7 Successful checklists to SaaS Users for Facebook Video Ads

Q: Why should you use Facebook video ads for SaaS?

They can reach far more people as Facebook is huge. The video ads appear in users’ news feeds and are automatically played. Perhaps the greatest advantage they offer is that you can target an audience based on demographics, interests, and behaviors

Q: What tools can be used to help you run SaaS Facebook video ad campaigns?

Many tools help you do that. For example, Canva can be used to create videos that are optimized for Facebook, the Facebook pixel can be used to gain campaign insets, AdEspresso to manage Facebook ads, and Facebook Ad library to keep tabs on your rivals.

A SaaS business’s success depends on its marketing to a great extent. Therefore, if a company commands a good amount of social media following, it’s easier for them to create brand loyalty, which in turn translates to higher sales.

People however, want to know how a product or service can help them solve a problem before they part with their cash.

So, having the answers to these questions before creating your video content on any platform, including Facebook, could go a long way towards having an audience that remains invested in your project from the beginning.

Facebook video ads are amazingly powerful, but they can be tricky to create for many SaaS marketers who are unfamiliar with the medium or the distribution channel.

This guide outlines what they need to do to create effective Facebook video ads so that they can present their SaaS products better and sell more.

Before we do that, however, we will talk a little bit about:

SaaS marketing vs. Traditional marketing

SaaS funnel (AAARRR)

Awareness – Acquisition – Activation – Retention – Referral – Revenue

Provides SaaS companies with an opportunity to:

Market their products and services using the internet and skip traditional marketing methods.
Quickly build and scale a business.
Offer their application as a cloud service, extend subscriptions, and provide secure access to it.

Traditional funnel

Awareness – Consideration – Decision – Purchase – Loyalty – Advocacy

Relies mainly on brochures and other documents.

How good is Facebook as a marketing tool?

Facebook is the world’s largest social media platform, with over two billion monthly active users.

That being said, let us examine Facebook’s efficacy as a SaaS marketing tool before we get more specific and talk about Facebook video ads.

Advantages:

Marketers operating on a limited budget can take advantage of the penetration and reach this service offers, as they do not have to invest a hefty sum of money into expensive campaigns.
It is easy to track Facebook marketing’s effectiveness as click-through rates and conversion of eyeballs into sales are readily available.
Global and local audiences and at the same time, allowing marketers to create campaigns to cater to both groups.
Unlike Twitter and Instagram, which lean more towards reach, we can reach a wider audience without compromising on our local customers.

Disadvantages

Better and faster reach means the ground is fertile for internal sabotage, activism, and trolling.
Brand engagement and loyalty are fickle as Facebook users tend to look for instant gratification as opposed to long-term engagement.
Demographics play a far greater role in forming an opinion than other platforms.

Next, let us examine whether

Facebook video ads are really worth your marketing budget

There is ample data-based evidence to show they really work because of their potential to reach millions of people at once.

Consider the following facts:

In addition to being highly engaging, Facebook video ads build trust with the viewer, which encourages them to act.
Facebook video ads differ from traditional advertising in that they can target an audience based on demographics, interests, and behaviors.
Facebook is considered by 91% of marketers to be a better B2B advertising platform than LinkedIn.

Next, we present a series of checklists that must form the basis of your marketing campaigns, along with advice specific to Facebook video ads:

1. Content strategy checklist

Your Facebook video ads should:

Encourage users to share: Create useful and shareable content. Be creative, be brief, be simple. Your viewers will take care of the rest of your ad to catch their fancy.
Encourage users to sign up for a demo: Product demo and marketing videos done right can work wonders.
Ideally not force users to share contact details straightaway: Try to share PDFs or whitepapers for free. People are increasingly becoming wary of this practice – most people cannot be bothered to take the trouble.
Assure your users that what they see is what they get: No strings attached service is what users have come to expect from SaaS providers.
Recognize that one size does not fit all: Target your audience based on language and region. Do not go by the stereotypes and long-held notions about people, cultures, and more importantly, purchasing power.
Have a clear call-to-action: What next is the bane of users who are mighty impressed with your product and want to sign up. Pay attention to your CTA on the Landing pages along with the right fonts, colors, and micro text.
Offer rewards (make it worth their while): Increased product usage can only come from allowing users a taste of how useful your product is.
Reveal your pricing plans upfront: Always include a detailed plan for different tiers. Your audience will appreciate it and will play willingly if you display your ‘menu’ before they place their order.
Highlight a use case: Influencers make a ton of money for a reason. An honest review of your product or services from a credible source matters a great deal.
Promote new product launches: Create an easy-to-understand intro video: People are 85 percent more likely to buy a product after watching a product video.
Include testimonials: Satisfied customers can tell prospects about the benefits of using your product way better than you can.
Offer free trials and rewards for increased product usage: Everybody loves an equitable bargain, and it always helps to leave your customers with a feeling that they have got more than a fair deal.
Be short and sweet: Create videos that are short enough to hold your audiences’ attention but long enough to provide a good deal of essential information.
Share your success and setback: Sustained engagement is one way you can hold your audience enthralled. Never be shy to share your latest success stories or temporary setbacks. Helps to show your resolve and tells your audience that you are here for the long haul.
Take inspiration from other companies in your niche: Being inspired by others and inspiring others, in turn, is the name of the game. In fact, friendly and tasteful banter between rivals tends to go viral.

Read more: How do you Improve Trial Conversion using Videos

2. Technical checklist

Create a video that is targeted, concise, well crafted, and designed for a good viewing experience.
Show specific age groups the benefits they are most interested in. Facebook ads are a wonderful way to do this.
With just one click, you can customize your video ads for Facebook. There are a number of SaaS products that allow you to do that.
Use square images with an aspect ratio of 1:1 to get more coverage. Also, animated images work better than static images.
Do not exceed twenty-five characters for headlines.
Do not exceed 125 characters for the description text.
Use a real image for testimonials and customer support videos. People love to interact with real people.
Use a real voice-over artist where possible. A robotic or machine-generated voice sounds artificial and lowers the credibility of your product or service
Choose a tune that is not too loud to distract from the theme but is still enticing enough to hold the viewer’s interest.
To maintain social media momentum, keep videos under 60 seconds.
Promote a new event, product launch, or update to show you as a company is active.

3. Tools checklist

Here is a list of tools from Facebook and third parties to help you run your video ad campaigns:

Purpose	Tool(s)
To create Facebook optimized videos.	Flexclip, Canva
To ensure that your image has less than 20% text as per Facebook guidelines.	Facebook Grid Image Checker
To integrate Facebook pages, ads, Google Analytics, project management tools, video hosting platforms etc.	Databox
To retarget users with relevant ads when they click on the shortened link.	Rebrandly
To manage Facebook ads.	SocialPilot, AdEspresso
To see the ads run by your competitors.	Facebook Ad Library
To gain campaign insights.	Facebook Pixel
To use Shutterstock stock photos directly when you create ads.	Facebook Ads Manager
To get campaign insights at a glance.	Agorapulse Ads report
To deliver the best performing organic Facebook content to more News Feeds than the algorithm permits.	Facebook boosted post autoresponder

4. Example video ads checklist to inspire you

It is always important to draw inspiration from others’ good work but credit the original creators whenever you do so.

We recommend that you watch video ads by companies like Adobe, SEMRush, Hubspot, and Ahrefs to see how exactly it is done – to learn from or even steal ideas from!

Have a look at AirAsia’s Friendsy campaign from 2017 that went viral on Facebook and reportedly generated an estimated PR value worth $1,700,000 and increased their Facebook fan base three times.

5. Marketing tips checklist

Let us see what some of the bright minds from various industries have to say about marketing.

The guidelines listed below are relevant, useful, and valuable regardless of the medium. Suffice to say, you cannot go much wrong with such advice:

Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make, but the stories you tell.

Seth Godin, Author

Just because you are the loudest, doesn’t make you right.

Brian Halligan – CEO, Hubspot

It’s a very complicated world. It’s a very noisy world. And we are not gonna get a chance to get people to remember much about us. No company is. So, we have to be really clear on what we want them to know about us.

Steve Jobs - Founder, Apple

Does your content lead readers on a journey, or does it merely stuff them as leads into a pipeline?

Ann Handley - Chief Content Officer, MarketingProfs

Stop selling. Start helping

Zig Ziglar, Public Speaker

Video Marketing tips checklist

More priceless advice to embrace the change and use and make the best use of the medium:

Obvious realization: Content that starts as video, can be downgraded to audio (in your pocket or as podcast), which can be converted to text (via transcription or blog). But content can’t flow in the other direction. Therefore, to max audience for any content, start with video.

Sarah Tavel - General Partner, Benchmark

The play button is the most compelling call to action on the web.

Michael Litt - CEO, Vidyard

Online video is the Swiss army knife of internet marketing. It really can be used all over the customer lifecycle, whether it’s customer service, marketing, or even recruitment.

Mark R. Robertson, Video Marketer

Create videos with a distinct purpose. Anticipate your ideal consumer’s needs and create content to address those needs.

Brian Rotsztein, Author

Videos can attract a different audience, one that might not want to take the time to read a white paper or an article.

Brick Marketing

6. Content Beta video creation strategy checklist

Content Beta has been creating video content for some of the top SaaS companies, and we have put together our own checklist for you that we follow when we create content:

Don’t try to just sell; people are a lot smarter than we give them credit for.
Nobody is going to buy from you even if you have a great product; you need to demonstrate it to people – and quickly.
Quality content always stands out – It’s your job to help separate the wheat from the chaff.
Try to keep content short to match the shrinking attention spans.
Video is the present and the future; embrace it!

7. Content Beta resources checklist

To get a good understanding of how the medium works, we recommend that you checkout our:

To summarize, what we have been discussing so far:

“Capture the essence of marketing without being salesy, reach out to people without being pushy, and build brands without being cheesy.”

Final words

Video ads are highly effective and beneficial for SaaS marketing as they provide users with relevant product information they are looking for.

But you must keep the following important points in mind when creating your ad campaigns:

Make sure the information provided to prospects and users is helpful and effective in solving their problems.
Do not create content without any product or service focus. You can have the best product, the best service, or the best marketing department, but without a well-made video, your ads may prove worthless in meeting your objectives.

FAQs on SaaS Video ROI

Why should you use Facebook video ads for SaaS?

They can reach far more people as Facebook is huge. The video ads appear in users’ news feeds and are automatically played. Perhaps the greatest advantage they offer is that you can target an audience based on demographics, interests, and behaviors

What features should a good Facebook video ad have?

Like any other video ad, SaaS Facebook ads should have the following features at a minimum:

It should be made well enough to be shareable to take advantage of the natural advantages Facebook offers.
A clear call-to-action
Customer testimonials
Use cases are valuable too.

What technical details should we pay attention to with Facebook Video ads?

For best results, you must follow Facebook video ad guidelines such as a maximum of 25 characters for the headline, 125 characters for the description text, an ideal video length of 60 seconds, animated images, and images with an aspect ratio of 1:1. There is a complete Facebook ads checklist for a good video ad on the platform.

What tools can be used to help you run SaaS Facebook video ad campaigns?

Many tools help you do that. For example, Canva can be used to create videos that are optimized for Facebook, the Facebook pixel can be used to gain campaign insets, AdEspresso to manage Facebook ads, and Facebook Ad library to keep tabs on your rivals.

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