How To Create Facebook Video Ads Successfully
Around 40% of small business owners achieved the best Return on Ad Spend on Facebook. This figure shows why Facebook video ads are important for small businesses that want to tap into new audiences.
If you’re a small business owner looking to learn about Facebook video ads, you’re at the right place. We will cover EVERYTHING you should know about how to run video ads on Facebook in this blog – let’s dive in!
Types of Facebook Ads
Before you start creating Facebook video ads, you need to familiarize yourself with different types of video ads on Facebook to choose the best ad format for your specific needs easily.
Here are the four types of video ads on Facebook:
1. Feed
Feed video ads show up in the Facebook feed of a user. These ads are considered traditional video ads on Facebook, which is why traditional marketers only rely on these ads.
2. Instant Experiences
Instant Experiences are video ads that convince the viewers to enter a full-screen mobile video experience to learn what you share about your brand and your offerings.
3. Stories
Video ads appearing in Stories look like a story shared by a person’s friend or a page they follow. Stories video ads are normally no longer than 10 seconds.
4. In-Stream
In-Stream video ads appear in the videos that another creator publishes. These ads should be highly persuasive to make a user skip the video they’re watching to follow your CTA.
Create Your Facebook Ad Strategy
Having a fool-proof Facebook ads strategy will save you a lot of time, money, and effort. Here’s how you can create your custom Facebook ad strategy from scratch that can set you apart from your competitors:
1. Define Your Goals
One of the biggest benefits of Facebook video ads is that these ads can help you supercharge your business’s growth. You can write down the goals you want to achieve from Facebook video ads and track if the ads are working in your favor or not.
Defining your goals will make it easier for you to set a budget and choose your creative workflow. Here are some questions to ask yourself if you find it hard to define your goals:
- Do you want to get more leads through Facebook ads?
- Are you looking to increase your sales through Facebook ads?
- Does branding come to your mind when you think about Facebook ads?
2. Learn Your Audience
Spending a lot of money on Facebook ads will be worthless if you don’t know about your audience in the first place. Remember that if your ads are not engaging, entertaining, and relevant to your target audience, you won’t be able to achieve the goals you set for yourself.
This is why you need to do a proper audience analysis before you create your Facebook ads strategy. You can use online tools to generate “audience persona” and try making a guess about what your audience wants. However, hiring a digital agency to unearth important information about your target audience is a better option.
3. Spy on Your Competitors
You don’t necessarily have to do everything from scratch when creating your Facebook ads strategy. If you want to save time and achieve your goals faster, you need to learn a thing or two from your competitors.
Essential Tips for Competitor Analysis
- Shortlist Your Competitors
- Understand Their Target Audience
- Write Down Their Company’s History
- Check Their Market Share
- Uncover Their Strategies
- Create Custom Strategy from Data You Gather
A proper competitor analysis can provide you with many details on how to use Facebook ads to get maximum ROI. For example, if your competitor is relying only on in-stream Facebook video ads, you can analyze why they are focusing on this specific approach.
Analyzing the strategies of your competitors can take a lot of time and effort. If you are running short of time and can’t wait around while you analyze your competitors, you should hire a digital agency that can do competitor analysis for you in the shortest possible time.
4. Establish Your Video Team
Once you define your goals and pinpoint the Facebook ads strategies that are working for your competitors, you need to move on to establishing your video team.
Setting up an in-house team of video creators is not a feasible option for small businesses. It’s a better option to hire freelance video editors if you want to save money. Freelance video creators can create ads for you according to your budget, but it can get difficult for you to stay in the loop with freelancers and oversee the project.
The best option for small business owners is to hire a social media agency that can create Facebook ads, publish those ads, and track ROI.
5. Start Your Campaign
Once your Facebook video ads are ready, you have to move on to the final phase of publishing your ads. Remember that you cannot waste your money publishing ads all at once. It’s your job to identify what’s the best way for you to publish your Facebook ads.
You will find it easier to set up your ad campaign if you’ve done a proper competitor analysis. For example, if your competitor runs video ads on specific days of the week, you can copy their strategy and only run ads on those exact days. You can also run ads on different days if you’re willing to do A/B Testing.
How to Set Up Facebook Ads
Here is the step-by-step guide on how to create Facebook video ads:
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Step 1 – Navigate to the “Ads Manager”
The “Ads Manager” located on the left side of your Facebook feed is the Facebook video ads creator you will use to create video ads.
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Step 2 – Click on “Create”
You will be guided on how you can create your video ad on Facebook once you click on the “Create Ad” button.
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Step 3 – Choose Your Objective
Next, you’ll be asked to choose a video that suits your objective. Here is the list of objectives defined by Facebook:
- Feed
- Marketplace
- Video feeds
- Stories
- In-stream videos
- Search results
- Instant Articles
You will have to click on “Continue” after you select your objective.
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Step 4 – Enter Your Details
You will be asked to choose your estimated budget, target audience, placement of your video ads, and optimisations in this step. Make sure you enter all the details carefully.
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Step 5 – The Format Section
In the Format section, you can choose your objective and decide how your ads will be shown to your audience.
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Step 6 – Upload Your Video
There are three approaches to uploading video:
- Click “Add Media” and then choose “Click Video” if you’re uploading a single video.
- Go to “Ad creative” and click “Create video” if you want to create a video from images.
- Go to “Ad creative” and click “Add media” if you want to show Carousel video ads.
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Step 7 – Hit the “Publish” Button
You are allowed to click on the Publish button once you add text, links, and enable tracking in Ads Manager.
Facebook Ad Best Practices
Creating a budget and running your Facebook video ads without avoiding mistakes will result in a total waste of your money. If you want to increase the ROI of your Facebook ads, you need to adopt the Facebook video ads best practices mentioned below.
1. Create Videos with No Sound
Most Facebook users who watch ads on Facebook mute the ads when watching them. As your target audience doesn’t really listen to a redundant script or any “stock” background music, it’s better to create Facebook ads without sound.
You should avoid adding a “voiceover” to your Facebook ads as hardly anyone is going to listen to the audio. It’s better to use the captions that Facebook lets you generate automatically. Only add calming background music to your video ad if you find it necessary.
2. Get Straight to the Topic
There’s no need to delve into the technical details of the product you’re selling through Facebook video ads. Remember that you only have less than ten seconds to captivate your viewer’s attention.
If you want the viewer to take your desired action after watching your ad, you shouldn’t beat the bush and get straight to the topic. Minimize the Facebook video ad length so people want to view your ad from the start till the end.
3. Choose Powerful CTAs
Almost all of the best Facebook video ads have a CTA that triggers the viewers to take action. As Facebook allows you to add a CTA to your video ads, it’s better to use this feature and place a powerful CTA that can persuade your viewers through videos.
Here is a list of compelling CTAs that you can use for your Facebook ad strategy:
List of CTAs for Facebook Video Ads That People Can’t Help But Click
- Shop now
- Send WhatsApp Message
- Sign Up
- Subscribe
- Try in camera
- Get Quote
- Watch More
- Get Showtimes
- Contact Us
- Download
- Learn More
- See Menu
- Book Now
- Send Message
- Request Time
4. Be Specific about Your Audience
You don’t necessarily want to show Facebook video ads to everyone in your target audience. When running video ads, you only have to target those people from your target audience that are more likely to try your business offerings.
Source: similarweb.com
For example, if you already have an established brand online, you should target those people who already interact with pages like yours. Targeting those people through video ads will make it easier for you to achieve your goals when creating your Facebook video ad strategy.
5. Repurpose Your Good Content
If you have been creating video content for digital marketing channels, you can repurpose it and use it to create Facebook ads. Doing so will help you get good results from your ads and save you a lot of time and effort.
You can repurpose:
- A video that performed well on Facebook organically
- A video that helped you get new subscribers on YouTube
- A Video Sales Letter that performed well on your website
You should only try to repurpose your top 1% video content. For example, if a video you published didn’t get high engagement, CTR, and watch rate, you should not use that video to create Facebook ads regardless of how much you like it.
6. Make a Flexible Budget
Trying to get great results from a meager budget or spending everything you have on Facebook video ads is not going to help you achieve your Facebook ads. You need to be careful about your budget to ensure you get maximum ROI.
Source: statusbrew.com
For example, if one of your video ads didn’t perform well on Facebook, you should avoid wasting more money on it. A better option instead is to boost those ads that performed the best. You should track the metrics of your ads carefully so you can pick what ads have brought the best results.
7. Keep Mobile Users in Mind
Most Facebook “scrollers” use Facebook through their smartphones. As a small business owner trying to achieve your business goals through Facebook, you should publish “mobile-first” video ads that can better engage your target audience.
Short but persuasive Facebook vertical video ads make it easier to engage mobile users. Use the 4:5 Ratio recommended by Facebook when creating smartphone ads.
8. Don’t Forget About CPM Bidding
If you want your ads to “autoplay” on Facebook. CPM stands for Cost Per Impression. In this model, you have to pay Facebook every time your video ad plays automatically in the Facebook feed of a user.
Using CPM bidding is a better option for you if you want to get more leads on Facebook. As Facebook is a platform that engages users through distractions, you should use disruptive ways like auto-playing your ad to achieve your business goals.
9. Determine Your KPIs
Creating a video ads strategy doesn’t mean you can magically achieve all your business goals. Maintaining a proper check and balance in your Facebook ad strategy is necessary to maximize your ROI and avoid steps that don’t bring results.
10. Follow the Trends
The best way to make your ads more engaging to your target audience is to jump on the bandwagon of trends. Facebook lovers love to watch trendy and viral content. If you use CPM bidding and create Facebook video ads that look like viral videos, you can easily maximize your ROI from Facebook ads.
Final Words
Facebook video ads can be highly effective for small businesses if run properly. Set some time aside from your routine to learn how to create persuasive Facebook video ads by following the tips mentioned above. You can contact us to create and implement a Facebook video ad strategy for your small business if you’re busy and want quick results.
