I’ve recently been doing more work on my clients video ads on Facebook, and have seen incredible growth, in reach, and engagement, and much more. I also find myself engaging more and more in other Facebook videos as well, which led me to my conclusion of why I think there is incredible value in investing in Facebook Video Marketing campaigns for any company looking for engagement. Here are a few tips on successfully launching and growing your own Facebook Video Ads.
1. Define your goals
Before you start your Facebook video marketing campaign, it’s essential to understand what you want to achieve. Are you looking for brand awareness or to drive action? First and foremost, getting eyeballs on your videos should be your initial goal, but don’t stop there. You have a wealth of customer data itching to be used. Take these video viewers and turn them into actual customers (which we’ll chat about in a moment).
- Driving brand awareness: Tracking video views and unique reach is important to you. Remember that Facebook considers a “view” someone who’s watched three or more seconds of your video.
- Drive action: Clicks to your website or conversions are important to you. Be sure to add a clear call to action to your ad.
2. Choose your target audience
In general, Facebook recommends defining an audience of over 10,000 people to maximize ad performance. You need to make people stop to view your video ad instead of scrolling past, so choose carefully – the more relevant your audience is, the more video views you’re likely to get. I recommend creating buyer personas to identify who your ideal customers are, and then using these to define your campaign’s target audiences.
Be sure to tailor your creative for each respective persona. This also goes for separate target audiences and brand awareness versus re-engagement campaigns.
Be creative and experiment with different targeting options to find the one that suits you best.
3. Mobile
Video ads are available across desktop/mobile news feed and Instagram. Mobile drives the most effective video views, with 65% of Facebook users watching videos on their mobile device. With mobile effectively becoming the core of Facebook’s business – having grown 82% year-over-year and accounting for 80% of its total ad revenue – it continues to attract more and more people on mobile devices. This is only set to increase with its Instagram offering.
4. Don’t over-due autoplay
Create engaging videos that make people want to hit that “play” button, and include attention grabbing elements within the first few seconds of your post. Sell without sound – 85% of videos on Facebook are watched on silent mode, so use text overlays and a clear CTA to get your message across. Get creative with your content and cater for silent autoplay.
5. Optimize video views for maximum reach
Allowing Facebook to identify users who are more likely to watch your video will, in turn, help increase the reach of your campaign. By choosing video views as your objective, Facebook will look for people who are more likely to watch your video in full. This will then let you generate much more effective custom audiences for your retargeting campaigns.
6. Re-engage users and drive conversions
Video is the perfect mode for prospecting – but don’t let your strategy stop there. Take your video viewers on a journey through your funnel and convert them into actual paying customers.
How, you ask?
Create an audience of people who’ve engaged with your video on Facebook based on these available options:
- People who viewed at least 3 seconds of your video
- People who viewed at least 10 seconds of your video
- People who viewed at least 25% of your video
- People who viewed at least 50% of your video
- People who viewed at least 75% of your video
- People who viewed at least 95% of your video
Use these audiences to retarget engaged visitors. People who’ve completed your video will represent a more engaged audience and will be more likely to take your desired action.
Get your messaging right, and as we mentioned above, take your viewers on a journey through the funnel. If you showed them generic messaging in your first touch point, be sure to follow up with specific product messaging followed by an incentive to purchase if they haven’t already done so.
The goal of retargeting in this way is to place your brand at top of mind while customers are still deep in their decision-making process.
7. Optimize
You’ve followed all of the above steps and now you want to actually figure out what’s working for you. Test, test, and test some more. Be sure to test all the creative elements of your ads, including different video variations and text overlays. The number of potential ad variations will add up quite quickly, so it’s best to create these in bulk to save you time.
Narrow your targets based on your key objectives and buyer personas. You can break down your audiences by location, demographics, interests, and behavior specifics. If your audience size is large enough and you want to target multiple locations, for example, run them in separate campaigns – making it easier to optimize – and see what’s working best for you.
Are you targeting fans versus non-fans? Consider using different creative for each. You should always have different messaging for people who are already familiar with your brand, versus people who may have never come across you prior to your campaign.
Along with the above be sure to:
- Include a clear CTA.
- Use high-quality video content.
- Include your branding and main messaging in the first few seconds of your video to take advantage of the autoplay feature (remember to use text overlay to cater for silent autoplay).
- Combat ad fatigue by refreshing your creative every one-two weeks for best performance. When people have seen your ad multiple times, it can become more expensive to achieve your desired results.
Navigate to the reporting section and monitor key metrics such as clicks, impressions, reach, CTR, and conversions. Be sure to track follow-on activity in your Google Analytics account, and measure the lift of your campaigns based on key website stats such as bounce rate, average session duration, pages per session, and goal completion. Use the results of your testing to create a powerful, results-driven campaign.
With the continued growth of video across the platform, Facebook video ads are more likely to generate increased engagement for brands. By implementing the above, you’re sure to generate conversions from your efforts.
If you’re interested in launching your own Facebook Video Campaign, that’s something I can certainly help out with. Feel to reach out!