Facebook remains one of the best ways to reach your target audience, offering you the chance to connect with millions of users on what continues to be the world’s largest social network.
Although Facebook uses an algorithm that’s constantly changing to make it more difficult than it used to be to connect with users, the platform’s micro-targeting features enable businesses to find the specific people they want to attract. Through Facebook, you can place your business front and center for users who are most likely to be interested in your services or products.
If you want to take advantage of this potentially invaluable marketing resource, there are several ads you can use for your campaigns. The types of ads you use will depend on how you want to connect with your audience.
Image Ads
Facebook image ads are among the best starting points for Facebook advertising. You can create them in very little time by boosting one of your page’s existing posts with an image.
While image ads are often simple, you can keep them interesting by using engaging photos and accompanying text content. Image ads are a potentially eye-catching way to bring more people to your page and, ultimately, your website.
Video Ads
You can also further engage audiences by using video ads, which you can run in either your News Feed or your Stories. You can also have them appear as in-video ads for longer videos with ad breaks. You can use these ads to showcase your products or provide audiences a glimpse of your team at work.
Keep in mind that you don’t necessarily need to film anything to create a video ad. Appealing animations can also attract audiences or entice prospective customers with offers. You can also target specific locations with geo-specific offers while showing users which of their Facebook friends already like your page.
Video Polls
In addition to video ads, you can also use polls for further engagement. Video poll ads are mobile-only ads that feature an interactive poll. According to Facebook, these ads are actually better at increasing brand awareness than traditional video ads.
Carousel Ads
Using as many as 10 videos or images, carousel ads are great for showcasing your services or products. You can even use these ads to highlight specific benefits of one or more products, or use several photos to create a panorama for your business that users can scroll through within a single carousel.
Slideshow Ads
Slideshow ads give marketers a simple easy-to-use method for creating brief video ads made from multiple photos, video clips, or even text. Don’t have your own videos to use? Not a problem–simply select stock photos that are ideal for your ad using the Ads Manager.
Slideshows can feature the same kind of motion as video ads while using far less bandwidth to allow for faster loading times, which is particularly useful for engaging users with a slower internet connection.
These ads are among the easiest tools to utilize for your Facebook marketing campaigns.
Instant Experience Ads
Formerly known as Canvas, Instant Experience ads are full-screen ads that load around 15 times faster than mobile websites outside of Facebook.
You can use these ads to link to other Instant Experiences to allow more access to additional instant content.
Dynamic Ads
Dynamic ads give marketers the ability to promote targeted products to customers who are more likely to purchase them based on their interests.
Say someone has visited a product page on your website or added an item to their shopping cart via your online store, but then neglected to finalize their purchase. You can use dynamic ads in these cases to target those specific products the user was interested in, getting them to appear in the user’s Facebook feed.
With the help of these ads, you’ll be able to remind users of the item they were interested in, potentially bringing them back to make one or more purchases. You can use these in conjunction with collection, image, carousel, and Stories ads.
Lead Ads
These mobile-only ads are designed to make it easier for users to provide contact information without the need to type a lot. You can use these ads to collect subscriptions to your newsletters, product trial signups, or requests for more information about your product or service offerings.
You can also use Messenger bots to qualify prospective customers or clients while lowering the cost of lead generation.
Stories Ads
A recent Scientific American study found that 72 percent of millennials don’t rotate their smartphones to view widescreen videos, but with Stories ads you can take advantage of the phone’s vertical format to take up the entire screen.
Augmented Reality Ads
Augmented reality (AR) ads use features such as animation and filters that encourage interaction with your brand. It’s still relatively new, but many people are trying this feature and finding it to be useful to enhance their Stories ads.
Collection Ads
Collection ads are paid ads that are only for mobile devices. They allow businesses to highlight five products that customers can purchase in a single collection.
These ads work with Instant Experience ads to allow people to make a purchase without leaving Facebook. This is particularly useful for those shoppers who don’t have the time or sufficient connectivity to visit your website but still want to buy your products.
Messenger Ads
Over 1.3 billion people use Facebook Messenger every month, making this a great way to connect with your audience. You can create Messenger ads by simply selecting Messenger and the Facebook feed as the placement for your ads during the ad creation process.
Users also have the ability to push “click-to-Messenger” ads through the Facebook feed. These feature call-to-action buttons that open Messenger conversations with the business’s Facebook page to allow people to engage in a conversation with your customer service reps or salespeople.
Playable Ads
Playable ads are also becoming more and more popular among users as a form of brand interactivity. Developers can create a mini-game that functions as an ad while providing entertainment value.
Regardless of the types of ads you use, you can give your Facebook marketing strategies what they need to thrive and dominate the market. Used in conjunction with your other marketing tools, Facebook will continue to be one of the most important assets to utilize in 2020.
If you have any questions, our team would be more than happy to help. Call us today at 215-393-9787.
