How to use emotive content and Facebook Ads to meet your charity goals

13 April 2021  |  Neil Hocking

How to use emotive content and Facebook Ads to meet your charity goals

With over 44 million UK users, Facebook is a powerful platform for charities looking to maximise their digital profile. Facebook excels in bringing online communities together but is it enough for a charity to set up a Facebook Page? Should you be investing some funds into a Facebook Ads campaign?

The problem with Facebook pages

The main drawback with Facebook Pages is that the ‘organic reach’ is not as high as you might expect. In other words, your Facebook Page will not reach that many new donors and volunteers unless you give it a little push.

That’s where Facebook Ads comes in. As with Google Ads and other pay-per-click (PPC) services, you get to spread your net much wider than you can with a passive page.

Types of Facebook Ad

From your Facebook Page, you can visit the Ad Center and choose between automated ads, manual ads or boosted content. With manual ads you can choose your audience, write your ad text and select or upload images, giving you full control.

You will first need to choose one of four goals and Facebook will recommend one or more of these based on the type of page you have created. If you choose the goal ‘get more website visitors’, you will find that your web address is pre-filled and you can choose from a list of common button labels (e.g. Donate Now or Sign Up).

The ‘Placements’ section lets you choose whether your add will appear on Instagram and Facebook Messenger in addition to Facebook itself. You can also choose to create a ‘pixel’. This is a tiny piece of code that goes on your website and enables you to track and retarget visitors to your site.

The ‘Audience’ section is where you choose who will see your charity ad.

Setting your targets

This is where Facebook’s massive audience database comes into its own. Every bit of data that a user enters into their profile is stored and sorted so that advertisers can build a target audience that matches the type of people who want what they have to offer.

In a charity’s case, that could mean people who are likely to donate to a cause or volunteer for a fundraiser. Because of the amount and richness of its data, Facebook offers advertisers a granular way to home in on their ideal audience.

Even better, once you’ve started running Facebook Ads campaigns, the new data you generate can be used to further refine your future ads.

Connecting with language

The ‘Description’ section is where you get to add the human interest that makes charities so special. Your goal is to tell a powerful story so bring the people and issues to life with emotive language.

Try to keep your text short to avoid turning off potential readers but add in enough detail to help the reader empathise with the person in plight or understand the severity of the issue at hand.

Avoid complicated jargon or words that might not be understood outside of your charity. Finish off with a clear, direct call to action that will persuade the reader to click the button and visit your website.

Getting your visuals right

Make sure the images you use in your Facebook Ad complement the story you have told. You can choose a single image or combine multiple images into a carousel.

Stock photos should not be used unless absolutely unavoidable. Whether your charity benefits people or animals, there is no real excuse not to have good quality natural photographs on file.

When creating an ad, Facebook allows you either to choose an existing photo from your Instagram account or Facebook Page or upload a fresh one. If uploading new images, the two most important elements to take care with are resolution and aspect ratio.

1200 x 628 pixels is a good minimum resolution for most ad images with 1080 x 1080 pixels ideal for square formats. With its 30MB upload limit, Facebook will handle even your most high-res images so if in doubt, aim high. JPGs and PNGs are the recommended image format but others are compatible.

While Facebook Ads images are automatically formatted for different placements (Instagram, desktop, marketplace etc.), Facebook has created a simple ads image guide page to help you customise your ads accordingly. All you have to do is select the type of placement you are targeting from the drop-down menu and the correct image size and aspect ratio will be shown to you.

Where there is a mismatch (e.g. you upload a square image instead of a rectangular one), Facebook will use masks or graduated bars to make your image look as good as possible.

This combination of emotive language, powerful imagery and granular targeting can unlock the full potential of Facebook for your cause. We would love to hear if using Facebook Ads improves your marketing ROI.