Facebook Ad Design Guide: That Will Work For You

What are Facebook Ads?

When you want to promote your business on social media, Facebook offers you a platform to do so. Ads on Facebook appear on the Newsfeed in mobile and Desktop and the right column. You basically have to choose where you want to position and pay for that.

How does Facebook Ad work?

The level of audience targeting, the number of users on the platform, and analytics and insights make Facebook Ads the most effective. These advantages, combined with great strategies and plans, are why Facebook ads have benefited many businesses. Whatever kind of advertising you do on Facebook takes iteration and experimentation to see its success.

Facebook Ads target the group of users who share similar characteristics and place your ad in these users’ News Feeds or in the right column.

Before investing in Facebook Ads, you first need to know who your target audiences’ are. When designing your new ad on Facebook, you have to create a new audience with some customizable characteristics. They are Location, Age, Sex, Languages spoken, Interests and behaviors, and their connection to your other business-related pages on Facebook.

You can also create a Lookalike audience that lets Facebook generate an audience for you that resembles a particular source. This source can include some or all of the information told above.

After you are done customizing your ad’s audience, you will have to consider how this ad will look on Desktop and Laptop. This ensures you to design your ad accordingly for easy viewing no matter where it appears on Facebook.

There are three different places where your ads show up:

Right Column: This is the most traditional type of ad on Facebook that appears on the right side of the News Feed. This is the first type of ads Facebook has had and still has. Though the ads on the News Feed are likely to get higher metrics due to the native advertising features, the right column ads shouldn’t be forgotten.

This type of ad sees less expensive clicks and conversions compared to others. To make your right column ad successful, it needs to be relevant, contains a value proposition, an attractive visual, and, most essentially, a call-to-action placed correctly.

Desktop News Feed: This ad appears directly on users’ News Feed when they access Facebook from their PC, and it looks more like native advertising. These types of ads have more value than the right column ones and are more expensive. These ads should follow Facebook posts best practices and should be both engaging and visually appealing.

Mobile News Feed: Similarly, like the Desktop News Feed ad, this type of ad appears on the user’s smart phone’s News Feed and displays like an organic post from people and pages they follow.

The Types Of Facebook Ads:

Photo Ads: They are images that can help you promote a product or event you specifically want to call attention to. If you already have a special promotion going on, this ad type puts a snap of your product or venue at its center. All the photo Ads shown in the Facebook news feed are at least 1080×1080 image resolutions.

Video Ads: They contain a GIF or video as the centerpiece of the advertisement that can be used to demonstrate your product or event. This type of Ads helps you create a deeper connection with your audience by coinciding with your brand with the kind of content the online users are consuming more.

Stories Ad: This is the newest type of Ad rolled out by Facebook that allows you to post new clips and images for a day. This ad fits the dimensions of a mobile device and can be played on desktop and mobile devices. When the user takes a look at their friends’ stories, these types of Ads appear in the same format in the stream of stories.

Messenger ad: This appears as direct messages in users’ message lists when using the Messenger app. This kind of ads directly interacts with your audience, showing them offers that you think they would like and listen to their responses to design your next message according to their interests.

Carousel ads: They contain a series of images and videos which the users can rotate through, where all of them are helping to describe a single product, service, or event the Ad is promoting. Each ad of this type can contain up to ten images or videos at a time and a link to their web pages. Since these ads include so many media, they are ideal for endorsing multiple products.

Slideshow ads: Like Carousel ads, Slideshow ads split your images one after another for users to view. The difference between both types is that Slideshow ads only play images (not videos). This ad compiles these images in the form of video. This is ideal for creating a video-like experience for users at a small budget.

Collection ad: This kind of ad brings the buying process directly into Facebook, so if a potential customer likes a product, they can make a purchase now and then. This ad features a central image or video promoting the product, with a collection of four smaller images below where viewers can click to know more about the product.

There are four types of collection ads:

• Instant Storefront: This ad is the best for displaying multiple products as part of the same ad and driving traffic to its respective page.
• Instant lookbook: This is for demonstrating a process in various contexts for the audience.
• Instant customer acquisition: This is ideal for driving traffic and prompting the audience to take a specific action on a product’s page.
• Instant Storytelling: This is ideal for narrating the story about your brand or helping the audience know more about you and your business.

Playables: They are ideal for app developers. This ad type allows your audience to view, preview, and even play a short version of your new app directly from the ad.

Here are the examples of 5 best Facebook ads that have worked

Slack: It is a universally acknowledged truth that everyone hates pointless meetings, so a simple yet effective visual from Slack illustrating what it feels like to sit in 25% fewer meetings draws the audience to the Slack communication platform. The ad is playable, and the internet parlance and imagery make it feel more relatable.

The CTA is also rightly positioned as asking users to sign up alone might not be a great strategy. This is an excellent example of how a work-focused communication can be advertised on social media or how even a practical product can be made to seem more attractive.

Amazon: This is an event Ad from Amazon. This ad works well on different levels. It clearly displays a sample product with its honest rating, and with this, you know what event Amazon is promoting. It is the Black Friday. Ecommerce, like Amazon, uses this kind of events to boost their sales at a specific time during a year, and Facebook’s event ads make this easy.

While you are about to invest in event advertising, make a list of holidays and awareness months your company cares about. In that way, you will know exactly which marketing campaign will line up with these days and when to promote it on your business page.

Google: Google’s Facebook Ads are very compelling for even someone who just passes by it without interest. This specific Ad has a few elements which make it enjoyable. First is its visual continuity between this Ad and the Google brand is smooth and boosts the brand behind the offer.

Secondly, it cleverly uses active verbs combined with some aspirational language to create hype about the product. Third, it uses a vivid blue color that fits well with Facebook’s predominant blue palette and reinforces the meaning of blue color, which is trust and stability.

Naturebox: Naturebox’s photo Ad features a creative point of view shot, which is ideal for catching your eyes and getting them to dive into its healthy snacks. This also makes you imagine your next house party. In your next Facebook Ad, use live-action photography and digital designing in the same image.

As you can see in the above ad, Naturebox has designed a vibrant “free trial” icon right on the top of the image that would have just worked on its own.

Allbirds: Allbirds, a shoemaker, has come with this simple yet attention-grabbing Ad. It has used white space to its advantage. Though the Adjust lasts for 9 seconds, it quickly catches your attention and resonates with you. There is lots of ad content on Facebook, but it’s just a few with subtle movements and details like Allbirds that will stick to your memory.

Make sure your video ads seem like a breath of fresh air to your audience among the flashy quick ads.

Finally, after all the essential information on Facebook Ads, you are all set to design yours. But before that, take a look at these tips for designing Facebook ads that will take your business to the next level.

Tips for designing a Facebook Ad to grow your business:

• While creating a Facebook Ad, it should be targeted to a specific audience. The quality of the audience is more important than quantity. Casting an extensive network of audiences who are not your target will tank your relevance scores and offer you bad data.
• Relevance is a critical element when using Facebook Ads. Remember that you are spending money when someone views or clicks on your ad. If you are showing ads that are irrelevant to your target audience, you are just wasting your time and money and would likely not succeed with this kind of advertising.
• Visual content is the key not only in the Facebook algorithm, but also, it’s more likely to be remembered and shared among your audience. No matter what ad you are designing, it needs to be visually appealing.
• The visual content and copy should be closely aligned. Aligning the copy with visuals provides a feeling of personalization that increases the chances of engagement or conversion. You will see better ad performances and better relevance scores.
• Make sure it includes a captivating value proposition. A value proposition informs the readers why they should click on the “learn more” about your product or service. How is your product different from others? And why should the viewer click on your ad to see your website? It should be believable.
• An appealing and relevant ad is great, but your viewers might not know what to do next without a call to action. It is essential to include a CTA like “Buy now and save %” or something like “offer ends soon” and add a sense of urgency to your viewer. Your CTA should want people to click on your ad.

Conclusion

If you own a business and would like to promote it for better reach, a Facebook ad is the best option. With so many billion active users, you can set your target audience and get a better reach easily. That, too, with a wide range of Facebook Ad options, you can select the one which will suit your business and go along with it.

It’s imperative to keep in mind the tips mentioned above to make your ad campaign successful. Facebook offers an ad-friendly environment with lots of options like ad relevance scores and analytics to make your ads get a better reach.