I recently completed a month-long marketing “boot camp” with representatives from Facebook that focused on Facebook ads.

I would like to share what I learned in this post, with a focus on best practices for creating ads, how to target your ads and how to monitor performance using the Facebook Ads Manager.

Types of ads

There are two types of Facebook ads:

1. Ads that point to an external website
2. Ads that point internally to something on Facebook, like a page, event or app

Creating an ad

Images

• Image sizes should be 110 x 80 pixels
• Smiling faces or action shots work best
• Avoid using logos or text in your images
• You should be using simple images that are vibrant with color

Text

• The title of your ad has a max length of 25 characters
  • Make your title catchy and use inter-capitalization to help make it stand out
• The body has a max length of 90 characters
  • Has to be 3 lines or less
  • Cleaner, simplistic text = higher click-through rates

Best practices

• Use call-to-action words to make it clear to users the action you want them to take
• A well-positioned question in the title or body of an ad helps encourage engagement
• Use capitalization wisely to draw attention to your ad
• You can use quotation marks around a key word or phrase to help draw attention to it
• Exclamation points are very effective when used with call-to-action phrases
• Avoid using abbreviations or jargon that might be unfamiliar to users

Targeting

To better understand which groups of users respond best to your ads, it is recommended to target an ad to smaller, more specific groups of users at a time. This targeting allows you to have better insight to how your ads perform and gives you more control over budgeting of your ads. The types of targeting include:

• Demographic targeting
• Location targeting
• Education and work targeting
• Interests targeting

Monitoring

It is recommended to regularly monitor the performance of your Facebook ads by using the Ads Manager tool. This tool allows for real-time monitoring and scheduling of regular reports.

Understanding metrics and reports to see what results you’re getting is essential, and this constant monitoring allows you to reallocate your budget to the ads or campaigns that are performing well. You can then create new ads using what you’ve learned.

Best practices for all ads

• Create 3 – 5 versions of an ad for each campaign
• If you want multiple targets for your ad, create a separate campaign for each
• When the frequency for an ad gets high, create new versions of your ad
• Remember to monitor and update your ads frequently

Additional resources

• Facebook Ads Overview
• Facebook Ads Help Center