The History and Power of Facebook Ads All Marketers Should Know

Here are a few things we can all use to improve our marketing efforts on Facebook.

Remember how the only available paid functionality on Facebook was a boosted post?

Since 2007 paid ads have been part of Facebook, however, Fan Pages weren’t introduced by the social network until 2008. And then, in 2009, we were able to see the first form of advanced targeting by demographics and location. This was a huge breakthrough in terms of advertising on Facebook. 

Understanding how Facebook Ads has progressed is important because it’s the only way to see how far they managed to revolutionize the hub. Since 2015 things started changing fast. Even if you were a marketer it was hard to catch up on all of the changes. One thing was for sure, things were changing for the better.

Facebook introduced functionalities such as pixel, custom audiences, dynamic product list ads, and lead generation ads. And, they are continuing to expand and innovate on advertising, Facebook is launching new interactive mobile ads in the future. The biggest social network on the planet has also had the greatest influence on other social media companies too, such as Twitter and Pinterest, as they have been trying to play catch up to keep up.

Both have introduced similar functionality to help many businesses to reach their target audience efficiently and effectively. Even Snapchat is now getting into the ads game. Even though it seems like we’ve finally caught up with the changes, there are some small things that not all marketers use frequently for better performance or are even aware of.

Here are a few things we can all use to improve our marketing efforts on Facebook.

 

1. Creative Hub

Many of us store all of our creatives on a local folder on our computer. We all do this because is the most efficient way to store and access things. However, files can get messy if we save everything in a local folder.

Facebook Creative Hub is the perfect place to create and store all of your creatives and ads.

On the Hub you can:

  • Get inspiration from other brands
  • Edit and manage mockups
  • Check the quality of your ads and increase the chance of approval
  • Learn about new ad formats
  • Learn about new Instagram functionalities
  • Get hold of mobile advertising
  • Share all of your ideas with your teammates
  • Preview and edit all of the ads in their natural environment
  • Export everything, simple and with a single click of a button

The Creative Hub offers the most optimal working environment to prepare you’re A/B test campaigns and manage multiple clients as you will be able to see in real-time how everything will look like.

The best part is the fact that you can get inspiration from other brands. Just find the get inspired button and analyze multiple successful ads activated by brands across the globe.

Find the ones that are in the same industry or have a similar target audience as you and prepare your ad copy following their examples.

2. Audience Insights 

Facebook Audience Insights will help you get the most out of data available for your target audience. Many companies use this functionality to learn more about the online behavior of their target audience. In some cases, you can use the available data to complete your persona questionnaire and ultimately redefine your marketing strategy.

Just by entering a few parameters, you will be able to see:

  1. The age span
  2. Relationship status
  3. Interests
  4. Liked fan pages

You can use this information to:

  • Optimize A/B tests
  • Improve your overall cost per click and performance of Facebook ads

3. Lookalike audiences 

Lookalike audiences can be created from Custom Audiences with data from your existing Facebook Pixel, your mobile app data, or from your Facebook Page. You can also do this from existing customer lists. Doing this, allows you to expand on your best-performing audience groups on Facebook. 

Along with the above, you can also choose the size of the Lookalike Audience that can be smaller (to match your source audience more closely) or larger audiences (to increase your reach). Facebook recommends audiences between 1,000 to 50,000 people and the quality of the source matters. 

You can create a lookalike audience from your remarketing target audience or the traffic on your website. By doing so, your targeting will be on point and you will be able to reach a completely new set of people that have the same characteristics as your website visitors.

Using Lookalike Audiences, you can broaden the reach of your existing customers through an iterative process. For example, for many of our E-Commerce clients, we are constantly uploading or updating these audiences with full customer lists or creating customer lists that are top converters to match the ideal customer we are targeting. 

4. Carousel Ads 

Video has become the best way to promote your business and the most widely used format in advertising as of late. People engage more with visual content and Facebook encourages the usage of video everywhere. 

However, don’t forget about using Carousel Ads. This interactive ad format gives you the opportunity to promote ten pictures or videos next to each other and all at once.

Why this format is so good?

Carousel Ads are amazing because they give you the freedom to be creative and tell a story about your brand, product, or experience throughout the carousel and lets you express your brand’s voice. This format also looks great in the news feed and people automatically engage more. You can create a really engaging ad with Carousel Ads in a very creative way that will attract your customers attention and get noticed.

Facebook is creating an all-inclusive hub for marketing people to better manage, create, store, share and analyze ads. Making yourself aware and becoming more familiar with everything available to you will give you the best opportunity to create  ads on Facebook that convert at a higher rate. Overall, it’s important to stay on top of everything available to you and the trends that are upcoming so you can continue to engage audiences and convert customers. Facebook is attempting to keep you within the platform and never have a need to leave, thus making you a much more organized and efficient marketing team.