Cool. I’ve been doing that a lot recently, too.

That’s because video ads have become an indisputable requirement for any Facebook advertising campaign.

When researching Facebook Ad Library for good examples, I noticed that 80% of the TOP brands’  Facebook ad creatives were videos.

Facebook video ads have become a necessity in 2025. You can’t go on running static ads only.

For more ideas, browse my Meta ad examples gallery with 230+ static and video ads, or, for B2B campaigns, these 105+ LinkedIn ad examples.

Read more about social media advertising trends in 2025.

Fun fact: Facebook algorithms deliver static and video ads to different audiences, depending on what a user is more likely to react to. So if you want to reach the people more susceptible to video content, you’ll need attractive video creatives.👀

The #1 obstacle that marketers come across when creating video ads for their Facebook or Instagram campaigns is the lack of skill and know-how.

For additional inspiration, you or check out what we’ve published on this blog – including 180 Best Facebook ad examples and 84 Best Instagram ad examples.

Meta video ad best practices

Before I created my first video ads, I had a number of questions:

• What are Facebook video ads’ best practices?
• How long should the ad videos be and what’s the correct size of Facebook video ads?
• What should the Facebook video ads feature?
• What tools are used to create video ads?
• Do we need an agency to create the ad videos for us?

I’ll do my best to answer all of these questions for you in this article.

Let’s not drag this intro too long and get to the Facebook video ad examples!

Best Facebook video ad examples,  2025 update

I found the following video ads while browsing the Facebook Ad Library – I like to regularly check my selected 100 brands’ ad creatives to keep my creative know-how up to date.

#1: Oreo

I envy whoever produced this video ad for Oreo as it’s perfectly executed, having a high-quality sleek look, fast-paced movement, and eye-capturing shifting patterns.

#2: Deliveroo

Deliveroo is running tens of similar Facebook ads, each featuring various city districts and relevant restaurants. Such automatically customized ads are usually created with a creative automation tool, e.g. Smartly. 

​#3: Spotify

Similarly to the previous ad, this Spotify looks a lot like it’s created using an automated Facebook video duplication tool.

Be it as it may, they have managed to create an engaging Facebook video ad with very few resources: An album cover, mixed colorful elements, and on-point typography.

#4: Restream

Working with Restream, we created a set of Facebook video ads that are essentially an animated version of their static ads. 

Bringing your static ads to life is a good way to get started with video advertising on Facebook. You just need a motion designer who can help to make your existing design assets move.

#5: Airbnb

The first four ads that you saw were all around 15 seconds long or even shorter. In contrast, this one by Airbnb is a brand awareness ad: it runs for 40 seconds and tells an inspiring story.

It is a best practice to use a mix of performance-oriented and brand awareness ads. Both need a slightly different approach:

• Performance ads should direct the viewer to make a purchase or take some other action. These ads usually end with a clear call-to-action.
• Brand awareness ads’ goal is to create… well… awareness about a brand and drive positive brand perception. These ads do not usually ask people to take an action immediately.

#6: Milka

Pardon my French. This ad by Milka is essentially reminding people to be nicer to each other. A simple and on-brand Facebook video ad.

#7: Sephora

This ad looks like it took a lot of work, so it is likely to be part of a big global Facebook campaign. 

You can create a mix of Facebook ads – some that take less time to create and that you run in the short-term + the branding ads that you invest more time and money into and will run for a longer period, e.g. for 3 months. 

#8: Klarna

I am a big fan of Facebook ad creatives that follow closely the brand’s CVI. That’s why I’ve always liked Klarna’s ads – they stay true to their pink color palette and as a result, their ads are easily recognizable in the news feed.

# 9: Snickers

Take notice of how this Facebook ad is pairing filmed video content with colorful background and typography.

By using highly contrasting sections throughout your Facebook video ad, you can assure that it will capture your audience’s attention while they scroll through their Instagram or Facebook feeds.  

#10 Moo

One more Facebook video ad effect to test out is the “endless loop” technique.

Repeating motion effects are especially helpful if you have interesting video content that lasts only a few seconds. To make sure your ad gets shows for the full 15-second story ad length, make it repeat on a loop for 15 sec.

#11: Nars

#12: Mailchimp

#13: Dior

#14: Grammarly

#15:Wrike

Facebook video ad examples, 2020 edition

Below, you will find the Meta ad examples that I collected for the previous release of this article. 

Looking at some of them made me think that we’ve come a long way from the time when only a few brands were able to produce high-quality video content.

I should probably start to learn video editing…

#16: VSCO

The Instagram video ad by VSCO showcases their product features in a simplified 15-second video. Here are some key takeaways for you to consider:

• The first 3 seconds matter most – Notice how the first few frames are using a bright color to lead people’s attention to the the ad copy “transformative tools” and get them hooked to watch the rest of the video.
• Video ads ≠ no copy – In fact, it’s a good idea to keep copy in your ad video to better explain what’s going on.

#17: Facebook

Yeah, Facebook is advertising on their own platform and they’re pretty good at it. Here’s what they’re doing well:

• The ad asks a question – there’s a highly visible question always visible in the ad video that catches the viewers’ attention.
• Video & message match – Notice how the message “Need a push?” matches with the moving car’s message.
• Simplicity – a video ad does not have to be 30-seconds long and take days to create. You can start testing with simple animations that are simple yet catch people’s attention.

#18: Monese

Monese’s video ad explains how their product works and shows their app in action. Here’s what’s noteworthy about this ad:

• Display your product – on the one hand, you won’t need as much new content. On the other hand, people will get familiar with how your product looks and feels. It’s a win-win.
• End with a call-to-action – don’t leave people hanging after watching your video. Tell them what’s the next step to take. In this case, it’s “download the app.”

#19: Squarespace

This Instagram video ad by Squarespace is another nice example of simple video design in action:

• Show small changes – showing small changes such as the growing numbers’ count in this ad is a good trick for catching the viewers’ attention.
• Show you logo – It’s a commonly known best practice to show your logo throughout the video ad (that’s also a suggestion in Youtube’s video ads’ playbook)

#20: Nike

If you’re working with a lifestyle or eCommerce brand, your audience might appreciate more story-focused ads. Nike’s ad would make for a great branding video.

• Make it look high quality – if you plan to film your Facebook video ads, make sure you’re using a high end camera.
• Mix video footage & copy – seriously, having some copy in your video ads makes them a lot more comprehensible and having a powerful impact on the audience.

#21: Web Summit

Here’s another example of a story-specific ad, showing how a conference venue is being set up in the matter of hours (being compressed into a 30-second video).

• Tell a story – our brains are hardwired to look for patterns and follow stories, leading your audience being hooked to your video ad
• You don’t need a fancy agency – Web Summit’s video ad could easily have been recorded by a camera set up by a crew member and edited by another crew member. Easy.

#22: AppSumo

This ad is not really a video ad but a Slideshow consisting of AppSumo’s product reviews. Here’s what I like about it:

• Creating it took 5 minutes max – you can create a similar ad by uploading 3-5 images to Facebook and creating a Slideshow ad.
• Showcase testimonials – third-party testimonials increase trust in your product. This ad could be shown in a Facebook retargeting campaign to nudge people to make a purchase.

#23: Mango

Mango’s Facebook ad is like a tiny movie that combines nice views, a celebrity model and the brand’s products.

• Use video ads for branding – while this ad doesn’t invite you to buy any specific product, it reminds you about the brand.
• Work with influencers – if you’ve got enough cash, having an influencer (that’s loved by your target audience) in your ad videos doesn’t hurt.

#24: Reedeshop

• Animate simple messages – even making a word blink or change color can help increase your ad’s click-through rate.
• Use the right ad formats – when creating video ads for Facebook and Instagram, you can upload ads in multiple sizes. Check out all the current Instagram ad specs here.

#25: The New York Times

This is one of my all-time favourite video ads. Seriously, I think it’s genius.

• Create unique ads – The NYT video ad is unique in that it only uses text to tell a story, But it’s super catchy at that.
• Know your tools – I created a similar video ad for a client by using Photoshop only (creating video ads is easier than you think).

The top 10 Facebook and Instagram video ad examples were my favourites. Up next, you will find more video ads for even more inspiration.

But before you check out the rest, here’s a list of tools that you can use to create video ads:

• Photoshop for GIFs + Illustrator to create icons, etc.
• Sketch + Flinto/Kite
• Adobe After Effects
• Record videos on your own
• Buy video footage on Stocksy or other stock photo sites

#26: BeUnsettled

BeUnsettled’s video ad is quote basic in terms of video content. However, they’ve combined video footage that looks like stock videos with copy, giving it more substance.

The nature-movie-like frames also fit perfectly into anyone’s Instagram feed, which can be a good or bad thing, depending on whether the ad manages to catch the target audience’s attention.

#27: Pelacase

This is another example of a Facebook video ad using average video footage, but using the correct medium to tell the story.

#28: Facebook

Here’s a good Facebook video ad example for marketers with small budgets that want to test our some kind of video animation.

You could basically take a static image and pair it with an animated loading icon – you’re guaranteed to get people look and wait for your ad video to load, without this ever happening. But then again, you’ve already got their attention, so they might as well read the rest of your ad.

#29: Okia

Playing around with text is the easiest way to create video ads. You could do a similar video on Photoshop in around 10 minutes. (+ the hours you’ll spend to come up with a good message and unique value proposition ideas for your ad).

#30: BetterMe

If you saw this ad as a static image v.s. a GIF ad, which one would catch your attention?

Try turning some of your existing static Facebook ad designs into GIFs to find out if it helps to increase the CTR and lower the cost-per-result.

#31: MyTheresa

Here’s an example of an Instagram ad that probably required a high budget to create. This is definitely appealing to a lot of luxury goods buyers.

However, spending tens of thousands of dollars on video creation does not always mean your ad is 10 times more efficient. Make sure to think who your target audience is before buying a video from an agency.

#32: Stuudionahk

For a leather goods brand like this one, creating a video ad to showcase their products makes a lot of sense. However, I would always suggest that you pair your video ads with image ads to see what works best.

#33: DRM Bracelets

This is a completely random campaign by some drop shipping brand. But I have to give it to them – using the country name in the ad is a nice personalised touch.

#34: Trvl

Notice how this Instagram video ad example by Trvl combines images, copy and colorful backgrounds to create a video-like effect. In fact, there’s no video footage in this ad – another proof that you don’t need a large budget to create marketing videos.

#35: Monese

I’ve always been a fan of slightly animated video ads (we also test a lot of them in Taxify). The reason these animations work is that they catch people’s attention but don’t lead the focus away from the ad’s main message.

Alright… We’ve reached the end of our video ad showdown.

Here are some key takeaways to remember:

• You need to test video ads – there are brands whose audiences love video ads. But there are also Facebook and Instagram advertising campaigns where image ads work best.
• Creating video ads doesn’t have to be expensive – many of the examples above could have been made in just a few hours. With help from one of the many great unlimited video editing companies, you can keep production fast and affordable. Expenses do not equal results in the case of Facebook ads.
• There are many video ad hacks – from catching the attention in the first 3 seconds to ending the video with a clear call-to-action, there’s a lot you can do to double or even triple your video ads’ conversion rate.

P.S. if you’ve got some cool Facebook or Instagram video ad examples, send them over and we’re happy to include them in this list.

The post 35 Facebook Video Ad Examples – 2025 Update appeared first on Marketing Fix blog.

You could either…

1. Create a personal Instagram account and start seeing ads
2. Browse online ad galleries
3. Read this article with 80+ Instagram ad examples

While browsing various ad examples, you will eventually reach another question: What makes the best Instagram ads so good?

There are several aspects:

1. Your Instagram ad design must catch the viewer’s eyes.
2. It’s best to follow Instagram ad size and specs best practices and create ads with the size of 1080×1080 px.
3. Create a different ad for your Facebook and Instagram campaign (1200×628 px vs. 1080×1080 px).
4. You must find a strong unique value proposition (USP).

As marketing legend David Ogilvy put it:

“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.”

So how can you create Instagram ads that won’t fail? – Check out the 84 ad examples in this article to get tens of new ideas for creating irresistible Instagram ads that will increase your sales.

How to use this article:

The first 10 ad examples come with an explanation of what makes them work – so that you can get a better overview of Instagram ad best practices.

While browsing all these examples, analyze:

• What makes the ad’s design good?
• What copywriting hacks could you copy?
• How to apply these best practices to your campaigns?

If you’re in B2B business, you might want to check out these 100+ LinkedIn ad examples by fast-growth brands.

Ok? Let’s roll!

#1: The Economist

What makes this ad good?

The Economist’s Instagram ad example showcases their magazine covers, letting the viewer immediately know what the product is. But instead of just showing the image, they have used ½ of the ad space to include a headline and a pricing point, making the ad more informative.

Key takeaways:

• Showcase your product – people will immediately grasp what it is that you’re selling.
• Add copy in your ad image – Consumer Acquisition found that images are responsible for 75%-90% of ad performance. It makes sense to add your USP in the image.
• Don’t make your ad too text-heavy

#2: HubSpot

What makes this ad good?

HubSpot’s Facebook ad is super simple – You could create it in under 1 minute by using Paint or Photoshop. However, the bright colours and copy will catch many people’s attention in the Instagram newsfeed. Think about it – the newsfeed is full of photos. This makes this ad example with simple background shine out.

Key takeaways:

• Use bright colours – People’s brains are wired to notice bright colours and associate them with positive feelings.
• Use simple ad design – In the crowded Instagram newsfeed, simplicity is often the key. Test ads that include only background + copy.
• Use the correct ad size – We can’t help but wonder how much more efficient this ad would be when created as a square image… It would take up more space in the newsfeed, and draw even more attention.

#3: New York Times

What makes this ad good?

This NYT Instagram ad is similar to the previous example in that it features a monochrome background with copy. However, this ad has taken a couple of steps further, playing with typography and including the brand’s logo. Also, the ad size is 1080×1080 px, which is perfect for Instagram ads.

Key takeaways:

• Use interesting typography – If you’re planning to include a lot of copy in your ad image, use eye-catching fonts to bring your ad to life.
• Include your logo in the ad image – It will help to create higher brand awareness at no extra cost. Moreover, your logo can serve as a design element.
• Use contrasting font colours – When using the background + copy ad design hack, make sure your background colour and font colours contrast each other. Otherwise, it will be difficult to read your ad’s copy.

#4: MeetFrank

What makes this ad good?

MeetFrank’s Instagram ad example uses a simple custom design which is highly efficient when it comes to Facebook and Instagram advertising. Moreover, the ad design features a growth curve which immediately draws the viewer’s attention. Not to mention showcasing numbers – another element that’s guaranteed to get more eyes on your Instagram ad.

Key takeaways:

• Use symbols in your ad design – Including positive symbols such as a growth curve in your ad design will make your audience remember you with positive emotions.
• Include numbers in your ad design – Research shows that by starting your headline with a number, you’re 36% more likely to have people click on your ads. Numbers draw attention.
• Address your users in the ad – By asking “UI/UX DEsigner” in the image, MeetFrank’s ad gets the attention of everyone who feels themselves addressed.

#5: Rains

What makes this ad good?

Being an apparel brand, it’s increasingly important for Rains to show their product in the best light. To showcase their products, Rains has created an Instagram carousel ad that features 3 different images (notice the three blue dots under the ad image). Moreover, the ad image’s size is in an interesting format, resembling a portrait photo rather than square image.

Key takeaways:

• Create Instagram carousel ads – Include more than one image in your ad to show multiple products within a single ad.
• Use professional photographs – If you’re planning to advertise a photo ad image, make sure these look professional. You can hire a photographer to help you out.
• Test portrait images – Instagram allows advertisers to set up ad images in portrait formats. Use this option to take up more space in the newsfeed.

#6: Zaful

What makes this ad good?

This Instagram ad example by Zaful caught our eye due to the original way of dividing the ad image into several pictures, creating a mosaic effect. That’s a smart idea to showcase different sides/elements of your product in a single ad image. You can also use it as a Facebook advertising hack.

Key takeaways:

• Test mosaic images – If you want to show multiple aspects of your product, test dividing your ad image into multiple image blocks.
• Combine mosaics with carousel ads – You could use the mosaic-style image as the first card in your Instagram carousel ad, and then include each mosaic image in a closeup as individual carousel ad images.
• Use hashtags – Instagram is all about hashtags. Did you notice the #FreeShipping hashtag in the ad text? Using hashtags will make your ad feel more like it belongs on Instagram.

#6: The Dots

What makes this ad good?

The Dots’ Instagram ad combines a colourful background image with in-image value proposition. While the in-image copy is a little bit difficult to read due to low contrast, it looks sleek and in balance with other ad elements.

Key takeaways:

• If you use stock photos, use good ones – Sometimes, it pays off to use a stock photo in your Instagram ads. However, do not include an overused free stock photo. Make sure people haven’t seen your ad image before.
• Mention your customers – Listing your well-know business customers’ names in the ad copy helps to increase trust in your brand. Note that this tactic requires the approval from your clients.
• Select the right call-to-action – Instagram allows you to select between several CTAs. Use the call-to-action that’s closest to your goal (if you want people to buy something, use the “Shop Now” CTA, etc.)

#7: The Kooples

What makes this ad good?

Here’s another Instagram ad example featuring apparel. Notice how the photographs have been taken by a professional photographer, showing the clothes in good light. Moreover, the ad copy lets the viewer know that there’s a SALE going on, increasing the ad’s click-through rate.

Key takeaways:

• Use emojis – Include emojis in your ad copy to make your ads more interesting. Read how to use emojis in your Facebook ads.
• Add up to 10 carousel cards – Do not limit yourself to 2-3 carousel ad cards – you can add up to 10.
• Add a different link to each image – When setting up your carousel ads, you can make each image to direct to a different link. Use this option to direct people to the correct product’s landing page.

#8: 8fit

What makes this ad good?

8fit’s Instagram ad image looks like it’s taken directly from a health blogger’s Instagram page. That’s the key to their potential audience’s hearts. If you’re advertising a lifestyle brand, use images that showcase your product in normal settings, so that people can imagine themselves using it.

Key takeaways:

• Copy successful Instagram accounts – No, we’re not suggesting that you copy their posts one-to-one. That would be plagiarism. But do copy them in terms of style.
• Write actionable ad copy – Use words like “Use,” “Get,” “Start,” etc. to indicate that people are supposed to take action on your Instagram ad.

#9: MindTitan

What makes this ad good?

This Instagram ad example by MindTitan is not here to sell – it’s focused on attracting talent and getting them to join the company. Instagram is a great platform for advertising your job offers – an opportunity that’s often overlooked by companies. Moreover, the ad states a question in the ad image, nudging people’s minds to answer “Yes” or “No,” and getting them engaged in the first few seconds.

Key takeaways:

• Test Instagram ads for hiring – In addition to promoting your product on Instagram, you can use it to reach talented people.
• Ask a question in the ad image – This will get more people hooked to your Instagram ad, and they will also read the rest of your ad copy.
• Use branded ad design – If you want your ads to be associated with your brand, it’s a good idea to create Instagram ad images that use your branded colours and design elements.

#10: Facebook Audience Network

What makes this ad good?

Instead of trying to sell you anything, this Instagram ad starts with a content marketing offer – an informative article. Facebook Audience Network is using the Instagram ad to keep their customers – marketers – informed about the upcoming features and changes.

Key takeaways:

• Use Instagram ads for promoting content – Especially in B2B sales, it’s important to start with a soft sell, and slowly turn your leads into paying customers.
• Mix icons and symbols – An easy way to create a custom Instagram ad design is to download some free icons and symbols and use Illustrator or Photoshop to mix them together into a good-looking ad image.

If you want to learn more about Instagram advertising, check out this in-depth guide: Instagram Advertising – Always Up-to-date Guide (2018 Edition)

#11: UsabilityHub

#12: Airbnb

#13: Blinkist

#14: Poketo

#15: Brooklinen

#16: Foreo

#17: Cofounders Lab

#18: Squarespace

#19: Deloitte Baltics

#20: The Dots

#21: Kickstarter

#22: Facebook Marketing Developers

#23: Workplace by Facebook

#24: Ohheygirl Store

#25: Folsom & Co

#26: Freefly Systems

#27: Getdesignrr

#28: Gurushots

#29: Harvard Business Review

#30: Hisuperhi

#31: H&M

#32: Hyatt

#33: Inch2

#34: Jason Squire smm

#35: Jon Loomer

#36: British Journal of Photography

#37: Aceroix

#38: Architonicag

#39: Asanarebel

#40: Alex la Rigato

#41: Udemy

#42: Alexander Wang NY

#43: Azalea’s Boutique

#44: LIFT99

#45: Makery

#46: Masterclass

#47: Flachsmann Watches

#48: Gagosian Gallery

#49: Nortal

#50: Nosto

#51: Olive Clothing

#52: Onelive

#53: Cbyloredanapinasco

#54: Origin

#55: Out in London

#56: Paradise Amsterdam

#57: Parts of 4

#58: Pelacase

#59: Pexel Photos

#60:Black Mirror Fans

#61: Rains

#62: Reserved

#63: Rise of the Kings

#64: Scoro

#65: Frontrow

#66: Shopify

#67: STAC

#68: Stitch and Story

#69: Studio Living

#70: Bold Tuesday

#71: Sugar and Cotton

#73: Taxify

#74: Tentree

#75: The Horse

#76: Trvl

#77: Two Dots

#78: Udemy

#79: Venngage

#80: Vidcon

#81: Mvmforher

#82: Web Summit

#83: Wizzair

#84: Your Plug Clothing

Conclusion

Now that you’ve quickly scrolled through all the Instagram ad examples in this article, you definitely have some great new ideas.

If you want to learn even more about creating efficient Facebook and Instagram ads, check out this guide: 215+ Best Facebook Ad Examples (2025 Update)

Looking for video ideas too? Here are 35 Facebook video ad examples.

The post 80+ Best Instagram Ad Examples (2025 update) 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.
2. 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.

Open up your newsfeed, scroll for a few minutes, and you’ll see that they are.

Should you also fall for the promise of quick wins while risking with ads that are borderline cliché?

No way?

Well… Following popular Facebook ad templates actually has its perks:

• Template layouts make the best use of ad space – Facebook’s 1200px – 628px ad format is quite limiting, so knowing the best layouts will help you quickly create ads that look nice in the newsfeed.
• They’re proven to work – Brands don’t use the same ad designs over and over again without a reason – some layouts simply work better than others.
• They’re easy to create – Universal ad templates can easily be filled in with your branded content and messaging, without you having to spend days designing your Facebook ads.

Find out all you need to know about various Facebook ad types and formats here: Facebook Ad Specis & Size (Always Up-to-date Guide)

Personally, I like to create 80% of ad designs following my go-to templates and treat the remaining 20% as tiny art projects, testing something new.

Where to find Facebook ad templates?

There is no online “Facebook ad templates” gallery that you can browse.

The best way to acquire a set of safe-for-work templates in to browse Facebook ad examples and see what layouts other brands are using.

Which I recently did, resulting in 18 ad ideas that you can apply to your campaigns as well.

Looking for Facebook ad specs? Read about Facebook ad dimensions in 2020.

While the following infographic is dividided into 3 parts – Universal, SaaS and eCommerce – most of the featured ad templates can be used for any kind of Facebook or Instagram campaign.

+ Scroll to the bottom of the infographic to see real Facebook ad examples for each use case. 👇

1. Image + centered text

This Facebook ad template works well with any kind of messaging, whether you want to mention your value props, a discount offer or a one-liner about your company.

All you need is a stock photo (check the above infographic for best free stock image sites) and a strong value proposition.

2. Image + left- or right-aligned text

This is another go-to Facebook ad template for most campaigns. Adding the call-to-action to your ad image can potentially increase your ad’s click-through rate, resulting in higher Relevance score and lower Facebook ad cost.

3. Image + text inside a circle

This format works best if you plan to feature some specific number, e.g. the pricing of your product or a discount rate.

Suggestions:

• A/B test various colours on the circle to uncover what catches most people’s attention.
• Make sure that the text and its background circle have a high colour contrast, so that the copy is easily readable (e.g. avoid placing white copy on light background)

4. Image + text inside a square

Use this Facebook ad template in brand awareness campaigns and place your logo inside the square in the centre of your ad.

You can also test a similar layout when promoting a blog article on Facebook, adding the article’s title on top of the background image.

5. Image + text + CTA button

When using a lot of copy on your Facebook ads – which you are when adding both a value proposition + CTA button in the image – make sure to use the Facebook Text Overlay tool to ensure that your ad is not too text-heavy.

6. Plain image + logo

If you’re wondering what’s the most beloved Facebook ad template of lazy marketers, this is it. However, this is not to say that this layout doesn’t work. Test it out!

7. Showcase your product

When it comes to Facebook ads for SaaS, it’s always a good idea to create some ads that showcase your product.

Showing people what your product looks like is beneficial for several reasons:

• It will catch the attention of people interested in software products
• The viewer can immediately tell if they’d like to use your product (you’ll get higher-quality leads)
• And, naturally, all you need to do is take a screenshot and do some Photoshop magic – easy.

8. Product image + value proposition

One step forward from the previous ad template with product image would be adding a value proposition on top of it. You can run a split test to see which results the ads with a simple product screenshot v.s. an additional value proposition deliver.

Combine product image with some copy

9. Product image aligned to the right

When working with SaaS companies, this is usually our go-to Facebook layout. Somehow, having the copy on the left and a product image on the right makes the image easy to understand and read.

10. Visualize a specific benefit

Does your product help teams to grow? Be more efficient and save time? Show it in your Facebook ads. To make things even more graspable for the viewer, make sure that your Facebook ad copywriting also revolves around the same benefit.

11. Visualize text with icons

If you’re looking for a good alternative to stock photos, find some high-quality icons and find various ways to organize them in your Facebook ad designs.

Tip: You don’t need to create the icons from scratch, there are many good websites for finding ready-made icons. (Check the infographic for suggestions)

12. Share a customer testimonial

You probably have plenty of positive customer testimonials on your website. Copy-paste them to your Facebook ad images, add a picture if a real customer (no stock photo), and you’ve got yourself a high-conversion ad.

13. Centered product + logo

This is a good Facebook ad template for any retail brand. You can also add a value proposition to your ad image to emphasize your product’s benefit.

Tip: Go an extra mile to get professional product photos as the first impression of your product will decide whether someone buys it or not.

14. Limited-time or discount offer

If you have a possibility to make a discount offer and promote it on Facebook, do it every time. This is especially relevant for Facebook retargeting campaigns, where you need to give people some additional incentive to buy your product.

15. Compilation of products + centered logo

Got a lot of products? Why not show them all in a single Facebook ad. You can also apply the same layout to your Instagram ad design where having catchy and colourful ads is the key to increased sales.

Read more: Instagram Ad Specs and Size in 2018 – The Complete Guide

16. Multiple products + colourful background

This layout is a good option when you’ve tested a lot of other ad templates already and want to introduce some new designs to your campaigns.

Tip: Don’t just repeat a single product, but find ways to show it from different angles, different colours, etc.

17. Carousel ad with multiple products

There are many ways to create a Facebook carousel ad that features multiple products:

• You can showcase simple product photos
• You can have an image or text as the first slide of the carousel ad
• You can have some copy on each slide throughout your ad

Or… You can test them all and see what works best.

18. Simple image + overlay + logo

Applying a colour overlay on top of your Facebook ad image is an easy way to make it more colourful and aligned with your branded colours. I personally like to use Sketch for designing ad images, but you can also do it on Photoshop or Illustrator.

That’s it guys. Have a go-to Facebook template that wasn’t mentioned in this article? Point it out in the comments.

Want even more inspiration? Check out this eBook with 200 Facebook ad examples. 👇

The post 18 All-rounder Facebook Ad Templates With 45 Examples From Top Brands appeared first on Marketing Fix blog.

Why?

Imagine this scenario…

You’re advertising your product to a large group of people. But although they clicked on your ad and checked out product, they weren’t willing to make a purchase right away.

Now if you’re not running a retargeting campaign to bring those potential buyers back to your website, here’s what happens:

A competitor who’s more advanced in Facebook advertising will show their ads to your potential buyers and snap them away from right under your nose.

“Alright,” you say… “I get it. I’m in. How can set up a Facebook remarketing campaign?”

That’s exactly what this guide is for: to help you understand…

• … why Facebook remarketing campaigns work
• … how to set up your marketing funnel for remarketing
• … how to use Facebook ads for efficient marketing
• … how to set up Facebook retargeting pixel
• … how to create Custom Audiences on Facebook
• … and what are the best practices for Facebook retargeting campaigns

But in case you need some more convincing, here’s some additional proof.

Do remarketing campaigns really work?

Put briefly: they work 95% of the time.

And there’s plenty of proof that Facebook retamarketing ads can be highly effective.

An eMarketer study showed that 30% of consumers show a positive reaction to retargeted ads, while only 11% feel negative about retargeting campaigns.

Moreover, 58% of people surveyed said that they usually notice online ads for products they have previously checked out.

But there’s more to it…

A comScore study with ValueClick Media revealed that retargeting tactics generated the highest lift in trademark search behavior at 1,046%, compared to other targeting strategies.

To give you more Facebook-related examples, here are some key takeaways from some campaigns I’ve worked on:

• When promoting Aggregate blog’s Facebook posts to a warm audience vs. cold audience, our CPC for remarketing audience is usually 40% lower.
• When we advertised an HR application to an audience that had already read about the app, the CPI (cost-per-install) was 32% lower compared to a cold audience.

Facebook ads are highly efficient and applicable in almost every industry.

But in order to get the best results, you’ll need to build a marketing funnel with different offers for each stage.

How to create a (re)marketing funnel?

Marketing funnel is a technique used by marketers for getting a better overview of different audiences they have.

As Johnathan Dane from KlientBoost put it: Some of your audience members are ice cubes while others are hot as lava.

When running marketing campaigns for the first time, you will reach people who know nothing about your brand (ice cubes). After a while, there will be a new group of people who are already slightly familiar with your product and offers. People who are ripe to buy from you are the hottest (lava).

Each of the stages in your sales funnel requires a different set of messages and remarketing campaigns.

You can add as many steps into your marketing funnel as you please.

Here’s an example you can use as a model.

Let’s break down the stages in the traditional marketing funnel one by one.

Awareness – In the first stage of your advertising funnel, your Facebook campaign will be targeting people who have never heard of your product or service before. This is a regular ad campaign, not yet remarketing.

Prospects – Your first-stage Facebook retargeting campaign should be directed at people who have seen your ad or visited your website at least once.

Leads – This is an optional stage that includes people who have engaged with your website/posts/emails many times. You can but don’t necessarily need to set up a separate Facebook ad campaign for targeting this stage of the funnel.

Customers – In this funnel stage, you’re going to run a retargeting campaign that’s focused on engaging your existing customers. E.g. you could upsell or cross-sell something.

Promoters – This is also an optional stage that you can use to segment your brand’s fans and loyal users. From Facebook marketing perspective, you could advertise to them some special offers or promote news about your brand.

Ok, now that you’re aware of how to set up a marketing funnel for your Facebook retargeting ads, here’s what we’ll do:

1. We’ll learn how to set up the Facebook retargeting pixel and create Custom Audiences.
2. We’ll take a look at 8 efficient ad strategies that cover all the stages of your marketing funnel.

You can skip the first part if you already know how to set up Facebook remarketing campaigns, and go straight to the section with ideas and examples.

How to create a Facebook retargeting campaign?

To set up an ad campaign on Facebook, you need to know how the setup process works.

We’re not going to stop on it longer. But you can check out this guide on how to set up Facebook campaigns.

Assuming that you already have Business Manager and Facebook Ads Manager accounts set up, you will need to take the following steps:

1. Add the Facebook remarketing pixel on your website or app.
2. Identify your Facebook campaign’s goal.
3. Create a remarketing audience using Facebook Custom Audiences.
4. Set up an advertising campaign in the Ads Manager.

After all is said and done, you can sit back and wait for the sales to come in. And, if you do everything correctly, the sales will follow.

Tip: To add a retargeting campaign, you need to create a new ad set with a Custom Audience. You can create new Facebook campaigns or add new ad sets into a current campaign.

We’ll also cover the setup process for remarketing audiences later in this article.

How to set up Facebook retargeting pixel?

Facebook pixel is a tool that helps to track all your website visitors and on-site conversions. Without the pixel, you can’t create any remarketing audiences.

Facebook pixel allows you to target your ad campaigns on the people who have previously visited your website or a specific landing page.

To set up a Facebook remarketing pixel, follow these steps:

1. Go to the Facebook Business Manager, and navigate the top-left menu to find the “Pixels” section.

2. Click on the green “Create a Pixel” button to set up your first pixel.

3. Name your Pixel and click “Next”.

4. Add the pixel code to your website. Usually, it’s easier to copy-paste the pixel code to your website’s header section, just above the tag.

5. Verify that your pixel is working and recording on-site events.

After you’ve set up the pixel, Facebook will start tracking your website visitor data, and you can start targeting your website visitors.

Tip: Note that it may take a couple of days or even weeks until you have an audience big enough to create a Custom Audience.

According to Facebook, you need at least 20 people in your audience. In my experience, it’s better to have at least 1,000 people per target audience – otherwise, you’ll spend a lot of time creating a campaign that only reaches a handful of people.

How to create Facebook retargeting audiences?

The next big question you’ll run into is “How to set up my audiences?

First of all, it’s important to know that all remarketing audiences for your Facebook campaigns are targeting Custom Audiences.

What is a Custom Audience?

It’s a Facebook audience that’s based on people’s engagement with your brand.

For example, your Custom Audiences could include people who…

• … engaged with your Facebook Page, Facebook ads or Facebook posts
• … visited your website in the past 30 days
• … watched your videos on Facebook’s platform
• … read one of your blog articles
• … made a purchase on your website
• … added sth to their shopping cart on your website
• … signed up for a free trial on your website
• … took a specific in-app action in your application

There are many more options.

Are you already getting excited about all these low-hanging fruits?

Let’s see how you can set up all of these Custom Audiences from scratch.

How to create Facebook Custom Audiences?

To create new Facebook audiences, go to the Ads Manager and from the top-left menu, select “Audiences.”

On the Audiences page, you can see all your existing target audiences and create new ones.

From the “Create Audience” drop-down menu, select “Custom Audience.”

Next, you will have plenty of different options for creating a Facebook retargeting audience.

There have recently been many Facebook updates that made new audience types available to all advertisers.

As of January 2018, you have the following options:

You can create Facebook Custom Audiences based on:

Customer Files

Add a file with names and email addresses of your leads/customers that Facebook will match with their user base.

Website Traffic

That is the most widely-used option for Facebook retargeting campaigns. You can target…

• … everyone who visited your website
• … people who visited specific pages
• … users that spent a specific amount of time on your website

App Activity

This Custom Audience is relevant for advertisers running Facebook Mobile App Install campaigns. You can target…

• … the most active app users
• … users who made in-app purchased
• … people who have installed your app
• … users that have taken specific action in your app
• … users with a specific number of sessions

Offline Activity

You can also upload or import via API offline conversions to Facebook and match them with people on the platform.

Engagement

This audience type is based on how people engaged with your branded content on Facebook’s platform. You can target…

• … people who watched your videos on Facebook for specific time or % of video
• … people who opened/completed your Lead Ads’ lead form
• … people who engaged with your Facebook Canvas ads
• … people who engaged with your Facebook page/posts/ads
• … people who interacted with your Facebook events

Phew, that’s A LOT of options for retargeting on Facebook!

And we didn’t yet mention the fact that you can also exclude people from your Custom Audiences by using advanced targeting options.

However, the fact that you can use all of these Facebook remarketing options doesn’t necessarily mean that you need all of them.

A couple of well-defined Custom Audiences will do the job.

8 Facebook retargeting ideas that work

As said before, all advanced Facebook advertisers run some kind of retargeting campaigns.

Depending on your business type, there are many options to choose from, one more efficient than the other.

Up next, you will find 8 retargeting campaign ideas I’ve seen succeeding repeatedly.

#1: Start with a brand awareness campaign

The first step of every remarketing campaign is making the first touchpoint between people and your brand.

Before you can start campaign setup, you need to have an audience. And that’s why it’s good to start off with a brand awareness campaign.

The goal of your Facebook brand awareness campaign is to introduce your product to potential buyers and arise their interest.

For example, Packlane’s Facebook ad simply explains what their product is: Custom branded packaging.

You could also advertise a media article about your product, and later retarget the people who engaged with your Facebook page.

Do not try to immediately sell in the awareness stage. First, you need to get people’s attention with softer marketing tactics.

For example, MeetFrank’s advertising a Business Insider article about their secret recruitment app before launching other Facebook ad campaigns.

Need more ideas? Check out these 84 best Instagram ad examples.

How to set up the audience for awareness campaign?

Target a wide audience of 100,000+ people, and let Facebook’s auto-optimization algorithms find the best audience for you. Create a Saved Audience where you target people based on demographics, interests, and location.

How to increase your success rate:

• Make sure your Facebook ad clearly says what your product or service is.
• Lead people to your website, where you can track them with Facebook pixel.
• When sharing an article, write a fascinating headline that catches attention.
• Run the awareness campaign for 1 week or until you have a big enough remarketing audience.

This tactic works best for: All types of businesses, i.e. consumer products, business services, eCommerce, SaaS, mobile apps, etc.

#2: Retarget all your website visitors

After running a brand awareness campaign, you have a set of website visitors who have shown some interest in your product (or service).

That’s an opportunity for setting up your first retargeting campaign.

Important note! If you’re already getting thousands of daily web visits, you can get more specific with your remarketing audience segmentation. (See the next point.)

However, if you’re a small brand, you can start by showing the same ad to all your website visitors.

But what should you advertise?

If your product is consumer-facing and people make the purchase quickly, you could offer a slight discount to drive people back to your website/e-store. Here’s an example by TopShop:

When you’re doing marketing for SaaS or other B2B services, your sales funnel can be a little more complex.

Before a company purchases your product, they need to understand its value to their business. In this case, you could advertise a webinar introducing your product or a free trial period.

AdEspresso ran a 10-day Facebook ad campaign targeting Custom Audiences made of past 30-day website visitors.

As a person visited AdEspresso’s website, they were added to the retargeting ads campaign, and were offered a free eBook. As someone downloaded the eBook, they gave AdEspresso their email, and were entered into an email marketing campaign.

AdEspresso’s campaign is a good example of a multi-step lead nurturing strategy that turns cold leads into customers via constant Facebook advertising. Also, they managed to keep down their Facebook ads cost.

How to set up this remarketing audience:

To target all your past website visitors, create a Custom Audience based on website visits, and simply target all the people who have visited your domain.

How to increase your success rate:

• Advertise a compelling offer, e.g. a free giveaway, a discount or a free trial period.
• Make sure that your remarketing campaign’s frequency won’t get too high (keep it at the maximum of 10 ad views per every two weeks).
• Advertise blog articles, eBooks or webinars to make people more familiar with your brand and product.

Works best for: Consumer products, B2B products/services, eCommerce, SaaS.

#3: Retarget specific landing page visitors

If your website is getting a lot of traffic, you have a big enough audience pool to divide it into multiple segments.

By segmenting your remarketing audiences, you can create more relevant Facebook campaigns for each.

For example, if you’re selling multiple products, services or use cases that each have a different landing page, you can set up different ads with different messaging.

Let’s take MOO, for example – they sell business cards, branded stickers, notebooks, etc.

Instead of creating one remarketing campaign that tries to sell everything, they could…

• … advertise business cards to the people who visited a landing page about business cards.
• … advertise stickers to the people who visited a landing page about stickers, etc.

How to set up remarketing audience:

Create Facebook Custom Audience based on website visits, but instead of selecting all website visitors, only include the visitors of specific landing pages.

How to increase your success rate:

• Make your campaign’s offers specific to particular landing pages.
• Indicate what’s the next step – what do you want the person to do after clicking on your Facebook ad (Buy something? Start a free trial?)
• Exclude the people who have already converted on your offer, so that they won’t keep seeing your ads.

This tactic workd best for: SaaS and B2B products/services.

#4: Set up dynamic remarketing ads

If you’re running an eCommerce store, you don’t have to set up a different campaign for every single product on your website.

You can completely automate your campaign, and show people the exact product in your online store that they have previously looked up.

This Facebook feature is called Dynamic Product Ads.

The Dynamic Product Ads feature allows you to create an online product catalogue, and automatically create ads based on the products people check out on your website.

This makes it super easy to deliver super personalized Facebook ads. For example, like this ad by The Kooples:

According to a Facebook case study, the Honest Company saw a 34% increase in CTR and a 38% reduction in cost-per-purchase when using Dynamic Product Ads.

To create a Dynamic Product Ad, you’ll need:

• A Facebook Page
• A Facebook ad account
• A Facebook pixel installed on your website
• A Facebook catalog or another catalog of your products that’s hosted online through Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, or Magento.

How to set up this remarketing audience:

Facebook will automatically create a personalized ad for every person visiting your online store. You will need to set up a product catalogue and a campaign with the Catalogue Sales objective.

How to increase your success rate:

• Make sure your product catalogue features high-quality product photos.
• Make attractive offers, e.g. a limited-time discount.
• Make sure that you have the advertised products in stock, so that people won’t be left empty-handed.

This remarketing campaign type works best for: Large online stores with a wide selection of products.

#5: Advertise to your blog readers

In case you’re actively working on a branded blog, you can retarget people who have read particular blog articles.

For example, if you’re a grocery brand, you could first promote a blog article on Facebook, and later advertise your products to the people who read the blog article.

Here’s another example: Grammarly could promote an article about copywriting, and later advertise their grammar correction tool.

But what if you want to retarget to people who read other blogs?

With a third-party tool, this is possible as well. You can use a tracking tool like PixelMe that lets you retarget anyone who clicked on your link – even if it leads to another website. These tools are far from perfect in tracking all the clicks – you will get around 30-40% of people to your Facebook Custom Audience.

So basically, you can first create a high-quality audience by promoting another publication’s story, and then show these people your Facebook ads.

How to set up remarketing audience:

To set up a target audience of your blog visitors, create a Facebook Custom Audience based on website traffic, and target people who visited your blog page (use the slug “/blog” or whatever link best refers to your blog).

To remarket to people who clicked on your links to third-party blogs/websites, use a tracking tool.

Tips for retargeting blog visitors:

• Target people who have read more than one blog article – they are more engaged.
• Target readers of a specific blog article.
• Make sure that your Facebook ad is related to the article or blog that your audience previously read.

This tactic works best for: All brands with a blog, nut also brands that want to remarket to people interested in specific articles/websites not their own.

#6: Bring back shopping cart abandoners

Shopping cart abandoners are users that have been shopping in your online store, even added some things to their cart, but then abandoned your website without completing the purchase.

Tip: The concept of cart abandoners is also applicable to other types of services. For example, people who almost completed a signup form or a survey on your website.

Shopping cart abandoners are a highly valuable segment as they have shown clear interest in buying your product. According to Statista, as many as 80% of people abandon their shopping carts. What if you could use some Facebook advertising hacks to bring back even 20% of them…

One of the easiest ways to convince cart abandoners to return to your website is offering them a discount or a coupon. Even better if you can make the offer personalized and limited in time.

For example, Nespresso is promoting a limited-time free delivery. This offer could be directed towards all potential buyers or only used as a remarketing ad.

How to set up remarketing audience:

To make your Facebook ads reach people who have abandoned their shopping cart, create a Custom Audience based on online events. You can set up an event on your website that records a person clicking on the “Add to Cart” button.

How to increase your success rate:

• Don’t just advertise your products as you would to a new website visitor.
• Make your remarketing ad’s offer worthwhile of returning to your website – add a discount or coupon to nudge people to complete their order.
• Advertise rather aggressively on the first 7 days after the person abandoned their shopping cart, then pause, and advertise your products again to them after 30 days.

Works best for: eCommerce, all other types of online stores, mobile apps.

#7: Turn free trial users into paying clients

Are you marketing a SaaS (software as a service) or some other type if subscription business?

On top of your marketing funnel, you’re likely offering a free trial / subscription period, so that people can learn more about your service.

After the trial period, the user has two options: to continue paying for your service or discontinue using it.

In my experience, it is not after the trial period that you should convince the person to sign up for a paid subscription. It is more efficient to get a person’s readiness to pay during the test period.

During the free trial period, your number one goal should be to delight the user with great user experience. However, you can also convince people to continue using your paid service by advertising an attractive offer.

You can run a Facebook retargeting campaign and…

• Offer to the user a nice discount if they sign up for a longer time period. E.g. “sign up for 12 months instead of 1 month and save 40%.”
• Offer to extend the free trial for users who haven’t been active this far.
• Share helpful materials such as guides and eBooks on how to get more out of your product.

For example, Litmus has created a series of blog articles around email marketing to help their customers succeed at work.

How to set up this remarketing audience:

The easiest way to remarket to your free trial users is to set up a Facebook Custom Audience based on the “Free Trial Signup” website conversion event. Another way to target your existing users is to upload a customer list with people’s emails and names to Facebook, and create a Custom Audience based on that.

How to increase your success rate:

• Differentiate the free users’ ad messaging from your top-of-the-funnel value offers.
• Think what would make you to start paying for your service/subscription. Outline that value offer in your ads.
• Educate your free trial users – offer them guides, webinars, etc.

This type of Facebook marketing strategy works best for: SaaS and online subscription services, but also for delivery services and publications.

#8: Re-sell and upsell to past customers

According to WordStream, the remarketing CPC is significantly lower to than that of regular search and social ads. Display and social remarketing ad clicks by contrast might cost anywhere from 2-100x less.

The same applies to advertisng to your existing customers. Once someone has already bought something from you, they’re a lot more likely to purchase again.

Targeting your existing customers on Facebook is a powerful way to remind them of your product line and show them your latest products.

For example, a fashion brand could advertise their new collection while a software vendor could use Facebook advertising to introduce their upgraded services.

GoPro uses another interesting tactic to get their product owners upgrade to the latest device. Instead of just promoting the new GoPro model, they offer to trade it for $100 off when a client returns an older model.

You can also use Facebook ads to inform your clients about ongoing discounts, e.g. like this ad by AllSaints.

So here’s the key takeaway: Once a person has purchased something from you, don’t move them out of your Facebook marketing funnel. Keep showing hem relevant offers (e.g. discounts) once in awhile.

How to set up this remarketing audience:

Set up Facebook Custom Audiences based on customer lists or website purchase events.

How to increase your success rate:

• Find ideas for cross-selling. For example, if someone bought coffee, advertise a coffee machine to them.
• Use Facebook ads to notify your clients about discounts and other offers.
• Support your campaigns with regular Facebook posts. For example, share a blog article on Facebook that your clients will find helpful and interesting.

Here’s another interesting thing to know about Facebook retargeting. While people will easily get tired of seeing your regular ads, it’s the opposite when doing remarketing.

People will still act upon your retargeting ads even after they’ve seen it for over five times.

Final suggestions

If you’re going to take away five key insights from this article, remember these:

1. Facebook retargeting campaigns can really benefit any type of business, both B2C and B2C.
2. Don’t be lazy about setting up your campaigns, they’re usually highly efficient and well worth the effort.
3. Your ads should deliver a slightly different message from your main ad campaigns – their goal is to engage people who are already aware of your brand and product.
4. Let your remarketing campaigns reach people for more than five times, but don’t keep them running infinitely. Ten ad views during a 14-day retargeting period is sufficient.
5. Combine Facebook ads with other online marketing channels to bring more people to your marketing funnel, and then use Facebook ads to convert them to customers.

Alright. You’ve got it! Good luck with your remarketing campaigns!

The post Facebook Retargeting Campaigns – The Practical Guide for 2018 appeared first on Marketing Fix blog.

That’s why, even highly experienced marketers do not always know all the Facebook advertising hacks & tips that would benefit them big time.

For example, did you know that you can:

• See a list with the names of all your Facebook page fans?
• Set a target audience for every Facebook post you publish?
• Create Facebook posts that include up to 10 images inside a carousel?

This article has one main goal and it’s to have you browse the 12 hidden Facebook features and think…

Seriously, I hope that you’ll learn at least one new Facebook marketing hack from this article, hopefully even more.

So here they are, the super secret Facebook features to engage more fans, beat the competition, and wow your boss.

1. Set a New Target Audience for Each Post

Hack #1 in one sentence: As you publish a post on your Facebook page, you can tell Facebook whom you want to target, so specific audiences will see that post.

On most branded Facebook pages, not all the posts are relevant to the same audience.

For example, food delivery services need to attract both customers, restaurant owners, and delivery couriers.

Or in case of Plated’s Facebook page, some of their fans might like savoury food while others have a sweet tooth.

If you’re engaging with multiples audiences across your Facebook posts, you’ll want every post to reach the right audience.

Here’s why:

If your Facebook post is relevant to people seeing it in their newsfeed, it will have a higher Relevance Score, and your post could have a higher organic reach.

Luckily for all Facebook marketers, there’s a fairly new feature called the Audience Optimization tool.

How to optimize every Facebook post’s audience?

As you’re creating a new Facebook page post, click on the small target icon in the lower left corner of your unpublished post.

As you click on the icon, you can target people based on their interests. (This is similar to creating a Facebook ad audience)

That’s pretty cool, right?! And it’s getting even better!

You can also restrict the audience of your Facebook post.

This Facebook feature is helpful if you want your post only to reach the people speaking a particular language or living in specific locations.

Can’t see the icon when publishing a Facebook post?

If your Facebook page has fewer than 5,000 likes, you’ll have to activate the Audience Optimization tool manually.

Click the “Settings” tab in the top right corner of your Facebook page. From the “General” tab, you’ll see a row for “Audience Optimization for Posts.” Click on “Edit” and check the box to activate the Audience Optimization. Then, hit the “Save Changes” button.

Use the Audience Optimization tool every time you’re publishing a new Facebook post – it will help your posts reach more people at zero cost.

2. Create Carousel Format Facebook Posts

Hack #2 in one sentence: In addition to single-image posts, you can also create Facebook page posts in carousel and slideshow format.

Sometimes, a single-image Facebook post isn’t enough to tell your story.

So what are you to do? Publish multiple Facebook page posts in a row?

That’s not what Pipedrive did. Instead, they published a Facebook Carousel post.

The Facebook carousel ads are often used to showcase multiple products or tell a branded story.

According to a report by Kinetic Social, carousel ads are 10 times better at getting people to click through compared to static sponsored posts on Facebook.

Unlike sponsored carousel ads, the Facebook carousel posts are completely free. Your Facebook advertising cost will be literally zero.

You can add a carousel post to your Facebook page by clicking on the “Share a photo or video” icon on top of your Facebook page. (Not that you’ll need to be using the Business Manager view to be able to post from under your brand’s profile).

Next, select the “Create a Photo Carousel” option.

Up next, you can enter a URL and Facebook will crawl all the images available. For example, you could enter your blog’s URL to share multiple blog articles in a single post.

In addition to sharing and promoting your blog articles on Facebook, you can also create a carousel post with your product’s features by entering the URLs of your landing pages.

Another idea: Share a single blog article and include multiple images to make your blog promotion differentiate from other stuff in Facebook’s newsfeed.

You can also add a different URL to every image in your carousel post. Simply hover over the image to find a link icon.

Tip: If the link that you want to share doesn’t have enough images or Facebook fails to scrape them, use the + icon to add additional imagery manually.

3. Turn Facebook Post Likes into Page Fans

Hack #3 in one sentence: You can ask people that liked your Facebook post or ad to Like your page in a single click.

As you share and promote your content on Facebook, it will often reach the newsfeed of people that haven’t yet liked your page.

Here’s a simple hack to turn people liking your Facebook posts into your Facebook page fans. (So that you can reach their newsfeeds organically in the future)

As you click on the likes under your Facebook post, a new window will pop up with everyone that has liked the post.

If there’s someone on the list that hasn’t yet liked your Facebook page, you can invite them to do so.

Once you apply this approach to every Facebook post you share, you’ll be able to grow your Facebook fan base at a faster pace.

On a side note, inviting people to like your Facebook page is highly time sensitive. If they’ve liked your post 3 weeks ago, they might not remember your brand anymore. Always invite people to like your Facebook page in 24h since they liked your post.

4. See the List of Your Facebook Page Fans

Hack #4 in one sentence: There is a place to see all the people who like your Facebook page. (Yes, you can finally check if your BFF is liking your page)

Sometimes, it may happen that you need a list of people liking your Facebook page.

Maybe you want to do user research. Or simply check whether all your friends are liking your page.

Whatever the reason, you should know how to access the list of people liking your Facebook page.

Here’s how it works: Go to your Facebook page Settings and click on “People and Other Pages”. Here, you can see the people and brands that like or follow your page. You can also manage banned and blocked users.

You can use the information about your Facebook page fans to do user research and better understand your target audience.

5. Use a Cover Video Instead of a Cover Image

Hack #5 in one sentence: You can add a GIF or video as your Facebook cover photo – just to ? things up a bit.

If you want to level up your social media presence, here’s a simple way to do it: change your static cover image to a cover video.

Here’s a nice example by Flixel. Notice the cinematographic elements.

Cover videos must be at least 20 seconds long, but no more than 90 seconds long. The recommended video size is 820px x 462px.

Cover videos should auto-play and auto-loop, so it might be a good idea to create a GIF.

Here are three cover video ideas to inspire you:

• Create a cinemagraph or your product in action
• Create a short team video or boomerang
• Create an animated video based on your existing product videos

Here’s a guide to creating GIFs in Photoshop. I recommend that you check it out – it’s easier than you think! (You’ll just have to mix n’ match the layers in the right order)

6. Spy on Your Competition With Pages to Watch

Hack #6 in one sentence: Use the Pages to Watch tool to review all the posts published by your competitors or favourite brands in a single feed.

If you want to stay ahead of the competition and know what the industry’s leaders are up to, you’re going to need to check their Facebook pages.

However, going manually through 10+ pages every week is a highly tedious job.

The Pages to Watch tool is designed to help you keep an eye on both competition and innovative brands that inspire.

You can find this Facebook feature it by navigating to your Facebook page Insights and scrolling down on the page.

As you scroll down the page, you will find the Pages to Watch feature. Note that Pages to Watch is a tool available to all Facebook pages with 100 or more fans. So if you’ve got less than 100 fans, you’ll need to add more. (Try using hack number 3)

Facebook will suggest you some pages to follow. You can also type in the names of brands you want to check out and add them to the list.

After you’ve added some brand pages to your watchlist, you can see the following stats:

• Total page likes (and the % +/- change from the previous week)
• How many times a page has posted to Facebook this week
• Their total engagement count for the week

As you click on a particular brand’s icon, you’ll be able to see all their past week’s Facebook posts, filtered by engagement (from the most engaging to the least engaging).

Tip: You can add Advertise. Grow. blog to your Pages to Watch list to be always informed about the latest Facebook updates and new formats of Facebook posts.

7. Edit Your Posted Links’ Copy

Hack #7 in one sentence: Due to a recent update, as you publish a link on Facebook, you’re not able to change the default headline . Or maybe you can…

Up until lately, you were able to edit the headline and link description of every URL you shared on Facebook.

That’s not the case anymore.

Now, whenever you share a link on Facebook, it comes with the static headline and description.

Luckily, there’s a workaround that lets you edit all the texts of your Facebook page post, courtesy of Jon Loomer.

Here’s what Jon suggests:

“You see, when you create an ad, the link information that you provide will go through a review process. Facebook will check to be sure that the link preview information that you provide is acceptable. Once that approval is granted, you can publish your ad organically.”

Here’s how the hack works:

1. Publish the Facebook post you want to share as a Facebook ad.

2. Wait for Facebook’s approval to your new ad.

3. Pause the ad before it starts to deliver (so you won’t have to pay anything).

4. Once your ad is approved, it will appear in your Page Posts section in Facebook Business Manager.

5. Check the box next to your ad and select “Publish”.

And that’s it! Your custom Facebook post will appear on your Facebook page.

8. Discover the Best Posting Times

Hack #8 in one sentence: You can see the charts with your Facebook page’s engagement levels and see when your audience is most active.

When is the best time to post on Facebook?

According to an article in Buffer’s blog, there is none.

Here’s what the author suggests instead: Publish on your Facebook page

• When your data tells you
• When it’s most relevant

In fact, you can easily see when exactly most of your fans are online.

Navigate to the Page Insights page and select “Post”. Here’ you can see the weekdays and hours of day with the highest potential of reaching your audience.

You can hover over each individual day to see an overlay of how that day looks vs the averages.

As you scroll down on the page, you can also see individual posts and their time of publishing. Analyze the engagement and reach of each post to uncover when’s the most reasonable time for publishing.

Note that if some of your Facebook posts were boosted, they’ll have a higher reach than other content.

You can experiment with your posting times, maybe even test every hour of day and every weekday to get closer to the perfect posting time.

9. Schedule Your Facebook Posts

Hack #9 in one sentence: You can schedule multiple Facebook posts in advance to save time and ensure you won’t forget to publish anything important.

Once you know the best times for publishing on Facebook, you can build your publishing strategy around these hours.

But what if you’re at a meeting or somewhere without WiFi connection? Does is mean you won’t be able to make that all-times-best-viral Facebook post?

Here’s good news: you can easily schedule all your Facebook posts days or weeks ahead. Simply use the “Schedule” feature instead of immediately publishing your post.

Scheduling your posts can also be handy if you want to prepare a Facebook post and confirm with other team members before publishing.

10. See More Boosted Post Statistics

Hack #10 in one sentence: As you promote your Facebook posts with a Boost, you can also see that ad in the Facebook Ads Manager for additional metrics.

Boosted posts are THE easiest way to promote your blog articles/updates/messages on Facebook.

All you need to do is hit the “Boost Post” button, enter a budget and target audience, and off you go. The not-so-nice thing about this is that the ease of usage often makes marketers careless about their results.

Do you know what were the results of your last Boosted post?

As you look at the report compiled by Facebook, you can only see:

• How many people your Boosted post reached
• How many clicks people made
• How many people that saw your promotion liked your Facebook page

That’s about all the information you can get from these reports. And that’s clearly not enough.

There is much more relevant data you should know about your promoted posts, such as:

• The click-through rate of your post – did the post do better or worse than previous ones in terms of engagement?
• The number of website conversions – did some people subscribe to your newsletter or react to other offers on your website?
• The TOP placements – did you Facebook post perform best on Desktop newsfeed, Mobile newsfeed or Instagram?

To find the answer to all these questions, go to the Facebook Ads Manager, where you can see all your boosted posts as separate ad campaigns.

Feel free to customize the columns and break down your campaign by different variables, e.g. placement. Read this Instagram ad reporting guide to learn to navigate the Ads Manager reports.

Based on this information, you can optimize your next Boosted posts and also use the insights to get better results across all your Facebook and Instagram campaigns.

11. Set Up Facebook Auto-optimization Rules

Hack #11 in one sentence: You can set up rules to be notified when your campaign starts underperforming. Or even automate part of your ad management. For free.

Have you heard about Facebook Automated Rules?

Many marketers use advanced Facebook advertising tools that help to optimize campaigns. What they don’t know is that Facebook has most of the same auto-optimization features.

Here’s the best part: Facebook’s Automated Rules are FREE.

Here’s how Facebook’s auto-optimization rules work:

You can set up four different consequences if the conditions have been met:

• Turn off the ad campaign, ad set or ad
• Send notifications to the ad manager (that’s you)
• Adjust budgets (increase/decrease daily/lifetime budget by…)
• Adjust manual bids (increase/decrease bid by…)

To set up an automated rule set, select a campaign, ad set or Facebook ad and go to the editing panel (Icon on the right side of the reporting table). Next, click on the “Create Rule” button to create a new rule set.

You can create rules by selecting some conditions and telling Facebook what to do once the conditions are met.

Here are some Facebook automated rules that you can easily apply:

• Be notified if the CPC of your ad campaign is higher than you expected – e.g. if you’re willing to pay the maximum of $0.80 per click, set up a rule that notifies you if the CPC is higher.
• Be notified about a high ad frequency – if your ad frequency reaches 3 points, your target audience has seen it a lot of times. It may be a good idea to optimize the ad set at this point. For Facebook retargeting campaigns, your ad frequency can be up to 10 points.
• Increase budgets for best-performing ad sets – when running an A/B test with multiple ad sets, you can have Facebook automatically allocate more (e.g. a 30% increase) budget to top-performing ad variations while lowering the budget for lower-performing ad sets by 30%.

Tip: Instead of creating different rule sets for each campaign and spending hours on the setup, try to come up with some universal rules that can be applied to all campaigns at once.

This feature is especially beneficial when managing a large set of campaigns with fast-changing results, e.g. a discount offer or Facebook App Install ads.

12. Quickly A/B Test Multiple Target Audiences

Hack #12 in one sentence: Facebook Ads Manager has some built-in A/B testing features that you can use to set up simple split tests.

When it comes to Facebook and Instagram ad targeting, it’s sometimes hard to tell who your ideal audience is.

So you might want to test two or more different target audiences to see which one delivers the best results.

The quickest way to set up split testing campaign on Facebook is to use the “Create Multiple New Ad Sets” feature.

While this Facebook A/B testing feature is quite limited regarding the campaign elements you can test, it makes it really easy to compare multiple target audiences.

Simply click on the “Add Detailed Targeting Variation” to add more than one audience variation (and create multiple ad sets).

Tip: If you’re interested in testing other ad elements such as your Facebook ad design or different emojis in Facebook ads, you should create multiple ad sets that each contains one creative variation.

You can learn more about successful Facebook ad A/B testing here.

Quick Recap  ↴

Did we manage to include at least one hack you didn’t know about? Did we miss anything?

All things considered, you’re now equipped with the TOP secret Facebook marketing hacks that haven’t been used by your competition (at least not yet…)

Make sure to share them with your boss, maybe mention some to your marketer-friends, and do your best to keep them from everyone else!

Want to learn even more Facebook ad hacks? Check out this article: TOP Facebook Updates in Q1 2018 Every Marketer Should Know

The post 12 Hidden Facebook Features 95% of Marketers Don’t Know appeared first on Marketing Fix blog.

However, there’s a huge difference between good Facebook traffic and bad Facebook traffic.

Most people that click on your blog promotions or Facebook ad are just passengers-by.

So instead of simply posting a blog article on your Facebook page and setting up a $50 boosted post, you should aim to convert people seeing your promoted post into high-potential leads.

Otherwise, people will just click on your Facebook ad, visit your blog once, and then forget about it.

That’s not exactly the relationship you’re looking to have with your readers, right?

What can you do differently to get good results out of your Facebook blog promo?

In this article, you’re going to find answers to three main questions haunting content marketers and Facebook advertisers alike:

• How to advertise blog via Facebook in the most efficient way?
• How to ensure that people are going to click on your promoted post?
• How to turn cold leads into email subscribers, and eventually, customers?

All the hacks and best practices in this article are based on personal experience of promoting multiple blogs on Facebook (including the blog you’re reading). After more than 2 million ad post impressions and 100+ Facebook blog promos, here are the key takeaways.

1. The Golden Rule of Blog Promotion: Always Share Your Content on Facebook

Whenever you publish a blog article, infographic, or release a guide, take 10 minutes to post it on your Facebook Page.

This is beneficial in many ways:

• You’ll keep your fans updated about new content
• Your article will reach new people who may become fans
• Posting regularly shows you’re active and more trustworthy
• Your fresh article will get a boost it needs to be read and shared across the web
• You could be offered guest blogging opportunities from top blogs.

For 10 minutes of your time, that’s a lot of benefits and fame.

Even if you don’t have that many Facebook page fans, it makes sense to share your post.

In the beginning, your post may organically gather only 1-2 likes (one of which is coming from yourself), but that’s fine. You will grow your followership eventually. Especially with the hacks you’re going to learn in a sec.

2. Share Your Blog Article as a Facebook Post

The easiest way to share your blog articles on Facebook is to copy-paste the article’s link into your Facebook’ page’s publishing box.

As you insert the link, Facebook will add the image, headline, and link description. You can edit these or use the default copy. You will also need to write a text for your post.

Note that you need to go to the Business Manager page when publishing something on your Facebook page. Otherwise, the post won’t be published by your brand but you.

Tip: You can bookmark the Business Manager view of your Facebook page for quick access.

3. Set the Right Target Audience

As a recent change, Facebook is letting advertisers optimize who will see their Facebook posts.

You can tell Facebook who’s the ideal audience for your post’s organic reach. (And you probably had no idea the Facebook Audience Optimization feature exists!)

Here’s how it works.

When adding a new post to your Facebook page, click on the little target-shaped icon to select your preferred target audience.

Once you click on the icon, a new pop-up window will appear where you can optimize your post’s target audience based on their interests. It works just like creating a Facebook Saved Audience.

Another thing you can do is setting audience restrictions to tell Facebook who is or isn’t allowed to see your posts. For example, you can set the age, language, and location to target specific people with every Facebook post.

How to activate the Automated Audience Optimization:

Important: If your Facebook page has fewer than 5,000 likes, you may need to turn it on manually. Simply click the “Settings” tab in the top right corner of your Facebook page. From the “General” tab, you’ll see a row for “Audience Optimization for Posts.”

Click on “Edit” and check the box to activate the Audience Optimization. Then, hit the “Save Changes” button.

Every time you publish a new Facebook post, let the algorithms know who it is you’re targeting (or in other words, who will find your Facebook post relevant and interesting).

Reaching the right audience already in the posting phase does two things:

• Your post has a higher relevancy so Facebook will distribute to more people.
• As people find your Facebook post relevant, they will like/share it and it reaches more people.

4. Write a Strong Headline

While your Facebook ad design is what catches people’s attention, it’s usually the headline that people decide on whether to click or not click on your post.

So how can you write a good headline for your blog promotion when sharing articles on Facebook?

Here are a few suggestions for writing good Facebook post headlines:

• Use numbers – By starting your headline with a number, you’re 36% more likely to have people click on your ads.
• Use unordinary wording – Always try to find interesting words, e.g. “magnificent,” “major,” or “extraordinary” instead of “good” or “best.”
• Keep it short – A study by Outbrain found that headlines with 60-100 characters result in the highest click-through rates.

If you’re unsure whether you’ve come up with a strong headline, try the Headline Analyzer tool by CoSchedule.

5. Write a Compelling Introduction

A high number of people who click on your Facebook post do it based on the image and headline alone.

However, there are also those who read through the entire copy before deciding whether your shared article is worth their time.

Moreover, the device people use when seeing your Facebook post plays a role: in mobile, the text part is a lot more prevalent.

All things considered, you should always ensure that all parts of your promoted post’s copy are best in class.

On Desktop, people will judge your post based on the headline.

On Mobile devices, your above-image text grabs the most attention.

Whenever writing copy to share a blog article on Facebook, follow these rules:

• The first sentence must catch everyone’s attention – you can insert a bold statement or a question.
• Your text should show some personality – keep it conversational as you were writing to a friend.
• The layout must be easily readable – if you want to write more than 2 lines of text, use the line spacing to format your text for higher readability.

6. Use Symbols and Emojis for Extra Attention

Another easy way to spice up 🌶 your Facebook posts is to insert custom symbols and emojis.

Here’s an example by Buffer:

Take a look at these 142 Facebook ad examples to see how top brands are using emojis in their Facebook promotions.

We once ran a small Facebook ad A/B test with SaaS startup Scoro to test whether emojis have any effect on the click-through and engagement rates. They did.

The ad with emoji in the headline had a 241% higher click-through rate than the ad with no emoji.

While a 241% difference is unusual, you can still use emojis and symbols to bring more life to your posts.

See this article to learn exactly how to use emojis in Facebook ads.

7. Create the Perfect Facebook Post Design

As you publish articles in your blog, they probably have a featured image.

However, the image size of your blog post may not exactly match Facebook’s specs.

That’s why, you can create a slightly altered version of your blog image to use on Facebook.

I do not create a new Facebook sharing image for every blog post, but as this blog’s featured images are in an unusual landscape format, they sometimes don’t look that good on Facebook.

Here are all the Facebook link post guidelines you may need:

• Image size: 1200px X 628px
• Image ratio: 1.91:1
• In-image text: less than 20%

If you’re interested in more ad sizes for both Facebook and Instagram, see this guide: Instagram Ad Specs & Ad Size in 2017 – The Always Up-to-date Guide

If you’re using WordPress to manage your blog, you can use the Yoast SEO plugin to optimize your social media sharing settings and change the image.

We’re not going to stop on the Facebook post design in this article as there’s an entire guide with 25 suggestions and hacks for you to check out: 25 Facebook Ad Design Hacks for Major Success

However, there is one important suggestion you should know… ?

8. Avoid Regular Stock Photos for promoting your blog

If you’re using free stock photos as your blog images (yes, also those beautiful Unsplash photos are stock photos), you’re missing out on an opportunity.

Think about it… You spend 10+ hours crafting the perfect Facebook post and then you’ll illustrate it with the same boring stock photo that everyone else is using. Not a good idea.

Instead, try to develop a specific brand language for sharing your blog articles on Facebook.

For example, you could use a colourful image overlay like Holini and KlientBoost.

Or if you love designing your own blog images, you could take an even more original path like BuzzSumo and AdEspresso.

As you continuously use a branded style, people will get used to seeing your posts in the news feed and will better recognize your brand in the future.

9. Test Image Posts vs. Link Posts

You may have noticed that not all Facebook promoted posts have a headline and link description.

For example, compare these two Facebook posts by Buffer:

The post on the left is a link post while the image on the right is an image post.

1. Link posts

The image on the left is a link post that you can create by copy-paste-ing your blog article’s URL into Facebook’s new post box.

PROS: As people click anywhere on the post, they’ll be taken to the landing page. So your entire Facebook post will be clickable.

CONS: Link posts usually take up a lot less space in the newsfeed as the image size is always 1200px x 628px.

2. Image posts

The image on the right is an image post which consists of an image and text.

PROS: Image posts take up a huge chuck on newsfeed real estate, meaning that they can catch more attention. Some brands, like The Dots, are even using image posts as Facebook ads.

CONS: As people click on the image, the image will open up on Facebook, not take them to your website. The only way for people to reach your URL is for them to click on the link inside the text.

Which one should you use: link posts or image posts?

Usually, image posts work well if you’re sharing visuals and targeting an existing fan base. They’re also great for brand awareness campaigns.

If your goal is to drive maximum amount of traffic to your blog, share your blog articles as link posts. This format also works well for Instagram advertising.

Pro tip: Use a shortened link in your image posts, to keep your text cleaner. Here’s Google’s link shortener to help you out.

10. Test Carousel and Slideshow Posts

Want to know a secret that 95% of Facebook marketers don’t know?

(It’s going to change your Facebook page’s feed forever)

Ok, here it comes…

You can also create carousel and slideshow format Facebook posts. They look just like carousel and slideshow ads, only you can publish them to your Facebook page.

Just click on the “Share a photo or video” icon.

When creating a carousel post, you can showcase up to 10 images from your website in a single post.

Just enter your blog’s URL, and Facebook will let you choose the images that will be included.

Promoting your latest blog posts is THE best use case for this kind of post.

Tip: If you use this type of post now, you’ll be among the first brands to do this.

11. Ask for Your Team’s Support

Once you’ve published your blog article on Facebook, you can take a deep breath and relax.

But only for a few minutes, because only 20% of the work is done. Even more important than the publishing is how you’re going to distribute your Facebook post.

The first thing to do right after you’ve published a Facebook post is to ask your team members to like and share it.

Just post the link to your Facebook post into a group chat or some other group with your colleagues.

That’s how you will get the first 10-20 likes and increase the Facebook post’s organic reach.

12. Promote Your Blog Post on Facebook

The next step (after you’ve had the support of your team members) is to get the love from your existing fans and customers.

The sad thing about Facebook posts is that they never reach all your page fans organically. In fact, Facebook Engineering Director Lars Backstrom has warned that the organic reach is getting record low.

In 2014, Social@Ogilvy found that organic reach for pages with more than 500k fans had dropped to as low as 2%. For pages with less than 500k fans, organic reach dropped to 6%.

Last year, Marketing Land reported Facebook’s organic traffic was down by 52% for publishers.

All numbers and stats considered, you’ll need to promote your Facebook post if you want it to reach more than 100 or 1,000 people.

13. Set Up a Facebook Post Promotion

To promote your blog article on Facebook, you have two options: setting up a Boosted post or a Facebook ad.

Let’s find out what’s the main difference.

1. Boosted post

Using a Boosted post is the easiest and fastest way to promote your Facebook post. Simply click on the “Boost Post” button and proceed to a 1-minute setup process.

PROS: Quick and easy. Gives “ok” results. Good option for beginners and small under $50 campaigns. You’ll get all the targeting options available for Facebook ads.

CONS: You can only boost a post to one target audience at a time which might often be limiting. You won’t be able to optimize the ad placements and schedule.

2. Facebook ad

To create a Facebook ad of a Facebook post, go to the Facebook Ads Manager and set up a new campaign.

When creating the visuals, you can select the “Use Existing Post” option and select your Facebook post.

PROS: You can optimize the ad placement, advertise the same Facebook post to multiple audiences, and optimize your ad delivery on reach/clicks/conversions – whatever you prefer.

CONS: If you’re not too familiar with Facebook advertising, it might take some time to set up the new ad campaign.

However, you can re-use the same Facebook ad campaign for promoting multiple blog posts. (Just create a new Ad Set every time)

If you’d like to learn more about setting up a Facebook ad campaign, read this article: From 0 to Results – How to Set Up Low-budget < $500 Facebook Campaigns

Final verdict: If you’re planning to spend more than $50 per Facebook promoted post, use the Facebook ad format. Otherwise, boost your posts to save time.

Small business? If $50 is significant amount money for your brand, also go with the Facebook ads option.

14. First, Advertise to Your Fans

Who are the people most likely to like and share with your Facebook post promotions?

Usually, it goes like this:

1. Your team
2.  Your fans
3. Your customers
4. People interested in your article’s topic

However, brands often set their Facebook promo targeting like this:

1. People interested in your article’s topic
2.  –
3.  –
4.  –

Before you promote your blog article to a wide audience of people (based on their interests and location), promote it to your fans and customers.

This way, you will get a nice basis of likes and shares from your fans. Moreover, they are the most important people to be informed about your new posts – you do want to keep the fan engagement high, right?

How to target your fans and customers?

First, you can target your Facebook page’s fans and their friends in a single click.

To target your customers, your can create a Facebook Custom Audience based on your customers’ email addresses and names.

Read more about Facebook and Instagram audiences in this guide: 84-point Guide to Master Instagram Targeting

15. Target Multiple Audiences

If your blog promotion’s budget is limited, you may not be able to do this.

However, if you’re willing to spend $100+ per a Facebook promoted post, you can create multiple target audiences to see which one performs best.

For example, you could test these five high-ROI Facebook promotion audiences:

1. People who have visited your blog in the past 30 days (Custom Audience)
2. People similar to your blog readers (Lookalike Audience)
3. Friends of your Facebook page fans (Saved Audience)
4. Interest-based audiences that align with your blog articles’ topic (Saved Audience)
5. Your newsletter subscribers, especially all inactive subscribers (Custom Audience)

Also, keep a close eye on your Facebook Ads manager reports to know which audiences show the highest engagement, best CPC, and convert on the offers on your blog.

16. Measure the Right Metrics

How do you measure whether a Facebook boosted post was successful or not?

Do you look at the number of impressions? The number of clicks? The reach?

All of these vanity metrics give you no real insight into how well (or not well at all) your Facebook promotions perform.

Facebook’s not making it any easier, only showing two irrelevant metrics in the Boosted post reports.

OK. Let’s cure this mistake and find out which Facebook post metrics truly matter.

Do not measure:

• Impressions
• Clicks
• Reach

Do measure:

• CTR
• CPC
• Time on page
• Pages visited
• Conversions

CTR – The click-through rate of your Facebook promoted post shows how relevant it is to the audience. A good CTR is anything above 1%, a really good CTR is above 2.5%

CPC – The cost-per-click shows how much you pay per one blog visitor. If two audiences you’re targeting have highly different CPCs but the same lead quality, you could allocate all promotion budget to the best-performing Ad Set.

Time on page – If you’re tracking your Facebook ad campaigns with UTM codes, you can easily check in the Google Analytics how much time people spent with your article. Always aim to target high-quality audiences that won’t immediately bounce away from your site.

Important: The Time on page in GA is the time between 2 interactive hits.

 The Time on page metric is accurate only if the page is not the last page in the session.

Pages visited – As people in your Facebook blog traffic visit more than one page, it means they’re interested in your blog content and highly engaged. You can increase the no. of pages visited by adding suggested articles in the sidebar and at the end of your article.

Conversions – You’re probably trying to convert your blog readers into email list subscribers and customers. You should always track whether your Facebook blog post promotions help to bring you new fans, leads, and revenue.

To get started with Facebook ad tracking, install the Facebook Pixel to your website.

If you’re interested in advanced ad reporting in the Facebook Ads Manager, see this guide: Instagram Ads Reporting and Optimization – Guide to 10x Results

Bonus Tips !!!

Just to make sure you’ll get the best expert knowledge for tracking and analyzing your Facebook ads, we asked Taavi Kalvi, one of the best Google Analytics and Tag Manager experts and the partner and Analytics Lead at Holini, to contribute two extra points to this article.

This ⬇⬇⬇ will change the way your track and measure your Facebook campaigns in Google Analytics.

17. Separate Paid and Non-paid Social Traffic

Sometimes, you might want to separate the paid and organic social media traffic in your Google Analytics reports.

This would make sense if you want to see how much (and what kind of) traffic came from organically sharing vs. promoting your blog article on Facebook.

Note that in order to separate these two traffic sources, you can’t use the same Facebook post for the promoted version. You’ll have to create a new Facebook ad with another URL destination.

Here’s how you should tag non-paid social media posts:

When tagging your non-paid social media posts and the domain as a source (facebook.com, linkedin.com, twitter.com, etc.), use “social” as a medium parameter value.

Example:

• utm_medium=social
• utm_source=facebook.com
• utm_campaign=summer+sale+2017

If you decide to use anything else as a medium (not “social”), make sure you follow the Default Channel definitions or modify your Channel Grouping settings if needed.

How to tag paid social media posts:

I would recommend using “paid+social” as a medium and defining it in the Default Channel Grouping settings as well. Plus (+) character between the words generates a space in GA.

Here’s how you can do it in GA:

If you don’t define “paid+social” as a medium in the Default Channel Grouping settings, it will go under “(Other)” channel in Google Analytics, not “Social” or “Paid Social”, and that’s not the result you want.

Important! Do not use “cpc” as a medium in Google Analytics because it’s defined as a “Paid Search Channel” by default.

If you’d like to dig deeper, you can read these in-depth Q&A article about the Google Analytics UTM parameters or UTM tags.

18. Fix the Fractured Facebook Reports

You’ve probably noticed that your social media traffic (e.g. from Facebook or Instagram) is reported on different lines in Google Analytics and it makes much harder for you to analyze the data and gather insights.

Here’s how your Google Analytics reports usually look like:

If you’d like to fix the reports and only see “facebook.com / referral” in your reports, you can implement the Search & Replace filter in Google Analytics.

That’s how it looks like:

Search string: ^.*facebook\.com$

Replace string: facebook.com

P.S. Filters do not apply retroactively to your data. They are only applied from the moment you create them.

And there you go – you will now see all Facebook traffic as one neat line per each link, giving you a better overview of how much traffic each of your Facebook promotions got.

TL;DR

If this article was too much for you to take in, BUT… 

…you still want to know all the hacks of how to promote your blog, here’s a handy checklist with everything we covered:

1. It always (99.99% of times) makes sense to share your blog articles on Facebook
2. Share your blog articles as Facebook page posts
3. Use the Facebook Audience Optimization feature
4. Take your time to write a powerful headline (use numbers, keep it actionable)
5. Write a compelling introduction (start with a question, make a bold statement)
6. Use symbols and emojis for extra attention
7. Craft the perfect Facebook post image (standard size is 1200px x 628px)
8. Avoid using stock photos and develop a strong brand language
9. Test large-format images vs. the regular link posts
10. Test carousel and slideshow formats when sharing posts on your Facebook page
11. Ask for your team’s support – get them to like and share
12. Promote your blog articles on Facebook for higher reach
13. Set up a Facebook Boosted post or promote your blog article as a Facebook ad
14. First, advertise to your fans, brand ambassadors, and existing customer base
15. Test multiple target audiences (past blog readers, people interested in the topic)
16. Measure the right metrics (CTR, CPC, time on page, pages per session, conversions)
17. Track paid and non-paid social media traffic separately in Google Analytics
18. See Facebook traffic as one line, not five lines in Google Analytics by using Search & Replace filter

There you go. Now go to your Facebook page and share a blog article, then create a Facebook promoted post or an ad, and enjoy the increased blog traffic!

The post How to promote your blog in 2018 – 18 tactics for more traffic via Facebook appeared first on Marketing Fix blog.

That exactly why in this chapter of the Instagram Advertising Guide, we’ll be focusing on the hacks and tips for creating successful Instagram ad design and writing good ad copy.

After reading this guide, you’ll know the answer to the following questions:

• What are the latest Instagram ad and video specs?
• How to create a winning Instagram ad design?
• How to write good Instagram ad copy?
• What are some of the best Instagram ad examples?
• How to set up your Instagram ad copy?

Ready to nail your first Instagram ad design? In this case, keep reading!A Quick Overview of Instagram Ad Specs

Like any other advertising platform, Instagram has a set of requirements for its ad creatives. If you want to find even more specific information, see the complete Instagram Ad Specs and Size Guide.

For a fuller set of current Instagram and Facebook ad visuals to model, see the Meta ads gallery, sorted by industry

Instagram ad image specs:

• Image ratio: 1:1
• Image size: 1080 x 1080 pixels
• Caption: Text only, 125 characters recommended
• Image ratio: Landscape (1.91:1), Square (1:1), Vertical (4:5)
• Minimum resolution: 600 x 315 pixels (1.91:1 landscape) / 600 x 600 pixels (1:1 square) / 600 x 750 pixels (4:5 vertical)
• Maximum resolution: 1936 x 1936 pixels
• File type: .jpg or .png
• Maximum size: 30MB
• Your image should include minimal text.
• Caption: Max 2200 characters

Instagram ad video specs:

• Instagram videos have to be created at 72px minimum resolution
• Minimum resolution: 600 x 315 pixels (1.9:1 landscape) / 600 x 600 pixels (square)
• Instagram videos must be between 2.5-30 seconds long
• Video aspect ratio: 1.9:1 to 1:1
• File type: .mp4.
• The recommended size limit for your Instagram videos is 50MB
• The maximum size is 4GB
• The caption length text for video ads: text only, max 2,200 characters
• Supported video codecs: H.264, VP8
• Frame Rate: 30fps max
• Supported audio codecs: AAC, Vorbis
• The thumbnail image ratio should match the aspect ratio of your video

Instagram stories specs:

• Format: Full screen vertical ad (9:16)
• Recommended Resolution: 1080 x 1920
• Minimum Resolution: 600 x 1067
• File Types: .mp4 or .mov (Video) or .jpg or .png (Photo)
• Recommended Video Codecs: h.264, VP8
• Recommended Audio Codecs: AAC, Vorbis
• Maximum File Size: 4GB (Video) or 30MB (Photo)
• Video Length: Maximum 15 seconds
• Photo Content: Visible for 5 seconds
• Captions are not currently available. Any text must be part of the video of image file

Up next, we’ll share with you our top Instagram design and copywriting hacks that will help you get more conversions at a lower cost.

Instagram Ad Design Tip #1: Create Colourful Ad Images

Research has discovered that people make up their minds within 90 seconds of their initial interaction with either people or products (or your ads). And guess what: 62%-90% of their decision-making is based on colors alone.

Creating colourful Instagram ad images helps your ads to get noticed. You’ll get bonus points for using bright energetic colours that spark positive emotions and make people more interested in your offer.

Here’s an Instagram ad example by Staples, displaying an image that includes highly colourful details.

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Bonus tip: Learn colour psychology to find out which colours appeal to specific audiences and match with your offers.

Instagram Ad Design Tip #2: Include In-image Text

If your Instagram ad image is the first thing people notice, it makes sense to place your key message right there in the image.

However, keep in mind that Facebook doesn’t like ad images with too much copy in them and will start to limit your ads’ reach if they’re heavy on copy.

You can test whether your Instagram ads get a pass by using Facebook’s Text Overlay Tool.

Here’s a good Instagram ad example by Spring, featuring a comment from Vogue.

Bonus tip: You can also use your customer testimonials as in-image ad copy to increase people’s trust in your brand.

Instagram Ad Design Tip #3: A/B Test Your Ad Visuals

Consumer Acquisition found that images are arguably the most important part of your ads — they’re responsible for 75%-90% of ad performance.

This means that changing your Instagram promotion’s image can result in a significant change in your campaign results.

Here are 10 ad A/B testing ideas to start with:

• A/B test your Instagram ad audience – target people in multiple locations, age groups, and having various interests
• A/B test various Instagram ad types – test carousel ads and video ads in addition to regular image ads
• A/B test ad image colours – use the colour psychology to find out which colours to use
• A/B test a stock photo vs. an illustration – some people prefer photos whil others find animated images more eye-catching

• A/B test in-image text vs. no text – create ad images with some copy on it and others without any copy to see what works best
• A/B test your call-to-actions – experiment with several CTAs to know which makes your audience act upon the ad (e.g. make a purchase)
• A/B test your Facebook ad headline – write up to 5 different headlines to see which one is preferred by the most people
• A/B test ad copy with emojis vs. no emojis – some people like emojis in Facebook ads while other
• A/B test you landing pages – instead of sending all ad traffic on a single landing page, set up multiple destinations to see what works
• A/B test your Instagram ad size – You can use several image sizes in your Instagram ads

To make sure your Instagram A/B tests are a success, read this Facebook Ad Testing Guide for Beginners.

Instagram Ad Copywriting Tip #1: Use Short and Catchy Ad Text

People’s attention spam on Instagram is short and that’s why you need to deliver your offer as quickly and straightforwardly as possible.

While Instagram allows a long ad copy, we recommend that you keep your ad text under 200 characters.

Here’s an interesting example by Bloomberg Business. P.S. this is a Facebook App Install ad campaign, so as someone clicks on the ad, they’ll be taken to the App Store.

Bonus tip: Showcase your products in the Instagram ad image to show people exactly what they can buy.

Instagram Ad Copywriting Tip #2: Use Actionable Wording

The decision-making part of our brain also happens to be the most primitive, making it act on simple and actionable words.

That’s why, you should always aim to make your Instagram ad copy highly actionable.

Here’s a quick list of actionable verbs to get your started:

• Try
• Buy
• Get
• Start
• Sign up
• Learn
• Read
• Save

Here’s an Instagram ad example by Chambord that starts with the call-to-action “Buy a limited edition gift set to…”

Bonus tip: Create a sense of urgency by letting your audience know that the advertised offer’s available for a limited time only.

Try these hacks:

• Define clear dates, e.g. “Today only” or “Offer ends in 24h”
• Offer a significant discount, e.g. “Get 60% off today”
• Keep your offer simple and brief

Instagram Ad Copywriting Tip #3: Focus on the Benefit

To most customers, what they’re going to get out of using a product is more important than how it looks.

If your Instagram ad image’s goal is to show people how your product looks, it’s your ad copy that should communicate your product’s greatest benefit to the user.

Here’s an Instagram ad example by Livday.sf that emphasizes the app’s benefits both in the ad image and in the ad copy.

How to Set Up Your Instagram Ads

You can set up your promotions’ copy and images in the Instagram campaign setup process.

Note that when setting up a Facebook ad campaign with multiple placements including the Facebook newsfeeds and Instagram, your ads’ layout will differ according to its placement.

For example, while Facebook newsfeed ads feature a headline and link description, your Instagram ads only have one ad text per ad.

You can review how your ads will look by using the Ad Previews tool.

After you’ve set up your Instagram ad copy and added an image/video, it’s time to publish your ad campaign!

Now that you know everything about Instagram ad specs and design, it’s time to learn more about Instagram ads cost and and bidding.

Additional reading:

• 240+ Best Facebook Ad Examples (2026 Update)
• 28 Facebook Advertising Hacks for Skyrocketing Results
• 25 Facebook Ad Design Hacks to Make More People Click
• Instagram for Business – The Beginner’s Guide (2018 Edition)
• Instagram Ad Targeting – 84-point Guide for Major Success

The post Instagram Ad Design and Copy – The Beginner’s Guide (2018 Update) appeared first on Marketing Fix blog.