Optimising your Facebook ads has become a science. With Facebook’s enormous range of features, insights and accessibility to a worldwide audience, the social network has a lot to offer businesses who are looking to advertise their products and/or services. However, with no knowledge or formalised strategy on how to create or analyse their Facebook ads, many businesses end up wasting their time and money on ineffective, unsuccessful ads.

The marketing experts at Fuse Agency have used social media channels including Facebook for years to advertise our clients’ products and services by driving audience engagement and conversions to increase the profits of their businesses. With our breadth of knowledge on advertising over social media channels along with our insight into the best practices to use, we have compiled a list of our top tips to creating effective and successful ads on Facebook!

1. Specify your ad’s intended purpose
   Are you trying to increase your brand’s awareness? Drive customers to your store? Increase website visits? Make sure that you outline the specific goals you want your advertisement to achieve and keep these in mind when it comes to creating the ad to guide its success.
2. Target the correct audience
   Facebook allows you to select an audience as narrow or as broad as you choose. You can select people based on their location, demographics, interests, behaviours or even connections. However, if you don’t target the correct consumers, you can end up wasting time and money on unsuccessful adverts. Facebook provides demographic data about the people who like your page via the Insights tab at the top of a business’ Facebook page. This data shows you who is interacting with your brand on Facebook and you can use this data to further target people in those same demographics with your ads. It is also a good idea to make the ads as targeted to the consumer group as possible. For example, if you are targeting women interested in fashion, you wouldn’t say “Hey ladies,” but rather “Hey there fashion enthusiasts!” Additionally, if you are creating multiple advertisements, try to target different demographics unless you are testing the effectiveness of one ad design versus another (in this case you should use the same specific target audience).
3. Write copy for your intended customer
   It is very important to keep your target consumer in mind when it comes to writing the copy for your Facebook advert. What tone of voice will they respond to, one that uses humour or one that is more formal and all business? When matching your tone of voice to your targeted customers, make sure the tone is also consistent with your brand and try to keep your copy down to a minimum before the text is truncated. Furthermore, Facebook can provide information on how different posts on your business’ Facebook page performed based on average reach and engagement. This data can be highly useful to see what posts were successful and resonated most with your audience. As such, you may want to consider using similar content from your successful posts in your Facebook ads to drive customer interactions.
4. Choose attention-grabbing images
   Your post will be competing with everything else present in your consumers’ newsfeeds so in order for your ad to stand out from the crowd, you will need to ensure the image that accompanies your copy is eye-catching. You can do this by shooting sharp, high resolution photos in well-lit environments and using a creative, stylish filter to add that sense of professionalism. Try to maintain consistency in your images across both your advertisements and your brand to add authenticity. This includes using the same camera shots (eg. close up, medium, wide or high angle shot), the same photography filters, the same lighting and so on. Consistency will ensure that when a potential customer clicks on your ad, they end up on a landing page that reinforces what they saw initially in your ad.
5. Consider a carousel format
   Are you selling one product or multiple products? A carousel ad is a versatile format that allows you to include numerous images in the one advert and can be used to present many different things to the customer. This can include showcasing multiple products, telling a story that develops through each separate image, explaining how your business works step by step or even showing the numerous benefits you can offer a potential customer in each different image. With advertisements in the carousel format found to consistently drive great results, carousel ads can be a very effective tool when it comes to choosing how you want to deliver information to your customer. One thing to note is that when you come to choosing your images, ensure there is a sense of similarity between them in either colour or style so that your overall ad appears cohesive.
6. Keep your video ads short and snappy
   With 47% of the value in a video campaign delivered in the first three seconds and 74% of the value delivered in the first ten, there’s no disputing the fact that the faster you can capture your audience’s attention and deliver your message, the better. If you are creating a video advertisement, try using your most engaging content at the beginning, whether that be stunning photos of your product or a celebrity endorser. Ads that showcase their brand in the first ten seconds have also been found to reach three times more people so don’t be afraid to incorporate your brand identity into the video! Additionally, try to use interesting or surprising copy to not only grab your audience’s attention but to also keep them engaged throughout the video’s entirety. It’s also important to be aware that many people may watch your video with their sound on mute so ensure your key messages can be understood without sound through the use of infographics or subtitles to tell your story.  
7. Insert a call-to-action button
   A call-to-action may not increase your ad’s click-through-rate or engagement levels, but it will likely improve your conversion rate as people will better understand what you want them to do! As such, call-to-action buttons are an important element to include in your Facebook ad. Some things to consider include keeping your message short and simple and using action words that will motivate your potential customer to take action and buy your product now. You may also want to consider using negative call-to-actions by generating a problem in their minds, such as “Is your mattress uncomfortable?” and showing them how your product can help them overcome this issue. By giving your ad a deadline, this may also serve to generate more conversions by creating a sense of urgency in the consumer to act now or fear missing out.
8. Test multiple designs
   When creating a brand new Facebook ad, try to come up with at least three different designs and then test each one for customer engagement. You may find that an ad with a specific image may perform twice as well as another ad with a different image, and you never would have found that out until you tested it!
9. Post your ads at optimal times
   Facebook can tell you when the people who like your page are online on Facebook via the same Insights page discussed above. Scheduling your posts to appear when your audience is most often online will optimise your customer’s interaction with your ad and ultimately drive the advert’s success. However, one thing to note is if you have created multiple ads, you may experience an overlap of target audiences who see your two separate ads at the same time in their newsfeed. To minimise overlapping audiences, you may want to consider the timing of when they should be scheduled for as they may not all need to run at the exact same time.

How can Fuse help?

Creating effective and engaging Facebook ads can sometimes be tricky business, which is why the team at Fuse Agency assist our clients in the creation, implementation and analysis of their social media ads. If you are looking to advertise on Facebook but don’t know how to get started, want help in developing your social media marketing strategy or simply want some tips on how to improve your existing Facebook ads, then give the team at Fuse Agency a call on 3198 4890 today!