7 Tips on How You Can Easily Create Facebook Video Ads that Convert

Facebook video ads provide companies with a great opportunity to increase sales. I talk with a lot of different types of business and I am amazed at how many companies, especially B2B companies, don’t understand the opportunity that Facebook provides and are willing to leave money on the table. I understand why they feel that way. Marketing is a risk and it is really easy to waste money on Facebook ads. Some have clicked that ‘boost post’ button and received no return; which is a good way to waste money. Meanwhile, others have either heard some of the bad press that Facebook has gotten or they think because they are a B2B company their target audience isn’t there or can’t be found there.

What you need to drive sales

Some companies create one video and think that it alone will drive sales. Now, if you have an innovative product that has a lot of wow factor, one video might work but most of us have a longer buying cycle. This means you will need a series of videos to guide people through your content marketing funnel for Facebook Video ads to drive sales.

Is video right for your business?

How do you know if video is right for your product or services? It comes down to what you sell, how much it costs, and how many you can sell. If you sell a widget for $19.95 and you don’t sell a lot of them, video probably isn’t right for you. Text and image-based ads might be good because you don’t have the added cost of creating the video. I also don’t recommend video to businesses like local restaurants unless they are part of a larger brand. However, professional services like doctors or lawyers can benefit greatly from Facebook video ads. If you sell a product or services for B2B then video ads provide a unique opportunity for you because there is a 99% chance that your competition doesn’t understand video and isn’t using it properly to drive sales. For your video ads to work, it’s important to follow this video formula: the right message + right video + right time + right audience = sales.

1. How to get started with Facebook Video Ads

The first step before you create anything is to figure out your goal. You already know what your ultimate goal is. Your ultimate goal should be sales. However, unless you have that product with the wow factor I talked about earlier, you need a set of smaller goal to get people to the point where they are ready to buy. Your first goal might be to get them to watch another video or have them give you their email address to get access to your video series. This is why setting up tracking is so important when you have a long sales cycle so you can know what videos lead to that sale. It is also important to know that your sales team is still an important part of this process. Think of video as a member of your sales team.

2. How to format your video

You need to start by capturing their attention. You only get 3 seconds, so make it good. You need something in the video that is going to stop them from scrolling and get them to watch your video. This might be the title of your video or something that happens in the video that is interesting or strange enough to get them to stop. If you get them for the first 3 seconds, you have another 5 seconds. Make sure you talk about your brand early in the video in case they don’t make it to the end of the video. This way, you will get a little brand awareness out of the part they do watch. Depending on the length of the video, we actually recommending putting a call to action halfway through your video.

3. Keep it short at the beginning

Your company has a lot to offer. Avoid the temptation to put it all in the first video. Keep your video ads short. In the awareness stage, we recommend 6 – 30 second ads on social media. Educational style videos can be longer, but we recommend testing shorter videos, even with educational video.

4. This is the number one tip in this blog post! Don’t miss it!

The best Facebook ads have real people talking to the camera in a real location, not just standing against a blank wall. People connect with other people in a way that text and animation can’t. People in a real place are your competitive advantage. The person talking to the camera can be you, your employees or a paid spokesperson. Don’t use animated videos. They do not convert as well as videos with real people.

5. Tips for script writing

Don’t be afraid to be creative. Don’t think that just because your target audience is boring that they don’t like creativity. This doesn’t necessarily mean that your video needs to be funny. Funny videos are the hardest of all the types of videos to create. They need to be funny to your target audience which means they may not be funny to you. Your video should focus on one thing. Make sure to talk about the problem the viewer has and how they, or you, can solve it. The bigger you can make that pain seem, the better and the simpler the solution can be. The final step of your video is the call to action. Every video needs a call to action. It is waste of marketing money if you don’t tell them what to do next. Not all calls to action need to be ‘buy my stuff’ or ‘download my free video series.’ It depends on the goals for your campaign. However, at the same time, don’t leave it off because doing so will cost you money.

6. Little things make a big difference

Most people will see the video, at least at first, with the sound off so make sure you add captions to your video. This will help people connect with your video faster. Facebook’s built in caption tool is definitely not the most user friendly to use. We recommend paying someone to make your captions or using the YouTube caption tool and then downloading your captions for upload to Facebook.

Optimize the title and description for the viewer as well as what they want in order to help draw them in. This is even harder now because, based on current changes to the platform, Facebook now only shows a few lines of text. This makes the copy around your ad as important as you ad. Size the video correctly. There is a lot of data that shows that square videos do better on Facebook. Figure out what is best for your Facebook video ads before you start recording.

7. Follow them around

If your company is skittish about Facebook video ads, start off with Facebook retargeting ads. Retargeting ads are only shown to people who know you. These are the people who visit your website, like your Facebook page or are people that your sales team are already talking to. I recommend using multiple social media sites because you will be more likely to stay in front of this group. Retargeting is my number one strategy for all brands. It is low cost and keeps you top of mind with the people who already know you. Make sure to set up a way to track your prospects by moving them from social media to your website. I recommend using a video player that allows you to track prospects once they are in your system and will report to your CRM. This will let your sales team know who they should follow up with first because the point of Facebook video ads is to increase sales and putting the right system into place will ensure you success.

There is no magic bullet

There are a lot of services out there that say you can make an ad in 10 minutes. And while that technically will be a video ad, it is more likely to be noise that they tune out and quickly move on to the next thing. Don’t try to short cut the video ad process by only creating one video. You need all the videos in the video funnel. The final short cut to avoid is trying to save money. Your ads need to be too good to ignore. It is hard to know what to spend. Find video production services from a video agency that understands the buying process and can be your guide. Make sure they are video first. Most social media agencies say they can create a video for you, but they really don’t know any more than you do about video. Video is different than all of the social media ad types because it is really hard to make a video that is worth watching and drives sales. Avoid hiring a freelancer. You will need to guide them through the process because they are artists not video marketers and don’t understand business.