As per the latest data from Statista, 4.2 billion people use social media actively in 2021. (it’s increasing too)

And the most popular social network is Facebook. Based on the audience size.

Who can miss this audience for their marketing? Plus, you have options to specifically target any group of people based on your target audience. 

Let’s not talk about other people. Just observe your Facebook feed and see how many Ads you saw every time you visited Facebook? Especially video ads. A lot, right?

If you look at it a bit more closely. You will get to know that there are more video ads than classic graphic ads. 

Businesses are starting to use video ads more and more. Why? Cause you get more Leads, sales, and ROI. Plus, you can also use video to provide more information about your products for better awareness.

Now, you might be thinking of starting video ads for your business too. 

But, check out these seven proven tips first that we have found from our personal experiments with video ads and some of them from Facebook itself.

So, You can easily avoid some mistakes we made in our early days. 

1. Get people’s attention right away.
2. Keep it short
3. Catchy Headline and Informative Primary Text
4. Optimize for Sound Off Situations
5. Make it Vertical or Square
6. Thumbnail that makes sense
7. Add your CTA in the middle

Let’s look into each point in more detail. 

1. Get people’s attention right away

Don’t bore your audience with your boring introduction. Get to the point in the first 3 seconds. 

The image above shows how long people stay on the ad before scrolling away. Depending upon this data and graphs. The best time to deliver what you have to offer is the first 3 seconds. 

Anything after that, many people will go away missing the point you want to communicate.

2. Keep it short

Facebook has a video length limit of 15 seconds for placements Instagram Stories and Facebook in-stream. Though you can use a long video, do you think your audience wants to be disturbed with a 3mins long video?

Even I don’t like to watch long video ads. 🙂 

3. Catchy Headline and Informative Primary Text

Do you watch a video without reading the title of the video first? No, Right? 

You must add a catchy headline to get the attention and informative description. So, your audience knows what to expect in the video.  

Btw, the ideal length of FB ad headlines is 5 Words. It is widely known. But, most of the advertisers don’t know when they start.

See some examples…

4. Optimize for Sound Off Situations

Many people scroll the Facebook feed while keeping their sound off or low in many situations and places. 

As per the study done by Digiday. 85% of Facebook videos are watched without any audio.

If your video is not understandable without audio then they will just scroll away. 

Also, Facebook auto-plays the video ads with no audio. When so many people are going to watch your video without sound then it should be optimized for that situation too. Right?

5. Make it Vertical or Square

When it comes to video size there are many options available for you. There are many sizes based on different types of placements. 

But, what is the best option to go with?

Many experiments and studies show that using a square or vertical video is the best practice to get more attention and engagement.  

Why Vertical? 

95% of people access Facebook from their mobile. So, when you use a vertical or square video you get more screen space.

The more screen space you have the more details you can show to the users at a time. 

6. Thumbnail that makes sense

Don’t show your ugly face to your audience. Although, Facebook has this autoplay thingy. Many people turn it off. The automatic thumbnail is okay. But, it can be any frame from the video. It’s better to take matters in hand rather than leaving it to luck. Right?

You can manually choose any frame you want from your video or you can create a creative for your video ad thumbnail. 

The choice is yours. But, surely automatic thumbnails aren’t that reliable. 

7. Add your CTA in the middle

The last thing is keeping your CTA Simple. After all, it should not be like people are asking what to do after watching the video. 

Where to put your CTA? 

There are mainly 3 places you can put a CTA. 

1) At the start
2) At the middle
3) At the end

So, you should put your CTA..

At the start of the video? 

Nope, you are going to introduce your brand and your offer at that time. 

Then at the end of the video? 

As per one study done by Wistia, 95.9% of advertisers put CTA at the end of the video. (this is the ideal practice after all)

But, If your video is long then with each second the attention of your audience is fading. They might think too much about it and don’t actually take the action you want them to take.

Then where to put the CTA?

In the same study, Wistia found out that CTA in the middle of the video actually gives more conversions compared to CTA at the end. 

So, many of us put CTA at the end of the video. We should consider putting it in the middle of the video and test it out for our businesses. 

Final Thoughts:

Facebook video ads are becoming more and more popular. Businesses are starting to work on it and leveraging video ads for their business growth. 

If you haven’t started yet, you should also start doing it. If you are already running FB video ads, you can check if you have applied all the tips we discussed in this article or not.

Start using Fb video ads to grow your business. Also, let me know about your experience with Facebook Video Ads in the comments.