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3 Things You’re Probably Not Doing With Facebook Ads

by Brian Colling - June 09, 2020

Pew Research Center reports as of early 2019, 69% of adult individuals were on Facebook, which is a significant advertising opportunity for businesses. Do you ever see the Facebook ads in your newsfeed and wonder if they work? The answer is they can be very effective if you’re using them the right way. 

Here are three things you probably aren’t doing with Facebook ads. 


3 Things You’re Probably Not Doing With Facebook Ads


1. Linking Facebook Pixel to Your Website

A Facebook pixel is a piece of code you place on your site. It collects information helping you:

• Track your Facebook ad conversions

• Build targeted audiences with future ads

• Optimize ad performance

• Remarket to individuals who have taken some type of action on your site already

The Facebook pixel works by placing cookies and triggering them to track users while they’re interacting on your website or your Facebook ads.

Why You Need to Set Up the Pixel 

Conversion Tracking: The Facebook pixel lets you see how many individuals are interacting with your site after they view your Facebook ad. You’re able to track customers across all devices. See if your customers tend to view your Facebook ads through their mobile devices, but then switch to their desktop computers before they make a purchase or vice versa. Facebook pixel data will help you better refine your Facebook strategy and calculate your ROI.

Retargeting: Facebook dynamic ads and retargeting pixel data help you show targeted ads to individuals who have visited your website already. You can decide on getting extremely granular here. For instance, you could show individuals a Facebook ad for the precise product they added to your website’s wishlist or one they abandoned in your site’s shopping cart.

Create Lookalike Audiences: The targeting data on Facebook helps audiences of unknown individuals with similar demographics, interests, or likes to those who already interact with your site to build on your potential customer base.

Trackability / Tools and Metrics: You have to install the Facebook pixel to use custom audiences from your site, web conversion campaigns, and dynamic ads. The pixel is also tracking metrics like cost per conversion or cost per lead.

2. Using Facebook Video Ads

With video ads gaining more attention in Facebook newsfeeds, many top brands are using video ads in their marketing and promotional campaigns.

Higher Engagement: Facebook video ads aren’t just a trend to follow; they’re the ideal strategy for obtaining leads, engaging visitors, and fueling customer engagement. There are billions of users on Facebook, making it the perfect platform for promoting your products and services. Nothing grabs more attention than compelling videos. 

More Opportunity for Text / Description: When working with Facebook video ads, you’ll want to add captions to your videos. Why? 85% of all Facebook videos are viewed with no sound. Make your video ads stand out even when the audio is off. Adding captions is the way to do it. According to internal tests, Facebook video ads with captions increase the view time of the videos by 12% on average. Video ads are also a smart way to get around Facebook’s 20% text rule.

Increase Branding:  A common objective in Facebook video advertising is brand awareness. You should be getting your branding name or logo within the first few seconds of your video. According to some video marketing data meta-analysis, consumers have a 23% higher chance of remembering which brand made a video if identified or featured in the first few. This statistic will drop to 13% if the brand is featured after four seconds.

Retargeting: One of the most significant benefits of Facebook video ads is they help you build an engaged audience. You can retarget individuals who have watched a certain percentage of your video, whether it’s three seconds or 10 seconds, and show another ad to them. Additionally, you can exclude the 100% video view users, so you’re not serving them the same ad over and over.

3. Optimizing Your Facebook Ad Placements 

It’s one thing to create a captivating ad campaign, but if you’re not optimizing its placement, you’re leaving potential conversions on the table. Here are three essential factors related to optimizing your ad placements. 

Multiple Placements and Sizes: The area you run your ads are known as “placements,” and with Facebook, you can have four placements for which you run your ads: Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and Audience Network. You should create different sizes for each placement ensuring every ad will be the correct size and won’t be cropped. Incorrect image sizes can lead to odd-looking or off-putting ads.

Automatic Placements: If you were to start up a brand new Facebook advertising account today, you’d likely see that your ads default to “automatic placements.” Facebook has everything already customized for you to what it’s found to be effective.

Optimize Placement: You can create various-sized ads for each placement. Each ad will be the proper size for each location where it appears, which makes your ads stand out since they’re the appropriate size and therefore won’t auto-crop.

If you’ve put in a lot of time and money creating Facebook ad campaigns, and you’re not incorporating one, two, or all three strategies to optimize your Facebook ads, it’s time to start.

You may also enjoy this article: Guide to Commenting on Paid Facebook Advertisements

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