How to Design a Facebook Advertising Strategy: Tips & Tricks

Facebook has found its rebranding as Meta challenging for both internal and external reasons. At the same time, changes to its policies and algorithm have restricted Facebook’s organic reach, making it more difficult for businesses to get in front of a wide audience.

Despite these challenges, Facebook remains the top sales channel for digital marketers worldwide. That’s because users spend an average of 35 minutes on Facebook every day—the most time invested on any social media platform. Add to that the 1.96 billion active users it attracts daily, and it’s obvious why you can’t ignore Facebook’s marketing opportunities.

This article explores smart ways to design an effective advertising strategy to help your business get the maximum reach and traction on the world’s most popular social media platform. By the end of this piece, you’ll learn how to:

• Define your target audience
• Have a clear vision of your goals
• Incorporate video ads
• Study the competition
• Use Facebook Mobile Ads
• Show customer testimonials
• Test different ad formats
• Focus on one call to action

Define your target audience

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When it comes to selecting your target audience, Facebook marketing is no different from standard marketing practices like content marketing, SEO, or email marketing. You want as large an audience as possible to see your ads, but at the same time, you need to target audiences based on specific demographics and habits. Facebook has efficient ad targeting options that let you target particular groups.

The platform’s Core Audience feature means you can specify your target Facebook audience based on these five classifications:

• Location. This option allows you to zero in on specific countries, states, counties, cities, and even particular ZIP codes. This feature makes it possible to define a radius around a specific ZIP code you want to target (e.g., users within 15 miles of ZIP code 90210).
• Demographics. This option lets you choose audiences based on age, sex, marital or relationship status, level of education, employment status, political affiliations, religious background, and more.
• Interests. This covers hobbies and activities that a particular set of people might like to do.
• Behavior. This includes spending habits, browsing habits, device preferences, network speed, and so on.
• Connections. You can choose to target only the people connected to your Facebook page, or exclude them in favor of finding new leads, getting new customers, and building brand awareness.

Have a clear vision of your goals

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Once you’ve set up your custom audience profile, define your campaign objectives.

Although reaching users through organic traffic can be challenging, the Facebook Ads Manager is still built around specific marketing goals. And unless you choose the right campaign objectives, you won’t have access to certain features on the platform. That’s because several important tools and functions are preset according to user-selected goals.

These are some of the Facebook-defined goals you’ll want to align with your advertising strategy:

• Brand awareness. Selecting this will show your ads to people who are already interested in your kind of business, product, or service.
• Reach. Reach is the total number of new or unique users who get to see your ads.
• Traffic. The traffic option helps drive people to a particular destination like your website, blog, or physical store.
• Engagement. This is any action a user takes on your Facebook page (like, share, comment, save a video, click a link, etc.). You can use this to generate interest in a brand, event, or product launch.
• App install. The app install option encourages people to install your app on their mobile devices.
• Lead generation. Leads help generate interest in a product or service. It involves users filling out a form or leaving contact information.
• Conversion. This is about getting users to perform the desired goal, like opening an email, registering for a podcast, making a purchase, and so on.

These are just a few of the marketing goals that Facebook defines. You can choose from several others—video views, store traffic, catalog sales, and more—according to your campaign objectives.

Incorporate video ads

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Facebook videos are extraordinarily popular. The social network is second only to YouTube in live videos, with over 42% of the market share. In the domain of short-form videos, Facebook even beats TikTok, with over 60% of user share. Regardless of your campaign objectives or ad budget, you’ll miss out on a giant chunk of Facebook users if you’re not including videos.

Here’s an overview of the types of videos on Facebook:

• Reels. A format acquired from Instagram, Facebook reels are short-form videos with music.
• Feed video ads. They are very effective because they look similar to organic posts. These videos appear on the right side of the screen.
• In-stream video ads. These are ads placed in organic video content. They can be five seconds to 10 minutes long.
• Stories video ads. These are vertical videos that appear in the stories feed on mobile devices.
• Marketplace video ads. These ads appear in the Facebook marketplace. They are great for showcasing new products.

First, decide which format works best for your campaign objectives. Then, use the following tips to optimize scroll-stopping videos that will drive engagement for your business.

• Make your visuals unique. Facebook users have made over 2.5 trillion posts on the platform so far. To stand out in that crowd, your video should have something unique and gripping in the first few seconds for users to keep watching.
• Keep it simple. Even though you may be selling a complicated tech solution, keep your video simple enough for people to understand, enjoy, and share. ‍
• Use subtitles. People watch 85% of Facebook videos without sound. Putting subtitles on your videos will make it much easier to get your message across.

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Study the competition

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Competitor analysis is important in any advertising campaign, but especially so for Facebook because of the sheer saturation of marketing messages on the platform.

Studying and knowing your competitors will give you ideas to enhance your strategy and set yourself apart. Facebook has made that process remarkably easy with its Ad Library. You can search all ads that are currently active on the platform, as well as some past ads related to issues of wider public interest.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to using this tool for competitor analysis:

1. Open Facebook Ad Library and select your country in the top-right corner of the screen.
2. Choose your category: Issues, Elections or Politics, or Search All.
3. Search for your competitor’s brand or business by typing its name on the search bar. This will bring up all active ads. You can use search filters to scan by country, platform, and impressions.
4. Click on See Ad Details under individual ads to find start dates, platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Facebook Messenger, or Audience Network), and impressions.

Use this information to gather inspiration for your ad campaign, find out what works and what doesn’t, explore new clients, gather audience insights, and discover new market trends.

Use Facebook Mobile Ads

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Almost 55% of all internet traffic comes from mobile devices. The percentage is even higher among Facebook users; almost 82% only access the platform via a mobile device. That shows you just how important Facebook mobile ads are for the success of your ad campaign.

Facebook advertisers are increasingly adapting their campaigns to mobile-first strategies. That’s because the low-entry cost of mobile devices (compared to a TV or desktop computer) and wide penetration of wireless connectivity has changed internet usage habits. Optimized ad campaigns for mobile devices are now a standard tactic for marketing executives.

This format offers several advantages, including:

• Versatility. Marketers can improve user engagement with a brand because mobile ads are more compelling, visually appealing, and customizable.
• Geotargeting. This allows you to reach target clients at the right time with location-specific messaging.
• Cost-effectiveness. Mobile cost-per-click (CSP) is 24% less expensive than desktop CPC.
• Click-through rate (CTR). Mobile-based CTRs are 40% higher than that of desktops.

Show customer testimonials

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Almost 90% of consumers worldwide research and read customer reviews before making a purchase. Another 79% of potential customers say they trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations from friends and family.

Whether you run a small business or represent a major brand, online reviews are a measure of social proof that lends credibility to companies. Here is a step-by-step approach to incorporating customer testimonials and reviews into your ad campaign:

1. Collect testimonials. Send emails to your existing customers or post a message on social media asking for testimonials.
2. Design your ad creatives. The best way is through video testimonials.
3. Track results. Use metrics like conversions and CTR to measure the effectiveness of your ads.
4. Implement marketing tactics. Cross-promote your testimonial ads on your website and through emails, other social media, and newsletters. Customize your videos for Facebook feeds and stories by sizing them to the appropriate dimensions. Use Google Analytics to understand the traffic generated by each ad on your website. Reward customers who leave reviews with a special offer, discount, or freebie to express your gratitude.

Test different ad formats

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Use your ad campaign objectives and target audience to A/B test which combination of Facebook ad types works best for you. The format will decide ad placement on the user’s page.

Facebook offers eight different ad formats. They are:

• Single image ads
• Videos
• Carousels, which can contain 10 different images or videos with separate links
• Instant Experiences, a multi-feature, mobile-optimized, full-screen ad format that lets users watch videos, images, and carousel ads
• Collections, which have a cover image or video and can contain multiple single images and an Instant Experience
• Dynamic ads, an automated format that pulls relevant images or videos onto a preset template
• Click-to-Messenger ads directly launch a chat conversation with your business
• Lead ads, a mobile-only format that allows businesses to collect contact information from users

Test your campaign with a combination of ad sets that align with your messaging. Use analytics tools from Facebook’s dashboard to determine which formats are most effective.

Focus on one call to action

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When you are running ads on Facebook, any engagement with your ads is a win. But your ultimate goal is to make users click through. For that, you need a strong, relevant, and compelling call to action (CTA).

The CTA is a vital component of the Facebook marketing strategy, letting users know exactly what action they are taking and what they can expect. An unclear CTA can confuse users and represent a lost opportunity for the advertiser. Let’s say you’re running a campaign to build awareness about climate change. Without a CTA, a Facebook user who views your ad and is sympathetic to your cause will assume there’s nothing he can do about it and leave. Having a CTA (like “Read More” or “Open Link”) is much more likely to engage them further.

Facebook has hundreds of CTA buttons on its Ads Manager. They are classified according to the following marketing objectives:

• Awareness
• Traffic
• Engagement
• Leads
• App promotion
• Sales

Although you are limited by their selection, almost every conceivable scenario is covered for every possible business or brand.

Design innovative strategies for Facebook Ads with some professional help

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Upwork is not affiliated with and does not sponsor or endorse any of the tools or services discussed in this article. These tools and services are provided only as potential options, and each reader and company should take the time needed to adequately analyse and determine the tools or services that would best fit their specific needs and situation.