Facebook Video Ads Guide – How to Make Profitable Video Ads in 2020

You have probably noticed that the videos on Facebook have significantly gathered a considerable proportion of content.

We are talking about general Facebook videos, but if we precisely talk about Facebook video ads, even that contains some fantastic stats.

• The online video ad creation Promo claimed the relevancy rate of a video ad on Facebook is 71%.
• It is forecasted that 75% of world mobile data in 2020 and 78% in 2021 will be videos.

Source: Facebook IQ

• Facebook videos now get 10 times more share than YouTube.

By looking at these facts, it would not be wrong to say that Facebook video ads are the best advertisement tool at this time and in the time to come.

We know that many of you have already tried the Facebook video ad for content marketing and failed to achieve the goals, right?

You are not alone!

Many young entrepreneurs, online sellers, dropshippers, and digital marketing enthusiasts want to learn the formula of making a profitable Facebook video ads campaign in 2020.

Well, we have tried to provide a comprehensive answer to the queries of all levels ranging from beginners to experts.

We can assure you that by the end of this guide, you will surely get the solution to your issues regarding Facebook video marketing practices.

In the end, we have also mentioned success stories of some e-commerce businesses that achieved their objectives by using Facebook video ads strategically. You can go through that if you need some ideas.

So, let’s start!

How to Create a Facebook Video Ads (Basic Guide Step – by – Step)

This step is just for the beginners who have no prior experience of creating an ad. If you knew the process, you could jump to the next part.

Step # 1

Login to Your Facebook Business Manager and Go to Ad Manager.

In case if you do not know about the Facebook business manager account, we suggest you check out this guide,  how to make a business manager account.

The process is straightforward though

• Go to business.facebook.com and click the create account button.
• Enter your business name in the option.
• Enter your business page, and email account for your business. That’s it.

Step # 2

Click to the Campaign option and select the ‘create ad’ option.

Step # 3

Choose the objective “video view” for your campaign.

Set an Add Account.

Step # 4

Choose the demographics of your target audience.

Setup your ad placement, Budget, and Schedule.

There are two option in setting up your ad placement;

i. Automatic placement: It is Facebook recommended. Your ad will be shown to relevant places automatically.

ii. Edit Placement: You manually select the places you want to show your ad.

Step # 5

Choose the format.

You have the option to upload a video from your desktop or create a slideshow with images. We recommend creating a proper video to make the best video ad on Facebook.

Step # 6

Upload the video.

Upload the video and make that your video has all the specification that Facebook has recommended – Look at the right section highlighted in red color.

Let’s learn some optimization lessons to earn profits form video ads.

Things to do to Make Successful Facebook Video Ads in 2020

Facebook video ads are the most effective tool for storytelling and branding. To do it correctly, you need to follow some Facebook video ads best practices that can help you to make it a successful social media marketing campaign.

Here are some practices that you should follow the best Facebook video ads for your business.

Impactful Thumbnail – Engage the Audience in the First Second:

Facebook is overloaded with different kinds of content. You only have a time of a second or two at most to capture the attention of your targeted audience.

Your video ad first impression must stand out in the news feed that entices the viewer to stop scrolling and make a tap on it.

Here is an example of the health and fitness app “Better Me” that perfectly manages to gather the attention in the first second.

Image Source

You’d better need to consult a professional videographer. If you have one that’s great but do not give this opportunity to a rookie or do it by yourself if you do not have the required expertise.

Show Brand Presence within 3 Seconds:

Facebook meta-analysis research slams down the idea of traditional narrative ads. Make the brand presence at the start of your videos have more potential impact on brand recall.

Source: Facebook IQ 

The brand presence in the first 3 seconds has 1.23x aided recall and the brand presence after 4 or more seconds have 1.13x recall.

If your objective is branding, then you must present in the first 3 seconds of the video.

The Ad should be Able to Give Message without Volume:

A lot of people the videos without volume, actually 85% of the people want Facebook video without sound.

So, you need to make the ad self-explanatory that it could provide a message without a sound. Use the text overlays and sharp graphics for social media to entice the customer to watch it.

Here are is an example of an ad for the reference of the point.

https://www.facebook.com/HelloFreshAU/videos/10216370436475117/?t=6

You can also engage the customer by teaching them something or providing them some information that could be unique for your targeted audience.

Make the Video Ad Shorter:

A lot of people are concern about the question – What should be the length of Facebook Video Ad?

We have an exact answer – make it short.

The average length of a Facebook video ad is 44 seconds, and the videos with the maximum completion rate are 21 seconds.

In fact, for in-stream videos, Facebook itself recommended a length of 5 – 15 seconds long. So, it means you have to wrap up your video ad in between 10 to 20 seconds to achieve your target with a Facebook video marketing campaign.

Tips to Optimize Facebook Video Ads

Use Facebook Video Ads Autoplay by CPM Bidding

There is a useful option to optimize your ads with autoplay. Facebook has mentioned that if you use CPM bidding, you get the option to autoplay Facebook video ads.

Why is Facebook video ads autoplay useful?

Autoplay starts to a video ad automatically when a user scrolls his screen. It will keep on running until the user scroll over.

When a user scrolls the Facebook newsfeed, he/she is not looking for something specific. Anything engaging can capture thier attention very quickly.

Autoplay is the best option here to gain the attention of the user, but the ad’s first couple of seconds should be extremely enticing to make it work.

Note: Here are some conditions in which Facebook video ads autoplay do not work.

Add CTA (Call to action) in Between Your Video

Call to action (CTA) is the next step that you want your customer to make. You can change it in any form such as shop now, learn more etc.

The research of Wistia shows that adding a call to action in the middle of your video has the maximum conversion rate than putting it at the start or the end.

The conversion rate in the middle of the video ad is 16.9%,  10.9% in the end, and 3.15% in the beginning.

Most of the people include a call to action at the end of the video while you have the golden opportunity to add it in the middle to boost your conversion rates.

How to Add a Call to Action in Facebook Video Ad?

You can include a call to action after you upload the video. You need to scroll down to the creative link section where you can see the Ad preview before publishing it.

There will be a call to action menu in the bottom left.

Make the Ad for Mobile Users 

95% of Facebook user access it on their mobile phones.

Mobiles are accounted for 65% of all Facebook video views. So while making a Facebook video, you have to make sure its accessibility on mobile.

The Facebook IQ research tells that the ads made for mobile-first have 46% aided recall of brand than adapted to mobile.

Mobile-first ad has the best view-time than traditional narratives and mobile adapted ads. Before making an ad, you’ll have to keep the fact in mind that how would it look on mobile.

To make sure your ad fits best on the smaller screen, you’d completed all the recommendations of Facebook.

Retarget the Target Audience

To make your Facebook video campaign to hit the bullseye, you need to dig a little deep into your Facebook audience insights.

Not everyone in your target audience watches your ad, so it is better to find out those who have shown interest – who have viewed your ad.

To do so, the custom audience is the best option. Once you run your ad for at least one time, then you can create a custom audience.

You can select based on the time people spend watching your ad.

When you create your custom audience, you can show your next ads campaign just to the people of your custom audience.

This will help you to narrow down your core audience and re-target them again with other videos of the campaign. It increases the chances of meeting your objective as well as finding loyal customers for your business.

Best Facebook Video Ads Examples in E-commerce Business

To better understand the Facebook video ads significance, we have gone through some fantastic success stories of the ecommerce businesses.

These businesses have to succeed to earn maximum profits through Facebook video ads.

You will definitely get some amazing ideas to market your e-commerce business through Facebook video ads.

Here are some success stories of those who perform the Facebook video ads best practices in E-commerce:

1. Memebox

Memebox is a Korean based beauty subscription e-commerce business that offers cosmetic products in the global market.

What do they want?

Memebox set up a goal to create maximum brand awareness and sales from their new lip cashmere product – I’m Tic Toc Tink.

How did they do it?

Memebox used the typical purchase conversion campaign on Instagram and Facebook for their new product, then they decided to come up with a unique approach.

The company set up a Facebook video marketing campaign. They made a simple video teaser and did the following things:

1. Set up the Target Audience: They ran the product campaign by just featuring an 8 seconds teaser video and targeted to the Korean women between the ages of 18-34.
2. Retargeting: Then they target the people who have watched their teaser and retargeted them with follow-up videos of their product to trigger the purchase decision.
3. Optimized Videos ads for Mobile: They started making videos in 16:9 landscape format to optimize the ads for mobile and edit the videos vertically to place it on Instagram stories.

They made the video’s graphics enticing enough that convinced the viewer to swipe up and land on the web page.

Results:

Memebox experienced an increased in their brand awareness and sales. Their video ad campaign on Facebook and Instagram made 73% of their overall sales.

2. Auction

It is a Korean based online market place started in 1998 is the e-commerce store for gift shopping.

What do they want?

Boost their brand awareness and drive maximum traffic on their webstore in the holiday season.

How did they do that?

They decided to cash-in the holidays as much as possible. They are primarily a gift shopping store that made them create a connection of holidays with their brand.

The company made a campaign for holiday goals and divided into three different phases.

Phase 1: To know the most desired gift in the country

They used its own internal data and Facebook IQ data to classify the audience their preference in buying the product.

Then they put those products on voting and started asking the audience of demographics and age group to vote your favorite holiday gift. The voting happens on their Facebook page for once in a week for 4 weeks straight.

This helps them to find out the most popular product categories for their holiday campaign.

Phase 2: Run the main ad campaign

First, they divided their target audience on gender base and age groups. They have gathered items from phase 1 that are more likely to generate a response from every group.

They designed the campaign based on engagement from each group and ran it for every Monday for 3 weeks.

The campaign was made of short videos between 10-15 seconds and ran it in a slideshow format that conveyed holiday message in a fun way.

The engaging videos eventually enticed the audience to see other gifts too in the ads and managed to pull the audience on the website successfully.

Phase 3: The Donation Box

This phase is mainly based on creating the community. They requested the people, who did not like the featured presents in their campaign, to donate the gifts and get cash of ₩30,000 (about $27).

Results

The campaign ultimately boosts their nationwide brand-awareness and traffic on their website, especially on holiday season.

They received 30 times more click on their websites as compared to the performance of previous awareness campaign.

Personally, we define it as one of the best Facebook video ads campaign practice for e-commerce business.

3. Zalora

It is one of the companies that started e-commerce trend in the Philippines.

What do they want?

Get new customer and build up a strong, loyal customer base for their store.

Zalora was facing the issue of gaining the customer’s trust as the competition was growing at a fast pace that made it difficult for them to show their USP and gain customer confidence.

How did they do it?

Firstly, they figure out that people in the Philippines are having issues in understanding the return policies and doubt about product quality that made them reluctant to go for online shopping.

Zalora wanted to resolve this issue by telling people about its easy-returns policy, quality product line, and variety of options. They decided to achieve this by creating a creative Facebook video ads campaign.

To make it more creative, they decided to go 4-video-ad-principle (an enticing ad that drives maximum conversion) and make it mobile optimized.

They ran a video ad campaign of motion features that played on a loop. In their video, they used basic motion. For better audience indulgence they added the third party products in videos.

4 Facebook video Ad principle

1. First, they showed all significant brands they are selling such as; Nike, Mango, and Riverland.
2. The second motion showed the brand logo for brand recall.
3. The third motion of ad they delivered the main of their product credibility, easy return and multiple payment options.
4. The fourth one explained the return procedure by just filling up the return form.

The company ran this video ad campaign on Facebook and Instagram along with photo link ads and targeted the age group above 25 in the Philippines.

Results

Zalora received a higher conversion rate than ever. It received 3.5 times more clicks on add to cart and 3 times increase in app installation.

It defines that Facebook video ads with images works better rather than images alone.

4. Sendo.Vn

It is one of the biggest e-commerce stores in Vietnam that want to make a different online selling perception among Vietnamese.

What did they want?

Increase the appeal of its brand in the rural areas of Vietnam.

Sendo.Vn realized the potential of the Vietnamese market that is still untapped and wanted to capture that region by demonstrating their product significance.

How did they do?

To achieve the new market in the nation the company decided to create a new brand awareness campaign along with the focus of increasing yearly sales.

To convince the rural area audience who prefer to shop in the store they created a two-part campaign:

Part 1: Show a variety of product of their online store and present the store as a new style of shopping.

Part 2: Re-targeting of the audience who have watched the video and convinced them with the convenient shopping experience and provide discount offers.

To target the new market the video ads show the convenience and benefits of shopping online while comparing it with in-store shopping.

To appeal to a new audience, the campaign’s creative strategy was to introduce Sendo.vn as a new way to shop for people who were used to do shopping from the marketplace in rural areas. It showcased the platform’s convenient benefits compared to a traditional marketplace.

In the campaign, the company ran multiple mobile-optimized ads along with carousal photo ads on Facebook. To give the clear and stand out a message in a short video, they used text overlays and split-screen frames in a video campaign to convey its benefits effectively and quickly.

For brand awareness, they target the audience of the age group of 22 – 35 for a month.

After that, they moved to part 2 where they tell convenience and benefits to the people who had already engaged with their campaign and offer them discounts on products.

Result

With effective video ads, they reached 61% of their targeted audience in just two weeks of campaign run and also generated 7 times return on their campaign cost.

Sendo. Vn success describes that the best Facebook video ads practice can have a crucial impact on brand and business revenue.

5. The Fox Tan

It is an Australian based E-commerce store that sells the products that speed up the tanning process.

What did they want?

Boost the sales of their products in the USA, UK, Canada, Germany, and Australia in the winter season when the performance is low.

How did they do it?

The company contacted its media agency to create interactive videos that ignite the sales in the regions where the performance decline in winters.

They created a 15 seconds mobile optimized video that contains a quick transition with sharp text overlays that would effectively convey the brand message.

The company ran this campaign as Facebook video ads and Instagram stories and targeted the people who showed their interest in the tanning salons in the US, UK, Canada, Germany, and Australia.

It targeted its Facebook video ads and Instagram Stories to people interested in tanning salons in the US, UK, Germany, Canada, and Australia. In addition to the videos, The Fox Tan ran single image photo ads and photo ads in a carousel format.

To make the most of their campaign, the company created a custom audience who had previously purchased their product and find a lookalike audience to boost the campaign. They also used automatic placement to run ads across different platforms.

Result

Fox tan finally succeed to achieve its goals that were to increase the sales in the winter months and had a 6.5-times increase in sales than the previous winter month.

Final thoughts

There is no doubt that with the right use of Facebook video ads, you can actually achieve the objective of your business.

The video ads are highly effective; however, it is also highly dependent on what strategy you adopt in targeting your audience.

Here are essential things that you must do and keep in mind while producing your video ad.

• Get to the point quickly and keep it short and creative.
• Keep funneling down your audience to get the most relevant target audience.
• You have only 2 to 3 seconds to attract the viewer. You lose that time you lose the objective.

You need to achieve these aspects in the making of your video ad. First, you achieve this. Then you should get the technicalities of optimizing your video ad.

If you have any suggestions and tips about Facebook video ads that you think can help others feel free to mention it in the comment below.