Why should you advertise on Facebook?

In 2020, video marketing is one of the key ways to make your brand shine, and with a variety of platforms providing a wide-reach to varied audiences, it’s easier than ever to create brand awareness and interaction. 

One of the most effective platforms is Facebook. Regardless of the negative press it’s currently receiving, Facebook is a marketing platform worth getting to know and its sophisticated video advertising tool allows you to target specific and detailed audiences, grab their attention and show off your brand.  

But don’t worry, there’s no need to spend hours researching! At DreamingFish, we’ve done the legwork for you.  We’ve put together the ultimate guide to Facebook video ads to help you harness the power of Facebook marketing.

Why Advertise on Facebook?

Everybody knows that Facebook is the grandfather of social media. From it’s launch in 2004, it has skyrocketed to over one billion users. If there’s one place you should be advertising – it’s here! 

Show Off Your Brand’s Personality

As content is becoming more and more video-based, Facebook’s advertising potential continues. Featuring longer form videos compared to other social platforms, it allows for a personal approach, giving you the means to really reflect your brand’s personality. By capturing a user’s attention within the first 5 seconds, companies can entice watchers into a longer video where they share their brand’s story, a demo of their product or service, or simply show some exciting or wacky content.

Facebook Loves Video

A staggering 4 billion video views take place on Facebook every day (that’s 100 million hours of video!) and with Mark Zuckerberg predicting that Facebook will be mostly video based by 2021, now is the time to get filming, editing and posting.

By using video advertising, your brand will benefit from a much higher CTR, higher engagement, and much longer dwell time, than a static image. And an added benefit for you, video advertising costs 10% less than carousel and static image ads, giving you a better ROI and freeing up your budget to produce more high-quality and engaging content. 

Optimal Audience Targeting

According to Hootsuite, the majority of Facebook users are between 18-49 years old, but is the fastest growing social channel for senior users above 50. So, depending on what your product is, if you’re trying to target a wide age range and possibly a mature audience, Facebook is the place for you!

Equally, according to Statista, Facebook has a great gender balance, being used by 44% women and 56% men. Here you can target men and women equally and keep narrowing down your audience until you hit your advertising sweet spot. With Facebook’s targeted advertising, whatever your audience is you can find them on Facebook, and with Facebook’s advertising insights tool you can see what works and for who. 

Facebook Offers 11 Marketing Objectives based on your Advert Objective:

1.Brand Awareness: Exposure of your brand to a new audience.

2.Reach: Target a wide audience globally.

3.Traffic: Drive traffic to a specific webpage, social profile or messenger.

4.Engagement: Boost posts to reach the relevant audience and gain likes and user interaction.

5.App installs: Get users to install your app.

6.Video Views: Encourage people to watch your videos.

7.Lead Generation: Get new prospects into your sales funnel.

8.Messages: Encourage people to contact your business through Facebook Messenger.

9.Conversions: Get users to follow through with your Call-To-Action and actually take the next step to finding out more about your business.

10.Catalogue Sales: For Ecommerce brands this allows you to connect facebook ads to specific products the user is likely to buy.

11.Store Traffic: Drive users to nearby stores and attractions.

Video Marketing Types

There are 3 types of video marketing on Facebook; In Stream, In-feed and Facebook Stories. Below we have outlined each ad type and what kind of video suits them best:

In-Stream:

Playing before or during a video that people are watching, In Stream advertising allows brands to present their products or services directly to targeted users. These video ads require the user to wait until the ad is finished or click skip after 5-15 seconds, depending on the ad, to continue their video. These ads mean users consume content quickly and easily as they sit back, wait and watch. Consider making an impact in the first 5 seconds and keep it fun, rather than information heavy, to get your message across before the consumer gets bored or clicks the dreaded skip button. These ads aren’t for a hard sell, but a good opportunity to increase brand awareness and personality.

In-Feed:

Reach people where they share ideas, find inspiration, and interact with others, with In-feed content. Appearing within users’ timeline, these videos allow them to watch, react, share and comment, increasing brand engagement and interaction for you. In-feed videos can be posted on your brand’s facebook page for your followers, or can reach a wider-audience with Facebook’s paid promotion feature. The great thing about paid promotion is, by having a business page, you can promote videos already on your Facebook page, meaning no new content is needed. As videos can be used on your page and for paid promotion, it is worth enlisting a production company to produce high-quality video ads to make a professional and impressive impact. Consider that a lot of people will watch without sound, so make it visually impactful and add captions.

Carousel:

Posted In-Feed, Carousel ads allow brands to post more than one video or a mixture of photo and video in one post. This feature can be useful in providing engaging video and impactful photos of your product with a click through to your website where they can buy. By providing a variety of visuals, you can appeal to those who like static image and video and get more into one post rather than bombarding users with multiple.  

Stories:

Less popular and relatively unexplored compared to their Instagram counter-parts, Facebook story ads will show between the stories of user’s friends. A possible lower-cost avenue for your brand, these ads will be viewed for 15s or until dismissed by the consumer. To these stories you can add a call to action to click through to a chosen landing page with an Instagram-famous ‘swipe-up’ feature. 

Here’s What Works – Advanced Advertising Tactics

1. Don’t run the same video adverts to all of your audience. You have lots of unique audiences which will respond to different advertising styles, by tailoring your ads to separate audiences you can increase engagement significantly and use advertising insights to see what works. 

2. Ads can be tailored to promote continued interest in your brand. By first running prospecting ads, brands can build awareness and engagement in the product. Following this, retargeting ads can be used to seal the deal with consumers who are already interested. 

3. Use videos without sound. 85% of Facebook users watch videos with no sound so by burning on or adding captions, users can continue to watch with or without. Equally, users commonly prefer visual over word-heavy content, so by creating a VIdeo Content users are more likely to be engaged and interact with your brand. 

4. Emojis are everywhere, and are now being heavily used in advertising. They are very effective in engaging a younger audience and driving higher CTRs. Emojis can be hit or miss though, so make sure you A/B test your ads and captions. 

5. Always try new things. Seeing the same ad over and over can be boring and annoying, often making users sick of your brand. Try to rotate ads whenever possible and test new styles regularly. Again, use ad insights to see what users are loving and not loving. 

6. Lookalike audiences are a key tool for marketers and work well for prospecting adverts. Take care not bombard targeting on lookalike audiences. You may end up shrinking your reach and in turn engagement. 

If you need help with your Facebook video marketing strategy, get in touch! At DreamingFish, we know how to optimise your content to make your brand stand out and can put together a detailed plan of when, what and how to post.