Let’s say you’ve worked with Media272 and produced some great video content, and now you want to use the content to promote your business online. You’ve heard Facebook offers a powerful advertising platform that helps you find the best potential customers in a fast and cost-efficient manner. But where do you begin?

This article explains how to create a video ad campaign on Facebook. If you don’t have video content yet, worry not! You can find the next step for video solutions at the end of the article.

1. Go to the Ad Creation page.

Facebook has streamlined this process to make it easy for beginners to start here. The first important question ask yourself is: what is your goal with this ad? Obviously, you’d like more sales overall, but you need to consider what your current video will be most effective for. There are around a dozen options to choose from, so we’ll keep it simple for this example and go with Video Views (this will deliver your ads to the right people and help you get the most video views at the lowest cost).

Before you click continue, there are two options to toggle below:

(Option 1) A/B testing will show two or more versions of your ad to similar but distinct audiences to test their effectiveness and help guide your strategy for future ads. This tool can provide useful insights to increase conversions, with the downside that your potential reach for a given ad variation is divided by the number of ad variations you test. The larger your targeted audience, the better idea this will be.

(Option 2) If you aren’t using A/B testing, you may want to use budget optimization. If you have two ad sets and one doesn’t perform well (i.e. doesn’t use the entire allocated budget due to lack of opportunities), the budget provides extra exposure to your better-performing ads.

2. Choose your Audience, Placement, Budget and Schedule. 

Audience – The audience selection is a powerful feature for advertising on Facebook. Here are the traits you can adjust, as listed on their site:

- Locations. Target ads to people based on locations (ex: country, state, province, city, congressional district, zip or post code). Most objectives let you target worldwide (type in “worldwide”), by region (ex: “Europe”), by free trade area (ex: “NAFTA”, the North American Free Trade Agreement) or by app store availability (ex: “iTunes app store countries”).

- Age. Target ads to people within an age range.

- Gender. Target ads to women, men or people of all genders.

- Languages. Target ads to users of certain languages. This is generally useful if you want to capture audience members who speak a language other than the most common language of your target area.

- Detailed Targeting. Include or exclude people from an audience based on demographics, interests and/or behaviors. This is an incredibly useful feature, as you can make very specific choices. For instance, if you sell cars, you can select “new car buyer,” or “used car buyer” to target someone currently in the market. Or, if you’re in B2B sales or marketing, you can target corporate executives. Targeting based on behavior is much more effective than targeting based on demographics like Age or Gender.

- Connections. Include or exclude people from your audience based on connections to your Pages, apps or events. This helps capture a tighter niche, often people who are more qualified leads.

- Custom Audiences. Custom Audiences are target audiences of people you already know created from information you provide or from information generated on Facebook’s products. You can create Custom Audiences from customer files, the Facebook pixel, the Facebook SDK and engagement on Facebook.

- A subset of Custom Audiences is Lookalike Audiences. A Lookalike Audience is a target audience you create from a “source.” It finds other people on Facebook who are the most similar to the people in the source. If your best customers have common interests and behaviors, Facebook targets a new set of potential customers who share these, as they are more likely to purchase your products. 

Placements – The default selection here will be Automatic Placements, which will show your video ads across multiple networks (Facebook, Instagram, Audience Network.) Generally, Facebook algorithms are advanced enough that they will do a better job at this than a person will, so it’s probably best to leave this as-is. 

Budget & Schedule – Select between a Daily Budget or a Lifetime Budget. These are fairly straightforward, with the difference that the second option will make larger adjustments each day, depending on which days make the most effective use of your overall budget. The Schedule option lets you set the start and end dates for the ad, so you won’t need to worry about forgetting to end it.

3. Uploading, Finishing, Publishing 

In the next section, upload your video and format your ad. A Slideshow is pretty self-explanatory, just a looping video ad with up to 10 images. For this we will choose Single Video. If you’d like, select Full Screen Experience below to create a more immersive ad experience when customers interact with the ad.

Click Upload Video to upload the video or videos you want to use in your ad. If you want to use a video you’ve already uploaded, click Browse Library to select it from your library. Select the aspect ratio settings of your choice (Facebook offers helpful recommendations for the best types of ads along the side). 

Set your thumbnail, and make sure it’s a clear image that makes users want to click! A good thumbnail can drastically improve your ad effectiveness. If you aren’t sure which to use, this could be something you experiment with through A/B testing, as mentioned above. Moving forward you would then have a better idea of which thumbnails appeal most to your customer base.

Be sure to add a compelling headline and an interesting description. Add the URL you want to promote, such as your website. Select an appropriate call to action message that matches your goal, such as subscriptions to your mailing list or visitors to your site. Tweak the rest of the setting here to your liking, depending on what works best for your particular ad.

When you’re done, Review Order, check your settings, and publish it!

And now, patience!

Don’t expect a flood of customers right away. While this can happen, it can often take some time for Facebook’s algorithms to test which audiences your ad works best with, and gradually optimize for better results.

One way to increase your ad’s odds of success is to use professional quality videos. Customers respond to quality, as it shows you to be reliable and trustworthy. If you need quality videos before you get started, contact Media272 and see for yourself what we can do for your marketing. 

Whether showcasing your best customers and clients through testimonials, or walking a customer through your services and products, Media272 works with you to create all the video marketing materials you need.

Follow this link to learn more and get started.

– Drew Estes, August 2018 –

Read other popular posts by Media272 content strategist Drew Estes:

- Expert Tips to Improve SEO with Video

- Is it Legal to Use Paid or Fake Testimonial Videos?

- 5 Video Marketing Tips to Attract More Customers Than Ever

- How To Keep Customers Away from Your Business