Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 15:17 — 17.9MB) | Embed
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Email | TuneIn | RSS
What was the one thing that you noticed about the videos that you see in your Facebook Newsfeed?
Let me tell you!
Facebook Videos in the Newsfeed autoplays but without sound. If you have not noticed it until now, you might want to go to your Newsfeed and check it out.
With native videos turning out to be a huge opportunity for people advertising on Facebook, this is a very important development. Because if your videos do not have the capability of attracting your visitors without really playing sound, then your have lost the battle. And hence it has become even more important to understand every aspect of video marketing on Facebook, so that you don’t lose your money.
This is what we will be discussing in today’s episode of the DKSpeaks Podcast.
How to Use Facebook Video Ads Effectively?
The last week we discussed about YouTube advertising and things that you should know about advertising on Youtube. I hope you tried your hands on YouTube ads after going through everything that we discussed about YouTube ads in the last episode.
Before we get onto today’s episode, just a couple of things. I posted my latest review on eCover Authority which is a cool ecover creation application that is web-based. You can find more about it on my blog.
If you are writing a book or, are planning to write one, then you need to check out Scrivener. Scrivener is a cool application that let’s you organize your thoughts and put them together into a book. Most established authors use Scrivener. It was available for a discounted price at stack social. You might want to check it out if you haven’t already bought it.
In the last episode we said that we will discuss about Facebook video ads this week. So let’s get straight onto today’s episode on Facebook video ads.
Facebook introduced native videos a few months back. In fact Facebook is now competing with Youtube so far as videos are concerned. You can upload video to Facebook and host it there.
There is some talk that FB is giving preference to native videos more than Youtube videos that are being shared on Facebook. While there is no concrete evidence that this is happening, there are quite a lot of people who are saying that they have experienced this. I will not be surprised if they are doing that and why wouldn’t they do that. They would in fact prefer that the videos that are hosted on their servers be shown ahead of anything that is being shared from YouTube. It is in the former case that they benefit but in the latter case it is Youtube who will benefit. And Mr.Zuckerberg is smart enough to understand that the money is in hosting videos on his server and playing that on Facebook rather than sending all the traffic to Youtube.
Videos are huge and from the success of Youtube and the millions that people are making on Youtube, it is very much evident that videos are source of money. So nothing surprising on Facebook deciding to host videos on their servers.
Find what video to target for your ads, in a few Clicks. Click here!
So, when Youtube was making all the money from hosting videos on their servers and running ads on them, it is just a matter of time that Facebook follows suit.
In fact Facebook started video ads some time back and advertisers had an option of advertising videos with the objective of generating video views in addition to all the other normal objectives like driving traffic to your websites, increase page engagement, promoting posts etc. This is similar to the instream Youtube ads. This advertisement option is not widely used and for a lot of people who are using it, they tend to lose a lot of money because of not doing it the right way.
So, what is the correct way of video advertising on Facebook and how to make the most of these video ads on Facebook.
Advertising on Facebook can be very cheap if you do it correctly. I have been able to generate video views for as low as $0.02 per view. But what you do with these views is what will determine your ROI.
The first 5 seconds – Just as in Youtube ads, it is important to catch the attention of the viewers in the first 5 seconds. Unlike Youtube, if a video has been viewed at least 3 seconds, it is considered as a view by Facebook. This is the norm in the industry.. That is important if you are paying per view. But if you are paying per impression, then irrespective of a video being viewed or, not, you pay per 1000 impressions. Whatever is the option you choose, you only have the first 5 seconds to catch the attention of your viewer and stop him in his track.
Using stop words in the first 7 seconds or, starting with a question on a specific problem that you want to address are some techniques that help catch your viewers’ attention. All videos auto-play without sound in the Facebook newsfeed. So while a user is browsing through their newsfeed, the videos will autoplay but without sound. If you video is not able to grab their attention silently, then the user will continue to browse away without watching your video ad.
To some extent I have seen catchy images with a Buzzfeed kind of a headline also work really well with videos. You might want to test your ideas to see how it works.
Another important thing to keep in mind is the length of the video. Don’t create long videos. People who are browsing on Facebook don’t have that long an attention span or, the patience to watch a long video. They are not on Facebook for that. So you might want to create a short video that quickly communicates your message across.
Follow this up with a call to action. This is something that most people miss. I have seen a lot of ads on facebook which does not really have a strong call to action and ends with no real guidance on what to do next. Depending upon whatever your ad objective is, add a strong call to action to the end of the video. This is very important. Your audience is sold into your ad and has watched the ad till the end. Keep them with you and guide them on what to do next with a strong call to action.
Select your ad objective wisely. This is another very important aspect of facebook ads. Just as in the conventional ads, your ad objective could be the single most important aspect that determines how good your ROI is. Depending upon what you want to your ad to do, you need to pick the ad objective. For example, if you want to drive traffic to your websites, you can pick the ad objective of sending visitors to your site. If you want to get more likes, you could use the “Promote your page” objective.
Selecting how to bid for your ads is one of the biggest problem that most people face with facebook ads. Testing has proved that Optimized CPM is the best way to start with. Once you have enough data to test and want to compare how it works with other bidding options, you can move over to other modes of bidding. In my personal experience I have found that Optimized CPM is what gets you the best ROI. In video ads, you might find that the price is a little higher than normal CPM price, but the cost per view will be lower.
Split test your ads. A/B testing is what will help you find the best ads that convert. Create about 2-3 ad sets. Test everything from the ad headlines to the content in the video and even the call to action. The audience retention graph will show you what part of the video and your ad is generating the most interest and which part is the one with the least interest. Accordingly you can tweak your ads to get better engagement and conversions.
The key to success is analyzing your ads periodically and testing variations. You might have to spend some money initially with poor returns. But if you are testing it right, then very soon you will find the best one of the lot and from there on you should be able to profit from your ads.
Resources mentioned in today’s Episode
These are some of the resources that we spoke about in today’s episode or, the ones that can help you in simplifying your tasks.
- Buzzfeed
- Facebook Ads
- Canva – Design Custom images for your videos
- Befunky – Another image designer
- Picmonkey – Yet another image designer
Thank You for Joining us
So that’s it for this episode. I hope you liked this episode on Facebook video advertising.
Don’t forget to let us know about your thoughts, suggestions and feedback by posting your comments. If you liked this episode do share it with your friends using the share buttons. Please do rate this show on iTunes and Stitcher and also post a genuine review. It will help in the rankings of this show.
Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast and share it with your friends. You can listen to the podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, SoundCloud and Podcast.FM
Subscribe to the podcast using any of the below links:
Click here to Subscribe via iTunes