INTRODUCTION TO FACEBOOK ADVERTISING

Yes, today is the day! You, yes you, are going to learn about Facebook advertising!!

Why now? Well, we’ve seen entrepreneurs put off Facebook advertising for far too long.

We get it, Facebook can make it intimidating to get started, and spending money on marketing, albeit necessary, can be scary

But, it’s our job to change all that by demystifying the Facebook advertising process.

We’ll Simplify Facebook Advertising –
in Three Easy Steps!

Look familiar? It’s not  Déjà vu, but another one of our step-by-step blog posts.  That means, it’s a culmination of info and real from-the-field insights we’ve gathered in the past. 
 
But, this post is routinely updated to ensure you’ll always get the latest advice to kill Facebook advertising efforts for your brand or client! 
 
If you missed our last one, here it is: How to Use Instagram to Grow Your Business.
 
Okay, let’s get right into it so you don’t waste another minute without Facebook advertising $ coming in.

STEP 1: FACEBOOK ADVERTISING INDUSTRY TRENDS

Honestly, launching ad campaigns can be scary. Of course, you don’t want to waste a bunch of money on Facebook advertising campaigns that don’t convert. 

Our first piece of advice? Simply, don’t reinvent the wheel.

Really, the smartest marketer in the room knows what their competition is up to. Start here, by pulling existing inspiration from your industry’s trends to educate yourself on what’s already working.

 Yep, we’re suggesting you spy on your competitors before getting started!

Find the Competition

Now, if you don’t already know who your competitors are, here is a simple way you can find them!

Go to your Instagram profile, then click the arrow next to “Contact”. Up next, Instagram should populate with various accounts that are similar to yours.

Sift through the results,  finding some direct competitors. Go on, repeating this process on more like-minded profiles to discover additional competitors.

Make a List

For this purpose, make a list of 3-5 top Facebook advertising competitors you admire in your space.

On our team, we like to add ours to a spreadsheet that lists the competitor’s assets like Instagram, their following, and website. That way, we can quickly check up on these accounts.

Spy on Their Facebook Advertising Library 

Onto the next step, see what type of ads your competition is running. Above all, never copy and paste their work. In any case, that’s not only plagiarism – your audience will see right through it.
 
To start, go to  The Facebook Ad Library and type in your first competitor’s name. Soo effortlessly, Facebook will populate all the ads this page has run!
 

Once you’re there, ask yourself the following questions about Facebook advertising…

1. How long has the ad been running:

  • Usually, longevity means it’s a winner.

2.  What creative is being used:

  • Alright so, do they have lots of videos? 
  • If so, are they educational videos, testimonials, slideshows? 
  • Do they run carousel ads? Catalog campaigns?

3.  What copy works:

  • Alright, is their copy short or long? 
  • Are they offering discounts or coupon codes? 
  • Or, are they educating in the copy or going straight to the offer?

4. See where people are being sent:

  • Now, where does their Facebook advertising lead? 
  • Click their CTA buttons to view their landing page. 
  • Once you’re in, find out where they send customers – straight to a product page on their website or to a longer sales page (to warm up leads).

5. See who’s being targeted:

  • Go ahead, click on the CTA button. And, pay careful attention to their UTMs to learn more about who they’re targeting.

6. Get on the list:

  • Sign up for their email list, gaining a peek into their opt-in flow.
  • Do they send educational content? Or, do they run promos?
  • Finally, what type of ads do they serve you after you’re on their list?

7. Abandon checkout:

  • Go to your competitor’s site, moving through their checkout flow.
  • Next, enter all your information then abandon your cart.
  • Notice, what type of abandoned cart email sequence and ad campaign you get.
  • Do they offer a coupon code? Or, do they push any type of scarcity (Ex. “This offer is ending soon!”)

So, that’s how you can easily spy on your competition and launch better Facebook ads!

Remember, stay tuned in to what your industry leaders are up to via Facebook advertising. And, ask yourself what you could be doing to spice these ideas up. Inevitably, that’ll set you apart.

Now, you’ve got an understanding of what’s already out there. Okay, let’s jump into making enticing visual creatives and copy that actually sells!

STEP 2: FACEBOOK ADVERTISING CREATION

Take note, great ads are more than just pretty pictures! So, let’s zoom in on what makes a truly eye-catching creative. And, one that sells at that.

Though, you don’t have to be a designer-photographer-stylist extraordinaire to get a positive return on your ad creatives. In reality, you just need to know the guidelines while sprinkling in a few of the tips below to produce something your potential customers will love!

Through this series of tips, we’ll show you how to stop the endless social media scroll and awe your audience.

Think about when you’re checking in on the goings-on, scrolling through your Instagram like a madwoman, when something flashy catches your eye. We actually made a Facebook just group for this, called CORE 3. Join here!

This is what you, as an advertiser, need to be aware of and emulate to create a great ad.

Keeping your customers in mind, ask thyself when creating ads, “What stops thee in scrolling, and therefore, what will stop thy in scrolling?”

1. Interactive

Movement may appear in the form of a Facebook carousel or catalog ad as well as a poll add-on. Or, you may create movement with slideshows and video creatives.

Don’t worry, you don’t have to be a videographer! You can use Facebook’s ad creation tool to simply upload photos to make a slideshow or a video with text overlay.

2. Colorful

Eye-catching, bright colors stop users from scrolling but so does negative space. Play around with both, but don’t stray too far away from your existing brand’s attributes.

Over time, we’ve found that high-contrast and slightly over-saturated photos tend to out-compete others. So, turn up the contrast and saturation ever so slightly to make your ad POP!

3. Readable

We all know copy is important, but the size matters too! For example, when you see text while scrolling that your brain wants to process – it can be more efficiently understood depending on the text’s size.
 
So, we recommend highlighting triggering words that you’d like to get across to your audience quickly by increasing their size. Be highly selective when you do so, adding emphasis to one word rather than every bit of text on an ad.
 
And just in case you weren’t in the loop, Facebook removed the 20% text rule on ads (the rule stated that less than 20% of your ad could be text). We still find keeping text to around 20% works best in most creatives, as it looks more native to be “image heavy.” However, we find the best results with text heavy graphics when running promos and sales.
Pro tip: Create folders in Instagram to save any ads or imagery that stopped you in your tracks (scroll).
 
Then, join our CORE 3 Facebook Group – we post new ad, email, or social posts inspiration there every dang day!

4. Dimensions

We’ve all heard it, and we’re here to tell you – it’s true. When creating an ad, you must keep the platform(s) you’ll be running it on top of mind.

This way, you can size and resize your creatives to take up maximum space, and therefore exposure, in the feed!

Here you go, the most popular ad types and platforms and preferred sizing:

  • Facebook Feed Desktop/Mobile: 1200px by 628px OR 1080px by 1080px
  • Carousel Ad: 1080px by 1080px
  • Instagram Feed: 1080px by 1080px
  • Facebook or Instagram Story: 1080px by 1920px
  • Video Ratio: 16:9 to 9:16
Now, save or pin this graphic for ongoing reference:
Facebook will let you upload different creatives onto different platforms. This way, you can customize each ad to perform its best.
Simply, click “Select a placement to customize” to upload different creative sizes for different platforms.

5. Tooling

Here, have some of our favorite tools:

  • Canva, free and user-friendly
  • Pexels or Unsplash, free stock images
  • Adobe Spark, a tool in Adobe Suite, so it’ll cost you
  • Instagram Story, create an Instagram Story full of stickers + other fun movement, then download for free (easiest video ad editing app + super duper native)
  • Pull UGC, user-generated content generally outperforms any creative you design up! People love other people and UGC provides the social proof your brand needs! Be sure and ask before using the creative as an ad though. We simply shoot over a DM asking for permission.

Get creative and seek feedback from your teammates or influencers in your field.

You’ve got a good idea of what kind of visuals you’ll create, but which ad type should you work with first? Through this next step, we’ll spotlight our favorites…

STEP 3: WINNING EXAMPLES OF FACEBOOK ADVERTISING

‘Cause, not all ad types are created equal! In fact, the first ad type that we recommend to our clients is the Facebook Catalog.

Often called a Dynamic Product Ad (DPA), it’s basically a database of your products ready to advertise and sell.

Ad features clothing brand Lou & Grey, a fave among our team for standout fashion pieces.

 It connects directly to your site to collect information on your inventory, like whether a product is stocked and if a price or description changes.

What’s more, your catalog can pull information from your store on a daily basis so your catalog ad campaigns stay up to date.

The Facebook advertising catalog allows you to dynamically retarget users 

It’s based on the product they viewed, and it deep links them directly back to that product page. When you connect your catalog to your Instagram account and Facebook page, those users can shop your profiles directly.

Also, you can even create multiple product sets in your catalog to create specific upsells and cross-sells based on what a user did or didn’t do on your site. 

The Facebook advertising catalog is so great because it’s an adaptable tool

 

A solid jumping off point, it’s generally the first ad campaign we recommend launching as it can retarget users that are the lowest hanging fruit.

Meaning, you can send people who’ve viewed a product or abandoned their cart directly back to the product pages they first viewed.

In this way, these ads tend to yield the highest returns for one’s business. 

 Since this is our absolute favorite type of ad, we’ll dig in a little deeper on how to create a successful one!

 

4 Facebook Advertising Catalog Best Practices

1. Stand out with a frame

Find above, a video ad we made for Mother-in-Law’s Kimchi – illustrates this product’s probiotic pop with a super simple frame-by-frame animation! 
You already know this, color helps catch the attention of a scrolling user! So, adding a colorful frame to your product catalog to show off that mouthwatering deal will almost certainly seal the sale.

2. Be relevant

If you want a recipe for Chocolate Banana Pancakes with Bone Broth Protein, you gotta check out Ancient Nutrition. 
In your Facebook advertising catalog, you can dynamically retarget people that abandoned their cart and be super relevant when you speak to them through ad copy.

3. Make a slideshow

You must, MUST, have multiple photos in your Shopify product page for this one to work – it’s a great way to showcase lifestyle product photos along with your run-of-the-mill product photos!  
If you’ve got several product photos for each product, create a product catalog – each frame is its own slideshow and catches the attention even more from the scroller!

4. Get creative

Playful catalog ad for Serenity Kids – can’t resist a cute little veggie garden. 

Challenge yourself, getting creative and interactive by making a wide motif with copy that they’ll want to read until the end.

With this ad there is a clear subject that highlights what sets the brand apart to naturally entice the reader to continue a story or idea by clicking through the entire carousel.

Try testing the same creative with different subject lines and copy to see which performs better with your audience.

If you’re not constantly looking for ways to entertain your audience… 

…you’re not doing it right!

For added customer entertainment inspo, browse Facebook’s Ad Library or join our Facebook Group – CORE 3!

Alright, so you’re all set when it comes to the Facebook Catalog, let’s push forward with other ad types.

Creating interesting, educational and eye-catching ads is one thing. But, adding an interactive element will take your ads to the next level.

Let’s talk Facebook advertising polls…

If you haven’t heard of or seen this feature, here’s what it looks like:

Emmy’s Organics is using a Facebook poll to ask their audience which flavor they’d choose!

Timeline-wise, Facebook implemented the ability to add polls to video ads at the end of 2019.

There’s no stressing this enough, it’s so important to connect and engage with your audience. And, polls help you do just that.

Facebook ran a study testing their new poll feature for video ads, with promising  results. They said, “[in] 5 out of 9 brand lift studies, we observed poll ads increased brand awareness compared to video ads.”

Of course, we ran an experiment of our own testing a poll video ad versus a regular video. And, our poll video converted completely cold audiences at a ROAS of 6.30 and had double the engagement. In this client’s ad portfolio, that well outperformed other non-poll video ads.

We’re here to tell you, video ads have always been queen. 👑 So now, just think what you can do with video plus a poll! 👑👑👑

The poll possibilities are endless, so try using polls to:

  • Ask your audience, “which variation of a product they would like best?”, then send them directly to that product page!
  • Learn more about your audience, asking them a question about themselves or their interests
  • Find out if your audience found the information you provided in the video helpful!
  • Discover your customers’ biggest pain point by asking them even more questions
  • Learn which new flavors to launch by polling your audience!

Enough chatter, let’s walk through how to launch your first poll ad:

  1.  First, hop inside your Facebook Ads Manager to create a new campaign
  2.  Poll Ads are only supported with the following objectives, so be to sure to choose: Brand Awareness, Reach, Traffic, App Installs or Conversions in your ad set
  3.  After you’ve uploaded your Video, click “Add Poll” 

          4.  Now, enter your Poll Question and your 2 Choices 

5.  Pro-tip, add specific URLs for each choice that the user can visit after they’ve made their selection!

P.S., Facebook only shows your polls on your video ads in the Facebook feed. But, it will play your video without the poll in other placements.

You’ll quickly start to collect valuable poll data, here’s how to view your poll results:

  1.  First, go to your Facebook Ads Manager
  2.  Then, select your ad with the poll on it
  3.  Next, click on “See Charts”
  4.  Finally, scroll to the bottom of the page to see Interactivity Results

We’re curious, are you testing video poll ads? Let us know, how they’re working for you!

If the process seems a bit much, we’re here to help! If you’d like us to run profitable campaigns for you, learn more by scheduling a free strategy call with our team.

BONUS: How Much Does Advertising Cost?

So now let’s get into the nitty gritty, how much is this gonna cost ya?

Well, it depends!

We generally recommend brand’s to spend 20% of their monthly revenue on advertising.

So, for example, if you’re pulling in $3,000 a month, then you could start advertising with $600 a month. This will allow you to at least set up some retargeting campaigns to make an efficient, non-leaky, marketing system because you’re retargeting those web visitors and social engagers that need that extra attention to come back to your site and purchase.

Of course, you can start with a larger or smaller budget as well.

If the 20% rule was shocking and you’d like to start advertising at a smaller scale, then we recommend targeting your lowest hanging fruit. What does this mean?

Think about who your hottest leads are currently, they’re going to people that have added a product to their cart, or even initiated a checkout, but dropped off right before buying.

You’re (hopefully) already sending these people abandoned cart emails, but people need multiple touch points before making a purchase, and that’s where your lowest hanging fruit ads come in. We call this type of campaign a Bottom of Funnel (BOFU) retargeting campaign, because we are retargeting those hot leads who are at the bottom of the funnel. 

For our BOFU campaign, we are generally retargeting people who have viewed a product or added to their cart within 7-30 days (the range will depend on how large your retargeting audience is – you’ll need to skew toward the longer day range if you’re a smaller company with less website traffic – because Facebook will need enough data to optimize your campaign and exit the learning phase).

We also use this catalog to retarget our previous purchasers from 30-60 day range (generally you want to give them time to consume the product before reminding them it’s time to restock!), as we all know that it is much cheaper to convert an existing customer than a brand new one, so use some of that small budget to ensure you’re increasing your life-time value (LTV) with this retargeting ad group.

But enough with the set up, let’s get back to the main reason we’re all here, the advertising cost!

So, for those of you who need to start with an extra small budget, you’re going to run this one campaign only, and set your daily budget to $5-10 to start.

This may be enough, you may need to up it slighting to exit the Facebook Learning phase, but this means you’re only spending $150-300 month to massively reduce your abandoned cart rate and increase your overall conversion rate!

Pay close attention to your ROAS with this campaign, you want this campaign to at least break even, but we generally see the highest return on ad spend (ROAS) on this campaign overall.

Be sure and check out our notes above on how to make these catalog campaigns higher converting using eye-catching frames and imagery!

Say you got some investment or money bags ready to go hard on your social ads. Well, in this case, the skies your limit! We still recommend starting with less than half of your target monthly budget so that you have the ability to scale the right ad sets and campaigns and trim the fat, rather than having unproductive ad sets spending budget.

With a budget over $2K a month, you’re generally able to create a full marketing funnel, meaning you can set up retargeting campaigns and prospecting campaigns – where you’re targeting and bringing in new leads into your facebook marketing funnel.

Though, it’s dependent on your niche, we find any less than this makes it too difficult to optimize your prospecting campaigns as there’s not enough budget to gain enough conversion event data that Facebook needs. Also, it’s difficult to do proper audience and creative testing under this mark.

With a budget over $2K we recommend spending 70% of your budget on prospecting for new customers and 30% of your budget is spent on retargeting.

You generally want to set your prospecting campaigns daily budget at least 3-4 times your target cost per acquisition (CPA) as well.

Once you’re hitting break even or better, it’s time to start scaling your campaigns. We recommend scaling your Facebook ads budget by 20% every 3 days or so, just as long as your ROAS and cost per purchase (CPP) stay steady, but no more than 50% in a 3-day period or you could cause the algorithm to go out of whack.

So, there you go. How much does Facebook advertising cost?

Well, it depends.

You can spend as little as $150 on solely BOFU retargeting, or really as much as you want!

Remember, we recommend 20% of your monthly revenue as your ad budget, and at least $2,000 a month if you want to set up a full Facebook funnel system – meaning, retargeting existing audiences as well as prospecting new audiences.

OUTRO TO FACEBOOK ADVERTISING

Yas, you did it! Now, Facebook advertising isn’t so intimidating. Right??

Especially, knowing there are many other food, bev, and wellness (CPG) brands out there like you. Now, you’ll know HOW to look to them for inspiration. And, UTILIZE these tips to refine your ad campaigns + make them your own.

And of course, there’s a balance to strike. But, we believe more is more when it comes to inspiration. 

That’s why we created this Facebook Group: CORE 3. 

This way, we’ve all got an outlet to share killer ads, posts, and emails that we see on the world wild web.

So, we’d LOVE for you to join up and share what you’re working on.

But, wanna get to know us first? Shoot us a message at hello@umaimarketing.com or follow us on Instagram!

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