If you are a business owner, there's a high chance that you are advertising on Facebook. But do you know what are all the types of Facebook ads?
Here are more questions to get you thinking:
With over 1,300 targeting options, 15 different objectives, and 6 ad formats, mastering Facebook ads can be complicated. Without a dedicated team of experts, even the best type of Facebook ads will give you mediocre results at best.
But if you want to know how everything works, keep reading, and we’ll take you through all Facebook ad types in detail.
Contents
There are a few different types of ads, all designed for specific uses and types of offers.
If you own a Facebook page and regularly post content, you already know that not all content performs the same. It turns out that a regular post only reaches about 2 or 3 percent of your total audience. With post engagement, you can drive more people to see the post and generate more engagement. In other words, you’ll have a better reach, and you will be able to get more activity on the post and other similar posts. As a result, you’ll get more organic traffic and followers.
Post engagement ads are available in two types, photo ads, and video ads. Both of them offer a few useful benefits and are very effective when it comes to growing your organic follower base.
Photo post engagement ads are the best type of Facebook ads that get best results through photos. They are a perfect choice if you want to show off a few pictures, and you can also add a link in the description to get a few extra visitors. The link probably won’t help you generate a ton of clicks, but you should still post links, as every click counts.
Video advertising is quickly becoming the ad of choice for many businesses out there. Videos are a fantastic medium for engaging a wider audience because they do a great job of connecting with people. Furthermore, this is the type of facebook ads that get best results for small local businesses looking to form a stronger connection with their audience.
Video ads are excellent because you can use them to re-target subsets of your page’s visitors based on how much of your video they watched. By repeating the ad, you’ll be able to segregate your audience correctly and keep pushing new ad types on the visitors that show the most interest.
Collection Ads are Facebook’s mobile-only ads format that can help your audience get the best mobile user experience. These ads are available on both Facebook and Instagram. Whenever someone taps on a collection ad, they are taken to a much more responsive and faster-loading page where they can learn more details about your offer. The new landing page is powered by Instant Experience, which allows the users to see the ads without leaving the social media.
These ads consist of a cover image that takes up most of the ad itself and the few images or videos below it. Facebook wants to make the entire process much simpler, so they included a few different ad templates for you to pick.
Instant Storefront collection ads are designed for eCommerce brands and websites that want to showcase their products in their ads. All you have to do to get started with this template is to upload a few product images and sort them in the available positions. The ads will show 3 to 4 products at a time, but users can swipe to the side to review all of them. The maximum number of images is 20, and you can fully personalise the order in which they appear for every user.
You can also add a call to action button to redirect the users directly to your website’s landing page. Here’s a quick overview of the situations where the Instant Storefront template works the best:
The Instant Lookbook template is the best type of Facebook ads for businesses selling clothes and other eCommerce fashion brands. Their goal is to inspire your audience by showing them lifestyle images that will motivate them to interact with your brand via the product tagging feature. You can also place videos as your ad cover image to get even more clicks.
The Instant Lookbook ad type is the best type of Facebook ads if you want to:
This Facebook ad type focuses on customer acquisition with a clear call to action button that pops up as a mini landing page. It usually includes a short intro video designed to capture the viewer’s attention. Once they click on the ad, they will see your product or service.
The purpose here is to make a sale or at least generate a lead. It works if you have a clearly defined goal or action you want the user to take. The Instant Customer Acquisition template is the type of Facebook ads that get the best results for:
Video ads are usually used to educate audiences about your latest products and their features. You should only use high-resolution videos in the most popular aspect ratios 9:16 and 16:9. The length of the video has to be between 1 second and 240 minutes.
Facebook video ads also allow the use of 360 ads, which offer a completely immersive experience where users can drag their finger across the screen to rotate the product and see it from all sides.
If you’re opening a new store or if you simply want to inform your audience about a special offer at one of your retail stores, the event response ads are the best choice. They are designed to help you drive brand awareness in specific locations or regions. They are very similar to brand awareness ads, but instead of focusing solely on the brand, they focus primarily on location.
There are a few different types of event response ads, so let’s go over each one.
Almost every business, company, or organisation uses Facebook Events to inform their audience about a special happening near them. These ads will help you get more people on board by informing them about the details regarding your event.
If you use the right targeting options, you will be able to boost your event very quickly. You can also limit the geographical reach according to the size of the event, and the ads will display only to the users living in the same city or area where the event will take place.
The offer claims ads are ideal for brick & mortar store owners who want to increase sales. You can use them to provide special offers to every user who opens the ad. The users will be informed about the offer details in their email, and they can claim their rewards once they come to your store.
The local awareness ads are the best type of Facebook ads for location-based targeting. You can use them to reach people who are in close vicinity of your store. Make sure that you include some type of call to action to make it easier for people to contact you.
As the name already suggests, lead generation ads are used to help you gather new leads. They work great because users can click on ads, download the content you provide, or sign up for your offer without leaving the social media platform.
The easiest way to increase the number of your page likes is using Page Like Ads. They are designed to pop up all over Facebook’s ad placements allowing users to like your page directly by simply clicking the call to action button. The only thing you should keep in mind is that you want to get likes to boost your sales in the long run.
These ads are a great choice for all business owners who put a lot of effort into creating a prominent social media presence. So, if you create content designed to drive engagement, this type of ad is the best choice.
Slideshow Ads are a bit more interactive as they show a set of images that appear as a video in the user feed. You can add up to 10 images per slideshow, and you can also pick the background music. Facebook will then blend all of the ingredients together and show it as a video that pops up in the user’s feed.
This ad type is ideal for small and medium-sized businesses that don’t want to invest a lot of money into video ads. They present a much cheaper alternative to videos, and they use far less data, allowing you to spread the word about your brand or offer to people with a poor internet connection.
If you decide to use this ad format, make sure that you add all ten slides. Each slide shouldn’t be longer than 4 seconds but do some testing first to see what works best.
The carousel ad format is one of the most popular types of Facebook ads among eCommerce advertisers in the past few years. It allows you to present up to 10 images, videos, links, headlines, or CTAs in a single ad. It allows advertisers to promote multiple products, posts, or offers until they find the ones that offer the best results and attract the most leads.
The content used in this type of ad has to be very appealing, and it has to have a clear message to attract as many leads as possible. You can create a short story behind the posts and walk your audience through a story.
Last but not least, we have Messenger ads that are proven to be very useful for promoting sales, giveaways, and lead generation. You can use them to contact your customers directly and show them that you care about their needs. There are two types of messenger ads:
These ads look like standard ads, but they have a CTA redirected to the user’s messenger.
The sponsored messages format appears in the user’s inbox rather than their feed. However, you can only use them on users who came in contact with your brand in the past. Therefore, you can’t use it to generate new leads, but you can use it to inform a part of your audience about your newest offers.
As you can see, there are so many different types of Facebook ads, choosing the right one for your needs can be easier said than done. That’s why we’ve put this little step-by-step guide together, hoping to help you figure out what type of Facebook ads get the most conversions in your case.
You should always set clear goals for your future ad campaigns before setting them up. You have to figure out what you want to achieve. Are you looking to increase the number of conversions on your website, or do you want to drive more people to a special event? Or do you simply want to inform your customers about a new store you’ve opened?
Instead of building an ad campaign around a specific type of Facebook ad, you should do exactly the opposite. Consider your marketing needs first and build the ad campaign around that.
After you set your ad campaign’s goals, you have to eliminate all Facebook ad types that don’t fit with your goals. Try to find the most relevant type to your goals and select the sub-type that fits best. Almost every type of Facebook ad campaign has multiple ad types you can use, so try to find the one that fits best with your goal.
Once you narrow down to a single type of ad, pick the option that fits the best with your goals. If you’re unsure which one to use, simply include the same ad copy into every type and see which ones offer the best results.
The Facebook Ads Manager tool allows you to make your ads unique and creative as there are a ton of different layouts and options you can use. You can choose different types of content, layouts, grids, and you can even customise each ad campaign to target specific devices such as mobile and desktop users.
The platform also comes with a huge selection of different CTAs you can use, so make sure you test a few of them out to see which one works the best.
It won’t take you long to realize that you can’t use a single ad type to reach different goals. That’s why you should experiment with different ad types in your campaigns. Just make sure that your ads are fully optimised for the current campaign and use different ad types to optimize your entire ad strategy and improve your reach.
Without targeting the right audience, your Facebook ad campaigns will just be a waste of time and money. That’s why you should put extra effort into finding the right audience for your ad campaigns.
Even if you’re happy with your current ad campaigns, you should know that they can surely be even better. That’s why you should keep a close eye on your results. Experiment with different ad types, try a different approach, and keep testing your campaigns to improve them even further.
Now that you know more about the different types of Facebook ads, you should be able to create ad campaigns that will offer the best results. With that said, don’t forget that digital advertising is all about testing, analysing data, and experimenting with different ad types. The optimisation process never stops, but your results should get better with time.
Stick to this last, most important rule, find the best type of Facebook ads for your needs, and you should see an increase in your ROI ad strategy in no time. Good luck!
If you're looking for Facebook marketing services in Singapore, Heroes of Digital can help you. We are the best Facebook marketing agency locally with over 600 clients. Get your free digital marketing consultation today!
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