How to Create a Facebook Ad Strategy: 21 Pro Tips that Work + Template

A well-defined Facebook Ad strategy can help your brand reach a wider audience faster. Get proven tips and a template to drive results at every stage of the advertising funnel.

21 Proven Facebook Ads strategy ideas

Creating a Facebook Ad strategy is like building a roadmap for your ad campaigns. With a clear strategy, you can reach your digital marketing goals more reliably while keeping advertising costs in check and return on ad spend (ROAS) high.

In this article, we’ll cover everything you need to know about building a Facebook Ads strategy, including 21 proven tactics to create better ads and a template for mapping out your own successful strategy.

Use these proven ideas to develop successful Facebook ad campaigns:

1. Build a conversion funnel
2. Design ad schedules for your business
3. Schedule your advertising budget
4. Capture attention and tell stories with video
5. Maximize reach with more placements
6. Use clear messaging and calls to action (CTAs)
7. Personalize ad copy for every prospect
8. Start conversations with customers
9. Experiment with interactive carousel ads
10. Run dynamic ecommerce ads
11. Retarget potential and existing customers
12. Create high-value lookalike audiences
13. Optimize ad landing pages
14. Combine paid social with content marketing
15. Share compelling social proof
16. Partner with social media influencers
17. Engage prospects with a giveaway
18. Split test ads to find what works best
19. Monitor results and optimize ads to increase ROAS
20. Scale successful ads with automated rules
21. Leverage Facebook ads on other ad networks

1. Build a conversion funnel

Not every Facebook ad can or should target conversions. Instead, use Facebook’s campaign objectives to build a conversion funnel:

• Awareness to introduce your business to new prospects and increase brand awareness
• Traffic and Engagement to educate prospects and encourage them to consider your product or service
• Leads, App Promotion, and Sales to drive conversions and revenue

For example, ActiveCampaign runs ads for every stage of the funnel. The ad below focuses on driving awareness and leads to a blog post that educates potential customers about the SaaS company.

While the ad above targets people at the top of the funnel, the ad below targets people at the bottom of the funnel. This conversion-focused ad leads to a landing page designed to drive signups.

2. Design ad schedules for your business

Facebook ads automatically run around the clock. An always-on approach may make sense for a Facebook ad strategy for Shopify or other ecommerce sites.

But if your ads require a personal follow-up or an employee to answer the phone, then a 24/7 campaign probably isn’t the best use of your ad spend. Instead, set ad schedules.

You can set ad schedules at either the campaign or ad group level of Facebook Ads Manager, as long as you use a lifetime budget. Check the “Run Ads on a Schedule” box and select the times you want the ad to run.

Note that you can set a schedule based on your timezone or the user’s timezone. If you’re basing the schedule on your company’s open hours or your team’s availability, make sure to choose the former.

3. Schedule your advertising budget

When you set a daily budget, your actual daily ad spend will be within a preset range. If you anticipate consistent demand throughout the campaign, the standard budget settings will work just fine.

But if you’re building a limited-time holiday offer or a Black Friday Facebook Ads strategy, you may want to allocate more budget during these high-demand times. Ads Manager’s budget scheduling feature can help.

Check the “Increase Your Budget During Specific Time Periods” box. Then set up to 50 different time periods when you expect high demand. For each time period, you can increase the budget by a percentage or set amount.

4. Capture attention and tell stories with video

Unlike paid search ads, Facebook ads need strong creatives. While both images and videos can capture attention, over 67% of marketers report that videos perform better for Facebook ads. Why?

Well, videos:

• Share complex information in a more engaging way, making them ideal for educational content.
• Capture attention and stop the scroll more easily, especially among audiences with autoplay enabled.
• Hold attention longer, according to Databox. They also seed retargeting audiences, which we’ll cover below.

For example, the Navi video ad above uses an animation to highlight how the marketplace works. The video shows viewers how they can compare carrier costs, which may prompt them to click through and try for themselves.

5. Maximize reach with more placements

Placing video ads in the news feed can drive results throughout the funnel. But the best Facebook Ad strategies maximize reach by optimizing ads for every available placement.

For example, the Away ad above uses a square ad to appeal to viewers scrolling through the news feed. The Away ad below uses a vertical short-form video to appeal to Facebook users viewing the reels feed.

You don’t necessarily need to set up different ads to optimize creatives for multiple placements. Instead, create a single ad and adjust the media crop for each group of placements.

“The biggest challenge when running Facebook ad campaigns is producing enough net-new ad creative that fulfills the platform’s appetite. Over the last few years, we have seen a higher frequency of creative burnout and generally a higher appetite for new creative,” shares Zach Murray, CEO of Foreplay.

“To overcome this, you need to evolve your media buying team to have stronger creative strategy skills continuously developing new insights, angles, and ad formats you can feed into your testing environment.”

6. Use clear messaging and calls to action (CTAs)

Creatives typically capture attention in the news, stories, or reels feed. But in most cases, the copy drives potential customers to take the next step. That’s why it’s so important to write copy that has:

• Concise messaging that’s easy to understand when scrolling quickly
• Clear CTAs that align with the next step your audience wants to take

For example, Pizza Hut uses concise ad copy with no more than 10 words. While it’s short, the copy in the ad on the left clearly conveys the offer. On the right, the creative clarifies the details.

Both use the “Get Offer” CTA to prompt customers to click or tap. This sales-focused CTA is ideal for a Facebook ad strategy for real estate, restaurants, or retail stores.

“When crafting ads, I find it’s crucial to truly understand your ideal customers on a deep level. Beyond demographics, what are their motivations, pain points, and interests? The more tailored your messaging, creative assets, and targeting can be to different subgroups, the better results you’ll achieve,” shares Ryan Robinson, Founder and CEO of Right Blogger.

How can you gather this audience data? “To source high-converting messaging angles, it’s best to extract them directly from customers. The most efficient way is to collect reviews, customer service tickets, or comments on your currently running ads into a spreadsheet,” explains Murray.

“From there you manually look through this content to look for problems, solutions, or transformations that are the most meaningful for your past customers and will overly resonate with future ones. To supercharge this process, try using Chat GPT to extract these insights from the raw data,” Murray suggests.

7. Personalize ad copy for every prospect

To get the best results, your ad copy should speak to your target customer. But even if you’re advertising to a niche audience, it isn’t always easy to speak to every individual prospect.

Ads Manager’s optimization tools can help. Rather than writing a single option for ad copy, write up to five for each eligible field (primary text, headline, and description).

Confirm that “Optimize Text Per Person” is enabled. Then opt in to “Standard Enhancements.” These options allow Facebook to place your ad copy in any field and combine it in a way that’s most likely to appeal to each user.

8. Start conversations with customers

Getting prospects to watch your videos or visit your website is a great first step. But if your customers typically have questions or need to speak with an employee to book a service, you need a way to start conversations.

Ads Manager’s Leads objective lets advertisers create ads that spark conversations in Messenger. With this objective, you create a messaging template that walks prospects through questions and qualifies them as leads.

As the ad generates leads, your team can download prospect data. Then you can follow up with them to answer questions or complete the transaction, making it ideal for a B2C or B2B Facebook Ads strategy.

For example, the East Tennessee Trimlights ad above prompts potential customers to send a message to get more information or a free estimate.

9. Experiment with interactive carousel ads

While video ads are a great option for many advertisers, they aren’t the only interactive ad type for the news feed. Carousels can also tell stories and prompt potential customers to swipe through.

Above, the Marimekko ad uses a carousel to showcase the brand’s end-of-season sale. While the first carousel card uses an eye-catching graphic to highlight the sale, the rest of the cards feature shoppable product collections.

Although many types of businesses can benefit from this Facebook ads strategy, dropshipping and ecommerce businesses are most likely to get maximum mileage out of carousels.

10. Run dynamic ecommerce ads

The carousel ad format doesn’t have to be static. Any Facebook Ad strategy for ecommerce should leverage Meta’s catalog feature. Attach a catalog to your ad set, and then insert product names dynamically. Facebook will automatically display the top-performing cards in your carousel first.

Above and below, Cozy Earth uses the carousel ad format to showcase the brand’s loungewear collection.

11. Retarget potential and existing customers

Even high-intent customers may not convert the first time they learn about your business or see your offer. With Facebook remarketing ads, you can continue to deliver ads to engaged audiences to increase the chance that they’ll eventually convert.

From brick and mortar businesses to ecommerce companies to entrepreneurs, this Facebook marketing technique can work for anyone. All your ad account needs is the Facebook Pixel or Conversions API. Then you can track micro conversions and get your ads in front of the right audience.

To retarget engaged prospects, use Ads Manager’s custom audiences tool. You build an audience with your own data sources — like your website or customer list. Or Meta sources — like video engagement or lead forms.

12. Create high-value lookalike audiences

Building retargeting audiences is a great way to lower your campaign’s cost per click (CPC). Yet, retargeting doesn’t work for every ad campaign.

To keep potential customers moving through your ad funnel, you need to continue to attract fresh audiences. When creating these top-of-funnel Facebook ads, targeting interests can help you reach new prospects.

But interest-based audiences aren’t your only targeting options for reaching new customers. With lookalike audiences, you can connect with prospects who are similar to your existing customers.

You can create lookalike audiences based on a range of different seed audiences — including people who like your Facebook page or who have bought from your business. In Ads Manager, select the “Custom Audience With Customer Value” option to build a high-value audience.

13. Optimize ad landing pages

No matter your target audience or your Facebook ad format, make sure your ads link to relevant landing pages. Instead of linking to your homepage, use an optimized landing page that aligns with the ad’s messaging and creative.

Above, the Lululemon ad promotes holiday gifts for various recipients. Each carousel card links to a dedicated ecommerce landing page for gifts, with mini collections for different personas.

14. Combine paid social with content marketing

For high-ticket offers like coaching, software, or home services, buyer journeys can be long. One of the best ways to guide these prospects through the funnel efficiently is fusing your paid social and content marketing strategies.

Above, Stripe uses a native lead ad to promote a downloadable guide to growth. Since these forms are designed to qualify leads, this SaaS ad type can educate prospects and help B2B businesses build pipeline more effectively.

15. Share compelling social proof

While branded copy can certainly convert customers, social proof may work better. Awards, customer testimonials, and names of high-profile clients can all convince prospects to take the next step.

Above, the Calendly ad combines multiple types of social proof. With both a testimonial and awards, this ad is likely to stand out on the social media platform.

16. Partner with social media influencers

Getting influencers to speak for your brand checks two boxes. Influencers can help you beat the organic Facebook algorithm and get higher reach, which can boost your social media ROI. And if you promote influencer posts (with permission), you can amplify reach exponentially.

Above, Monos uses Ads Manager’s partnership ads tool to sponsor third-party content. Both ads feature influencers’ original Facebook posts and include unique promo codes to drive sales.

17. Engage prospects with a giveaway

Working with influencers can certainly pay off. Yet, this approach also tends to have a high up-front cost. Giveaways often work better for a low budget Facebook Ads strategy, as the main cost is the contest prize.

But it’s important to ensure that the prize is large enough to make prospects want to enter. Above, the Oreo ads promote a sizable $5,000 giveaway.

18. Split test ads to find what works best

Even the most experienced ad strategists can’t always predict which ad creative will resonate best or which audience segment will respond most positively. That’s why A/B testing is so important for Facebook ads.

Facebook Ads’ built-in A/B testing tool supports creative, audience, placement, or custom variables. To get the most accurate results, compare two ad sets that are identical aside from the test variable. Give the test enough time to run (i.e., at least five days) and learn from the results.

19. Monitor results and optimize ads to increase ROAS

Even top-performing ads won’t continue to deliver top-tier results forever. That’s why it’s crucial to monitor Facebook ad metrics regularly and optimize campaigns based on the results.

With Facebook Ads charts, you can visualize results over time and spot negative trends before they become overly expensive. These built-in charts also report on top-performing demographics and platforms, which can help you maximize Facebook Ads ROI.

“One challenge is that the Facebook algorithm is always evolving, so strategies do need refreshing. You have to be willing to try new approaches to keep seeing growth over the long run. But with the right research, testing, and analytics-based optimization, Facebook ads can absolutely deliver qualified customers at scale,” shares Robinson.

20. Scale successful ads with automated rules

Make your most successful Facebook ad campaigns work even harder for your business. Scale successful Facebook ads vertically.

There’s no need to go through the step-by-step process manually. Instead, set up automated rules to scale top-performing campaigns on a schedule.

First, determine a threshold for scaling, such as a cost per result. Then decide how much to scale. Facebook typically recommends increasing ad budgets by no more than 20% a week to maintain optimal performance.

“When done properly, Facebook ads are a viable avenue to drive sales. At HawkSEM, we take a tight and targeted approach when it comes to Facebook ads. We track all steps of the user journey, identify winning patterns of success, and scale with ROAS goals in mind,” explains Sam Yadegar, CEO of HawkSEM.

“By integrating targeted B2B ads, we were able to grow Wind River users by 39%. We also increased the click-through rate (CTR) by almost 300%.”

21. Leverage Facebook ads on other ad networks

Facebook ads don’t always translate seamlessly to other ad networks. But the data you gather from Facebook Ads Manager can inform the creative’s messaging, offers, and audiences you use on other ad networks.

At HawkSEM, we use ConversionIQ to collect conversion data from Facebook Ads. Then we apply these insights to Google Ads, Amazon Ads, and even SEO to optimize campaigns across other marketing channels.

Why you need a Facebook Ad strategy

A Facebook advertising strategy is the key to creating high-performing ads and optimized campaigns. With a well-designed strategy, your social media marketing team can:

• Align ad campaigns with business and marketing goals
• Build funnels that guide prospects from awareness to conversion
• Attract new audiences and encourage existing customers to repurchase
• Create campaigns that get the results you want while keeping cost per result as low as possible
• Leverage Facebook Ads success to convert customers on other ad networks

The takeaway

Developing an effective Facebook Ads strategy requires time for research, testing, and optimization. Whether you need a Facebook ad strategy for jewelry, real estate, SaaS, or health services, our social media consultants are here to help.

Contact HawkSEM for a complimentary consultation and discover what your B2C or B2B business can achieve with Facebook advertising.