How to Create the Best Facebook Ads

For almost all businesses, Facebook and Instagram are essential platforms to be running paid social ads. The reason we group Facebook and Instagram together is because Facebook (now Meta) owns Instagram – which at least makes running ads across multiple platforms a little simpler!

Here are a few tips that everyone should keep in mind when creating Facebook ads to have the best chance at being successful. Enjoy!

Create adverts to target all placement sizes

This means that your ads will fit the sizes suitable for Facebook and Instagram newsfeeds (1080 x 1080) as well as Facebook and Instagram stories (1080 x 1920). Both of these advert placements have their own benefits and are effective when used together, so try not to miss one out.

Bonus tip; you can use a tool like Adobe Creative Cloud Express to resize a video from newsfeed to story dimensions.

Use the Facebook Ad Library

 The Facebook Ad Library is home to all the past and present adverts that have ran on Facebook’s network. You can use this to get inspiration from your competitors by seeing what types of ads that they use.

Bonus tip; take note of the ads which have been running the longest. They are either A) killing it with this advert, or B) not paying attention and left it running and are burning through their spend.

Understand targeting

Ever wonder who you should target with your adverts? Next time you’re on your mobile phone, go to the Facebook App and wait until you see an advert come up in your newsfeed. In the top right corner you will see three dots. Press, then select ‘why am I seeing this ad?’ and Facebook will tell you the interests that they associate to your Facebook account and justify why you’re seeing that specific advert.

This is a simple and effective way to understand how targeting works and provide you with some tips on who you should be targeting.

Create a hook and angles chart

A hook and angles chart should be the bedrock of your campaign. Make a list of different pain points that your customer experiences, and then write copy that demonstrates how your product or service can alleviate their pain.

Once you find a really effective pain point that gets you clicks, start making different variations of that copy to run a super-focused campaign.

User generated content

Don’t get bogged down with having the most professional-looking, studio level advert. Do you know what people think when they see a professional-looking advert? They think they’re looking at an advert! People generally don’t like being sold to, so a great way to combat this is by using user-generated content!

Authentic, and loyal customers who love your product or service can use their phones to create content showing off your product that you can then use in your adverts. It can have a much greater impact on your customers when compared to a big expensive video ad, and also puts in an element of social proofing!

Test behaviour and demographic targeting

Facebook’s targeting abilities are second to none. For example, let’s say you run a boutique dress shop online. You could target people who have their birthdays coming up in the next 30 days. Your advert could use copy that tells them to get their dress sorted for their birthday night out with a 15% discount code to say happy birthday.

Or maybe you run a jewellery business. If so, you could target people with an anniversary coming up in the next 60 days reminding them to get a gift in to celebrate their anniversary.

What you want to do is use targeting to make your products relevant and, in a sense, necessary to the user!

Use broad targeting

Or, if you want to target different groups of people, then you can leave it up to Facebook by using broad targeting. Facebook is very good at finding specific people through data on big audiences.

Bonus tip; if you have a product or service that is gender-specific, test out targeting both genders! We recently worked with a men’s apparel business and were shocked to discover that over 50% of their sales were purchased by women for men. Increasing our audiences to both men and women reduced our cost per acquisition by 25%!

Utilise current events and trends

You can use a tool like Google Trends and incorporate worldwide events into your ads. For example, last summer at the peak of Love Island we had fun making ads that showed bags of sweets bathing in the sun wearing bikinis and asked customers which bags they wanted to couple up with!

Another example is when Drake released his album Certified Lover Boy and brands jumped on the trend of copying the recognisable album cover.

Usually, these types of ads will only have a short life span, but they can still be effective for a short period of time if you get them in front of the right customers.

Create a calendar for your campaigns

This allows you to become more organised and have content or landing pages made in advance so that you’re not rushing around last minute. We also include potential deals we are going to have on our content calendars. I.e., a 24-hour flash sale, free shipping weekend, end of the month 30% sale.

Test, test and test again

Finally, our last (and most important) piece of advice is for you to constantly test your ads and come up with new ideas. Even the most successful ad won’t stay effective forever and will eventually begin to show fatigue so don’t get too complacent…even when things are going well.

At Blaze Media, we screenshot every good advert we see and put them into a folder called our ‘ad swipe file’, so we have hundreds and hundreds of Facebook and Instagram ads ready to give us inspiration at any time.

Use a paid ads agency

Okay, so while this isn’t exactly a tip, it’s definitely a solid piece of advice! If setting up all of your own campaigns and constantly monitoring them and tweaking them so that they’re making you the most money possible sounds a bit much for you, then leave it in the hands of the professionals. Get in touch with our Facebook advertising team and we’ll create adverts for your business that attract the right customers and make you a solid return on investment.