There’s no question video is an incredible marketing tactic with a proven track record for success. Recently, we talked about creating awesome remote videos and even offered up a video marketing crash course. But today we’re focusing on creating and setting up Facebook ad videos for maximum profitability.
First, let’s talk a bit about Facebook advertising in general.
Facebook advertising overview
If you’ve ever spent time on the Facebook website or ad, you’ll have experienced Facebook ads firsthand. As you scroll through your newsfeed or a Facebook page, you’ll come across all kinds of ads for products, services, websites, pages, and more.
Facebook ads are one of the most commonly used tactics in social media marketing, and there are several different options for utilizing them.
Brands use different ad formats within Facebook advertising to reach their target audience, including:
- Video ads.
- Photo ads.
- Slideshow ads.
- Carousel ads.
- Canvas ads.
- Dynamic product ads.
Depending on your budget, your goals, and other factors, the type of ads you choose to run on Facebook will vary. For today’s post, we’re focusing specifically on video content. Before we discuss how to create Facebook video ads, let’s talk about why you want to.
Choosing video for Facebook advertising
When you’re creating your Facebook advertising strategy, there are a lot of good reasons for including video content in that.
Here are just some of the reasons more and more brands are choosing to advertise this way:
- Video is an incredibly powerful way to boost brand awareness. Most experts agree it’s even more impactful than just words and pictures. In fact, users spend an average of 5X longer looking at your video than a static image?
- The average engagement rate for Facebook video posts is 6.13% vs. 3.6% for an average Facebook engagement rate.
- 60% of Americans who watch digital videos do so on Facebook, second only to YouTube, with 90%. In third place is Instagram with 35%.
- Video ads give you a far better capability for information distribution than other forms of advertising. It’s much easier to fit in a ton of content and information about your brand in a Facebook video ad than it is in another kind of Facebook advertising.
Maximizing profitability for Facebook ads
Now that we’ve shared why video content is a powerful choice for your Facebook ad campaigns, let’s discuss the best practices for boosting their profitability with these 4 top tips.
- Know (and target) your audience
- Optimize for web and mobile
- Keep your videos short and sweet
- Create compelling CTAs
Your audience
Understanding your audience is absolutely critical to the success of any marketing tactic. Before you create video ads, you need to consider the demographics of your audience and what they would like to see. Luckily, Facebook tools make it easy to select specific demographics, interests, purchasing behaviors, and psychographics for your video ads.
Once you’ve got a clear vision of your existing audience as well as your target audience, you can tailor your content to reach them most effectively.
Speaking of targeting, we also share our B2B retargeting best practices for success in this post.
Web and mobile optimization
You’ll also want to use separate ad sets for mobile and desktop use so you can optimize your video ads, bids and conversions depending on the device being used. These all perform differently depending on the device, so this really can’t be overlooked.
Research suggests most video ads are viewed on mobile devices. But you could still be losing out if you don’t optimize your content for desktop use, too.
Here are some tips for optimizing Facebook video ads on mobile devices:
- Keep your videos especially short for mobile use to ensure they’re watched for longer
- Plan for your videos to be watched without sound. Keep the sound muted as default. Most mobile users don’t watch ads with sound, so don’t rely on it to tell your story. Instead, compelling visuals and graphics are your best bet.
- Consider vertical hold rather than forcing horizontal view. Most mobile device users hold their phones vertically. If an ad starts playing horizontally, they’re more likely to click out of it rather than turn their device and keep watching.
And for optimizing Facebook video ads on desktop devices:
- If you plan to make long and short versions of video ads, longer videos tend to do best on desktop devices, while shorter content is best for mobile devices.
- When you’re testing two videos, one with sound and one without, the one with sound will tend to be a better choice for desktop use. More users are likely to have their volume up and will actually hear the content of your message.
Video ad length
The best practices for video ad length vary somewhat depending on who you ask, but there’s one thing just about everyone agrees on: short is sweet!
In today’s fast-paced world, it’s difficult to keep anyone’s attention–especially as we’re bombarded with thousands of pieces of digital content each day.
So, the next time you’re creating video ad content for Facebook, focus on making it as concise as possible. Remove any “filler” and only include what your audience really needs to know.
Here are some of the tidbits you might include:
- The price of your product or service
- How to make a purchase
- Delivery information/schedule
- The benefits of the product/service
- Returns and guarantees
- Social proof
- How to use your products
- Demonstrate your expertise
Remember, you want your videos to be personal, engaging, and compelling to truly capture your audiences’ attention. And we can’t mention compelling your audience without also discussing CTAs.
CTAs
CTAs, or Calls to Action, are those little pieces of information that get your audience to click, to learn more, to buy, or to continue moving down the funnel. The end of your Facebook video ads should always include a compelling CTA or tagline that tells viewers what to do next.
Here are a few examples:
- Buy today and save
- Learn more
- Find out more
- Try today for free
Want to learn more about crafting compelling CTAs? Take a look at this post where we discuss making landing pages that convert.
Get help with Facebook video ads and much more
Today we’ve scratched the surface on how to create and set up profitable Facebook video ads. But we know this can still seem overwhelming at first. Blue Water Marketing is here to help! We can help not only with Facebook video ads, but all of your digital marketing efforts, including SEO, social media, and web design.
Want to learn more about our services and what we can do for you? Click here. Or contact us today to chat more.
If you’d like to see how other clients have increased their revenue with video ads, take a look at these case studies.
In the meantime, we’ve got plenty of useful insight, tips, and advice on our blog for maximizing your Facebook videos ads and other digital marketing efforts.
