Effective Facebook ads are about more than calls to action. The best ads create a connection between a brand and its desired audience. According to Facebook, you have three seconds to capture a user's attention before they scroll past your ad in the News Feed. Given that, these three tips will make your intended audience more likely to stop scrolling and read, watch or click your ad.

To say video is important to Facebook is the understatement of the century.  If you haven’t noticed all the video in your News Feed you probably haven’t logged in in the last year.

A few weeks ago, Facebook announced a slew of video updates that prove the social network will not stop until they are the top destination for video.  If you're not already using Facebook video for your business now is the time to start.

Flipping Video on its Side

Taking a cue from Snapchat, Facebook will play vertical videos in a larger format for viewers on mobile phones.

Given that mobile phones are used in portrait mode 98 percent of the time (Mobile Marketer), this is a switch you should make for your social videos to take advance of the phone’s full real-estate.

We all know that attracting customers through social media is more complex than just setting up a profile, but is it worth the effort and expense? According to a recent Marketingland report, the answer is an emphatic yes. In the article, marketers report that social media is the third-largest source of new customers for SMBs. If you're not already using social media, now is a good time to start.

Boosting a post on Facebook is one of the easiest things a marketer can do to reach more people instantly. The Huffington Post reports that it is one of the best ways for small businesses to market themselves, as it is low risk, low cost and has a good return on investment potential. However, while boosting a post instantly syndicates your content to more users, this simple Facebook advertising solution is not appropriate in all circumstances. Here's a handy guide on when it is best to boost Facebook posts and when it might be more prudent to try other Facebook advertising tactics.

Many marketers agree that Facebook is the most important social platform when it comes to promoting a brand. Building a big following and generating organic engagement from that audience can yield great returns, making the process a critical digital asset.

But succeeding on Facebook, like anything else, takes hard work, patience and an understanding of what works on social media. In an effort to speed up progress and cut corners in building a social audience, some brands have tried buying Facebook Likes in an attempt to quickly increase their page followers. This sort of spending can add hundreds or thousands of new followers overnight, giving you a boost that makes your page look much more legitimate and mature than it did only days before.

Or at least that's how it seems. But the cosmetic gains of purchasing Facebook Likes aside, there's little to be won from this marketing tactic. There are, however, a lot of things that could go wrong.

Engaging visual content is the future of marketing. And Snapchat, marketing geniuses that they are, was the first small business to ride that wave. It can no longer be classified as small, however — according t o TechNewsDaily, Snapchat has surpassed Facebook with 10 billion daily video views, and New York Magazine reports it has more users (150 million) than Twitter (140 million). Luckily, the principles behind Snapchat's marketing savvy are available to all SMBs (small and medium-sized businesses) looking to raise their brand profile. Here are six of the top ways Snapchat teaches marketers to build their brands on social media.

Though virtually every business in the world can benefit from beefing up its social media presence, the home improvement industry in particular is one area where social media content is especially crucial. A recent report in Mobile Marketer revealed that 22 percent of consumers working on home improvement projects were directly influenced by ads on mobile, social media and desktop, with 19 percent of those surveyed specifically looking to either Facebook or Pinterest for ideas. Once you've set up your social-media profiles, you may be wondering exactly what home improvement marketing tips you can implement to maximize the effectiveness of your social-media presence.

With approximately 1.7 billion active monthly users, marketers are well aware of the value of advertising on Facebook. According to HubSpot, businesses paid 122 percent more per ad unit on Facebook in 2015 than they did in 2014. With dozens of different ad objectives, placement options and product features available on the social networking platform, it's easy for marketers to feel overwhelmed when starting a campaign on Facebook's ad network. Here's a quick rundown of the network's top ad types for local businesses.

 

Brand Awareness

The first step to building a successful business is increasing customer awareness of products and services. The Facebook network offers numerous ways to promote brand recognition with photos, videos, slideshows and carousel ads on Facebook and Instagram. Carousel ads are unique in that they allow you to showcase up to 10 images and links within a single ad unit. For instance, if you own a restaurant, you could show off the top 10 dishes on your menu.

Though Facebook is a great tool for businesses that want to engage with their customers, it's also very useful for accomplishing more tangible goals. With a little know-how, marketers can increase relevancy and visibility, and even grow physical store visits. Here are the Facebook marketing tips you should be employing now.

Use Audience Optimization to Increase Relevancy

Facebook posts have historically had an uncertain impact on visibility (some brands do extremely well, while others stumble), but the platform recently rolled out an audience optimization tool that allows businesses to target specific subsets of their audience for individual posts. For instance, if you are a retail clothing company and create a post that markets a new line of bras, you can exclude male recipients (who would be unlikely to find this specific post relevant).

Facebook has become a massive part the digital marketing landscape in recent years, thanks largely to its programmatic interface, high level of scalability and, perhaps most importantly, its cost-effectiveness. Though this platform is already performing well for digital marketing professionals, Facebook has recently added an exciting new option to its Custom Audiences targeting tool. Marketing Land reports that Facebook Custom Audience targeting is now allowing marketers to hone in on their targets more effectively by serving ads to consumers who have spent a certain amount of time on a page, opened an app a specific amount of times or made in-app purchases. This is a huge development that allows marketers to really take their campaigns to the next level.