing

3. Measure EVERYTHING, especially the obvious stuff

“I know this is going to work!”

Of course every marketer thinks that, especially after reading some article about best practices.

Next thing you know, you’ve paused some of your old ads or implemented a big change on your website, without setting up any measurement test to confirm if it really works.

Not good.

Every time you change your email layout, add some new ad visuals or rewrite copy on your website, add to your to-do list a task to come back and check if it improved the results.

E.g. when I set up an A/B test on Facebook Ads Manager, I add to my calendar a note 2+ weeks ahead to return to the campaign and check the outcome.

Same goes about social media posts, emails, website changes, etc. – if you think a change will improve the results, make sure that it actually does.

Most of the time, you won’t probably see an improvement. What should you do in this case?

1. If the old and new version work on the same level (or there’s less than 2% difference) and you think the latest one better reflects your branding and messaging, keep it.
2. If there’s no big difference between the two options, keep the old version and start another A/B test to find another way to improve your results.

Another thing I’ve noticed: the bigger the difference between two tested A/B test variations, the more you will learn. Best to avoid A/B tests with very tiny variations in tested elements.

4. Key Learnings on 2018 about Facebook Ads

All the brands I worked with in 2018 run some Facebook Ad campaigns. It’s the easiest channel to get started with.

Also, having my Instagram and Facebook feeds flooded with ads by both local and global brands has been a perfect chance to learn what’s working.

Seriously – don’t underestimate scrolling your Instagram feed just to learn what other brands are doing.

Try this for 1 week, daily: Scroll through your Instagram feed. Take screenshots of all the ads you see. Put these to a G Drive folder or wherever you store your information. After 1 week, take a look at all the examples and write down the best practices you can use to improve your own ad visuals and copy.

You will end up with a personal gallery of Facebook ad ideas.

PS: If you’re interested, here are 142 Facebook ad examples I collected some time ago.

As this blog’s already full of Facebook ads best practices, I didn’t want to spend too much space listing new hacks & tips. Here’s a quick list of my new observations from 2018:

1. Facebook video ads don’t work – Yes, it’s an exaggeration. But with all the blogs and Facebook itself promoting the video ads to be the golden nugget of online advertising, I have yet to see video ads outperforming static ads. For sure, you should test if video ads work for you. Just make sure to measure their performance against single-image ads.

1. Prefer broad audiences – When setting up Facebook ad campaigns, leave your audience targeting as broad as possible. If you’re selling a consumer-focused product, you can even test targeting entire countries at a time – algorithms will deliver your ads to the most relevant audience.

3. Optimise your Facebook ad sets on right conversions – Whether you optimise your ad delivery on link clicks, signups, or purchases will have a huge impact on your results. If you have a high volume of down-the-funnel events, optimise your ad delivery on those instead of link clicks.

4. Use automatic placements – Yes, there’s an option to exclude some ad placement from your Facebook campaigns. However, it’s much more efficient to use auto-placements and, once again, let the algorithms decide what’s the best channel for showing your ads.

4. Use both illustrations and stock images – When it comes to ad visuals, it’s a good practice to use a mix of illustrations and stock images as different people relate to different images. Pro tip: using numbers in your ads will also help to improve results.

6. Create Lookalike Audiences – If you’re starting to advertise in a new country, it’s a very good idea to create a Custom Audience of your existing TOP customers all over the world, then create a local 5%-10% Lookalike Audience based on that. Simultaneously, set up a broad targeting ad set as it will at some point likely overperform the Lookalikes’ ad set (once you’ve reached all the people in the audience).

5. Value your time more and put 💸 into promoting each campaign

At Taxify, we do lots of fun marketing campaigns to engage with our riders and drivers.

Some of the most recent marketing campaigns include a Halloween giveaway, TOP drivers’ event in France, social media Advent Calendar, and more.

As you might imagine, a lot of time goes into planning and executing some of those campaigns.

But no matter how awesome those campaigns are, you’ll be missing out on a lot of potential if you just execute them without proper promotion.

What I mean by this is that when you’re doing a cool marketing campaign, e.g. a social media post in partnership with another brand, don’t stop by posting to your Facebook page. Make sure that you make enough noise for people to actually notice you campaign. You could do that by informing all your users via email, boosting your social media post for a higher budget, running online ads campaign to support the campaign, or use all of the aforementioned tactics combined. (And that’s so not the definitive list of things you can do to amplify your campaigns’ reach)

On a similar subject, don’t spend your time doing small marketing activities that have a very low reach and ROI.

Rather than execute 10 tiny social media campaigns or partnerships, focus on one bigger campaign that will truly engage your audience and will have a higher reach than all those 10 small marketing activities combined.

6. Create everything mobile first

How much of your work do you do on desktop? Around 100%, right?

This means that you view all the marketing campaigns, emails, websites, etc. that you’re working on from the desktop perspective.

Now, guess where your potential audience spends their time?

Mostly on mobile.

People read your emails on mobile, view your Facebook ads on mobile, browse your website on mobile…

Even this blog has a significant share of mobile traffic.

And you really need to remember the mobile-first approach every time you’re working on a marketing campaign. If you forget about it, here’s what happens:

• Your email visuals that looked amazing in your desktop inbox are unreadable on mobile
• Your website that was built looking at the desktop version is not fully mobile-responsive
• Your online ads with copy in the image look overcrowded on mobile devices, resulting in low CTR and conversions

So really… 📍📍📍 Create for mobile first, and then make sure it also looks nice on desktop.

Cool articles, websites, blogs, books, podcasts and whatever

While it’s difficult to remember all the good stuff I’ve read in 2018, here are some of the nice books, articles, websites, blogs, books, podcasts I discovered.

Books:

• How Brands Grow: What Marketers Don’t Know by Byron Sharp – this was recommended by a team member at Facebook’s Marketing Partners team as “the one book that all brand marketers have read.” I’m halfway through it, but it has been really informative this far
• Sprint by Jake Knapp – I read it earlier, but the brainstorming sessions we did in 2018 based on the book’s suggestions all turned out to be amazingly productive
• Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy – written in 1985, still highly relevant. Definitely worth your time more than any of the 2018 books on buyer personas and other random stuff

Most business books are similar in that they take 1-2 really good ideas that could be explained in a couple of pages… And turn those into a 200+ page book.

So what’s the point of reading these at all?

For me at least, the point of business books is not as much in learning a particular best practice. It’s more about the brainstorming that runs on the background while reading a well-written book. It kind of makes your mind wander and makes new ideas on how to improve your teamwork, marketing campaigns, etc. pop up – completely independently of what the book is teaching you.

• Art Is Work by Milton Glaser – As explained by Amazon: “A lavishly illustrated, oversized retrospective of one of history’s most influential figures in international design evaluates the role of art in business today… documenting the creative processes of several of his works.” – note the part about “documenting the creative processes” – the book gives you a nice perspective on how to approach design work – any work for that matter
• Joan Didion & Tom Wolfe – two writers who popularised the literary journalism movement throughout 60s and 80s. My favourite kind of fiction to read.

If you want to grow into a better marketer, reading just business books is not going to cut it. Differentiate your reading list with good fiction and art/design books to build your creative ideation and copywriting skills.

Newsletters & podcasts:

• Benedict Evans, Andrew Chen, Next Draft (newsletters) – three main newsletters I actually open and read. I’m sure there are plenty of other good ones I’m not aware of tho. Please share!
• Tim Ferriss (podcast) – not all of it is worth a listen, but check out the conversations with Seth Godin (another one), Nick Kokonas, and Naval Ravikant
• The Design Better podcast by DesignBetter.co – I just got started with this one and while it’s about UX and UI design, a lot of the principles used in design are applicable to marketing and teamwork in general
• Overtime Design podcast by Dribbble – If you feel like you’ve already heard everything discussed in marketing podcasts, switch to design podcasts

Online marketing resources and design galleries:

• Facebook Active Ads (Facebook ads run by any brand) – In case you missed the train, Facebook added an option to see all the ads run by any advertiser in any country. Just go to your competitors’ Facebook pages and check out what ads they’re running. 👀
• Really Good Emails (online email design gallery) – a super informative overview of the marketing emails sent by well-known brands
• Land-book (online web design gallery) – I worked on two website design projects in 2018. Both times I returned to Land-Book for inspiration and latest UI hacks
• Good Web Design (online web design gallery) – Another amazing gallery for anyone working on website design, This one’s more focused specific UI elements, e.g. CTA buttons, Pricing pages, and so on
• Dribbble, Designspiration, Behance (online design galleries) – for fresh ideas whenever u run out of them

Blogs & magazines:

• First Round Review (blog) – one of my favourite blogs featuring interview-style articles by managers and CEOs from top companies
• The New Yorker, The Atlantic, (magazines) – if reading amazing reportages and essays from some of the best writers in the world is not a good enough reason for you, consider it an investment in perfecting your English copywriting skills. Best read on paper. 👌
• The Purple Magazine, Frieze (magazines) – artsy magazines for great interviews (The Purple) and art inspiration (Frieze)
• IdN Magazine – I spotted an issue of the magazine in a Paris museum bookstore, ordered a bunch of these when back at home, and found some nice design and campaign ideas. These magazines look sooo beautiful.
• Trendhunter – I check this site way too rarely, but it’s a great go-to place for the latest cool stuff happening in branding

As you might have noticed, I didn’t read much marketing blogs. I’ve come to a conclusion it’s best to learn by doing.

Which is the perfect note to wrap up this year and this article.

But before that… the “I’d like to thank my mom” moment… To the marketing team at Taxify and guys at MeetFrank and MindTitan – I’ve had a truly great year together with you! 🙌

The post 2018 In Review – Key Learnings on Facebook Ads & Marketing in General appeared first on Marketing Fix blog.

Campaign optimizations hacks like “A/B test a lot of different ads” or “set up a custom ad delivery schedule” sound awesome in theory, but do they really work in practice?

As someone who has managed hundreds of Facebook ad campaigns, my answer is “no.”

Or rather, “not exactly.”

That’s where this article is coming from, intended as…

1. A rant about micro-level ad optimization (from a previous advocate of such a practice)
2. A comforting guide to any marketer thinking that they’re not optimizing their campaigns enough (success lies elsewhere than optimization)
3. A warning sign to marketers who are overthinking their Facebook campaigns (to the extent that might ruin your campaign’s success)

But first, let’s make one thing clear…

I’m guilty as hell of promoting micro-level Facebook ad optimization.

I’ve written on this topic for a handful of business blogs, including Entrepreneur, Content Marketing Institute, AdEspresso, KlientBoost. The top Google Search results for “facebook ads optimization” are the cherries on top of my Facebook ads optimization articles cake.

The logical question to follow is… Are all these articles BS?

That’s not true either.

There’s the right place and time for each and every of those Facebook ad hacks.

Thing is, all Facebook ad hacks are not relevant to ALL campaigns.

How over-optimization may damage your Facebook campaigns

To make things a bit clearer, here’s a list of popular Facebook ad optimization hacks that marketing blogs suggest:

1. Set up a custom ad schedule, e.g. show your ads only on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 5pm to 10pm.
2. Optimize your ad placement, e.g. let Facebook show your ads only on desktop or mobile, or remove the Audience Network placement.
3. A/B test your ad ideas, e.g. first test 10 different ad variations and later use the best-performing one.
4. Set up many different Custom Audiences, e.g. target people who are on your email lists.
5. Create Lookalike Audiences who are similar to your existing clients.

There are so many more of those! These three I found from a Social Media Examiner article that’s also a top Google Search result on the topic.

1. Set up a sales funnel and create a different campaign and messaging for prospects, clients, retargeting audiences, etc.
2. Monitor your ad frequency and when you see the frequency exceed 1.7, you better be careful!
3. Select the right bidding option, e.g. optimize for Link Clicks at the beginning of your campaign, then switch to Conversions.

Every time I read about such hacks I’m thinking “OMG I have to try them!”

And, well… I have tried them – tens of different optimization hacks.

Do they work?

Yes and no.

Sometimes, no optimization is better than over-optimization

Here’s the caveat – many Facebook ad optimization hacks are relevant only to high-volume campaigns.

In some respects, it would make sense that if you’re running a low-budget Facebook ad campaign, you need to save more money and optimize more.

That’s when over-optimization happens.

If you apply 10 different Facebook ad hacks to a campaign with a $100 – $1000 budget, you’re probably going to damage your campaign’s delivery and results.

Why?

Because you’re limiting your ad delivery to a way-too-small audience or ruling out potentially good ad placements.

Also, you’re likely to make frequent changes while optimizing your campaign (more than one change per every 24h) that are impairing the work of Facebook’s auto-optimization algorithms.

Not good.

So what is the silver bullet here?

A year ago, I would never have thought I’d come to saying this, but…

You should test running a campaign without using any optimization hacks.

Just test it for once.

Also, whenever you’re unsure what an optimization hack is meant for, don’t apply it to your campaign.

And while you’re not getting worked up about small things like which call-to-action buttons to test or which campaign placements to use, you’re going to save a lot of time!

The time you’re going to spare by not puzzling about campaign optimization, can be put into a lot better use.

Here are the two TRULY MAGICAL TRICKS that will make your ad campaign perform better than any micro-level optimization hack:

1. Figure out your product’s unique selling proposition (USP)
2. Create 2-3 (not 10) high-quality ad images

Believe me, both of these are easier said than done.

Figuring out your USP is a difficult task in today’s competition-heavy business world. The advertising legend David Ogilvy had some pretty good suggestions on this topic up his sleeve.

Regarding high-quality ad images, you can start by learning what’s working for other brands and gathering inspiration. Also, I suggest that you read this article about top Facebook ad design hacks. For inspiration, check out these Facebook and Instagram ad examples.

! No Facebook ad optimization hack is going to make your campaign succeed if you have boring ad messages and your images fail to catch attention.

Focus on initial campaign setup rather than optimization

The key to successful Facebook campaigns lies in well-done homework.

Before you go to the Facebook Ads Manager to set up your campaign, figure out what your campaign’s goals are.

Do you want to increase brand awareness or boost sales? Who is your most potential target audience? And so on…

Based on your campaign goals, you will know what kind of messaging and campaign objectives to use.

For example, if your goal is to get mobile app installs, you should use Facebook Mobile App Installs campaign objective.

I have explained my recommended Facebook campaign setup process in this article. Just a few key takeaways that you should keep in mind:

1. Spend at least $100-$200 per every new campaign – for less, Facebook auto-optimization algorithms won’t be able to optimize your ad delivery.
2. Set up a single ad campaign with a single ad set and 1-3 ads while resisting the urge to fragment your campaigns into scattered low-budget ad sets.
3. Don’t A/B test too many elements at once – you won’t have enough results to conclude the test. Here’s my guide to Facebook ad A/B testing.
4. Don’t worry too much about the ad placements, custom delivery schedule, and manual bidding. Use Facebook’s default settings for all these things.
5. Set up Facebook Pixel to track your campaign’s results and set up Facebook retargeting campaigns. IT’S A MUST-HAVE!

Once you’ve hit the “Publish” button, let your Facebook campaign run for at least 6h before making any conclusions. (In the perfect world, you’d let it run for at least 24h, but you probably can’t make yourself wait that long)

Optimizing you Facebook ads based on results

When it comes to optimizing your Facebook ads after publishing your ad campaign, it’s a whole different story.

Naturally, you should keep your eye on campaign results and if you don’t like what you’re seeing, take action.

In addition to other ad metrics that you consider important, you should definitely measure the COST-PER-RESULT. This is the one KPI that will tell you if you campaign’s doing well or not.

(I am not going to explain in this article how to save a badly performing campaign. But it’s for sure a topic I’d like to cover in the future.)

Ok… But returning to the discussion over Facebook ads optimization, there’s one last question I’d like to answer.

What about third-party Facebook advertising tools?

Today, there’s a software tool for everything, especially in the profitable industry that is Facebook advertising.

These tools are meant to help you with campaign setup and ads optimization.

Facebook ads management tool – Image source

Should you use a third-party Facebook advertising tool such as AdEspresso or Smartly?

The answer is a big “no.”

If you come to think of it…

• You don’t need a third-party tool for setting up your Facebook ad campaigns – Facebook has been adding new features to the Ads Manager and that it the fastest tool on the market for campaign setup (especially for small campaigns)
• Third-party tools also offer you suggestions for optimizing your campaigns, e.g. “pause this ad as it has a lower CTR” or “automatically increase the best-performing ad set’s budget.” Facebook’s auto-optimization algorithms do the exact same thing for free and they have thousands of times more training data than any third-party algorithm.

So instead of paying for a third-party Facebook ad management tool and hoping it will improve your campaign results…

Pay this money to copywriters and designers who will help you improve your ads and landing pages. You will get a significantly higher ROI out of the process. Also, check out this guide on copywriting for Facebook to write better Facebook ad copy.

P.S. if you have other arguments that I’m not aware of that justify the use of third-party advertising tools, I’d love to have a discussion.

When to use Facebook ad optimization hacks?

Look I’m not overly grumpy about Facebook ads optimization.

As I said before, there’s the right place and time for different hacks.

Here’s a list of popular Facebook ad hacks together with potential use cases. I hope this will help to clear up the picture.

Set up a custom ad schedule

This hack is relevant to products that people generally use at specific times of day. For example, a pizza delivery service could schedule their ads to show on Friday and Saturday nights, when people are most likely to order a pizza. If your product is used by people on a daily basis, there’s no point in scheduling your ads.

Optimize your ad placement

I would say that there is really no need case for this hack. That’s because Facebook will automatically show your ad on the most effective channels, optimizing for best results. This might be handy when your desktop landing page has a lower conversion rate that your mobile landing page or vice versa. In this case, you could show your ads either only on desktop or only on mobile.

Set up A/B tests

Split testing new ad ideas is definitely something you should do in the long term. However, if your campaign budget is lower that $100, it is best to use a single ad variation, so that Facebook’s algorithms can focus on optimizing the ad delivery, not the visual.

Set up Custom & Lookalike Audiences

Advertising to a Custom Audience is worth the effort when there are at least 100 people in it. Also, do not create Lookalike Audiences from Custom Audiences smaller than 100 people – less is usually not enough data for Facebook to identify the key characteristics of your Custom Audience and make relevant matches.

Monitor your ad frequency

There are other ad metrics more important than ad frequency, e.g. your cost-per-result. Checking your ad frequency is relevant when targeting small audiences (less than 10k people) while having high budgets – you likely don’t want people to see your ads more than 5 times per week.

Select the right bidding option

There are campaigns where optimizing for Link Clicks at the beginning of your campaign, then switch to Conversions is a good option. Switch to Conversion-based optimization once you have at least 50 conversions per ad set. If you’re planning to run a long-term campaign with high budgets and many conversions, you can select “optimize for Conversions” option right from the start.

Conclusion?

To sum this all up, here’s the verdict:

Facebook ad optimization hacks can be of huge help when applied to correct use cases.

Just use them responsibly – not piling them up on a single campaign but using them as fairy dust that you sometimes sprinkle on campaigns in need.

The post The Best Facebook Ad Optimization Hack is… No Optimization appeared first on Marketing Fix blog.

There are many benefits of using Facebook App Install campaigns over other paid app marketing tactics:

• Facebook App Install campaigns are easy to set up
• The App Install campaigns are highly trackable and measurable
• You don’t need a huge budget to get started with promoting your app

Moreover, Facebook ads tend to have a great cost-per-install compared to other advertising channels.

According to AdEspresso’s data, Facebook App Install Ads cost around $1.2 per app install. I’ve also seen many App Install Campaigns with a CPI lower than $0.80.

Facebook’s also the top advertising platform when it comes to reaching a large audience of potential app users. With more than 1.3 billion monthly active users, it’s the perfect ad network for reaching your target audience.

So it’s a no-brainer that if you want to promote your mobile app and have more people install the app, Facebook App Install Ads are a surefire way to get new users.

After working with several App Install Campaigns, I’ve learned that there are multiple best practices that always apply.

After reading this article, you will know:

• What is a Facebook App Install campaign and how it differs from other campaign types?
• How to set up and manage a Facebook App Install campaign?
• What are the best practices for running a successful app marketing campaign?
• How to get more app installs at a lower cost and optimize your campaigns?
• How to set up Facebook SDK to track and measure in-app events?

Note to readers:

If you’re an advanced app marketer, you may want to scroll down to the “Hacks” section. If you’re just starting out, read the entire guide to get a complete overview of how App Install work and how to set up your first campaign.

Alright… Ready to learn to create winning App Install campaigns? You better read on!

What is a Facebook App Install campaign?

Let’s start from the beginning and see what exactly differentiates the App Install ads from other Facebook campaigns.

You can usually recognize App Install ads by the “Install Now” call-to-action button.

Perhaps the most important factor is that the App Install campaigns lead people straight to the App Store, instead of a landing page.

So as you click on an App Install ad…

You’re taken straight to the App Store.

Why does it matter? Why is it better to lead people straight to your App Store page?

Put simply, by skipping the landing page and taking people straight to the App Store, you can:

• Avoid the friction – people are taken directly to the App Store.
• Avoid slow landing page loading – people need to spend less time to get to your app’s download page.
• Better track conversions – you can integrate your app with Facebook’s conversion tracking.

If your goal is to get new app users via paid advertising, it’s always the best practice to use App Install campaigns. You will get more new app users at the lowest cost.

How to create a Facebook Mobile App Install campaign?

Before you start setting up your first Facebook App Install campaign, think about the following questions:

• What is the goal of my campaign?
• How can I get the maximum number of people convert on my ads?
• Do I have the correct tracking set up – is your app integrated with Facebook?

Once you know the answer to these questions, the likelihood of you going crushing the campaign (in a good way) is significantly higher.

When marketing your app, you can have multiple goals:

1. Get new app users
2. Engage existing users
3. Retarget potential leads

In this article, we’re going to focus on the first goal: getting new app users.

However, here’s a quick overview of which Facebook campaign types you can potentially use for all three objectives:

1. Get new app users – App Install campaign
2. Engage existing users – App Engagement campaign
3. Retarget potential leads – App Install campaign / Website traffic campaign

But let’s just assume that your goal is to get new people to install your app and start using it. In this case, when setting up a new Facebook ad campaign, you should select the “App Installs” campaign objective.

Tip: It’s easiest to create your first campaign in the Facebook Ads Manager, where there’s a guided setup process.

After you’ve chosen your campaign objective, you’ll be lead to the next stages where you can set up the following campaign elements:

• Your ad sets
• The apps you want to advertise
• Your target audience
• Placements where your ads will be shown
• Your campaign budget and schedule
• Your ads
• Your advertisements’ names
• Your ad’s format (images, videos, carousel ads, etc.)
• Ad designs
• Ad copy
• Call-to-action buttons

We’re going to learn how you can proceed in each of these steps to maximize your campaign’s success rate.

Read more: 12 Facebook Features that 95% of Marketers Don’t Know About

What’s the best App Install ads campaign structure?

First of all, let’s make a super quick stop and revisit the Facebook campaign structure.

There are three levels in every campaign:

1. Campaign
2. Ad set
3. Ad

While for most Facebook campaigns, you can start out with a single ad set that includes multiple ads, the Mobile App Install campaigns are slightly different.

Here’s why.,

There are two App Stores – one for Android and one for iOS. There’s a high chance your app’s present in both.

This also means that when setting up your Facebook App Install campaigns, you’ll need to create a campaign with two ad sets:

• Ad set 1 for your iOS app
• Ad set 2 for your Android app

You can select the app and App Store you want to advertise in the campaign setup phase.

Tip: Add the app type (Android / iOS) to your ad set’s name so that you can differentiate the two ad sets later.

How to integrate your mobile app with Facebook?

In the image above, I was able to select the app because it was already integrated with Facebook.

If you haven’t yet integrated your app with Facebook, you won’t be able to set up the App Install campaigns.

No Facebook integration, no App Install campaigns.

Fortunately, integrating your app with Facebook isn’t too difficult. Still, you’re going to need your developer’s help.

Go to the Facebook for Developers page to add a new app. Here’s a Quick Start link.

Next, follow the instructions that include copy-paste’ing the tracking code into your app’s code and setting up app events you want to track. You might want to assign this task to your development team.

Here are two additional how-to guides by Facebook

1. For integrating an iOS app
2. For integrating an Android app

Optimize your campaign on the right app events

Once you’ve successfully integrated you App Store pages with Facebook, you can:

• Set up App Install campaigns
• Track relevant in-app events (e.g. registrations and purchases)
• Optimize your campaign on specific in-app events and benefit from Facebook’s auto-optimization algorithms

Here are the 14 standard app events you can track:

When running a Mobile App Install campaign, you can optimize your ad delivery on these events.

As you scroll down in your ad set setup page, you will find the Optimization & Delivery section.

Here, you will have the option to optimize your ad delivery on:

• App Installs
• Link Clicks
• App Events
• Video Views

I always suggest my clients to optimize their ad campaigns on conversions. For App Install campaigns, it either means app installs or specific app events.

As you optimize your ad delivery on conversions, Facebook will show your ads to people most likely to complete the action you need them to: download your app, register as a user, make a purchase, etc.

As you optimize your Mobile App Installs campaign on app events, you’re 95% guaranteed to get the lowest cost-per-install. (As Facebook will automatically show your ads to the most potential customers)

How to select your target audience?

When setting up your Facebook ad campaign, you can target three types of audiences:

• Saved Audience – best for new campaigns
• Custom Audience – best for Facebook retargeting
• Lookalike Audience – best for reaching people similar to your users

Start by targeting a Saved Audience – this means targeting people based on their interests, demographics, etc. Even when running a low-budget Facebook campaign, you should keep your audience sufficiently large to leave some room for automatic optimization.

You can see your audience’s potential reach in the right-hand corner of the page.

Here are three audience targeting best practices you can follow:

1. Keep your potential audience reach at 20,000 people at least
2. If you’re promoting an innovative mobile app, target technology early adopters
3. If you want to target different audiences, create separate ad sets for that (it’s easier to evaluate the results)

How to select your ad placements?

As you already know, your Mobile App Install ads take people straight to the App Store.

This means that all your Facebook ad placements must be mobile – you can’t target desktop placements with this campaign type.

However, this still leaves you with plenty of placement options:

• Facebook mobile newsfeed
• Instant articles on mobile
• Suggested videos on mobile
• Instagram feed
• Facebook Audience Network
• Facebook Messenger home

I recommend that you start out with Automatic Placements and later, based on your campaign reports, optimize your campaign by excluding some low-performing placements.

Mostly, I’ve seen app installs coming from three ad placements, so I would encourage you to test at least those three to begin with:

• Mobile newsfeed
• Instagram feed
• Audience Network

According to AdEspresso’s research, the cost-per-install is lowest in the Audience Network. The Instagram ads cost has been dropping in time, especially compared to other ad placements.

Facebook App Install ads budgets and bidding

As you reach the Budget & Schedule section of your ad setup process, you can select between two options:

• Daily budget – tell Facebook how much you’d like to spend every day.
• Lifetime budget – tell Facebook how much you’d like to spend in total.

Which on of these Facebook features is the best option?

It’s hard to tell as both options have their advantages.

Advantages of using a daily budget:

1. You can leave your ad campaigns running indefinitely.
2. You’ll know exactly how much you’ll spend every day.
3. I find daily budgets easier to evaluate and manage.

Advantages of using a lifetime budget:

1. Facebook will allocate your budget based on a larger timeframe, potentially lowering the cost-per-install.
2. You can only set up a custom ad schedule when using a lifetime budget.
3. You can cap your spending and won’t forget the campaign running.

Important! No matter which option you select, you won’t be able to switch the budgeting options after publishing the campaign. However, you will always be able to edit the size of your budgets.

If after all this information you’re even more confused…

I recommend that you use the daily budget as it’s easier to measure and increase/decrease when needed. And let your ads run 24/7 to begin with, especially if you want to maximize the number of new app users.

Tip: Among other 2018 Facebook updates, a feature called Campaign Budget Optimization was introduced.

This new feature allows you to set campaign-level ad budgets and let Facebook algorithms allocate it between ad sets. You could use this feature to optimize the budgets between your iOS and Android ad sets.

Creating your Facebook App Install ads

The next step in the campaign setup process is creating your ads. Arguably, this is the most difficult challenge of creating a Facebook ad campaign.

At least it usually is for me. You need to get right so many different elements:

• Ad image/video
• Headline
• The main ad text
• Call-to-action button

Let’s take a quick look at how app install ads look in Facebook’s mobile newsfeed and as Instagram ads.

The main difference between App Install ads and regular Facebook ads leading to a landing page is that there is no link description under the headline.

In Instagram ads, your ad copy will appear below your image as the title for your image.

So how can you assure that your ads look great and convince the audience to download your app?

Follow these nine rules:

1. Think of your USP – Unique Selling Proposition
2. Write a strong yet short headline
3. Create original images and avoid stock photos
4. Show your app / app screen in the image or video
5. Include the App Store icons in the image
6. Write actionable ad copy
7. Use the “Install Now” or “Sign Up” call-to-action button
8. Test multiple ad formats
9. Check out deep linking

Let’s explore each of these suggestions a little more in-depth…

9 hacks to create irresistible Mobile App Install ads

Before we get to each of the nine points, you may want to check out the article that lists 142 best Facebook ad examples – it’s a great resource for inspiration.

And now, let’s learn all the Facebook advertising hacks to create magical App Install ads.

1. Find your USP – Unique Selling Proposition

Two great advertising legends, David Ogilvy and Rosser Reeves believed that having a strong USP is the key to successful ad campaigns.

Reeves explained that your unique value offer has three parts:

1. Each tagline must make a proposition to the consumer that shows a clear benefit.
2. The proposition must be unique – one that your competition either can’t or doesn’t offer.
3. The USP must be strong enough for people to take action.

For example, LinkedIn’s Facebook ad clearly states the value proposition to their target audience – marketers: “Attract new customers.”

Think about your USP before creating any ad copy or campaign visuals. Both of these should support your USP, not the other way around.

I know that looking for your unique value offer might seem like an unnecessary, time-consuming step, but it’s really not – I’ve seen so many Facebook campaign results improve once the brand added a strong USP to their ads.

If you’d like to read more about finding your unique selling proposition, check out this article: 18 Golden Advertising Rules by Legendary D. Ogilvy and R. Reeves

2. Write a short yet strong headline

A study by Consumer Acquisition found that 90% people first look at a Facebook ad’s image. Ip next, their attention is drawn to the headline. Basically, many people decide whether to click or not click on your app install ad based on its headline.

How can you write a headline that won’t let you down?

Here are some tried-and-proven headline formulas you can use:

• Mention the main benefit of your app (the USP)
• Mention how many users you already have
• Tell people what your app does
• Ask a fascinating question to spark curiosity

Here’s an example by Frank, asking a question both in the ad image and headline.

Tip: Research has found that by starting your headline with a number, you’re 36% more likely to have people click on your ads.

Here are some numbers you can mention in your mobile app’s Facebook ad:

• Your App Store rating
• The number of people using your app
• The number of positive reviews

You can also include emojis in your Facebook ads to drive more attention to the key messages. We tested this with Scoro and the ad using emoji had a significantly higher click-through rate. ?

For additional writing hacks, see this guide on copywriting for Facebook ads and social media posts.

3. Create original images and avoid stock photos

Whenever you need to choose between an original design and stock photos, dismiss the latter.

Facebook ads using stock photos blend into the newsfeed and are difficult to notice.

Which one of these two ads catches your attention?

If you must use a photo, make sure it’s original.

Tip: Marketing Experiments found that using a real person associated with your product instead of a stock photo increased conversion by 35%.

If you want to learn more about how to create the perfect Facebook ad image, check out this article with 25 Facebook ad design tips and get inspired by these 21 Facebook video ad examples.

4. Show your app / app screen in the image or video

I discovered this rule while working on SaaS (Software as a Service) Facebook ads.

Mobile apps and software products both have this one thing in common: they enable you to take screenshots to easily showcase your product.

As you include your app screen in the Facebook ad image, three things will happen:

1. People will immediately realize your product is an app
2. If your app looks great, people will start trusting it more
3. You can showcase how your app works

You can even take this one step further and create a Facebook carousel ad with several app views like Gusto.

If you have a 15-30 second introductory video about your mobile app, you can also create a Facebook video ad. See all the Facebook and Instagram ad specs here.

5. Include the App Store icons in the image

Another way to indicate that you’re promoting a mobile app is to include Google Play and App Store icons in your ad image to indicate that people should install your app.

That’s exactly what Bloomberg Business did in their Facebook app install ads.

Similarly, you can include your app icon (the icon that signifies your app on a smartphone’s home screen) in the image.

Very important tip: Once someone clicks on your Facebook App Install ad, they’re taken to the App Store. To convince them to download your app, your App Store description and images need to be high-quality and your app ratings high.

Joanna Wiebe from Copy Hackers recommends that you use in your App Store oneliner one of the following elements:

• Your value proposition / USP, stated as succinctly as possible
• Your “ideal for” statement
• A short snippet from a product review: “A must have for moms!” – TechCrunch
• A short snippet from an influencer review: “A game-changer” – Seth Godin
• Media mentions: “As seen on ABC News”
• Reasons to believe: “Free upgrades for life!”
• Teasers like, “Click ‘More’ to see the screenshot that Angry Birds designers called ‘Sick on a stick’“
• Star ratings
• Numbers of downloads or users (if it’s large)
• Other apps you’ve created: “From the creators of _______”

6. Ad copy: make it actionable

Your main ad copy is what you see above the Facebook ad image.

That’s the place for emphasizing your app’s benefit to the user once more or wooing them with a promising claim.

Your ad copy must convince the people that still need convincing after seeing your ad image and headline.

As it’s the last part of your ad that most people notice and engage with, it makes sense to end your ad text with a call-to-action.

Blue Apron, for instance, sends people to a link and offers them first three meals for free.

Need ideas for your Mobile App ads? You could end your ad copy by saying:

• Download [your app’s name] in the App Store!
• Try it for yourself by installing the app today!
• Join 10,000+ happy users!

7. Use the correct call-to-action button

When it comes to call-to-action buttons, Facebook has plenty.

Which is the right one to use in your App Install ads?

Mostly, it’s a best practice to select the CTA that’s closest to the action you want people to take.

If your goal is to get people install your app and sign up, it doesn’t make sense to use the “Learn More” or “Shop Now” CTAs, to give a few examples.

As you select the “Install Now” or “Sign Up” call-to-action button, fewer people might click on your ad than when you’d pick “Learn More.” However, as people go to the App Store, fewer are going to install your app after having clicked the “Learn More” CTA – downloading your app is not what they opted in for.

Tip: If you’re running App Engagement ads to increase the current users’ engagement level (that already have your app installed), use the “Use App” call-to-action button.

8. Test multiple ad formats

Facebook Mobile App Install ads aren’t limited to a single-image format.

Here’s a list of all possible app install ad formats:

1. Single-image
2. Single-video
3. Carousel ad
4. Slideshow ad

If you’re wondering what’s a Slideshow ad, it’s a multi-image Facebook ad where your images change automatically, creating a video effect.

Which App Install ad format works best?

In my experience, a good old single-image ad usually works best. However, if you’ve already advertised a while for the same audience and ad fatigue starts to kick in, you can add carousel and video ads to the mix.

Tip: Are you also advertising on Instagram? When creating a single-image ad, you can set up a separate image for Instagram. The way it’s used is that you upload a square image (1080×1080 px) in addition to the landscape ad image (1200×628 px).

9. Use deep linking

By now, you should have a pretty decent overview of how to create a Mobile App Installs campaign on Facebook.

Here’s one more hack that you might not know yet: Deep linking

With deep linking, you can directly send people who click on your ads to what they’re interested in (e.g. a specific hotel offer in a travel app) when they open your app for the first time.

Here’s an explanation by Facebook:

1. Your ad will show personalized content, in our example a vacation to San Francisco.
2. People will download your app.
3. Via a deep link people will come back to their point of inspiration, the vacation to San Francisco.

You can find the step-by-step guidelines for creating a deep-linking app here.

Let’s wrap things up

Mobile ads are making up for an increasingly large share of digital ad spend.

Knowing how to create mobile ads that convert on a high level will give you a significant advantage over the competition.

If you’re looking for additional Facebook advertising best practices for campaign optimization, check out this article: 12 Hidden Facebook Features 95% of Marketers Don’t Know

And should you have any questions about Facebook App Install ads, feel free to leave them in the comments, and we’ll get back to you.

The post Facebook App Install Ads – 114-point Guide for More Installs appeared first on Marketing Fix blog.

Those are the words of advertising legend David Ogilvy, right out of his book Ogilvy on Advertising first published in 1985.

Lately, I’ve been spending some time on reading the advertising classics and discovered that what the agency gurus told 40 or 50 years ago is still relevant today. Even more so, it seems like many modern marketers have forgotten some of the core principles of great advertising.

According to R. Reeves, out of 78 biggest package-goods advertisers in the US, some ads were recalled by 78% of people while others by a mere 2%.

If your advertising fails to get the message to the heads of people, your money’s wasted. And this is happening to millions of advertisers every day.

Having worked through two cult marketing books – Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy and Reality in Advertising by Rosser Reeves, I feel like I’ve been to the best marketing conference of my life – there are so many applicable takeaways.

All the best practices, research findings, and recommendations by the two advertising legends are still relevant today. Even more so, many marketers seem to have forgotten the core principles of marketing.

Just take a look at these 18 golden rules of advertising and remind yourself how to create ads that do not fail.

1. You need to know your USP

USP, a term coined by Rosser Reeves, signifies the Unique Selling Proposition. Both Ogilvy and Reeves believed that having a strong USP is the key to successful advertising.

According to Ogilvy, writing a good advertisement starts by studying the product – you need to know what makes it beneficial to its users and different from the competition.

Reeves explained that your USP has three parts:

1. Each advertisement must make a proposition to the consumer.
   Not just words, not just product puffery, not just show-window advertising. Each advertisement must say to each reader: “Buy this product, and you will get this specific benefit.
2. The proposition must be one that the competition either cannot, or does not, offer.
   It must be unique – either a uniqueness of the brand or a claim not otherwise made in that particular field of advertising.
3. The proposition must be so strong that it can move the mass of millions.
   Your advertisements should pull over a large number of new customers to your product.

For example, the ad above proposes a clear value offer: Save money by shopping at Sears.

So how can you find the best USP?

2. Research your product and users

The way Ogilvy came up with the advertising copy for Sears was by researching what people thought about the company.

When research reported that the average shopper thought Sears Roebuck made a profit of 37 per cent on sales, Ogilvy headlined an advertisement Sears makes a profit of 5 per cent.

This specific number was more persuasive than saying that Sears’ profit was “less than you might suppose” or something equally vague. Sometimes, it’s worth mentioning specifics.

With all the modern surveying tools, asking for your users’ feedback is easier than ever before. Use that opportunity to learn what makes people buy your product.

3. If you don’t have a strong USP, do this

Most advertisements have interchangeable parts – you could just as well insert a competitor’s name in your ads.

This means that you don’t have a USP that’s limited to only your product.

If that’s the case, Reeves suggested two solutions:

1. The product could be changed/improved to have a USP.
2. If the product can’t be changed, it’s possible to tell the public something about that product that has never been revealed before.

Here’s one of the advertisements that Ogilvy created for the Campbell’s – it’s showing the product from a completely new side.

Do not forget that your Unique Selling Proposition has to be relevant to the audience.

Sometimes, a cool product feature that seems amazing to you does not appeal to your customers.

You could argue that Ogilvy’s ad is focused on an irrelevant USP. However, if you give it some more thought, the USP is not that the soup can be served cold. The core USP of the advertisement is that the product’s easy to consume – and that’s relevant to millions of consumers.

4. Your advertisement needs one big idea

I recommend that you read the following quote at least twice.

“Be cautious, in the course of adding secondary claims, that a distraction claim does not suddenly crystallize, i.e. a second claim which sucks power away from your USP.”

– R. Reeves

A consumer tends to remember just one thing from an advertisement – one strong claim, or one strong concept.

If you’re advertising more than one benefit, chances are that people don’t either remember any of them or develop their own reaction.

As Reeves put it:

“The advertisement may have said five, ten, or fifteen things, but the consumer will tend to pick out just one, or else, in a fumbling, confused way, he tries to fuse them together into a concept of his own.”

So instead of listing three or more product benefits, find the one that truly matters to people and advertise the hell out of it.

5. How to recognize a strong USP?

How to tell a strong USP from a week one?

For one, a strong USP will sell your product times more than any irrelevant message.

Ogilvy also suggested that your advertisement has to contain a big idea. Ask yourself:

• Did it make me gasp when I first saw it?
• Do I wish I had thought of it myself?
• Is it unique?
• Does it fit the strategy to perfection?
• Could it be used for 30 years?

For example, the legendary Lucky Strike ads used USP “It’s toasted” – and used it in consecutive campaigns for many years.

However, don’t focus on minuscule differences. Reever called this “The Deceptive Differential.”

Another interesting fact about “It’s toasted” message is that back then, Lucky Strike wasn’t nearly the only cigarette company selling toasted tobacco.

Which leads us to the next point…

6. You can “acquire” any general USP

According to R. Reeves, the advertiser to first use a Unique Selling Proposition will own that USP.

“Can those USPs be stolen by competitors? – No. Studies of great numbers of brand histories show that the first big advertiser can pre-empt the USP. He is the pioneer, and, protected by his penetration bulwark. Thus, the USP becomes his property.”

R. Reeves

Lucky Strike owned a general USP. And so did Colgate with their ads saying “Cleans your breath while it cleans your teeth.”

Some time later, one of Colgate’s competitors ran an advertising with the message “Freshens your breath while it cleans your teeth – because it has a special mouthwash built in!”

Here’s what happened:

Now may also be a good time to reflect on your advertising messages and think whether they truly belong to your brand or you’re just repeating your competitors’ USP.

7. If you find a USP that works, keep repeating it

If you’re lucky enough to write a good advertisement, repeat it until it stops selling.

According to Reeves, research shows that the readership of an advertisement does not decline when it is run several times in the same magazine.

Readership remains at the same level throughout at least four repetitions. “You aren’t advertising to a standing army; you are advertising to a moving parade.”

In fact, changing your USP too often can have a damaging effect on your brand recognition and sales.

Take a look at the case study below.

Look at this way: You shouldn’t change your USP while it’s working, but this doesn’t mean that you can’t change your advertisements.

You can create different ads, both in design and copy, until they all reinforce your core USP.

8. Your competitors using a consistent USP will outgrow you

According to Reeves, three great basic principles of advertising reality emerged from their research:

1. Changing a story has the same effect as stopping the money, as far as penetration is concerned.
2. Thus, if you ran a brilliant campaign every year, but change it every year, your competitor can pass you with a campaign that is less brilliant – providing he does not change his copy.
3. Unless a product becomes outmoded, a great campaign will not wear itself off.

“Recently, we watched the drama of an advertiser who had 65% penetration on a powerful, sales-winning theme. Then he changed campaigns. In eighteen months his hard-won 65% penetration had dropped to 2.2% – in other words, had almost vanished entirely.”
R. Reeves

If the campaign has really worn itself out, one of two things will happen:

• People’s awareness of your USP will drop.
• The public would cease to respond to the message, and your sales volumes will fall.

Often, when a new brand with a strong USP enters the market, leading competitors panic and start changing their own campaigns. That’s the worst idea.

9. There’s only so much room in people’s heads

Or, if you wish, there’s only so much love in people’s hearts for brands in the same vertical.

Reeves’ research team found that as your branded message becomes increasingly known, the USPs of your competitors fade from people’s minds.

“There is a finite limit to what a consumer can remember about 30,000 advertised brands,” Reeves said. Today, there are hundreds of thousands of brands advertising.

“It’s as if he [the consumer] carries a small box in his head for a given product category. This box is limited either by his inability to remember or his lack of interest.”
– R. Reeves

10. Ogilvy on creating great advertisements

According to Ogilvy, the easiest way to get new clients is to do good advertising.

Easier said than done.

Here are some key takeaways from Ogilvy’s research into what makes some advertisements succeed while others fail.

• Images of finished dishes consistently attracted more readers than photographs of the raw ingredients. In a study of 70 campaigns whose sales results were known, Gallup did not find a single before-and-after campaign that didn’t increase sales.
• Images with an element of “story appeal” were far above average in attracting attention.
• The kind of photographs that work hardest are those which arouse the reader’s curiosity.

• Create ads that people can relate to. When you show a photograph of a woman, men will ignore your ad.
• Most copywriters believe that markdowns and special offers are boring, but customers don’t think so. They are above average in recall.

READ MORE: 12 Hidden Facebook Features 95% of Marketers Don’t Know

11. Make your ads effortlessly readable

One of the golden rules of advertisement design is: Don’t capitalize your headlines.

If you look at the ads in the magazine next to you, you’ll be surprised how many marketers mistake against this rule.

A professor at Stanford established that capitals retard reading – capitalized words tend to be read letter by letter.

Here’s another important rule: Don’t put a period at the end of headlines – they’ll stop the reader from reading more.

Don’t set your copy in reverse type – with white letters on a black background. It’s more difficult to read.

Black type on a white background is easier to read than copy set in reverse type. So think twice before you set your ad copy on a colourful background.

12. Make your product the hero of your advertising

Often, advertisers make the mistake of creating a vampire video – a video that takes away attention from your USP.

According to Reeves, “One wrong picture can steal a hundred words.”

Here’s a best practice that applies to all types of advertisements: Make sure your message and visuals match.

If the message says: “This tablet dissolves into 10,000 tiny bubbles,” show the tablet dissolving into 10,000 tiny bubbles. Make sure your videos interpret your USP.

Do not create ads that steal the attention from your USP.

Here’s another interesting takeaway from Ogilvy: Advertisements with testimonials by celebrities tend to underperform.

Viewers will know the celebrity has been bought and they will remember the celebrity instead of the product advertised.

Here’s another important thing to keep in mind: Do not advertise your competitor’s USP, not to spean of their brand names.

If there’s a comparison with the competitor, they do not mention their name, but say “another leading detergent,” etc.

13. Headline is the most important part of your ad

A Harvard professor used to begin his series of lectures with a sentence that took his students by the throat: “Cesare Borgia murdered his brother-in-law for the love of his sister, who was the mistress of their father – the Pope.”

– A passage from Ogilvy’s book

On average, five times as many people read the headlines as read the body copy.

Unless your headline sells your product, you have wasted 90% of your money. The headlines that work best are the ones that promise the reader a benefit.

If you have any news to tell, don’t hide it in the body copy. Say it in the headline.

Include your brand name in the headline – otherwise, 80 per cent of people who won’t read your body copy will never know what product you’re advertising.

According to Ogilvy, some copywriters write “tricky” headlines – double meanings, puns, etc. This is counter-productive. Your headline should telegraph what you want to say.

Moreover, your ad copy should be written in the language people use in everyday conversation. Avoid analogies as they are often misunderstood.

14. Use the right advertisement layout

Ogilvy’s research showed that readers first look at the illustration, then at the headline, then at the copy.

So put these elements in that order – illustration at the top, followed by bu the headline.

On average, headlines below the illustration are read by 10 per cent more people than headlines above the illustration.

Here’s another interesting takeaway from Reeves:

Two-spread magazine ads cost twice as much as single pages, but seldom get twice the readership, or pull twice as many coupons.

You could double the reach or frequency of your campaigns by using single-page ads. So think twice before creating two-spread magazine ads.

15. How to create video ads that sell

In his book, Ogilvy has devoted an entire chapter to video advertisements.

Here are the key takeaways from his years of practice and research:

• When doing video ads, mention your product multiple times to make people remember it.
• Show the packaging and the product. Commercials which end by showing the package are more effective in changing brand preference than commercials which don’t.
• Try to grab the viewer’s attention during the first seconds of your ad.
• Research shows that it’s more difficult to hold your audience if you use voiceover. It is better to have the actors talk on camera.

16. How to succeed in B2B advertising

If you’re in the B2B marketing space, you’ll love the following guidelines:

• Promise what is important to the customer – a supplier of computer software was proud of the size of his company and wanted to make it the feature of his advertising, but research found that his customers were not interested in size. They were looking for responsiveness, support, service – and a good product.
• Make your promise specific. Instead of generalities, use percentages, time elapsed, dollars saved.

• Testimonials work well, as long as they come from experts in reputable companies.
• Even if you think your product boring, it’s not boring to your potential buyers – there’s no need to advertise irrelevant images.
• Don’t be afraid of long copy – if that’s what it takes to explain your product.

Fun fact: Ogilvy was running content marketing ads to get new customers. 60 years ago!!

17. How to advertise like TOP consumer brands

Here are Ogilvy’s key takeaways from analyzing big advertisers’ campaigns, e.g. Procter & Gamble.

There’s a lot you can learn from them.

• They always promise the consumer one important benefit.
• They believe that the first duty of advertising is to communicate effectively, not to be original or entertaining.
• They measure communication in three stages: before the copy is written, after the commercials are produced, and in test markets.
• All their commercials include a “moment of confirmation.” E.g. a demonstration how a cleaning product absorbs more liquid.

• Their commercials talk straight to the consumer, using language and situations that are familiar to them.
• Often, they also show their users some emotional benefit derived from the product – “You’ll be more appreciated if you use Dash.”

18. How to reach the largest audience for your budget?

Is it better to reach a smaller audience, yet reach it more times? Or is it better to reach a bigger audience – yet reach it less often?

Here’s Reeves’ answer – buy dispersion. Try to reach more homes, not the same homes.

Reach your audience less often, but make it as large an audience as you can. (This is especially relevant for consumer products that have a wide potential user base.)

This also applies to digital advertising – e.g. try to reach a wider audience with your Facebook ads rather than show the same ad to the same people for more than 3 times.

Final takeaways

Here are five more amazing quotes from Ogilvy and Reeves that you should remember whenever creating new advertisements.

Don’t create ads that are window dressers – the ads that merely show your product without the USP. – R. Reeves

If the product does not meet some existing desire or need of the consumer, the advertising will ultimately fail. – R. Reeves

If it doesn’t sell, it’s not “creative. – D.Ogilvy

The most dangerous word in advertising is… originality. – R. Reeves

Advertising is the art of getting a unique selling proposition into the heads of the most people at the lowest possible cost. – R. Reeves

– – – – – – –

Ogilvy’s book was first published in 1983 and Reeves’ even sooner, in 1961. It is amazing how the best practices in use back then have made their way into modern advertising.

Everything you read in this article can be applied to your Facebook advertising campaigns, Instagram ads or email marketing funnels. So take one hour and go over all your current advertisements, looking if they have a clear USP and whether they follow the basic best practices.

You might be surprised by your findings.

The post 18 Golden Advertising Rules by Legendary D. Ogilvy and R. Reeves appeared first on Marketing Fix blog.

All I had done was feasting on marketing blogs and podcasts for the previous two months. I was so into digital marketing that I thought I knew everything.fa

As I soon found out, the SaaS marketing world turned out to be a lot more versatile and exciting than I’d thought.

But you know what… It all worked out.

Better than my 21-year-old self could possibly have imagined.

During my last two years as the Digital Marketing Manager at Scoro, we’ve:

• Increased the number of monthly leads by over 300%
• Built our blog readership from 1.6k to 32k monthly organic visitors
• Published tens of new landing pages and hundreds of ads
• Grown into a team of full-stack marketers

However, I’ve got some big news.

Today is my very last day working as the Digital Marketing Manager at Scoro.

Looking back, I wanted to share the key learnings on SaaS marketing that I’ve discovered on this two-year journey, 35 of them to be exact.

SaaS marketing strategy – key learnings

When I joined my first SaaS startup two years ago, there was no all-encompassing marketing strategy in place.

So we started by…

• Defining our buyer personas
• Finding out who’s our high expectation customer – the people who enjoy your product’s most complex and differentiating benefits
• Thinking what are our potential customers’ pain points that our product could solve

SaaS Marketing Lesson #1:
Find your High Expectation Customer

There’s an amazing article on the High Expectation Customer by Julie Supan who’s worked for Airbnb and Dropbox.

If you’re unsure how to answer the following questions, chances are that you’re struggling to position your SaaS product in the market.

SaaS Marketing Lesson #2:
Keep true to your target audience = don’t try to sell to everyone.

Even though we had defined our buyer personas, it sometimes happened that our marketing activities got derailed and we were trying to serve a larger audience than we should have.

This led to delivering low-quality leads to the sales team. Fortunately, in the quickly adaptive environment of a SaaS startup, we were able to quickly recover.

Seriously – the more we worked on defining our target audience, the higher ROI we saw across all marketing channels.

SaaS Marketing Lesson #3:
You absolutely must know your UVP and mission statement

Unique Value Proposition (UVP) is a brief statement that describes your product’s benefit to the customer while differentiating you from your competition.

That’s the utmost reason why anyone should buy your SaaS product.

You should also be clearly aware of why your startup exists in the first place.

Test your mission statement by following this framework – do you know your target customer, your product’s benefits, and the key differentiating element?

Translated into a mission statement, the result will look like this:

If you’re unable to clearly identify your core value offer, you’re going to struggle when developing future marketing messages and organizing big campaigns.

Moreover, your entire team will feel demotivated when working without a clear mission.

SaaS Marketing Lesson #4:
Keep true to your mission statement

Once you’ve set your SaaS company’s mission statement, you should actually act by it.

Offering potential customers a big discounts or trying to keep employees happy with nice office perks isn’t going to cut it.

Today, with tens of thousands of SaaS products in the market, the key differentiator isn’t your product’s features, it’s your branding and mission.

You should regularly ask “Why does our company exist other than to make money?” – knowing the answer will also make it easier to communicate your product’s value to the user.

https://www.mindtitan.com/?utm_source=aggregate&utm_medium=paid-ads

SaaS Marketing Lesson #5:
It’s all about growth

Looking back at the past 24 months, I wish I’d focused even more on growth. I feel like we occasionally got stuck in doing the same things over and over again just because they worked.

However, the biggest increase in our marketing results has come from constant optimization and new ventures.

Key takeaway: Be constantly on the lookout of new ideas to improve your lead flow and increase conversion rates.

SaaS Marketing Lesson #6:
Your growth plan needs to include clear actions, not just nice numbers

It’s not sufficient to just write down the anticipated numbers, you also need to know how to achieve this growth.

The way I’d set up a SaaS marketing strategy is by setting up growth goals, e.g. 10% growth every month and then contemplating how this growth will be achieved.

The growth plan should be created by a large team of people (from marketing, sales, product teams), each contributing their knowledge and ideas.

SaaS Marketing Lesson #7:
There are multiple ways to increase sales

Here’s a graph by KlientBoost, illustrating how every stage of your SaaS conversion funnel is converting at a different rate.

In the end, only a handful of website visitors become paying customers.

If you want to grow your MRR by, let’s say, 10% every month, you have two options:

• Optimize the conversion rates of your conversion funnel stages
• Get more people into your conversion funnel

It’s up to you to choose which path you prefer (usually, it’s the combination of both).

However, the choice should be intentional and every action you take driven by your SaaS company’s long-term marketing strategy.

SaaS Marketing Lesson #8:
Failure = Winning

There’s a simple correlation between the failings and gains in your marketing team’s work.

The more you fail, the more you’ll also grow. That’s because you’ll be testing a significantly larger number of new tactics.

Failure = Testing = Winning

While many of our ideas didn’t work out as expected and cost us some leads and budgets, I’m glad that we tried.

Many experiments also turned out to be great success and helped us increase the number of monthly leads (and sales results).

SaaS Marketing Lesson #9:
Don’t optimize for leads. Optimize for growth.

Speaking of results and sales, you should be aware that new leads do not necessarily translate into more sales.

Leads ≠ Sales

You can get thousands of low-quality leads, but if none of them converts into paying customers, you’ll soon be out of business.

When I started managing Scoro’s AdWords account and working with PPC agencies, I discovered we were targeting lots of keywords irrelevant to our product.

While these keywords brought in leads at acceptable CPA (cost per acquisition), they never ever converted into buyers.

After we cleaned up our campaigns, we started getting more qualified leads.

Key takeaway: Measure the number of qualified leads you get from every marketing channel, not just the overall lead count.

SaaS Marketing Lesson #10:
Track the right metrics

The more I’ve spoken with successful SaaS marketers, the more I’ve grasped the importance of tracking the right marketing metrics.

So what are the right SaaS marketing metrics you should track?

I would suggest that you select 3-5 key marketing metrics that you use for decision-making and only then build a list of supporting metrics.

These 3-5 key metrics should be directly tied to your company’s growth, thereby they could be:

• Increase in MRR
• Cost per acquisition per paying customer
• Average lifetime value

The CPA per lead could be a secondary metric that you use to evaluate the performance of marketing campaigns.

Of course, your SaaS metrics really depend on the product you’re selling. Maybe none of the metrics I just mentioned makes any sense with your particular strategy.

SaaS Marketing Lesson #11:
Trust in your LTV

Until recently, I had never thought of the customer lifetime value as a key metric to SaaS marketing strategy.

However, your average users’ LTV can easily predict how much you should be willing to pay for leads and paid customers.

You should opt for the CPA to be 3 times lower than the LTV, meaning for every dollar you put in your SaaS machine you’re getting 3 out.

However, I’ve seen many SaaS companies struggling with this paradox: Once they find a marketing channel with a positive ROI, they keep limiting their budgets.

SaaS Marketing Lesson #12:
Once you’ve found the perfect growth channel, use it to its full potential

Most of the successful SaaS marketers I’ve talked with aim to find marketing channels with a positive ROI and then use them to their maximum capacity.

For example, if the avg. CPA for a paid customer on AdWords is $1,2k and the LTV of that customer is 10k, it would make sense to extend your marketing budget as much as possible to grow faster.

Once you’ve found a profitable marketing channel, increase the resources spent on it. E.g. if you’re happy with your Facebook ads CPC, increase your Facebook advertising budget.

SaaS Marketing Lesson #13:
Segment your LTV by marketing channels

Not all of your SaaS marketing channels bring identical leads.

You can conduct an analysis on different lead segments and see what’s the average LTV across different channels, countries, and other customer segments.

You’ll find it a lot easier to evaluate whether a marketing channel has a positive or negative ROI.

You’ll also avoid keeping some poorly performing campaigns running and won’t close the ones with a high potential due to generalizing.

SaaS Marketing Lesson #14:
Know when to say “We tried but failed”

Working in SaaS marketing has also taught me a couple of lessons about sunk costs.

In terms of marketing, a sunk cost is a cost that has already been incurred and cannot be recovered. And often, it makes us want to keep pushing a failing marketing incentive in the hopes of it starting to work.

In SaaS marketing, it’s especially important that you notice the budget-draining projects early on, before they exhaust your budgets and resources.

Train yourself to be the wake-up-call for the entire marketing team whenever it happens.

Here’s an easy litmus test for uncovering low-performing projects.

Ask your team: “If we could devote our resources (time and budget) on a different marketing project, would we?”

If you’re able to name some ideas with a bigger potential, that’s where you should focus.

SaaS Marketing Lesson #15:
Prioritize based on numbers and data

A couple of days ago, I read a blog article by Peep Laja where he mentioned that many marketers prioritize their website A/B tests by the ease of implementation, not the possible gains.

Let me repeat it…

Often, marketers choose their projects by the ease of implementation, completely ignoring the data.

Guilty as charged.

Where you spend your time and resources should be directed by data, not your gut feeling or comfort zone.

SaaS Marketing Lesson #16:
Set up a strong lead tracking system

If I could turn back time, I’d travel back to 2015 and set up a comprehensive lead tracking framework.

Customers have so many possible touching points with your ads/content and take so many different actions before converting.

And if you’re unable to track all of it, you’ll have no idea of what actually works.

So looking back, I’d draw up a customer journey map and start using tools like HubSpot, Mixpanel, and Kissmetrics in the early phases of SaaS marketing.

Using those tools is crucial to understanding how our leads and customers interact with your ads, content, and the SaaS product.

Content marketing – key learnings

When I joined Scoro, one of my first tasks was to create a content marketing strategy and start publishing articles that would translate into sales.

In the past 20 months, we’ve grown our blog’s organic traffic from 1.6k monthly visitors to 32k visitors/month.

That’s a 1,843% growth.

However, the fastest growth has happened in the past 11 months while we grew our traffic from 6k/month to 31k/month.

In fact, I wrote an in-depth article on the SEO hacks and content marketing tips we used, you can read it here: From 1.6k to 31k Monthly Blog Visitors in 20 Months – How We Did It

So how did we achieve the nearly 2,000% growth?

And how can you replicate the success in your SaaS startup’s blog?

SaaS Marketing Lesson #17:
Give instead of taking

As a general rule, SaaS companies aren’t non-profits.

This means that every presentation, gift or blog article ever made should translate into sales.

That’s true, but don’t take it literally.

Before you can take, you should learn to give.

So instead of contemplating your masterplan on how to get everyone buying your product…

Think instead how you could provide value to your target audience.

SaaS Marketing Lesson #18:
Don’t publish content for the sake of publishing

WordPress users produce about 84.3 million new posts and 41.8 million new comments every month.

The top 1% of these posts are read by 99% of the readers.

If your goal is to create content that’s engaging people and will ultimately help to increase your SaaS product sales, you can’t just publish any content.

When I joined Scoro, the company was buying articles from an agency in the US. These articles were a content marketer’s nightmare – 600 words long texts lacking any actionable advice.

As you may have guessed, nobody read nor shared those articles.

Only after we started creating high-quality and SEO-aware content, did the leads start to pour in.

SaaS Marketing Lesson #19:
“Quality vs. Quantity” is a wrong approach

After managing Scoro’s content marketing strategy for two years, I’ve learned that while consistency is the key to success, so is the quality of the articles.

So what are you to do: Choose the quality over quantity or vice versa?

Actually, you should aim for quality and quantity.

When given a choice – take both.

After publishing 2 articles per week for a short period of time, we decided to cut it back to 1 article/week and focus on publishing content with higher value, while maintaining the weekly schedule.

SaaS Marketing Lesson #20:
Awesome content will get the attention it deserves

I’ve heard so many marketers complain “We’re publishing high-value content, but people just won’t find nor read it.”

That’s so untrue!

Take this blog you’re currently reading. It’s only 4-5 months old. However, all the previous three articles have been widely shared and read.

How? – By being packed with value.

Of course, there are the “superstar” blogs that have accumulated large readerships and can now enjoy even their mediocre articles getting thousands of shares.

And of course, it also depends on luck to some extent – will people notice and pick up your articles.

However, if you’re just starting out, you need to work hard on writing content that’s on par with the very best articles on a similar topic.

That’s the only surefire road to building a popular blog.

SaaS Marketing Lesson #21:
Publish original content & research

While high-quality content can help build an engaged audience and expand your marketing funnel, it’s the original research that can bring you near-magical results. ✨

Here’s an example by Ahrefs: an article based on original research and measuring how much time it takes to start ranking well on Google.

High-quality and actionable research articles get picked up by other industry blogs and will become widely shared.

That’s exactly the kind of attention you need on your SaaS product.

Now that you’re all excited about conducting original research and publishing an epic blog article, I’d also like you to consider the next rule…

SaaS Marketing Lesson #21:
Measure your content marketing ROI

The ROI of content marketing is different from say, paid advertising, in that it’s not as clearly measurable.

Content marketing can be perceived as a top-of-the-funnel tactic that’s attracting new audiences without necessarily converting them into leads.

And that’s just fine.

If you can prove that content marketing is supporting your marketing funnel and eventually, sales, it’s definitely worth pursuing.

However, I’m a lot more sceptical about eBooks, webinars, Twitter chats, and other similar large-large content formats.

I’m not saying they’re not working, especially if you’re an established company with a large marketing team, like Marketo.

However, when we calculated the benefits we got from publishing and promoting eBooks and thought what else all those resources could have brought us in terms of leads and sales, it was a lousy deal.

As eBooks didn’t have a positive ROI in the case of our SaaS marketing strategy, we focused our time and effort on other activities with a higher ROI.

SaaS Marketing Lesson #22:
Do guest blogging only if you have a clear goal

You’ve probably heard all the marketing influencers tell that you should be guest blogging to acquire high-quality backlinks and get more website traffic.

Well, that’s only halfway true.

While guest blogging can certainly help you get quality backlinks, it isn’t necessarily worth your time.

For 10 hours of your marketing team’s time, what has more value:

1. Writing a top-notch guest blog post for a popular blog and giving away all your rights to the content.
2. Writing a 10x SEO-optimized article for your own blog, getting all the branding benefits, and later thousands of organic visitors.

Tim Soulo has written guest posts for tens of marketing blogs.

In his experience, writing a guest post in a top blog brings you about 100 website clicks.

The key takeaway here is that you shouldn’t be writing guest posts for the sake of driving traffic to your website.

Rather, write guest articles to establish your brand as an industry expert and build relationships.

SaaS Marketing Lesson #23:
Build relationships with other blogs

There’s another awesome benefit to guest posting that you could aim for: the relationships you build.

When we got started with Facebook advertising, I wrote a guest post on AdEspresso’s blog titled 6 Facebook Advertising Hacks I Wish We Had Known Before Launching Our First Campaign

The collaboration didn’t end there.

They asked me to become a regular contributor, which in turn led to new guest contributions in the top marketing blogs such as:

• Content Marketing Institute
• Social Media Examiner
• Copy Hackers
• AdEspresso
• Kissmetrics

Later, I was able to include Scoro’s marketing tactics as examples in my articles, getting us lots of quality backlinks.

SaaS Marketing Lesson #24:
Build relationships with other SaaS brands

If you take a good look at brands and people featured in blog articles, they’re often the same across the web.

That’s because those people and brands have built relationships with each other.

For example, my latest article in this blog featured SaaS marketing hacks. When compiling the article, I also interviewed some successful SaaS marketers.

After I’d published the article, those marketers also helped to promote it and shared the article with their audience.

Here’s another example of collaboration of Venngage, Aggregate blog, and Copy Hackers – we partnered on an infographic and blog article.

If you’d like to read more about how we grew Scoro blog’s organic traffic and which SEO tactics we applied, read this article: From 1.6k to 32k Monthly Blog Visitors in 20 Months – How We Did It

Paid advertising – key learnings

Paid advertising is an integral part of most SaaS marketing strategies.

Even if you’re lucky to be driving sales with “free” marketing activities such as content marketing and social media marketing, you can use the paid ads to accelerate your SaaS startup’s growth.

At Scoro, we focused mainly on two PPC channels – Facebook and Google AdWords – and combined them with some smaller paid lead sources (review sites, display ads, LinkedIn ads, etc.)

Paving our way to a solid PPC strategy wasn’t always the easiest challenge.

Luckily, we also had many small victories on our journey that made us want to test even more new ideas.

However, it wasn’t always as sunny in the PPC land.

When we got started with Facebook advertising, we failed to attract any new leads.

Why?

Because we were targeting a cold audience and trying them to sign up for a free product trial right off the bat.

SaaS Marketing Lesson #25:
Most people don’t care about your salesy ads

The cold hard truth about your SaaS product is that most people just don’t care enough to buy it.

If you set up a Facebook ads campaign targeting a Saved Facebook audience (based on people’s location interests), and show them an ad like this…

Most people will be like…

They’ll never click on your ad nor sign up for the free trial you’re offering.

That’s because you’re serving your sales pitch too early in the sales funnel, asking for too big a commitment.

In the Awareness stage of your marketing funnel, focus on educating and helping your target audience instead of jumping right on the sales pitch.

Read more tips and hacks in this guide on SaaS Facebook advertising.

SaaS Marketing Lesson #26:
Target sales messages on remarketing audiences

One of the a-ha moments we had regarding our SaaS startup’s paid advertising happened when I set up our first segmented retargeting campaigns on Facebook.

To the people who had previously visited our landing pages about Project Management Software, this Facebook ad made a lot more sense:

When delivering sales messages to Facebook Custom Audiences of past website visitors, we finally started to see some positive results.

Key takeaway: Start by attracting cold audiences with soft-sell ads and organic reach. Then, create paid remarketing campaigns targeting people that already know about your SaaS product.

SaaS Marketing Lesson #27:
Segment your remarketing audiences

Once we had set up our Facebook remarketing campaigns, we started looking for ways to optimize them.

One of the best ideas we had was to segment our website visitors into several groups.

This way, we were able to create more personalized marketing messages, depending on which exact landing page our audience members had visited.

Instead of delivering the same offer to everyone who had visited our website in the past 30 days, we only targeted our ads on the visitors of specific landing pages and blog articles – the people who were most likely to start a free trial.

As a result, our average Facebook marketing CPA decreased by 80% while the number of total conversions grew.

SaaS Marketing Lesson #28:
Good design is paramount

In the past 12 months, I’ve spent a lot of time on creating, managing, and optimizing both Facebook ad and AdWords campaigns.

One key thing I’ve learned is that design matters. Big time.

We’ve tested tens of different Facebook ad designs as that’s one of the key elements that makes the biggest difference in Facebook campaigns’ performance.

Learning to design basic visualizations isn’t as difficult as you might think. Start with a tutorial of Illustrator or Sketch and soon, you’ll be able to create all your SaaS company’s ad designs.

If you’d like to learn more about A/B testing your ads, see this guide on Facebook ad testing.

SaaS Marketing Lesson #29:
Don’t leave the PPC strategy (entirely) up to your marketing agency

Having worked with several PPC agencies, here’s what I think:

No PPC agency is as invested in your SaaS company’s growth as you are. That’s simply not possible.

Yet even though the agencies aren’t always perfect and answering your emails as often as you’d like, you still need them.

It’s a tough relationship.

95% of the time, hiring a PPC agency won’t immediately bring the results you’re hoping for.

Now, the way I imagine the perfect SaaS-agency relationship goes like this:

• Your in-house team sets the long-term and monthly PPC strategy
• Your PPC agency sets up the ad campaigns (writes the ad copy, designs ads, sets up the campaign structure)
• Your in-house team regularly reviews the paid ad campaigns and asks for small changes and optimization

Key takeaway: Even when working with world-class PPC agencies, you should still review your ad campaigns on a regular basis and contribute new ideas for improvement.

SaaS Marketing Lesson #30:
Keep testing new (and old) marketing channels

Even though you’ve found your top-performing marketing channels, there may be even better ones out there.

Moreover, the paid advertising channels that didn’t work in the first place could deliver good results the second time you try.

Set up a dedicated monthly “testing budget” for experimenting with new marketing channels. There’s a chance you’ll uncover a hidden gem.

SaaS marketing– general learnings

SaaS Marketing Lesson #31:
Don’t let your growth slow down

Once you’re in the frenzy of month-over-month growth, do your best not to let it slow down.

Trust me, it will be hard to get back on the train later.

Be constantly on the lookout for small tweaks and improvements that either bring more people to your marketing funnel or help to increase the conversion rate at different stages of the funnel.

However, remember that if you write month-over-month growth into your marketing strategy, you also need to add how you’re going to do it.

SaaS Marketing Lesson #32:
Keep your eyes on the road instead of competition

Scoro is a project management solution and guess what… There are hundreds of different project management tools out there.

However, none of these tools does all the exact same things as Scoro.

While you might feel the urge to copy your top-performing competitors… You should work in proactive mode rather than reactive.

Adjusting your goals and marketing tactics by perceiving your competition will get you derailed quickly.

There’s no single SaaS product in the world that would have 100% matching audience and solution with yours.

Or if there is, maybe you should rethink your UVP (unique value proposition).

SaaS Marketing Lesson #33:
Listen to your customers

When marketing a SaaS product, it’s incredibly easy to get caught up in the industry jargon and emphasize the wrong product benefits.

That’s why you should devote at least 5% of your time on learning what your customers think, how the interact with your product, and what are their core problems.

Yes, you really should reach out to 5-10 customers every three months and conduct survey in the meantime. You could also listen to the sales calls, read customer support emails, and check analytics to see how people use your product.

Listening to your customers helps to:

• Realize you product’s top benefits
• Improve your marketing messages
• Uncover missing / unnecessary features
• Discover how to keep your customers happier
• Improve your product’s UX
• Reduce churn

SaaS Marketing Lesson #34:
Think of your customers as people, not numbers

You sign up for a free SaaS product trial and for the next 12 months, your inbox is going to be flooded with their marketing emails.

Sounds familiar?

More emails and push notifications ≠ more customers

Don’t forget that your leads are real people and respect them by sending them only the marketing messages that are truly relevant to them.

A couple of lead nurturing emails is all good, but if you lock them into your marketing funnel forever, sending them irrelevant content every month, you could damage your brand instead of getting more customers.

Respecting your customers also applies to every other aspect of your SaaS strategy – sales calls, support emails, product developement – don’t forget it’s the customer you’re building the SaaS product for.

SaaS Marketing Lesson #35:
Keep reading and learning

When interviewing new potential marketing team members, I always ask what blogs and magazines they like to read.

That’s one of the key indicators whether a person’s passionate about marketing.

There are so many insightful articles and resources on SaaS marketing. Just to name a few:

Intercom on Starting Up eBook by Intercom
The Beginner’s Guide to SaaS Conversion Optimization by ConversionXL
The entire blog of First Round Review by First Round
The best SaaS newsletter I’ve seen this far by Hiten Shah

If you’re managing a SaaS marketing team, you could schedule the “reading hours” to every second Friday and make it a habit to share new tactics and ideas with the team.

What’s next?

As I said at the beginning of this article, I’ll be leaving Scoro as of June.

It’s both sad and exciting to be leaving.

I’m planning to take a looong vacation, go travelling, and devote even more time to reading and learning. I’ll also be working on some freelance projects.

In the long term… Who knows…

The post 35 SaaS Marketing Lessons I Wish I’d Known 20 Months Sooner appeared first on Marketing Fix blog.

Is Facebook even a good channel for SaaS marketing?

When I started managing Facebook ads for SaaS startup Scoro, I didn’t know the answer to either question.

However, after a few months of A/B testing different ad layouts and audiences, we started seeing a positive ROI from Facebook ads.

It turns out we weren’t the only ones.

Many popular SaaS brands are advertising on Facebook.

When I asked some of the top SaaS marketers to share their Facebook advertising hacks, many had great examples and tips to share.

And that’s exactly what this article’s about: the best practices and examples of SaaS Facebook ads.

We’ll start with a quick overview of three most important SaaS Facebook marketing best practices. Then, we’ll proceed to 29 awesome SaaS Facebook ad examples and hear how the best marketers set up their campaigns.

SaaS Facebook marketing tip #1:
Understand your conversion funnel

When we started testing Facebook ads with our SaaS startup, we focused on targeting a cold audience by using Facebook Saved Audiences.

We targeted people living in the UK who were interested in our competitors’ brands, and matched the demographics of our buyer personas.

The goal of our campaigns was to get people sign up for a free 14-day trial.

We failed quite miserably.

While the ads got quite a few likes and clicks, they failed to convert.

Why?

Because we were blindly targeting people who had never heard of our product, asking them to sign up immediately.

So, we tried a different approach.

Instead of targeting Facebook Saved Audiences, we started to retarget our landing page visitors. These people had already seen our product and were at least slightly interested in it.

The result? – We started getting leads from Facebook advertising.

Understanding our conversion funnel and different Facebook ads’ place in it was crucial to the success of our campaigns.

As an article on KlientBoost’s blog explains, different audience temperatures call for a different messaging and ad strategy.

So my first and foremost advice to any SaaS brand looking to advertise on Facebook is this:

Understand your conversion funnel and craft different ads and messages for every stage of the funnel.

And once you divide your Facebook audiences into multiple groups, everything will change.

Key takeaway: Cold audiences, lukewarm leads and warm prospects all need to be targeted with specific Facebook ads and offers. As a result, you’ll get more results at a lower Facebook ads cost.

SaaS Facebook marketing tip #2:
Create advanced audiences

While creating Facebook Saved Audience is incredibly simple and effortless compared to setting up Custom and Lookalike Audiences, don’t make the mistake of limiting yourself to the former.

There’s research showing that 98% of B2B website visitors don’t convert on their first website visit. Most of SaaS website conversions also happen during the following visits to the site.

The most successful SaaS Facebook campaigns I’ve seen almost always target remarketing audiences.

That’s why you should install the Facebook Pixel on your website and start creating Custom Audiences. You’ll be able to reach people who have either visited your website or are already using your SaaS product.

If you’d like to learn more about Facebook Custom Audiences, you can find an in-depth guide I wrote for KlientBoost’s blog here.

Tip: One thing I’ve noticed about Facebook remarketing campaigns is that the leads keep converting even when the ad frequency’s getting super high.

Even if one of our SaaS remarketing campaigns’ frequency reached 12+ points, the conversions kept coming.

As you look at a campaign’s results, the CTR and CPC only increased at the very end of the campaign, when the ad frequency exceeded 15 points.

Key takeaway: Install the Facebook Pixel on your website and start creating advanced Facebook audiences that have significantly higher conversion rates.

SaaS Facebook marketing tip #3:
Don’t just sell. Create value.

You can’t expect someone to buy your product on their first encounter with your landing page.

SaaS sales can take some time.

To earn your prospects’ attention and trust, you first need to deliver value and prove you’re the industry’s leading expert.

According to Demand Metric’s research, 82% of consumers feel more positive about a company after reading custom content and 90% of consumers find custom content useful.

Many B2B brands are seeing success on Facebook when promoting their blog articles, eBooks, case studies, and other types of original content. (You’re about to see many awesome examples)

In fact, the Content Marketing Institute found that social promotion is B2B marketers’ preferred method of paid content promotion with 84% of B2B marketers using social media to promote branded content.

Once again, think about your conversion funnel and how to turn cold audiences into paying customers.

Try to advertise offers that resonate with each stage of your SaaS product’s marketing funnel.

Key takeaway: Don’t just advertise bottom-of-the funnel sales offers. Combine the BoFu offers with soft sells and top-of-the-funnel content such as free eBook downloads and promoted blog posts.

Alright…

These were the most important things every SaaS marketer should know about Facebook marketing.

But that’s not all…

Because now, we’re going to share the very best Facebook ad examples and best practices from some of the top SaaS marketers.

29 inspiring SaaS Facebook ad examples

As there’s no better way to reveal all the SaaS Facebook marketing best practices than exploring the examples from successful brands, let’s jump right into the next section: 29 SaaS Facebook marketing examples.

When compiling this article, we talked with some of the world’s top SaaS marketers to reveal what are their most successful Facebook ads and target audiences.

We’ll start with their answers.

Example #1: Ahrefs
It’s all about quality content

When we asked Tim Soulo, Head of Marketing at Ahrefs to share their best’performing Facebook ads, he sent us two ad examples.

Both Facebook ads feature high-quality content, one containing original research and the other sharing a thought leadership article.

What strikes me about these ads is the number of likes the ads accumulated over time. Which is a perfect proof that SaaS Facebook ads and content marketing can work really well together.

In fact, Ahrefs isn’t using any other type of Facebook ads.

According to Tim:

“We don’t do FB ads that lead people directly to our product. We only promote our content on Facebook, because we want to give value first and people are then much more likely to sign up.”

Moreover, the team over at Ahrefs are sure that there are a ton of ways to measure “success” of FB ads, but they believe the most important metric to be cost-per-lead.

Key takeaways:

• Provide value to your audience – Instead of advertising sales messages, offer value and the leads (and sales) will follow.
• Share high-quality content – Make sure all the blog articles, eBooks, and other types of content you share are highly relevant and worth your audience’s time.
• Measure the right metrics – Keep in mind that link clicks won’t bring any revenue. It’s the final purchase you should be after.

Example #2: Autopilot
Show your Saas product with GIFs

Facebook recently added the support for ads in GIF format. And Autopilot was fast enough to keep up with the trend.

Autopilot’s Facebook ad features a visual overview of their product in 15 short seconds. Anne Fleshman, Director of Marketing – Demand Generation at Autopilot, explains:

“In our initial tests, using auto-play animation commands more attention while scrolling in the News feed compared to static images.”

Consumer Acquisition found that images are arguably the most important part of your ads — they’re responsible for 75%-90% of ad performance.

Key takeaways:

• Test GIF-format ad images – Using moving images helps to draw the news feed visitors’ eyes on your ad.
• Use strong words that capture attention – Autopilot’s Facebook ad text starts with the word “WARNING” that immediately catches attention.
• Use a clear call-to-action – The headline “Start Your Free Trial Now” lets the reader know they’ll be led to a landing page with a free trial offer. When running a Facebook App Installs campaign, use a CTA that’s relevant to that particular audience: Install Now, etc.
• Be trustworthy – Autopilot’s ad mentions that over 40,000 marketers are using their product.

Example #3: Clanbeat
Create noteworthy ads

If you want to learn how to advertise your SaaS company’s content on Facebook, you should learn from Clanbeat.

Their Facebook ad had the CTR of 3.81% and the CPC of $0.07, helping to drive traffic to their website and increase brand awareness.

So what makes this SaaS Facebook ad so successful?

We asked Clanbeat’s storyteller Kadri Märtin and here’s what she said:

“We used an intriguing headline and the timing was right as well (end of the year performance reviews get many people down – managers and employees alike).”

Clanbeat’s ad follows a set of additional best practices that you can apply to your Facebook ads as well.

Key takeaways:

• Use custom creatives – Branded ad designs get noticed more often compared to stock images.
• Place a CTA in the ad image – Placing a call-to-action button right in your ad image hints that the ad’s clickable.
• Write provocative headlines – Fascinating headlines help to create a curiosity cap and make people click on your ads to find out more.

As Kadri said:

“Normal is boring, and boring will be the death of you in social media.”

Word.

Example #4: AdEspresso
Increase the click-through rate with video ads

According to Adobe, shoppers that watch videos are 1.81 times more likely to make a purchase than non-video viewers.

If you’ve got a cool SaaS product with great UX that you’d like to show in action, video ads are one of the best to do it.

For example, AdEspresso’s Facebook ad is using video to show how their product works, step by step.

Tim Chard, Marketing Director at AdEspresso told us that:

“We use this video ad to retarget the people who have visited our Pricing, Tour, or Join pages but didn’t sign up for a free trial.”

The remarketing video also acts as a “qualifier” based on how long someone has watched it. People who view a large part of the video could be moved to the next remarketing funnel stage.

Key takeaways:

• Test video ads – Facebook video ads are a good way to show your SaaS product in action (and these ads also tend to have a higher CTR compared to static ads). P.S. video ads also work great in Facebook App Install ads – test videos when you need to promote a mobile app for your SaaS product.
• Caption your Facebook video ads – According to Facebook, captioned video ads increase video view time by an average of 12%.
• Create a multi-step remarketing funnel – Set up a remarketing campaign flow, so that more qualified leads keep moving towards the sales phase through multiple remarketing offers.

Example #5: Pipedrive
Display your SaaS product in ad images

People hate to buy a pig in a poke, especially if they’ll have to work with the product for months to come.

That’s why you probably have a screenshot of your SaaS product on the landing pages.

Pipedrive‘s brought the first encounter between a prospect and the product one step earlier by showcasing their product in the Facebook ad image.

According to Ott Ilves, Digital Marketing Manager at Pipedrive, continuous A/B testing has shown  that for direct response ads, displaying the product on the ad image works best.

A close second is using real testimonials on ads.

Ott also shared a Facebook audience targeting tip:

“The best performing audiences are layered audiences where we combine a lookalike, based on our customer base, with interest-based targeting.”

Key takeaways:

• Display your product in ad image – It’s a good way to immediately show what your ad is about and get people interested in your offer.
• Use layered targeting – Combine Facebook Saved Audiences or Lookalike Audiences with interest-based targeting to reach high-potential prospects.
• Choose the right ad placement – Analyze your Facebook ad results by breaking them down by ad placement to see what works best. If your SaaS product has a complex sign-up process, you might get more conversions on Desktop.

Example #6: Leadpages
Develop a clear value offer

Leadpages’ Facebook ad gets many things right.

The ad’s headline features a strong value proposition: “Increase Conversions.”

That’s both relevant and helpful to their Facebook target audiences as it says clearly what’s the tool’s main benefit.

According to Zach Grove from Leadpages, this ad is shown specifically to folks who have visited the Order page but not converted.

“These people are at the very bottom of our funnel — they’re closer to buying than any other audience we have.”

While straightforward sales pitches do not usually work on cold audiences, these offers can excel when targeting hot leads.

Key takeaways:

• Include a clear value proposition – Let people know how your product will improve their life or work. Place your UVP in the ad’s headline or in the image.
• Align your Facebook ads and website design – Leadpages’ Facebook ad uses the exact same header image as their homepage, being easily recognizable to all past website visitors.
• Create remarketing audiences – Use Facebook Custom Audiences to specifically target people who have taken action on your website.

If you’re also interested in Instagram advertising, here’s a guide you should read: Instagram Ad Design and Copy – The Beginner’s Guide (2017 Update)

Example #7: Scoro
Create highly specific remarketing campaigns

When working on Scoro’s Facebook ads, one of our most successful campaigns was a remarketing campaign targeting specific landing page visitors.

We created several different ad messages and ad sets to retarget people who had visited our landing pages related to:

• Project management
• Budgeting
• Productivity

The reason these ads worked so well is that people were already familiar with Scoro and interested in project management software.

That’s why we also used a straightforward headline: “Project Management Software”

Notice that the CTA button says “Sign Up.” We also tested the “Learn More” CTA but while it resulted in higher CTRs, it resulted in higher cost-per-lead.

As you can see, we also ran a Facebook ad A/B test to see which ad designs work best.

Key takeaways:

• Create specific remarketing campaigns – Don’t put all your high-value remarketing audiences into one bucket. Set up campaigns with super targeted offers.
• Test using your product description in the headline – Stating clearly what your product is about will catch the attention of people truly interested in your offer.
• Always be A/B testing – Every time you create a new ad campaign, experiment with one ad element, audience, or optimization method.

Example #8: Venngage
Follow design best practices

Your ad design can make or break the Facebook campaign.

That’s why Venngage tested over 25 Facebook ad designs to learn what works.

According to Nadya Khoja, Director of Marketing at Venngage, here’s their best-performing ad Facebook ad:

Nadya explained that:

“The darker colors stand out well against Facebook’s light grey and white background. The white text is also very easy to read against the black background.”

Moreover, the Facebook ad’s image includes a few extra design elements such as a custom red call-to-action button that pushed the audience to click.

Key takeaways:

• Test using dark-coloured ad creatives – Venngage’s experiment showed that dark images outperform all others.
• Mention the FREE part – Make sure to mention your downloadable content’s free to increase the click rates.
• Include text in the ad image – Your ad creative is the first thing people look at. Place your most important offer where it’s most visible.

Read more: 25 Facebook Ad Design Hacks to Create Perfect Ad Creatives

Example #9: Sleeknote
Market your SaaS product with case studies

In a survey conducted by Dimensional Research, as many as 90% of respondents said that positive online reviews influence their buying decisions.

Case studies also serve the goal of educating your target audience about your product.

So why not include these in your Facebook ads.

Sleeknote’s Facebook ad does just that, emphasizing the results a customer has received by using their product.

Isabella S. Rasmussen, Online Marketing Specialist at Sleeknote told that this Facebook ad is the first one in their remarketing flow. (Notice that Sleeknote has set up a Facebook ads remarketing flow, which is super smart)

“As a SaaS company with a product a little more complicated than others, we find it important to market our product using case studies.”

Moreover, Sleeknote’s Facebook ad copy’s easy to read as the text has been organized into bullet points with the “?” emoji.

Key takeaways:

• Create and advertise case studies – It’s the perfect way to increase trust and show your product’s benefits.
• Include images of people – According to research by Psychological Science, seeing a smiling person makes others feel happy, comfortable and safe.
• Use emojis in your ad copy – Emojis catch attention and help to increase your ad’s CTR. Learn how to use emojis in Facebook ads.

Example #10: Buffer
Build an online community

Buffer’s Facebook page’s feed is full on fun images and helpful content.

Mostly, they’re sharing blog articles and other quality content offers with the Facebook audience. Sometimes, Buffer’s social media team also shares the fun findings from the web. For example, the image below.

This Facebook post received almost 7k likes, 2,5k shares, and 279 comments.

Brian Peters, Marketing & Social Media Manager at Buffer shared with us some secrets behind Buffer’s success on Facebook.

Buffer does not use the “real” Facebook ads (words used by Brian). They only share articles and images and frequently boost their reach with Facebook’s paid promotion.
Here’s Brian:

“In terms of audience, we usually boost our posts to audiences in two different buckets:
1) Traffic to our website and our blog based on the Facebook Pixel traffic.
2) Interests such as “Social Media Marketing” , “Social Media Examiner” , “Social Media Today” , “Online Marketing” , etc.

Key takeaways:

• Put your audience first – Think how you can provide value to your audience and only share content they’re interested in.
• Build a community around your SaaS product – Buffer’s put a lot of effort into building strong community of fans and customers. Many of them have also become brand advocates.
• Show your personality – To build meaningful relationships with your social media audiences, your SaaS brands needs a strong voice.

Example #11: Asana
Don’t be afraid of bold colours

Asana’s branding is full of playful colours. So are their Facebook ads.

Research has discovered that people make up their mind within 90 seconds of the initial interaction with either people or products. About 62‐90% of their assessment is based on colors alone.

Key takeaways:

• Create brightly coloured Facebook ad images – Strong colours can be easily noticed in crowded news feeds.
• Keep your ad copy short – Asana’s ad headline “Free for teams of 15” is short but sweet. Moreover, their 3-word link description won’t steal the attention away from the rest of ad copy.

For additional inspiration, check out these Facebook ad examples from the world’s leading brands.

Example #12: Segment
Ask a question

Segment’s Facebook ad headline asks: “Tired of building third-party integrations?”

That’s smart for several reasons:

• It speaks to their target audience by mentioning a common pain point.
• Our brains are hardwired to look for answers to any questions around us.

Moreover, Segment’s Facebook ad looks more like a promoted blog article than a sales offer. This might help them to earn the ad viewers’ attention and get people to read about the offer.

Key takeaway:

• Ask questions that resonate with your target audience – Research by Outbrain has shown that article titles ending with a question mark have higher avg. click-through rates than those ending with an exclamation mark or full stop.

Example #13: Zendesk
Offer a free demo

Instead of jumping right to the sales pitch, Zendesk’s Facebook ad offers a free product demo.

The ad copy also explains the core benefits of booking the demo: “See how you can empower and engage your customers”.

Key takeaways:

• Offer a free demo – Demos are a great way to introduce more complex SaaS products to potential buyers.
• Use the “Book Now” CTA – The “Book Now” call-to-action allows you to get the lead’s email address without them leaving Facebook’s platform. It’s easier for both parties.

Example #14: FreshBooks
Know your buyer personas

FreshBooks’ Facebook ad is a perfect example of how a well-defined target audience can contribute to ad copywriting.

The SaaS brand’s targeting specifically small business owners and so is their Facebook ad copy emphasizing the solutions to the accounting problems an SMB owner might have.

Moreover, the Facebook ad’s colourful image is sure to catch many prospects’ attention.

Key takeaway:

• Know your customers – Before you set up any Facebook ad campaigns, make sure you know your buyer personas. This way, you’ll be able to write the ad copy that speaks directly to the potential customers.

Example #15: Slack
Tell stories with carousel ads

Slack’s Facebook ad uses a specific ad type – Carousel ads – that let you add up to 10 consecutive slides in a single ad.

A report by Kinetic Social revealed that carousel ads have up to 10 times higher click-through rates compared to static sponsored posts on Facebook.

However, take this with a grain of salt. As we recently tested the carousel ads with one of my SaaS clients, these ads resulted in 3x higher cost-per-clicks compared to regular Facebook ads.

Notice that there’s no ad copy under the carousel’s images. Facebook actually allows advertisers to include ad copy under each slide. However, Slack’s decided to pass on the offer for increased clarity.

Key takeaways:

• Experiment with new Facebook ad types – Test new ad formats such as carousel ads to find new methods to reach new audiences and lower your cost-per-acquisition.
• You don’t need to use all Facebook ad copy placements – While Facebook offers plenty of options for adding more copy to your ad, you can test whether simplistic ads work even better.

Example #16: Shopify
Introduce new features and products

From time to time, your SaaS product gets new add-ons in the form of updated features. Maybe you’ll even launch a new product.

Naturally, you should share the good news with both the existing customer base and prospects.

For instance, Shopify’s Facebook ad announces a new product Shopify Pay.

The ad’s headline includes the new product’s main benefit (Accelerate Checkout) and the ad image showcases the new product in action.

Key takeaways:

• Promote your product announcements – Use paid advertising to ensure your latest product news reach your existing customers and people considering the purchase of your product.
• Showcase your product in the ad image – Use a screenshot of your SaaS product in the ad image, so that people can immediately see it.

Example #17: Salesforce
Increase sales with limited-time offers

An article in the Wall Street Journal suggests that it takes 20 minutes for the feeling of excitement to pass.

If you give people too much time to consider your offer, their initial curiosity might pass and they’ll never sign up for your SaaS product’s free trial or other offers.

That’s why Salesforce created a Facebook ad with an additional incentive to try their product Quip – a limited-time -50% discount.

Also, pay attention to the “Contact Us” call-to-action button. Once a Facebook user clicks on the CTA, they can leave their contact details so that Salesforce’s sales team can contact them.

Key takeaways:

• Promote limited-time offers – Make your Facebook ad offer limited by time to nudge people to sign up faster.
• Offer discounts – Provide small discounts to first-time users, so that they’ll have to risk with smaller budgets to test your product.

Example #18: SaneBox
Include well-known logos

Studies show that our brains prefer recognizable brands. If your product has integrations with other popular tools or you collaborate with a well-known brand, show it in your Facebook ads.

For example, SaneBox’s Facebook ad image features Apple’s iMail icons that are easily recognizable to most people.

Key takeaway:

• Include well-known logos in your ad image – If your SaaS product’s fairly unknown, you can take advantage of the halo effect of popular brands by including their logos in your ad image. However, be careful not to infringe any copyright laws.

Example #19: Infusionsoft
Collect leads with Facebook Lead Ads

Facebook Lead Ads permit advertisers to collect the prospect’s email addresses.

Mostly, they offer some kind of downloadable content in exchange.

For instance, Infusionsoft’s Facebook ad offers 27 downloadable email templates.

Moreover, the Facebook ad keeps repeating the “Download” call-to-action across the an copy, making it more loud and clear what’s the next step.

Key takeaways:

• Collect new leads with Facebook Lead Ads – Set up Facebook Lead Ad campaigns to turn cold audiences into warm leads and enter them into your marketing funnel
• Make your content worthy of a download – If you offer low-value content, people won’t be willing to share their emails with you.
• Be repetitive – If your want a specific message to reach your target audience, insert it in multiple text parts of your Facebook ad.

Example #20: Heap
Create trust by mentioning your customers

If your SaaS product’s used by several well-known customers, you might want to share this information with a larger audience.

Heap’s Facebook ad does just that, mentioning their top customers right in the headline.

Seeing the names of some well-known brands creates a feeling of recognition, making people associate your brand with a positive emotion.

Another nice thing about Heap’s Facebook ad is the main text – it tells exactly what the product’s about while using emotionally loaded words such as “painless.”

Key takeaways:

• Mention your customers – If you have some well-known companies using your product, you could mention it in your Facebook ads.
• Use emotionally loaded words – When writing your ad copy, use powerful words to make people more interested in your offer.

Buffer’s put together the ultimate list of 189 magnetic words that make your copywriting almost irresistible.

Example #21: Xero
Place the free trial offer where it’s most visible

Free trials are highly popular in the SaaS industry.

After all, it makes sense that people want to test your product before they make a large monetary commitment.

The free trail offers are also widely used in SaaS Facebook ads. For instance, Xero has placed the offer of the 30-day trial period in the ad’s headline, making it easy to notice.

Another nice hack in Xero’s Facebook ad is including the logo in the ad image, making it memorable and increasing brand awareness.

Key takeaways:

• Place the free trial offer in a visible place – Test offering the free trial in your Facebook ad’s headline or in the ad image.
• Showcase your logo – If you have some extra room in your ad creative, include your logo, so that your Facebook ad not only brings new leads but also increases the brand awareness.
• Create interesting ad designs – Xero’s Facebook ad image immediately catches the eye as it’s colourful and features a fascinating message.

Example #22: CoSchedule
Experiment with side-project marketing

Side project marketing is a tactic where you create a free side product that’s relevant and helpful to your target audience.

For example, CoSchedule’s main product is a content marketing calendar. However, they’ve also created a free headline analyzer tool that’s helping thousands of marketers daily.

And they’re also sharing the free headline analyzer with their Facebook audience.

Launching a side project could take less time and effort than writing a blog post or guest blogging for top blogs, while returning a 10x more efficient outcome.

Side project marketing can be especially beneficial to SaaS brands as you can even take an existing product feature and build it into a free side project.

Key takeaways:

• Try side project marketing – The free stock image site Unsplash started as a side project by SaaS startup Crew. It saved their startup from failing.
• Promote and share your side projects – If you’ve already spent a significant amount of time creating the side product, you should also give it the attention it deserves, ensuring it’s discovered by your target audience.

Example #23: Wrike
Bring your customer testimonials to Facebook

If you’re able show that regular customers are happy with your SaaS product and enjoying its benefits, it sends a clear positive signal.

Wrike uses a testimonial from a well-known customer in their Facebook ad copy to prove their product’s trustworthy.

Wrike’s also applying the copywriting hacks of posing a question to catch people’s attention.

Key takeaway:

• Include client testimonials in your Facebook ads – If you want to appear more trustworthy (especially when selling to enterprise-level companies), make your Facebook ads more trustworthy by incorporating a testimonial.

Example #24: Canva
Show what your SaaS product can do

There’s a saying that an image speaks a thousand words.

As there’s no way to write a 1000-word Facebook ad copy, you should make sure your ad images aren’t just placeholders but contribute to your campaign’s overall success.

Canva’s Facebook ad image showcases an illustration created with their SaaS product – the Free Mind Map Maker.

You can also take screenshots of your product and use these as Facebook ad creatives – it will save you some time and gives your audience a sneak peek at your product.

Key takeaway:

• Show what your SaaS product can do – Take a screenshot of something created with your software and use it as your Facebook ad image.

Example #25: Shopify
Use high-quality stock images

The good thing about stock images is that they take almost no time to find and use.

However, should you decide to use any stock images in your Facebook ads, make sure they’re not the free ones.

People are tired of seeing the same images in their newsfeed over and over again. And they’ve surely seen the popular free images before.

Shopify’s Facebook ad features a high-quality stock image that’s not as widely used as its free alternatives.

The ad image also matches with the ad copy and the promoted guide.

Key takeaways:

• A/B test custom images vs. stock images – If you’re unsure which ad images work best, include a stock photo in your A/B tests.
• Avoid using free stock photos – If you’re short in time or don’t know a designer to create your ad creatives, make sure to buy stock images that haven’t been used many times before.

Example #26: Contently
Use color overlay to brand your ad images

Another quick hack to turn stock images into branded ad creatives is to apply a color overlay to every image.

For example, Contently’s Facebook ad creative features a regular stock image that’s been coloured with a branded blue tone.

Moreover, the blue background and white fonts create a contrast that makes in-image text highly readable.

A study by UsabilityTools showed that using highly contrasting landing page call-to-actions resulted in 75% higher click-through rate, compared to a low-contrast CTA.

Key takeaways:

• Align your Facebook ad images with your branding – Look for quick ways to give your Facebook ads a branded look, e.g. by using colour overlay.
• Use high colour contrasts – Whenever you add text in your ad images, make sure it’s easy to read and doesn’t blend into the background.

Example #27: Squarespace
Offer additional perks

If you’ve been marketing your SaaS product for a while, some features might start to seem like nice-to-haves. However, they may be critically important to some target audience members.

The same rule applies to small add-ons.

Squarespace’s Facebook ad offers a free year of Google Business account to all new customers.

Adding small perks to your SaaS product offer can help to nudge people sign up on your offer.

Key takeaways:

• Offer extras to convert more people – Make your SaaS product’s Facebook ads even more compelling by adding extras that your target audience may be interested in.
• Match the extras with your product – When offering extra perks for first-time users, make sure these also help to improve their product experience.

Example #28: ConvertKit
Introduce your SaaS product on webinars

Webinars aren’t usually the SaaS marketers’ first choice when it comes to increasing brand awareness and collecting new leads.

However, this content format allows you to show your product in action while also sharing lots of helpful tips with your audience.

ConvertKit’s Facebook post promotes a free webinar that teaches marketers to get 1,000 email subscribers in 30 days or less.. Sounds like a good (almost too good) deal to me…

Notice how ConvertKit’s using the power of numbers to get people’s attention. That’s a smart move as people are wired to like even numbers.

Key takeaways:

• Explore new content formats – Test promoting your webinars, case studies, eBooks, etc. to see what your audience likes most.
• Use numbers in your Facebook ad copy – A blogger studied his articles’ engagement and discovered that posts that had a number in the headline received 2.5-8 times more traffic.

Example #29: Yahoo Mail
The weirdest software ad

I just had to share with you this ad by Yahoo Mail that surfaced when researching examples for this article.

Hi Mom. Send emails that bloom…

That’s just a weird way to advertise a product.

Conclusion

So, should you spend more time on marketing your SaaS product on Facebook.

Quite possibly so.

Start by providing valuable content and running some remarketing campaigns to bring warm audiences back to your marketing funnel. Then, proceed to building a strong online community around your brand.

If you’d like to share your experience with SaaS marketing and Facebook, we’d love to hear about it in the comments.

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The post 60 SaaS Facebook Ad Hacks From 29 Successful Brands appeared first on Marketing Fix blog.