An interesting video pops up on your mobile feed, you tap it to turn the sound on or learn more and suddenly the video moves to the top of your screen. Below it, is a landing page, to accompany the video. Facebook™ Instant Experiences, formally Canvas, are possibly the most powerful way to market your business.
The advantage is that it's like taking the viewer instantly to your website without them choosing to leave Facebook™. The trick being, it's not actually your website, it just looks like it. It is in reality a landing page that you build within Facebook™ Ads Manager. This provides a unique journey from inspiration to conversion. You can use it to get new customers, introduce your product or brand, drive product sales or encourage people to visit your website or app .
"Within an Instant Experience, people can watch engaging videos and photos, swipe through carousels, tilt to pan and explore lifestyle images with tagged products – all in a single ad." - Facebook™
They're fast-loading, easy to create and good for any goal. But how do you create one?
The Video
In order to create an effective funnel, we recommend creating 2 videos for your instant experience. For the first video you should lead with a 15 second ad. Once they tap that ad, however, they'll see a second video if you should choose to have one (and you should).
This video can come in a variety of forms - a speaker presenting to camera, an editorial promotion, an animated explainer video - but whatever form it's in there's 1 key difference to other Facebook™ ads: you're not confined to 15 seconds.
For this video anything up to and including 2 minutes works well. This is fantastic because it means you can communicate more of your message in a paid ad. Your audience is drawn in by the landing page, knows there's something good on offer and so the viewer retention goes through the roof.
For SMBs we recommend using this opportunity to let people get to know you as human beings. Feature as much smiling, happy faces and talking heads as possible, since the landing page is doing the branding part for you.
For Corporates, considering your audience is likely to be familiar with you already, focus the video on the product(s), service(s) or offer more than yourselves. High production value here tends to pay off.
The Process
Facebook™ recommends a 3-step process for your customers to follow:
Generate intent with ads in feed. This means your video must hook the viewer's attention enough for them to tap the video to turn on the sound (opening your landing page). We suggest providing something of value to them in the first 10 seconds and communicate that visually, ideally through on-screen captions, titles or subtitles.
Nurture intent with a Facebook™ Instant Experience. Your viewer taps to turn on sound, the video jumps to the top of the screen and the landing page appears below. Here you want to summarize your offer with a variety of multimedia including headers, carousels, photos, text blocks & videos. Same as any landing page, include multiple call-to-actions for one goal - most likely going to your actual website or app.
Harvest intent on your site or app. Finally, send them to a high-converting landing page on your site or app. The form this takes will vary depending on what you're selling. Simply put - if you're in eCommerce give them the opportunity to buy instantly, if you're selling a service then include a lead magnet so you can get their details and market to them further.
How to Set it Up
There are multiple ways to do this but we recommend this basic strategy.
In Facebook™ Ads Manager, click create campaign.
Under 'What's your marketing objective?' click 'Conversions' then click 'Continue'
Select 'Website' or 'App' under 'Conversion' and fill out the rest of the details on this page according to your preferences. Then click 'Continue'.
Select your business page under 'Identity'.
Under format choose how you'd like your ad to look initially, before the instant experience is opened.
Select the tick box next to 'Add an Instant Experience'.
Decide whether you'd like to start with a template or build a custom instant experience and follow the on-screen prompts to create your landing page.
Upload your 15-second video ad (make sure you follow the video recommendations & specs). This will be the first video your customers see, so make sure it hooks their attention and gives them a reason to tap in.
Fill out the 'Links' section and click 'Confirm'.
You're all set! We apologize if you got stuck at any point but we wanted this article to be a broad guide that allowed you to understand how it works, while still being able to customize it for yourself. We hope it was helpful!
If you want help creating awesome videos to put into your Facebook™ Instant Experience, feel free to book a strategy session with us now to see if we might be a good fit to work together.
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