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Do you want to reach more mobile Facebook users?
Wondering how Canvas ads might help?
Facebook Canvas lets you create full-page, interactive mobile ads that work like landing pages for tablet and smartphone users.
In this article you'll discover how to create quality Facebook Canvas ads.
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Why Facebook Canvas?
Facebook Canvas is a new tool for advertisers, built specifically for the mobile platform. Facebook users can scroll through Canvas ads to view photos, watch videos, and discover your company's story.
Canvas is free to use beyond the standard Facebook advertising costs, and its drag-and-drop interface requires no coding knowledge. The ads are fully immersive, so there's nothing else on the page vying for users' attention when they're scrolling through or clicking on the content in your ads.
And while interactive media is normally a concern because of loading times (long loading times drive people away in every corner of the web), Canvas ads load almost as soon as they're selected. This is because they're hosted on Facebook rather than redirected to an outside page. In fact, they can download up to 10 times faster than general mobile web pages.
Here are some ways you can use Facebook Canvas to maximize the impact of video ads for your business.
#1: Complement Videos With Text and Images
To use Canvas effectively, you need to take advantage of everything it has to offer. The tool allows you to share much of the same content you can post on your website, such as articles, photographs, videos, and even products.
You have the option to display photos in carousel format, which Facebook introduced last year. You can add up to five images with optional links in one Canvas ad. Facebook is slowly rolling out the ability to create a carousel of videos as well.
While there may be an emphasis on video in Canvas ads, you should also consider using other content options to better tell your company's story, highlight your products, and pique consumer interest. A genuinely compelling multimedia Canvas ad will capture attention and engage your audience, which can translate to increased web traffic, more conversions, and more sales.
You can also use your video content in a variety of ways. For example, you might create a video that highlights the core principles of your brand and then include a carousel of products. Alternatively, you might include a series of customer testimonials or behind-the-scenes highlights of your company. Tailor your video to your marketing goals, whether that's greater brand awareness or increased sales, to get the best results.
Kit and Ace used this video in a Canvas ad to bring awareness to their brand and get their line of all-day technical performance apparel in front of their target market.
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#2: Tell a Story With a Series of Video Clips
Facebook allows a maximum of 2 minutes of video for your canvas, but you can split up the video content however you want. One tactic is to use a series of 15- or 20-second clips, as in this social media campaign for Evan Williams' Bourbon.
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Not only are shorter clips more likely to hold your audience's attention than longer videos, but they also give you the freedom to explore different facets of your business or highlight individual customer experiences. This greater flexibility in storytelling allows you to truly guide your audience through the experience and direct them toward what you want them to see.
#3: Draw the Viewer in With Immersive Content
Videos let you harness the power of both visuals and words to tell your company's story. It's important, therefore, that you come across as genuine and sincere.
Design your videos (and your entire canvas) to elicit some sort of emotion, whether it's funny, heartfelt, or exciting, and then tailor your words to that goal. Keep your language simple, but emotional. Never use business jargon or buzzwords in your video ads.
It's not just the videos you should focus on, though. Remember that you can add text before and after your video using Canvas. Make sure that you choose photos that reflect your voice and convey the same sort of emotions your video and text do.
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Carnival Cruise Line does a nice job of evoking the feeling of being a part of one of their cruises. They took advantage of wide images by allowing viewers to tilt to pan to make the experience even more enjoyable.
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Anyone who views your video should grasp the message you're trying to convey about your brand and products. Remember that you can use multiple videos to tell different facets of your story.
#4: Clarify Calls to Action
It should be no surprise that good marketing requires that you tell your audience what steps to take next. Canvas makes it easy to invite your audience to take action with buttons you can customize with your own call to action (CTA).
You can incorporate multiple CTAs to guide your audience through each portion of your canvas. Then seal the deal with a clear, final CTA that tells everyone exactly what you want them to do next, whether that's discovering more about your services, signing up for a newsletter, or exploring your online shop.
L'Occitane's ads tell a rich brand story about the history of the cosmetics maker's products and the benefits of their key ingredients. Most of the 2.3 million people who viewed their Canvas campaign followed through until the very end before clicking on the CTA.
A good CTA (or multiple CTAs) will result in higher engagement rates, which generally translate to more conversions, traffic, and sales.
#5: Target Delivery by Audience Interests
It's important to know your ideal customers. What kind of values do they have? Where do they live? What do they like to do? Customize your Facebook canvas design, from your copy to your video content, to appeal to these specific demographics.
To ensure your ad lands in front of the right people, take advantage of Facebook's ad targeting options. You can choose your existing audience or find a new audience based on very specific characteristics or interests.
If you target the people who are most likely to be interested in your company, you'll likely see more clicks, shares, likes, and eventual purchases because of it. That's advertising money well spent.
#6: Track Campaign Metrics
You should never run any sort of ad campaign without keeping an eye on your analytics. Because Canvas is essentially a special type of mobile ad, you get access to all of the Facebook Insights you normally get, plus two additional metrics: average duration of a viewing session (in milliseconds) and the average percentage of your canvas viewed.
These numbers are crucial for gauging how well your canvas is engaging your audience. It also helps you spot where people might be dropping off in the ad so you can refine that element and improve your conversion rates.
You can also run split tests to compare one canvas ad to other canvases and traditional Facebook ads. Keep as many factors as possible the same, or at least similar. That includes budget and length of campaign. Focus on testing only one variable, such as the ad format, the CTA, different videos used, and so on. This is a great way to discover which variation of an ad gives you the best results.
Conclusion
As mobile and video become increasingly dominant on the web, marketers are looking for ways to harness their power.
Facebook Canvas is free to use except for your Facebook advertising fees, but the potential for a great ROI is enormous, thanks to the mobile-specific platform and interactive multimedia approach. Facebook has also announced plans to expand Canvas ads to Instagram in the second half of 2016, so soon you'll have another platform on which to reach your target audience.
With Facebook's detailed targeting options and the free analytics, you have all of the tools you need to succeed. It's just a matter of being brave enough to dive into this new type of social advertising!
What do you think? Have you created Facebook Canvas ads for your business? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.
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