Paying for marketing has to pay off – and Facebook is one of the advertising platforms where you have the best chance of that. In this guide to Facebook ad size and formats, we’ll show you how to make every penny count.
One of our most important missions here at LeadQuizzes is helping business beginners generate leads and convert them to sales – and we’ve been doing that successfully for quite a while now. While we are firm believers in the power of organic reach, sometimes you need a little push – and that means that paid advertising should be a part of your marketing strategy.
Why Facebook?
Just in case you’re still not convinced, here are some cold hard facts. First, everyone is on Facebook. Well, not everyone, but, more than 2 billion active users, which makes up for a significant portion of humanity.
An average user checks Facebook eight times per day. A fifth of time people spend on their smartphones is spent on Facebook. You get it, it’s quite enough of people and time to get your message across. Back in the day, it was easy to do it organically – but latest Facebook algorithm does not favor content from Facebook pages, which now has an average 2.6% organic reach.
But if you are ready to pay and you know how to devise a good marketing strategy, you’re in for an average click-through rate (CTR) of 90%. Depending on your industry, a click can cost you between $0.45 (for apparel) and $3.77 for the insurance and finance. Most important of all, 26% of Facebook users who clicked on ads reported making a purchase.
More than half of consumers say social media influences their shopping, led by Facebook at 44%. Of course, your case won’t make it to these shiny statistics if you don’t follow some important guidelines – both those set by Facebook and good marketing practices. But we are all set on helping you maximize your potential – and we’ll start with a detailed guide through Facebook ad size and types.
But before we begin…
Golden Rules of Facebook Ads
1. Prioritize visual content
Visual content is favored by Facebook algorithm – and people are 2.3 times more likely to share and remember this type of content, according to Buzzsumo. Moreover, images account for 75-90% of Facebook Ad performance, so choose your visuals wisely.
2. Good targeting
Clicks are great, but conversions are even better. If your Facebook advertising doesn’t bring you conversions, you’re wasting your money on pointless clicks. So before you even start shaping your Facebook strategy, you need to know who is the right audience for you and target it with customized ads. If you need help with that, we got you – just look for the information you need in these articles:
- 4 Ways to Shape Start-Up Marketing Strategy Using Market Opportunity Analysis
- 5 Types of Surveys and How to Use Them to Understand Customers
- 8 Demographic Questions Every Quality Survey Needs to Contain
3. Value proposition
Be straightforward with your value proposition – it’s easy to scroll past an ad that takes ages to tell why people should look at it or buy a product. Here you’ll find sound advice how to shape your value proposition.
This is a great example of value proposition – it captures audience by asking the question, identifies the problem behind it and offers the solution.
4. Call-to-action is a must
The whole purpose of your ad is to inspire some type of action. Depending on your goal – sale, engagement or something else, you should use the benefit of CTA button at the ready and include it in every advertisement.
5. Don’t try to game the system
Cramming links and text into your ads is both ugly and pointless. Facebook encourages advertisers to be as concise and simple as possible, and believe us, they do it for your good. While you are allowed to insert text into pictures and videos, it has to serve a practical purpose, not just be there to relay needless details.
Yes.
No.
Quite often, it’s easier to produce short ad text which may convert better than poorly written longer text. Cramming too much text into your video or image will increase the chance of Facebook refusing to run your ad. However, there are certain exceptions to that rule – such as charts and graphs, magazine and newspaper covers, and movie and TV show posters.
Exception.
Now that you keep this in mind at all times, we can move on to specifics.
Facebook ad size and types
1. Facebook Feed Ads
Facebook News Feed is the place to be. This is where brand awareness and engagement are truly made – in the arena where communicating with your customers feels like one-on-one conversation. While Facebook Feed Ads don’t have the advantage of sticking out, there are plenty of ways to overcome this and make sure that nobody scrolls past your message. Before we move, let’s run through the technical side.
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Facebook Feed Image Ad
Images are somewhat of a classic of Facebook advertising – they offer plenty of opportunities for creativity, image ads are simple to make and they are a safe investment. If you opt for a single image, you have the possibility to create up to six variations of one ad – so make each option count.
Depending on your goal, you can use layouts with different calls to action, inviting people to buy your product, engage with your brand, learn more about your product, or give you their contact info.
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Facebook Feed Video Ad
Videos earn the highest engagement rate on Facebook, even though they make up only 3% of content. If you’re a marketer, these two opposed statistics spell only one thing – opportunity. Facebook loves videos as much as it loves pictures – similarly to YouTube’s algorithm, Facebook is starting to favor this type of content because it keeps people glued to the screen and the website. Since 47% of the value of Facebook video ads happens in the first three seconds, wade decisively and let people know what you’re about straight away – here you can find plenty of great advice about making engaging videos.
Another important detail about Facebook videos is that 85% of them are viewed without sound – so make sure that you include captions or ask viewers to turn on the sound if the sound is indispensable to your message.
2. Facebook Carousel Ads
Facebook Carousel Ads are one of the new additions to the social networks ever growing advertising palette – and they are as adorable and inviting as their name suggests.
They are a great way to present people with several products, each with their CTA in their own right. Basically, Carousel transfers part of your website offer straight to the Facebook news feed.
3. Facebook Right Column Ads
This is probably the most ‘traditional’ ad placement, since it takes ads back from the user’s feed to a territory reserved for advertisements.
Another flaw of this advertising method is that right-column ads are available only on desktop – cutting you away from a valuable portion of potential customers who visit Facebook from their mobile phones. However, with the right image, proper copy, and solid targeting, this ad’s distinct positioning will help you get those clicks you need!
4. Facebook Instant Articles Ads
Here at LeadQuizzes, we are great fans of content marketing – and here we show exactly why content can be one of the most powerful drivers of brand awareness, engagement and conversions.
Instant articles are a great addition to Facebook’s advertising options, which enables you to showcase interactive, fast-loading articles AND place ads within content.
5. Facebook Marketplace Ads
Facebook Marketplace is among the latest additions to the social network, which allows you to buy or sell products in your area by searching or looking through the available listings.
Marketplace is a great thing for customers who know what they want and a great opportunity to welcome them and take them to your website.
6. Facebook In-Stream Video Ads (Just Don’t!)
Facebook in-stream video ads are the nightmare of the era when TV was the primary source of passive entertainment. Remember sitting back, relaxing and enjoying a movie or a cartoon you’ve been waiting for, only to have a commercial interrupt this bliss by blasting into your face out of nowhere.
Someone who just wants to see the world burn managed to bring this nightmare back to the social media realm by enabling marketers to interrupt regular videos on news feed with their own video ads. The silver lining comes with time limitation of these ads to 5-15 seconds.
Some marketers boast that these ads have a completion view rate of 70%, obviously unfazed by the fact that they successfully drive away a third of users who just wanted to watch the actual video content. So the takeaway is – you will catch someone’s attention, only to annoy them.
Still, if you’re hell bent on annoying people – here are the specs.
Bonus Tip
As already said, given that we aim to become one of the best online quiz creators on the market, we’ve been helping people with lead generation and conversion for a while now – and we want to share a secret with you. Your advertisement doesn’t have to be limited to images and videos. You can get ahead of your competitors with something more original and engaging – a quiz. What makes quiz so effective? Several things.
First, it’s the visual appeal – with the right content builder and free stock photos site, you can create dozens of sweet packages of questions with multimedia content. Second, quizzes are inviting and hard to resist for a number of reasons you can find here – and they have an amazing viral potential. Third, quizzes can ease people into solid content marketing that ties to quiz results – and here you can find a detailed guide on how to create a Facebook quiz that would communicate your marketing message.
So what do you say? You can conduct a little experiment and make a quiz on your own – no strings attached. You have plenty of time to get creative and test your quiz’efficiency before you decide to purchase a package that comes with plenty of added perks – so click here and make sure that all Facebook goers remember your brand!
