Fine-tuning your Facebook ads to yield the best result involves a reasonable amount of trial and error, and you might want to split-test your ads to determine the most effective approach. However, just by taking a closer look at the type of ads that Facebook shows in your own news feed, you will soon get a feel for the type of ads that perform well and those that are boring or irritating, and likely to alienate their viewers.

Here are some tips for constructing great Facebook adverts.

• Visual ads work best – use images as appropriate to draw the eye and give an at-a-glance pointer to what is on offer.
• Avoid the hard sell approach – Facebook advertising is most effective when it plants the seed of an idea in your prospect’s mind organically and makes them want to know more. Pushy or shouty ads rarely work well on social media platforms.
• Don’t make your ads too obtuse – if viewers have no idea what you’re offering or selling, they’re unlikely to pursue it.
• Integrate incentives and teasers but avoid clickbait – most Facebook users are savvy enough to spot clickbait ads and avoid content that starts with lines like “this one trick to banishing belly fat is all you need to lose 100lb in a month!”
• Try to make an emotional connection with the viewer – providing a solution to a common pain point or giving the viewer an actionable means of fulfilling a need.

1. The bold text immediately makes a personal connection with targeted viewers – in this case, cat lovers.
2. It provides enough information to let the viewer know what the ad is about, integrating an emotive image that cat lovers will find hard to ignore.
3. It clearly and succinctly provides a description of the offer (a lottery) with the unique idea that playing this lottery also helps cats.

Many people who use Facebook ads concentrate too heavily on their click-through stats rather than impressions. Impressions provide more value in the long term, because they increase familiarity with your brand – something that people remember (even if unconsciously) when they come across the same ad or brand again in the future.

Finding the sweet spot when it comes to ad frequency – how often any individual Facebook user sees an impression of your ad – is the key to turning your ad spend into conversions and profits. If a prospect only sees your ad once, the chances of them clicking it that one time are low. The number of times that your ad appears for each viewer has to be frequent enough for their mind to make a connection and consider clicking it another time.

However, the same ad repeated too many times can lead to the viewer unconsciously tuning it out entirely, meaning that after a certain number of impressions, it’s time to move on to targeting someone else.

So, what is the optimum number of impressions per viewer for an ad to stand the best chance of performing well? That largely depends on what your ad offers and who you are targeting.

If you’re a well-known brand offering a popular product that is similarly well known and well regarded and that most of your viewers will already be aware of, capping impressions per viewer at a frequency of one or two per month is likely to return the best results for your ad spend.

If, on the other hand, you’re a new brand promoting a new product without any existing market share or viewer awareness of your offerings, this probably won’t be enough. Most experts advise capping your ad frequency at around five or six impressions per viewer per month, to get the balance right between raising awareness and bombarding your viewers with the same ad to the point that they start to ignore it.