With over 2.07 billion monthly active users (Q3 2017), Facebook is too huge and spacious for advertisers to ignore it. Nevertheless, the percentage of affiliates and advertisers who enters this traffic source is rather small.
Why?
The whole Facebook advertising process can be very twisted; just remember the number of variables and combinations you should set to run your ad campaign. Besides, Facebook applies some strict regulations to the creatives you can use.
Bottom-line: We’ve tried almost everything with Facebook advertising creatives and analysed the best-performing ones – and now, we are going to reveal some efficient Facebook advertising life-hacks to help you raise the performance of your creatives.
1. One key message per ad
Viewers should understand the ad message at first glance. The headline and the description should complement each other, while the ad text should intensify the image and carry the single message. There is no place for redundant information.
For example, the New York Times delivered its key message, 4-week-subscription for 99¢, very clearly by repeating the same statement in the headline and on the image.
2. Use colours
Make colourful adverts in order to attract the attention of people who are constantly distracted by a flooded news feed.
Note: Make sure to avoid Facebook’s brand colours as users’ eyes will most likely to skip over the ad.
3. Be minimalistic
Alternatively, you can try minimalism in your ad with a total white (or black) background — an advertising hack that we’ve evidenced working many times. Such ads often stand out as they differ from all the rest messages in the Facebook news feed.
4. Be creative with Carousel ad format
Carousel allows you to place up to 10 images and/or videos in a single ad. This format allows you to be as creative as possible. For example, try to create a long panoramic image, as Oberlo did it:
5. Coordinate your CTA and ad message
Be sure to transmit a single call to action (CTA) in your ad message and ad button. Don’t mislead the viewers, but show them the exact action you want them to perform. For example, if you’re a travel/airline company, then don’t use “Shop now” as your call-to-action, use the obvious CTA choice, “Book now”, instead:
6. Use numbers in your ad
The research says that ads with numbers have 36% higher CTR (click-through rate). Why? The numbers usually foster trust and induce interest in the offer. Have a look at the ad by LinkedIn below; it notes a considerable number of professionals that already use the network – doesn’t it sound enticing to join them there?
7. Use customers’ real photo instead of stock ones
The Marketing Experiments research says that the use of real photos instead of stock images increases the conversion rate by 35%.
This hack is especially relevant if your ad contains testimonials/opinions shared by your customer.
8. Make sure to follow Facebook’s 20% rule
If you’re a newbie to Facebook ads, you might not know that this social network allows you to put text on the ad image as long as it takes less than 20% of the image’s total space. Otherwise, your ad would be banned by Facebook.
Photos by themselves can be very powerful, while accompanied by a laconic and eye-catching phrase might become even more attention-grabbing.
9. Add urgency to your ad
Empathise the time limitation of the advertised offer; when you present the limited time offer, people get worried about missing it out.
This hack is even more effective during holiday ad campaigns (e.g. Christmas, Black Friday, Thanksgiving).
Create immediacy with your ad offer following these rules:
- Specify the exact time/date of the offer, e.g. “Today only” or “1 day left”
- Offer the discount
- Place the best offer on the image or add it to the headline
- Make sure the ad is driving the customers to the relevant page on your website/landing page, etc
10. Appeal to emotions
At a psychological level, what often influences the customer’s purchase decision is the emotion they have towards the product/service/brand. Thus, it is important to evoke a positive attribution to the advertising offer.
Slack seems to do it right:
11. Use fonts smartly
Facebook doesn’t allow use custom fonts, as well as bold or italic words in your ads. In case you want to draw customers’ attention to such words as “new”, “sale”, “free”, try capitalising it. Note how the font size of the headline is larger than the rest of the text. Take advantage of that and highlight the biggest selling point here.
Note: Don’t over-do it, as far too many capitalised words might frighten away the customers, instead of attracting them.
12. Make best of your ad headline
The recent study by the Science Post shows that 70% of people actually never read more than the headline of a Facebook share. Besides, the shorter and catchier your Facebook ad headline is, the more likely people are to read it.
With this information in mind be sure to create a powerful headline, placing the key advertising message here.
13. Use emoji
The statistics show that the advertisements with emojis earn a CTR 20x higher than the industry standard ones. Facebook allows you to place emoji wherever you need it, i.e. headline, advertising text, or description.
Domino’s Pizza is one of the brands that use this hack in about every Facebook ad.
14. Show your product on the ad
No matter whether you work in retail, a SaaS company, or logistics, you can always show off your product, especially if it’s visually appealing. The demonstration of the product within the ad guarantees the increase of brand awareness and gives potential customers an overview of what your product is.
In RedTrack, we split-tested the ads with a stock image and the image that showcases our product. It was the second one that performed best in terms of both CTR and CPC (cost per click).
15. Place your key message wherever you can
Choose the key message you want to transmit in your ad and repeat it in the headline, description and put it on the image. Thus, you guarantee that the whole ad is consistent and coherent.
16. Use location data
Create ads that feature offers related to a location of your target audience. Such ads perform like crazy. Why? Because they are highly-personalised!
This ad by Jasper’s Market will surely bring them high conversion rate, as the offer is highly enticing for those that are in the range of the city, featured in the ad.
17. Leverage the customers’ curiosity
Grab the viewer’s attention with an engaging and challenging question in your ad. It’s a natural desire to discover the answer. It is often hard to pass by a fascinating question without knowing the answer to the question. E.g. won’t you be interested in the value of your home in comparison with others?
18. Make an ad about your customers and not about your brand
Be sure that your ad message targets the potential customers, but not just lists the features of an advertising product. How can you do it? For example, detect the possible problem of your customers and then solve it with an advertised product/service. It is exactly what FlameDomain did in their ad.
19. Sell soft to a cold audience
If you’re a small business, it might be effective to start with not an invasive advertising but with the loyalty increase of your potential customers.
Use soft-selling to increase the brand awareness and to draw the customers. What we mean by ‘soft-selling’ posts — useful informational posts, catchy infographics, etc, that are not extra intrusive with their ‘advertising’ goal.
20. Specify the audience
Don’t be afraid of making ads that target tightly-specified audience. Such ads sometimes turn out to be the best-performing ones.
21. Make the customers feel safe
Try to offer a money-back guarantee in your ad, so as to evoke trust and loyalty to your brand. You can do it by saying “No fees”, “Money-back guarantee” (e.g. in case of product shipping).
22. Include price in your ad
In case your product’s price seems like a great deal compared to your competitors, it would be wrong not to highlight this advantage in your ad.
If your pricing is significantly higher than that of your competitors, don’t try to justify it in your ad. In this case, it is better to omit the price information, indeed.
23. Be relevant and timely
Follow the trends that are live online and implement them in your ads. Relevant and ‘hot’ content always evokes interest and engagement.
24. Create seasonal ads
Holidays are the most profitable period for the advertisers. If done well, the ad you’ve created could pay off on the first day of your holiday’s campaign.
What are the best performing holidays for FB advertising? Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Back-to-School, Boxing Day, Thanksgiving Day, Season-end sell-out.
25. Always split-test
After having a look at all the hacks above, make sure to test the ideas you find relevant and then detach the best-performing ones for your product and industry.
Let your experiments run until you find the winning combination for your ads.
For example, Scoro tested a Carousel ad format and regular image ad. Against all the expectations, the regular ad was the one to perform best with the highest CTR and 300% lower cost-per-conversion.
As you can see, there are hundreds of different options and winning cases for Facebook ad campaigns, and you won’t know what will be a win for you until you try.
Instead of a conclusion
Once a user notices your ad in their Facebook news feed, you have about 5-10 seconds to catch their eyes on your ad. Without an eye-catching image, a powerful call-to-action, and enticing headline, you have no chance to grasp the attention of scrolling Facebook users.
Before launching your FB ad campaign, make sure you’ve read through these 25 ad creative life-hacks to boost your performance. And don’t forget about split-testing and analytics in order to detect which tips perform best for you.