A Beginner's Guide to Facebook Video Ads

Facebook video ads are the most intuitive and effective advertising method available.

Not only is it a great way to showcase your brand’s personality and connect emotionally with your audience, but it also grabs the attention of Facebook users.

On average, viewers spend 5 times longer on videos than on static images.

These audiences are more likely to become active customers, increasing reach, engagement, and conversions more than any other form of promotion.

3 Reasons to Run Video Ads on Facebook

With Facebook and Instagram ads, it’s easier to reach an audience for your brand. You can build your target audience based on any number of different data points to narrow down the group that will be interested in your content. Of course Facebook has launched a video creation toolkit, including our competitors.

Create video ads that not only attract potential customers but also build an emotional connection. Done well, it will also increase audience engagement and drive more valuable conversions.

Here are the top three reasons why you should develop a video advertising strategy for your Facebook ads.

1. Facebook users like videos

Facebook has 2.38 billion monthly active users. That’s more than a quarter of the world’s population!

Statistics show that Facebook users watch nearly 3 billion hours of video every day, including more than 16 minutes of video ads per month. Agorapulse found that native Facebook videos have 86% higher engagement rates than similar content on YouTube.

Facebook video ads not only help us connect with our audience on the channels they love, but we can also build connections using the types of media they love to consume, delivering content to the right people at the right time.

2. Facebook Video Ads Drive Engagement

Video ads capture your audience’s attention better than any other type of advertising.

A HubSpot study found that 54% of people want to see more video content from brands or businesses they support. These people were also 85% more likely to purchase after watching a product video. In addition to this, most people typically only read 20% to 28% of the words on our website, and four times as many consumers would rather watch a video about our products than read about them.

Take Red Bull as an example:

While the energy drink company may be best known for its "Red Bull Gives Us Wings" campaign, they're also a huge sponsor of extreme sports, like auto racing and skydiving. At Flugtag, an air show, participants create and compete with their own flying machines.

To promote participation in this event, Red Bull produced some eye-catching video content.

For example, “Hanging on” (a Facebook video we shared earlier) shows a hang glider breaking a record in Chile. Another followed Felix Baumgartner, who jumped from space in 2012. While another video shows the cliff diving from the perspective of what looks like a crowd member.

Red Bull repurposed this content into advertising for their annual Flugtag campaign and their products. Engaging, high-impact content compels people to like or share their videos, which increases Red Bull’s overall reach.

3. Facebook video ads drive more conversions

When groups share online video content, it creates word-of-mouth marketing. In these cases, videos outperform text and static images by 1,200% in organic traffic, with organic traffic increasing by 135% in 2017.

The significant increase in organic reach is another reason to make video a part of your campaign. Showing our products being used by real people or highlighting different aspects of our brand’s personality helps us build an emotional connection with our customers.

Organic reach and word of mouth are also two of the most authentic and effective ways to promote our brand on social media. According to HubSpot, video ads receive 20% more clicks than images. People are drawn to engage with a video because it makes them feel something. Without building this emotional connection with your customers through video, it would be impossible to drive this kind of impact organically.

How to choose the right audience for Facebook video ads

To make an impact with video ads on Facebook, you need to target the right people with the right ad at the right time.

Doing this ensures that our video ads are shown to people who are interested in our content. When you know exactly who is watching your video, it makes it easier to provide them with relevant and useful information. Our message will resonate with the audience, thereby increasing engagement.

Build Custom Audiences

With custom audiences, we can find the right people and create content for them through advertising. Instead of showing our video ad to everyone, hoping to capture their attention, we’ll set a select group of people. Creating this audience can be done manually by uploading a dataset or through the API, which automatically updates the target audience based on specific criteria, such as past engagement or movement through a funnel.

This feature allows you to customize your audience based on personal information:

We can locate geographic location.

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Location targeting options in Facebook Ads Manager.

This is great for small businesses that only offer their products in a specific location, such as the New York metropolitan area. We can target based on demographic information such as gender, age range, relationship status, and education.

There are a variety of different demographic targeting options within Facebook Ads Manager.

This helps us show ads to people who fit our buyer personas. We may also target based on Facebook Likes and Interests, which use data listed in a user's profile and the Pages and Groups that the user regularly participates in.

Targeting customers by their interests is a great way to find people further along their buying journey.

This is a great targeting strategy when we know how much time our potential customers spend on Facebook. If our customers tend to like community groups or related hobbies, build our audience based on that information. It’s also great for creating audiences based on behaviors like purchase history, device usage, and overall browsing activity on Facebook.

Through behavioral targeting, we can find people who are actively searching for products similar to our own.

Combine these characteristics to start targeting individuals who best match our buyer personas. This helps create video content tailored to their needs, leading to better audience engagement.

You can also customize your target audience by triggering your ads when certain lead events occur. For example, at-home hair-color startup Madison Reed sends people targeted video ads after they complete an online style quiz.

An example of an online style quiz by Madison Reed.

This was a very targeted approach because Madison Reed knew these people were interested in their product. Additionally, using the information from the quiz, they can display ads that match the potential customer’s personal preferences.

All of these work together to help us find the biggest opportunities. But Facebook also lets us go a step further by helping us retarget people who have previously interacted with our videos.

Log into Facebook Ads Manager to see who has viewed your video and who has completed it. To be counted as "viewed," an individual needs to watch a video for at least three seconds. To count as "completed," they need to watch at least 95 percent.

Video viewing statistics via Facebook.

Compiling lists of people who have viewed or completed a video helps build a demographic that has been “engaged” by our content before. They have expressed interest and willingness to watch similar videos. We call these people our potential customers.

Because the ads play automatically in Facebook’s News Feed, users who watch for more than three seconds could be considered to be at least interested in our content. Users who complete a Facebook video are highly engaged .

There are many reasons why users stop watching, but we know they are ready to learn more about our product or brand.

Creating custom audiences from these engagement metrics helps us target these hot spots more effectively. We can promote more brand awareness and conversion funnel content to users who have already watched our videos, and show more mid-funnel or funnel content to users who have completed our videos.

Not only does this reduce advertising costs, but targeted users are more likely to ultimately complete a purchase, while providing a better overall experience for potential customers. This builds consumer trust in the brand and makes it easier for them to be loyal after purchase.

When we think of campaigns as sequences, it’s easier to build ad experiences that effectively move prospects down the funnel.

Take Target, for example, showing a young girl in a princess costume dancing around the house, excited for Halloween. This was the first video that Facebook users saw as part of Target's ad campaign.

What does Target know about the people who watch this video? They are excited about Halloween. Have children. Thinking about buying clothing. Putting it all together, we can infer that they would be interested in Halloween activities for kids. That's why Target followed up with this ad to people who watched the dancing princess video.

Retargeting Halloween ads based on previously viewed videos.

The “Spooktacular Kids Event” highlighted the interest Target had gathered from people who watched their first video. They use Facebook users’ previous activity, their likely home status, their location and vacations to build ads that speak directly to those users’ needs.

This way, Target will provide more relevant content to these hot prospects and potentially reduce its ad spend as a result. They’re building relationships with potential customers, slowly rolling out more targeted, conversion-focused content as they get closer to purchasing.

Create content based on specific customer needs

People at different stages of the marketing funnel have different needs. If we are targeting potential customers, create an ad that introduces the brand and run the campaign under the brand awareness or video views objective. As these people move from the awareness stage to consideration, show them more conversion-driven ads.

We need to understand not only how people move through the funnel, but how each ad progresses in sequence to create the overall image of the brand. We are slowly delivering and building our value proposition over time.

At this time, we are using custom audiences in our campaigns. Let’s say we want to retarget people who have watched more than 50% of our brand awareness video.

If they watch 50% of the video, we know they’ve at least seen enough to become familiar with our brand. If our video is only one minute long and we know that the most valuable content happens around 25 seconds, it won’t be effective to target users who only watch 25% (15 seconds), while users who watch 75% (45 seconds) may already be further down the funnel.

That’s why it’s important to understand how different types of content can appeal to different subsets of your audience. The more specific we are about the content of our videos, the better the results, and ultimately the lower the customer acquisition cost.

We can also set up specific ads based on actions Facebook users take on our website.

For example, ThirdLove, a lingerie startup, uses targeted Facebook video ads. After someone completes an online tailored survey, Facebook ads reinforce the valuable information the survey provided and move the prospect further down the funnel.

They can also use the information provided in the questionnaire to describe specific products that may be of interest to potential customers.

Sequence ads to guide customers through the funnel

Sequencing ads slowly introduces customers to our brand and is one of the best strategies for optimizing advertising in your sales and marketing funnel. Use them to guide customers down your sales funnel.

This study from Facebook shows how successful Refinery29’s campaigns were when they slowly introduced customers to their brand through sequencing.

The first ad looked like this:

Customers saw it on days 1 to 4 of the campaign and got to know the personality of the Refinery29 brand.

The above ad was shown to customers on days 5 to 8 of the campaign. It builds on the connection established in the first ad and suggests how viewers can engage with Refinery29 through a daily beauty tips email series.

The final ad for the campaign was shown between days 9 and 12. It doubles down on the call to action and tells potential customers how they can become a part of the Refinery29 community as an R29 Insider.

Here’s what Facebook found through this study: Sequential ads drive more clicks than one-off ads. 87% of users who saw these ordered ads visited the relevant landing page in the call to action. There is a clear relationship between ordered ads and subscriptions. Subscriptions increased by 56% in response to this campaign. Most conversions were made by people who were exposed to all three parts of the sequence campaign.

Facebook's research concluded that sequencing is effective because it tells a story — it makes customers feel an emotional connection with our brand before they ask for any relevant information.

Understand that it may take a lot of advertising to create that connection, especially if we don’t have a ton of brand recognition. But once we do that, our leads will be more likely to convert.

Five tips for successful Facebook video ads

#1) Keep our video ads concise and clear

Facebook users are inundated with all types of content in their News Feed. From friendly posts to testimonials, competitor ads to funny videos, we typically only have about 60 seconds to capture our audience’s attention.

That’s why it’s important that your video ads are concise and easy to understand. If you don’t get their attention quickly, users will just let it slide!

Use these tips to make our video as concise and clear as possible.

A pre-loaded video ad with the most important information plays first . If we don’t get to the point quickly, users will most likely not watch the video until they understand the value our product provides. Display this value as quickly as possible.

Be specific about each ad . If you include too much information in one video, it’s easy to lose focus, which can make the video unengaging. Focus on a single topic in each video; don't try to communicate more than necessary.

Make it personal . When we appeal to the emotions of Facebook users, it’s easy to create a lasting connection.

Take the shoemaker Allbirds as an example:

In just six seconds, they showed a model wearing the product with the simple statement, “Allbirds, the perfect shoe for long trips.” It was a very simple and clear value statement without any superfluous information.

Allbirds does a great job with their video ads, which are usually less than 15 seconds long and focus on the single attribute of their sustainable footwear.

#2) Tell a compelling story

A compelling story video often requires a clever idea or narrative technique. Make every video memorable when we think like storytellers. We are not just trying to sell a product or present an idea. Designed to strengthen the relationship between potential customers and your brand.

Storytelling makes our brands seem more trustworthy, human, and memorable. The video needs to grab their attention as quickly as possible . It’s important to communicate with the user in the first frame. Real and down to earth. Showing off our brand and team’s personality. Videos help us connect with potential customers better than static images or carousel ads. Chatbooks, a photo book and printing company, provides a great example of narrative used in the video ad below.

While bathrooms and photo albums have little to do with each other, the ad draws us in, amuses us, and even surprises us, rather than trying to sell us the product outright. The video has amassed nearly half a million shares, and it’s a great example of the direct impact that fun and engaging video storytelling can have on user engagement.

Through music, color, and dynamic expression, we can truly capture the emotion of what we’re saying, making it easy to turn quick marketing copy into an engaging narrative.

#3) The importance of silent video ads

Facebook video ads start playing immediately when users swipe to the video, but the video is usually muted, which means our video won’t be able to grab someone’s attention through sound.

According to Digiday, 85% of Facebook video ads play without sound, even after users stop scrolling to watch. Consider closed captioning, which, according to Instapage, can increase viewership. Take Cubcoats, for example.

Use text clues and add subtitles whenever possible. Cubcoats does this to demonstrate how their product works and introduce the problems they solve. Since Cubcoats sells a dual-use product, their video ad not only shows the product as a stuffed animal, but also as a hoodie.

#4) Use mid-roll ads to boost impressions

Facebook in-stream ads, or interstitial ads, allow us to place ads at any time during an existing Facebook video, increasing views and impressions because we’ve already established a connection with the user.

It’s worth mentioning that 70% of these footages were viewed with sound!

Using automatic placements means that ads will always be served according to our creative and objective requirements. In-stream ads are one of the best tools for grabbing the attention of Facebook users.

Keep in mind that these ads do interrupt the rest of the video experience, so it’s important to keep your message clear and concise.

#5) Always include a text tagline

Make sure the end screen in your video has a strong tagline. “Visit our website to learn more” or “Buy now!” can help guide our audience to the next step in our campaign, whether that’s visiting a landing page, signing up for a newsletter, or making a purchase.

The visual impact of our tagline – even if it’s featured in our description – can make a difference in the number of viewers who actually convert.

If we use these video ads to showcase our personality, then the closing text can also be used to reinforce our brand value proposition.

Take these three ads from clothing retailer Chubbies.

Chubbies ads all carry the same slogan, "The weekend has arrived."

Their ads all feature different models wearing different products they sell, but they use the last frame of the video to restate their brand’s tagline.

It is this repetition that strengthens their relationship with their customers.

Author: Hugo.com

Source: Hugo.com