Facebook is huge. There is simply no denying it. As of September 2014, there are, on average:
- 864 million daily active users
- 703 million mobile daily active users
- 1.35 billion monthly active users
- 1.12 billion mobile monthly active users
With such an enormous potential audience, advertising might (remember there are no guarantees with any type of advertising) just be your ticket to success, particularly if you are running a Facebook business page. The thing is, there are so many options and features available when it comes to Facebook advertising. There are multiple advert types, and all sorts of built-in demographic targeting features. If you haven’t used Facebook for advertising before, it can all seem a little on the side of daunting. But, with our beginners guide on how to know what type of Facebook advert to use, at least you’ll be off to a great start.
A Beginners Guide to Facebook Advertisement Types
Let’s start at the beginning. If you’ve never advertised using Facebook before, there’s a good chance that you might not have noticed how to access the Adverts Manager.
Start on your Facebook account homepage. See your cute little profile picture in the top left-hand corner? Look just below that. The first option underneath your picture should be ‘News Feed’, followed immediate by ‘Adverts Manager’. Click on that option.
You will then be redirected to your own personal Adverts Manager page. This is like a dashboard for all your advertising options. Once you start running adverts regularly, you will be greeted with a list of all your campaigns. From there you can view and export reports and invoices, as well as edit existing adverts and even pause and recommence old adverts. You can see below what my Adverts Manager page looks like. As I’ve run a number of campaigns, and boosted a number of posts, in the past, these are all displayed in my dashboard. So, once you’re on this page, you need to look for the green button in the top right-hand corner that says ‘Create Advert’ (it’s inside the red box in the image below).
This is where things can get tricky, particularly if you’ve never run an advert on Facebook before. Once you’ve clicked on ‘Create Advert’, you will be greeted with the following page:
This is where you can select the objective for your campaign. The objective of your campaign will determine the type of advert that you run. The objectives include:
- Send people to your website
- Increase conversions on your website
- Boost your posts
- Promote your page
- Get installs of your app
- Increase engagement in your app
- Raise attendance at your event
- Get people to claim your offer
- Get video views
Let’s run through each of these, one by one.
Send People to Your Website
If you opt for this objective, then it should result in increased traffic to your website. This type of Facebook advert allows you to include an optional, obvious ‘call to action button’. It also offers more space for copy than some of the other advert types, and the image that you use will also be hyperlinked directly to the webpage of your choosing. Tips
Advert Specifications:
- Headline: 25 characters
- Text: 90 characters
- Call to Action Options:
- Shop Now
- Book Now
- Learn More
- Sign Up
- Download
- Newsfeed Link Description: 200 characters
- Image Size: 1,200 pixels x 628 pixels
Increase Conversions on Your Website
This type of Facebook advert is perfect if you want users to take a specific course of action once they reach your website. If you want people to buy a specific product, or to sign up to your newsletter, then this is the advert type for you. If you really want to take full advantage of the power of this type of ad, then you really need to install the Facebook Conversion Pixel. The FCP allows you to optimise your ad, and tell it exactly what you want your visitors to do. While this is getting into slightly more advanced territory, don’t be scared. Facebook has quite a good video tutorial on their Conversion Pixel.
Advert Specifications:
- Headline: 25 characters
- Text: 90 characters
- Call to Action Options:
- Shop Now
- Book Now
- Learn More
- Sign Up
- Download
- Newsfeed Link Description: 200 characters
- Image Size: 1,200 pixels x 628 pixels
Boost Your Posts
By opting to boost your post, you can access a much larger audience, and increase post engagement, including post likes, shares and comments. You can boost any type of post that you like – a simple status update, a photo, a website link, even a video. Keep in mind that you need to create the post first, before you can boost it. You can also add the Facebook Conversion Pixel to a boosted post (see Increasing Conversions on Your Website for more information on this).
Advert Specifications:
- Text: 90 characters (anything longer will be truncated)
- Image Size: 1,200 pixels x 1,200 pixels
Promote Your Page
The whole idea of promoting your Facebook page is to garner more page likes. This type of advert helps you grow your followers. This can be beneficial in a number of ways. It helps you establish a strong reputation within the Facebook community (the more likes, the more credibility you and your brand will have). It is also beneficial long-term; once someone likes your page, they will receive your updates in their News Feed free of charge (most of the time).
Advert Specifications:
- Text: 90 characters
- Image Size: 1,200 pixels x 444 pixels
Get Installs of Your App
If you have designed, or recently released, an app, then look no further. This is the Facebook advert type designed with you in mind. The whole point of this type of advert is to encourage your Facebook fans to install your app. Fairly self-explanatory this one. Keep in mind that Facebook will automatically pull in your app’s star rating from whatever platform it is available for download from. So, before you set up this type of advert, it’s a good idea to make sure that your star rating is positive. You can also register your app with Facebook, so that you only pay when people install your app from your Facebook advert. Again, this is getting slightly more technical, but Facebook has a great user guide on how to register your app with Facebook.
Advert Specifications:
- Text: 90 characters
- Call to Action Options:
- Install Now
- Use App
- Book Now
- Download
- Learn More
- Listen Now
- Play Game
- Shop Now
- Sign Up
- Watch Video
- Watch More
- Headline: 25 characters
- App Name: 25 characters
- Image Size: 1,200 pixels x 628 pixels
Increase Engagement in Your App
This type of advert is slightly different to the last. Where the last advert type was all about getting people to install your app, this one is all about getting people to use your app. All of the other details mentioned above apply, and all the specifications are the same.
Raise Attendance at Your Event
If you are running an event, and looking to increase the number of attendees, then this type of Facebook advert is perfect! I’ve recently used this type of advert for a local community market and the response was phenomenal. Not only did people RSVP to our public event, they also ended up liking our Facebook page as an added (unexpected) benefit. It was kind of like a two-for-the-price-of-one. This particular type of advert can also be quite powerful when teamed with specific demographic targeting (more on that another day). Before you can set up this type of advert, you need to have already set up a public event page – the date and time will be automatically pulled from your event page.
Advert Specifications:
- Title: 25 characters
- Text: 90 characters
- Image Size: 1,200 pixels x 444 pixels
Get People to Claim Your Offer
If you have a super duper special, or discount offer that you can run via an online platform, then use this type of Facebook advert to promote it to a much wider audience. After all, who doesn’t like free stuff?! Again, this type of advert can sometimes lead to unexpected, added benefits, such as page likes. Again, this type of advert can be really effective if you use location targeting to push the offer out to people located near your business (if you have a physical, street address). There is also the option to include an expiry date, which can be handy if you are prone to a set-and-forget style of operation.
Advert Specifications:
- Title: 25 characters
- Text: 90 characters
- Image Size: 1,200 pixels x 628 pixels
- Terms and Conditions: 900 characters
Get Video Views
Last, but by no means least, we come to the video views advert. As one might imagine, with this type of Facebook advert you can tell a story using a video. You might want to give people an insight into how your company was established, how your products are made, who your employees are. The sky is the limit when it comes to video.
Advert Specifications:
- Text: 90 characters
- Call to Action Options:
- Shop Now
- Book Now
- Learn More
- Sign Up
- Download
- Watch More
- Video:
- File size: up to 1 GB
- Format: .MOV files
- Resolution: 720p
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Image Size: 1,200 pixels x 675 pixels (this is shown when your video is not playing)
And that’s it! That is all the different types of Facebook adverts that are currently available. In closing, we thought we’ run through a few general Facebook advert tips and tricks. Tune in for our next instalment, when we take a look at how to set up targeting and demographics, and how to run reports.
General Facebook Advert Tips and Tricks
Images:
- Apart from boosted posts, you can load up to six different images for each of your adverts. If you haven’t run advertising before, or you are advertising something different to usual, trialling and testing different images can be really insightful. You can see which types of images work best, and gain traction most effectively for your particular audience.
- Your image may not include more than 20% text. If it does, it won’t be approved, and your advert won’t run. But don’t despair, Facebook has a nifty little text checking tool. You simply upload an image, and it will confirm what percentage the text overlay represents. Access Facebook’s Text Checking Tool.
- The recommended image width is 1,200 pixels
- The recommended image ratio for advertisements appearing in the News Feed is 4:3
- The recommended image ratio for advertisements appearing in the right column is 1.91:1
- Recommended image width: 1,200 pixels
Text:
- With your text options being so limited (25 characters for your titles, and 90 characters for your body text in most instances), it is vital that your text is concise and compelling. Regardless of what type of advert you opt for, you need to explain why people should click on your ad, like your page, download your app. You need to tell them immediately. Give them a reason to engage with you advert. Otherwise, the whole exercise is simply a waste of time and money.
Sources:
- http://newsroom.fb.com/company-info/
- https://www.facebook.com/business/ads-guide/
Sally Wood
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