Facebook Advertising is an amazing tool for businesses that need to target specific users, but it can be tricky to understand.
You might have seen the Adverts tools, even dared to draft an advert, maybe even ran an advert campaign.
However, you only really see success through research and trial and error. This blog post is designed to help you understand the importance of advertising, how you can ensure you get the best results and which ad type will work best to achieve your goal.
Best Practices for Choosing an Advert Type
What is your goal?
Before you begin the process you need to know what your goal is.
This will often clarify which advert type you will need, as each type is designed to fulfill a particular goal or activity.
Narrow down the advert types
Each advert type suits different campaign goals. Although some types suit more than one goal.
For instance, a Clicks to Website, Website Conversion and Lead Generation ad will all suit an objective of driving downloads for an ebook.
You should spend time testing these different options with your copy and design assets to discover which will be most effective for you.
It's often worth considering your audience - which type of ad will they respond best to? This includes placement - are your audience more likely to discover the ad on Instagram or on their desktop feed, for instance?
Write copy and create design assets
There are now so many options for your design, including single image, carousel, canvas and video. Choose which suits you best, remembering to use images with no or little text. If you're struggling for a quality image, Facebook allows you to select from a host of Shutterstock images in the advert process, free of charge.
Keep your text, concise, relevant and suitable for the audience and don't forget to test different CTAs.
The Facebook Advert Types You Can Choose From
Brand Awareness
Get your brand name and products 'out there' to as many people as possible.
It can be used for a variety of campaigns but it is best suited to sharing that 'not-to-be-missed' content
Clicks to Website
A lot of campaigns are aimed at getting website visitors to take specific actions. The main advert type for this campaign goal is 'Clicks to Website' as it will allow you to get people to the specific landing page for your chosen goal - i.e. contact form, landing page form, blog post etc.
Event
You don't have to just promote your Facebook page or website - you can also promote a Facebook Event that you set up.
Bear in mind that if you wish to encourage sign ups on a specific event page on your website or Eventbrite, you will need a 'Clicks to Website' ad.
This ad type only works with promoting events setup on Facebook Events.
Lead Generation (Full Form)
One of the more recent ad types is 'Lead Generation'. This takes the step out of the conversion process that requires you to formerly set up a 'Clicks to Website' ad and then the user would be directed to a landing page form on your website.
With this ad type your user can stay on Facebook and you can collect information without forcing them to leave the app or page they're on. Instead they will get a Facebook form, with your logo and form options to complete.
Post Engagement
A 'Post Engagement' ad allows your company to not only share the ad design and copy but also the post's engagements, to encourage further engagements.
This is great if you've got some 'not-to-be-missed' content or media that you wish to share - this is how you make content 'go viral'.
It is a great way to encourage more engagement-based activity as well as finding organic followers. This advert type lets new potential followers see the kind of content you publish and includes a 'Like page' button on the post.
Page Likes
This is a best-suited ad type to those marketers that put lots of effort and content into their Facebook page's content.
Remember, if you'd like to accomplish two goals with one ad, you can ad a 'Like page' call to action on other ad types, such as the 'Post Engagements' advert.
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