How to Design Facebook Ads in GetResponse

Want to generate more sales with your landing pages and marketing funnels?

Then look no further – read this post and start driving more quality traffic to your site with Facebook and Instagram ads – right inside of your GetResponse dashboard.

Not sure if it’s the right thing for your business or maybe you’re worried that it’ll be difficult? Don’t be! In about 15 minutes, you’ll be ready to launch your first Facebook ad campaign through GetResponse.

But other than providing you with a step-by-step guide on how to do this, I’m also sharing some best practices and tips on how to run your social media ad campaigns effectively.

This way, your Facebook ad campaigns won’t strain your marketing budget, and you’ll feel more confident about managing your customer acquisition costs.

So, let’s get started, shall we?

What’s new in GetResponse Facebook Ads?

Update 1: Not sure what type of ads you should run? Worry not. From now on, our Paid ads Creator will suggest the ad types you should run based on your campaigns’ goals.

Update 2: Accounts registered after 15 November 2022 only have access to the new Facebook ads creator, while older accounts still have access to the legacy version.

Update 3: The flow of setting up the audience and the budget of the campaign has changed; in this article we explain how you can set them up for both versions.

Update 4: In the new Paid ads creator, payments for Facebook ads are not processed by GetResponse, only Facebook.

Step 0. Accessing the Facebook Ads in your GetResponse account

To access the Facebook Ads creator in your GetResponse account, all you have to do is click on the Menu icon on the left side of the navigational bar and then select Paid ads.

Note: Please bear in mind that all ads are paid for in USD, regardless of the account’s payment currency.

Next, click on “Create ad” under the Paid ads menu option.

Step 1. Specify the goal of your campaign

Now, you’ll have to specify your campaign’s objective. You’ve got three options to choose from:

• Bring new leads
• Engage your audience
• Generate sales (option coming soon)

Let’s say we’re an ecommerce business selling bicycle accessories and want to drive awareness for our holiday discounts. In this case, we can pick the “Engage audience” goal that’ll help us drive our existing clientele back to our site. 

Once you’ve specified your ad’s objective, the Ad Creator will suggest the most relevant ad type for your campaign. Click on it and move on to the next step.

In our case, the ad creator lets us choose from two options: Search ad (Google) or List or segment targeting (Facebook and Instagram). Let’s go with List or segment targeting to access the Facebook ads editor!

Editor’s note: Currently the only available option for Facebook ads in the new ad creator are List or segment targeting, but new options are added continuously.

Step 2. Giving your campaign a name 

The first thing you should do when creating a new ad campaign is to give it a good name.

Although it will only be visible in your account dashboard (your audience won’t see it), it’s important to choose an appropriate name that’ll help you quickly identify the following elements:

• which Facebook Page the ad is related to
• what’s the campaign about
• who’s the target audience
• what’s the ad placement

If you name it well, you’ll be able to understand and filter your reports more efficiently.

Here are two examples of ad campaign names we would use if we wanted to promote our holiday sale for our customer list:

• Joe’s Bike Accessories – Customer list – Holiday sale – Mobile users
• Joe’s Bike Accessories – Remarketing – Christmas sale – All devices

Step 3. Selecting the ad placement

Now, you’ll have to select where your ad will be presented.

To do that, select your Facebook Page or connect a new one if you haven’t done it before.

If your Facebook Page is connected to an Instagram account, it’ll appear like this:

Now if you don’t already have a Facebook Page connected to your GetResponse account, you can do add it through the Connect your Page button. 

Alternatively, you can access it by clicking the Integrations and API link in the main menu.

Once you’ve selected the page, it’s time to pick whether you’d like your ad to be presented on:

• the News Feed of your Facebook Page
• the Facebook Audience Network
• the Instagram feed
• the Instagram stories

Also, you can specify what type of devices it’ll be displayed on:

• Mobile
• Desktop
• Mobile & desktop

If you’re unsure what Facebook Audience Network is, here’s how they describe it in their Ads Help Center:

Audience Network allows advertisers to extend Facebook and Instagram campaigns across the internet – onto thousands of high-quality websites and apps.

People spend a lot of their time on Facebook and Instagram. But they are also spending time on other apps and sites. Audience Network helps advertisers reach more of the people they care about in the other places where they’re spending their time.

Before you choose any of these placements, ask yourself this question:

Who am I targeting? Are these people on one of those platforms? And if they are, how likely is it that I’ll interest them with my content?

In some cases, you’ll be better off if you skip the Facebook Audience Network and only target those who are on Facebook. Other times, Facebook on its own won’t give you the level of exposure you’re looking for.

The same goes for choosing the type of devices your ad will be displayed on. Consider how likely your audience is going to convert using a desktop or a mobile device. If your website or product are only suitable for one of them, switching off one type of device will help you make better use of your budget.

Whatever you do, make sure to test your hypothesis using only a part of your budget.

Once you’ve got the data, you can make a well-grounded decision and invest a bit more money in your ads knowing that they’ll drive you more leads.

Step 4. Add your content

Now it’s time to add content to your Facebook ads.

The words and images (or video) your target audience will see when they browse Facebook or other apps in the case of Facebook Audience Network.

Your ad will consist of the following elements. You can customize all of them so that they’ll meet your preferences:

• Message introducing your ad (optional)
• Image(s), banner(s), or video that’ll be used to promote it (adding multiple images creates a carousel ad)
• Link to the site you want your audience to be referred to when they click on the ad button
• Headline of your ad
• Button type, e.g. Sign Up
• Description (optional)

Note: Please note that Facebook may show your ad copy differently, depending on the device on which the ad is being displayed. This may affect how the text that introduces your ad is being shown to your audience.

This may look like a lot of elements, but the good news is that not all of them are obligatory.

You may choose to skip the optional ones, but before you do that, think twice whether it’s the right thing to do.

Below is a blank Facebook ad image that highlights all of the above sections and fields you can provide when creating your ad.

If you’d like to see what your ads would look like when they’re published, you can check them out with this Facebook Preview Tool.

Keep in mind that there are certain requirements when it comes to what your ad content’s going to look like.

For example:

• the dimensions of the image you provide must be at least 600 x 315px
• Maximum file size is 8MB for GIFs and 10MB for static images
• Aspect ratio should be 1:1 (this will ensure the ad looks good across the whole platform)
• GIF ads should be 15 seconds or shorter
• You can’t add more images to the ad if you’ve already added a GIF

We’ll talk about this a bit more later in the last section on Facebook ad campaigns best practices.

Step 5/a Pick your audience [New version]

It’s time to select the people you want to target with your social media ad campaign.

Let’s say you want to run a Facebook ad campaign to reach some of your email subscribers.

For example, those who haven’t recently engaged with your email campaigns, so that you can reengage them, or those who have previously downloaded one of your ebooks because you’ve got a new product that they might be interested in.

This is a powerful way to reach your audience on Facebook, but there are two key conditions that you should keep in mind:

First, this option will work only if your email list or segment has at least 100 people in it. Otherwise, the group’s too small to create an audience on Facebook.

Second, you should understand that people don’t always use the same email address to access Facebook and sign up for products or services like the ones you’re offering. That’s why the size of your target audience on Facebook may be smaller than what’s stored in your email list.

Usually, Facebook can match 60-70% of the contacts from your list.

This is especially the case if you’re targeting people who have given you a work email address. The chances are that they’ve registered to Facebook using their private mailbox, which would affect the size of the audience for your ad.

So how can you use your existing contacts to run an effective Facebook ad? Here are some quick ideas.

Three ideas for using this targeting option:

• Target those who have registered for one of your webinars or your newsletter but haven’t become active paying customers yet. Present them an offer they don’t want to miss out on.
• Reach those who’ve become less active and haven’t opened your newsletters in the last 30 days. Reengage them and convince them to keep coming back for more.
• Launching a new tool or service? Target existing customers and upsell those who’ve bought from your once or are currently subscribed to a lower-tier plan.

Step 5/b Pick your audience [Legacy version]

If you are using the Facebook Ads Legacy version, you can select from the following options:

Existing contacts
Target people who are already in your mailing list for re-engaging them.

Lookalike audience
Reach new people with similar characteristics to your existing leads or best customers.

Custom audience
Reach new people by characteristics such as location, gender, age, interests and behaviour.

People liking your Page
Target those who like your Facebook page, people similar to those who already liked your page or both.

Website visitors
Target people who have visited your website or certain pages on your site in the past X number of days.

Read more: What is Facebook Pixel and How to Use It & Ultimate Guide to Facebook Retargeting

Step 6/a Set the budget [New version]

Almost there! Now it’s time to set your ad budget.

In other words, how much in total you want to spend and for how long your campaign should run.

You can run ads indefinitely or specify a set runtime. The first option is for ongoing campaigns, while the latter is used if you want to run a seasonal campaign or promote an event. It is advised to never run campaigns for less than two weeks to allow time to Facebook to optimize the campaign and making sure that many people see your ads.

One of the updates in the latest version of our paid ads creator is that GetResponse no longer processes the payments for your ad campaigns. This means that for your campaign to start, you need to set up a payment method on your Facebook Ads account. 

Read more: How to Lower Your Facebook Ads Costs and Improve ROI

Step 6/b Set the budget [Legacy version]

If you are using the Facebook ads Legacy version on Facebook, the process is slightly different.

Here, GetResponse processes your payments, but your options are somewhat limited.

You can set up how much in total you want to spend and for how long your campaign should run. The daily spend can be anywhere between $5 and $100.

Step 7. Submit the ad

Now that you’ve set you ad it’s time to hit the submit the ad button.

Once that’s done, GetResponse sends the information to Facebook so they can have a look if everything’s been set correctly.

Having said this, there might be some situations where Facebook will reject your ad and you’ll have to edit it before you can resubmit it.

There are, in fact, about 100 reasons why an ad could get rejected. Here’s an official list provided by Facebook, in case you’re interested.

Just to give you an overview of what these could be, I’ve summarized the ones that are quite common:

• There’s excessive text in your ad images
• Your ad is targeting personal attributes
• Your landing page is not fully functional or doesn’t match your ad creative
• Your ad content is not in line with the community standards
• You’re advertising something that’s prohibited or restricted (e.g., adult products, alcohol, or cryptocurrency)

We’ll talk about the most important ones once again later, in the last section of this post.

Step 8. Managing your ads

Once you’ve submitted your ad, you can monitor its status in the Manage Ads section of your account.

There, you’ll see the full details for all the ads you’ve created.

This includes the thumbnail of one of the visuals you provided, the campaign name, the text introducing your ad, ad status, ad duration, budget, reach, and the number of clicks the ad generated.

In the Manage Ads section, you’ll also be able to edit, duplicate, delete, and of course – create new ads.

When it comes to the ad status, there are several types of statuses you’re likely going to see.

These are:

• Draft
• Completed – when the ad campaign finished successfully
• Canceled – when the ad was canceled by the user
• Failed – when the ad couldn’t be activated
• Rejected – when the ad got rejected by Facebook
• Inactive – when the user paused the campaign
• Active – when the campaign is still running
• Scheduled – when the ad has been successfully approved and is now scheduled to start at a time specified by the user
• In Review – when the ad campaign is being reviewed

Note: When you hover over the status of your ad campaign, you should see additional information, e.g., why it may have been rejected.

The most important piece of information is that you’ll only be charged if your ad gets approved by Facebook.

How to create effective Facebook ads: best practices

To finish off this article, I’ve decided to provide you with a list of tips and best practices that’ll help you generate more bang for the buck with your Facebook ads.

That, of course, requires that your ads get approved by Facebook first, hence some of the tips that you’re about to read are directly related to match their ad requirements.

Minimize the amount of text in your images

Facebook found that ads that contain less than 20% text perform better.

That’s why they want their advertisers to meet these criteria when submitting their ads through Facebook.

Note that there are some exemptions to these rules (e.g. if your ad shows a book cover or an album cover).

That’s why it’s worth reading up more on these requirements directly on Facebook.

There, you’ll also find some useful ad examples with different amounts of text and explanation on how that element could affect their reach.

Make your ads personal

We see thousands of ads every day of the year. And we ignore most of them, too.

If you want your ads to stand out, you need to make them personal.

Rather than using stock photos, try using your own photos or videos as often as you can.

Show your products in action. Make them feel natural, not like they’ve just been rendered out. But that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be high resolution!

Match the colors and fonts in your ads with the ones that’ll be used on your landing page.

Maintain the scent. Thanks to this, your audience will feel that they’re in the right place and the ad hasn’t mistakenly directed them to some random site.

Not sure what’s going to work well for you? You can start by gaining inspiration by exploring the Facebook Ad Library and searching for other companies in your niche.

Keep it simple

Like in all areas of marketing, in Facebook advertising, simplicity pays off, too.

Effective ad campaigns are not only personal, but also tend to be simple.

The reason for this is also simple, we only have a couple of seconds (if not less) to capture someone’s attention and explain what it is that we can do for them.

So think twice before you submit a complex image or text that’s hard to comprehend.

Although some studies in the past have shown that people focus and understand more when the things they’re reading are hard to read, it might not be the most optimal experience for Facebook.

After all, many of your users will be accessing this social network to relax and socialize, not to strain their brain wires.

Understand that Facebook advertising is a bit different

If you’re new to Facebook advertising then you might not know this, but advertising on social media is a bit different from anything else.

Unlike on Google or Bing, people are spending time on Facebook to socialize and entertain themselves.

Sure, they do also learn about the latest news and events from it, but they’re not usually actively looking for that type of information.

Having said this, your Facebook ads should be a bit different from what you’d usually use in Google or Bing.

Your ads have to be eye-catching, interesting, and engaging. But, they can’t be distracting.

Think about this when designing your ads and you’ll see that their performance will be positive, too.

Match the ads with your funnel stages

As you may have read in our guide to marketing funnels, a typical audience goes through several funnel stages before they actually convert.

Typically, marketers refer to the top (awareness), middle (consideration), and bottom (conversion) of the funnel.

Each part of the funnel aims to achieve a different goal and you need to keep that in mind when you’re designing your Facebook ads.

If you’re running ads that are meant to fuel your marketing funnel at the top, i.e., drive traffic to your landing page, then your ad content should focus on generating awareness.

Naturally, if you’d be interested in retargeting those who’ve gone through your funnel, but haven’t converted yet, your ads should focus on the conversion.

To learn more about this, check out this article which provides further explanation on how to write ads for different business objectives.

Test different approaches

There’s not one single best way to reach your audience.

That’s why rather than betting big that your ad is going to convert like crazy, prepare several versions (including images, copy, video, and targeting option) to find the approach that works best for you.

Only when you know the potential outcomes, you should increase your budget.

Ready to take action?

Although this article turned out to be a bit lengthy, you’ll see that creating Facebook ads is not more complicated than sending out a newsletter to your email subscribers.

And if you want your marketing funnels to continually generate sales revenue, you should reach out to new audiences.

As you saw, there are at least several ways you can do this using the Facebook ads integration with GetResponse.

So, are you ready to give them a spin?

Go ahead and create your first Facebook ad campaign through GetResponse.

And if you have any questions, just let us know in the comments below 🙂

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PS. GetResponse is a verified Facebook Marketing Partner