When you scroll through your Facebook feed, what’s the type of content you keep seeing? Video. What else is strategically placed between posts in your newsfeed? Advertisements. Facebook video marketing isn’t a new concept, but it’s one that’s on the rise for marketers.
In a survey conducted by Wyzowl, 81 percent of businesses utilize video as a marketing tool — and there’s a good reason why. In that same report, 72 percent of consumers voted they’d rather watch a video to learn about a product or service than any other medium.
On top of that, Facebook prioritizes native video — video uploaded directly to Facebook — over video shared to Facebook from other platforms with an 86 percent higher reach than YouTube.
It’s pretty clear that video marketing is here to stay. Whether you’re trying to reach more people, drive traffic, or make sales, Facebook video ads have proven to boost engagement.
Before taking you through the steps to set up your video ad campaign, there are a few important things you should keep in mind so you end up with conversions instead of content no one cares about.
Know who you’re targeting
The best way to know your target audience is to map them out in detail using buyer personas. These are fleshed out examples of your business’s ideal consumer and the details surrounding them: their age, job, location, hobbies, interests, and more.
The reason it’s so important to flesh some examples of buyer personas out is that it’ll make your marketing message crystal clear. It’s difficult to have confusion when you know who you’re catering to and what they’re looking for. You can’t go wrong when you map this out ahead of time.
To do this, study your current customers if you have any. Set up a poll or survey asking them what they want more of or what they expect from you in the future. Ask them about themselves so you know the demographics of your audience. Search businesses that sell similar products and services to your own and study who they target their content to.
When you create content, specifically video ads, you’ll do it with your ideal customer in mind. This will make it easier to create something visual your audience will love. It’s really that simple.
Perform split testing
There’s never a time when A/B testing doesn’t come in handy in any campaign and the same goes for video ads.
Like any campaign, you want to test what speaks to your audience most. What gets them excited? What makes them stop and listen?
When split testing, make sure you’re only testing one element at a time. Don’t play around with the title, description, and colors all at once. That defeats the purpose. The objective is to pinpoint what can be changed for better conversions, so you want to take it one step at a time.
Optimize for mobile
Facebook found that users are five times more likely to watch video on their phones than on a desktop or tablet. That’s more than enough reason for you to optimize your video ad for mobile users.
According to Facebook, there are a few things you can do for better mobile optimization:
- Capture attention as quickly as you can. The faster you can get your point across, the better. Make it visually appealing.
- Design your video for no sound. This doesn’t mean omitting it completely but adding captions so that users can still understand what your ad is about even if the volume isn’t on.
- Edit your video so it fits mobile screens, including the dimensions and scale.
- Continue experimenting. There’s no one-size-fits-all for mobile ads and new methods are constantly improving the user experience.
Creating your video ad
First, go to Facebook Ad Manager. For your objective, click Video views.
Scroll down and you’ll see a section where you can set up your campaign name, choose to split test, and optimize your budget. When you’re done, click ‘Set up ad account.
Recommended for You
Webcast, January 16th: The Latest in Growth Hacking: Link Retargeting
Then enter your country’s info.
When you click Continue, you’ll be taken to the next page where you’ll decide on your target audience.
Then, decide where you want your Facebook ads displayed.
Next, pick a budget based on what you can afford and when you want your ads to be scheduled. You can make this as flexible as you’d like.
Now it’s time to upload your video ad! Under the Format section, click Single Video.
Scroll down to Video and upload your video ad to Facebook. Pay attention to the recommendations that Facebook displays on the right for the best video optimization.
Once it’s uploaded, it’s time to add text and let people know what you’re all about.
Click Confirm at the bottom, and you’re all set! Facebook will review your ad and once it’s approved, your video advertisement will be live and ready to bring in traffic, engagement, and conversions.
Over to you
If you’re thinking about implementing Facebook ads into your marketing strategy, these steps should help get you started. It isn’t enough to have a product or service you want to sell; you have to make it visually appealing, know who you’re marketing to, and pay close attention to mobile. With enough testing and analyzing, you’ll soon find out what video ad strategy works best for you.