Facebook isn’t just for connecting with friends old and new, stalking acquaintances and old flames, or even zipping through photos of people you haven’t seen in years. If you’re a small business, it can also be used for building your brand quickly, gaining immediate feedback from your customers, housing the most up-to-date information about your product and launching infinitely shareable content.
As Facebook continues to be the number one social commerce platform, your business can’t afford to miss out on the growth opportunities it provides in terms of getting your product in front of the eyes of its over 1 billion users (and growing). If you’re not using Facebook, you’re doing it wrong.
Check out the tips below to help guide you through making the most out of Facebook Video Ads:
Don’t be fooled by the diminutive image of its name: thumbnails matter and the impact of choosing the right one can be huge. With so much video content populating the Facebook newsfeed, it’s important to create an eye-catching, scroll stopping image to engage a user. Choosing the right thumbnail is no different than choosing the best, high-resolution images for your blog posts or website.
Your story starts as soon as your product video begins. If you can’t catch the attention of your viewer, you can consider that opportunity as good as gone. Here’s the thing: the reason the first few seconds of your video matter most isn’t arbitrary; for a video view to be tracked on Facebook, a user must engage with it for at least three seconds. So, it’s in your best interest to make those three seconds count in order for them to amount to something more valuable like a positive impression with your viewer.
This may seem like a no-brainer, but it’s worth remembering that the product videos are being watched on Facebook in the middle of a very congested newsfeed. This means you need to do your best to stand out. No one came to Facebook to watch your video, so make sure that your video content stimulates the viewer’s attention with a compelling narrative and respects the user’s time. Speaking of time, the shorter you can make your video, the better. Anywhere between fifteen seconds and a minute is great and appreciated.
The impact your video makes depends a lot on how it engages users. While making it past those pivotal three seconds is important, what matters is how your audience interacts with it, namely how long a user engages and whether or not that user shares the video. For example, you may have only targeted your ad to reach 1000 people, however, that reach can be extended if any number of those people share your video with their networks. So on and so forth, your video has the potential to reach millions of users thus getting your brand and product in front of more people than you initially hoped for. As for how quickly that can happen, well, that’s up to the internet court of public opinion. If there was a tried and true way of going viral, everyone would be doing it.
From introducing your brand or product to driving traffic back to your site to closing the deal, a great Facebook video is the number one way to engage your audience on social media and turn your products into purchases.
Charlie Rall is the Co-Founder and Head Producer of StoryCraft
