How To Create A Facebook Carousel Ad: A Guide

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Updated: October 8th, 2022

What Is A Facebook Carousel Ad?

Facebook Carousel Ads is an ad format that tells a story to your customers through images and video in a single ad unit.

By using carousel ad format, users can swipe through your post to see new offers, imagery, and videos.

Facebook carousel ads format is a great option as you are able to give customers variety and increase your chances of conversions/sales.

Facebook Carousel Ad Key Takeaways

Carousel Ads can drive up to 10 times more traffic to advertisers' websites compared to static sponsored posts.
Facebook Carousel ads can display up to10 products in images or videos
Carousel ads accumulate click-throughs with low prices per acquisition.

Understanding How Facebook Carousel Ads Work

Facebook carousel ads let you show 2 or more images or videos in a single advert.

Each image/video could have its own headline, ad description, links, and call to action.

To switch between the carousels, Facebook users swipe on their mobile devices or click the arrows appearing on the ads.

Therefore, Facebook carousel ads support multiple business needs and types.

Here are different possibilities you can achieve using Facebook Carousel Ads:

Feature multiple products linking to different landing pages:

The Facebook carousel ads allow you to highlight multiple product types.

This gives the advertisers additional options and boosts the Click-Through Rate.

Highlight multiple features of a single product

You can use Facebook carousel ads to show different product angles or product details.

Here is a great example of how this works:

Therefore, you can use this feature to educate customers and highlight product features.

Tell a story

Facebook carousel ads allow advertisers to use images and or videos in succession, and to illustrate a compelling narrative highlighting the product story. Besides, you can use carousel ads to explain your journey or highlight the product development process.

Explain a process

Advertisers use carousel ads to walk people through how the business works step by step.

Alternatively, you can use Facebook carousel ads to explain target audience how to use products or how to troubleshoot common issues.

Carousel ads appear in multiple placements across Facebook, Instagram, audience network, and Facebook/Instagram messenger.

Tips For Creating Facebook Carousel Ads

When creating carousel ads, you can use the following best practices to ensure more reach and increase ads conversion rate:

1. Use all available components to tell your story

According to inc, sharing visual content on social media platforms is a great way to boost engagement.

Therefore, using images and or video for Facebook carousel ads grabs attention.

To maximize the potential, ensure visual content features snappy headlines, clear descriptions, and a compelling call to action that gives context, detail, and encouragement.

Remember each carousel ad can contain up to 10 cards.

Here is an illustration of different elements making carousel ads effective.

2. Provide A Variety Of Relevant Links

If you are using carousel ads to promote multiple products or services, provide links to the product or service description page.

Before publishing the carousel ad, check the links to ascertain that they point to relevant landing pages.

Note that Facebook carousel ads allow you to promote external links, Facebook pages, Facebook events, and even Facebook offers within the carousel ads.

3. Use Cohesive and Engaging Images/ video

If you are adding a combination of video and still images on your Facebook carousel ads, choose images from the video recording, so that the ad feels cohesive and maximizes engagements.

4. Reach Out To Your Customers

Leverage product imagery to target people who visit product pages on your website. Targeted Facebook ads help to boost engagement rates and maximize conversion rates.

5. Show Best-Performing Cards First

The Facebook carousel formats let you test multiple pieces of creativity in one go.

Order the ads based on best performance and replace the low-performance ads with the best performers.

6. Use Large Product Sets

If you are using the product set from your catalog for your carousel ad, we recommend you select a fairly broad set.

Thus, to display in your ad, items must be in stock, and not rejected, and not variants of the same product.

In case the number of available items in the set ever fails to less than 2, your carousel ads turn into a single image.

Real-World Examples Of Brands Using Facebook Carousel Ads

Here are some top examples of brands using Facebook Carousel Ads Effectively.

1. How Standard Chartered Hong Kong Achieved 2/3 X Increase In Digital Payments Using Facebook Carousel Ads

In response to the Coronavirus pandemic, Standard Chartered Hong Kong had to temporarily close branches and limit services.

To ensure their customers had the bank's support, they introduced a wide range of digital banking products, and run campaigns on Facebook aimed at educating their customers about their digital products.

One of the campaigns featured Facebook Carousel format. The team developed a wide range of creative assets targeting customers at different stages of the conversion journey.

The shift from traditional advertising formats to Facebook carousel ad format allowed the bank to boost brand awareness and to drive conversion rates among their target audience.

Following the series of digital advertisements, the bank registered over a 2.6X increase in monthly average mobile account openings, and over 3.5 million people were reached, representing over 80% of the target audience.

Here is what the Head of Retail Marketing at Standard Chartered Hong Kong had to say:

“ We launched the “Invest from Home. Bank from Home” campaign to help customers manage their banking needs and investment portfolios from home with ease. Facebook was our platform of choice as it efficiently reached our target audience. Utilizing different creative formats to optimize reach and engagement helped deliver high awareness and recall for our campaign. Cheuk Shum

Head of Retail Marketing, Hong Kong & Greater China North Asia Standard Chartered (Hong Kong) Limited

2. How Clinique Laboratories LLC Built Brand Awareness Using Facebook Carousel Ads

Clinique Laboratories, LLC is one of the top manufacturers and marketers of prestige skincare, makeup, and fragrances.

The brand wanted to promote the launch of its new skincare product line.

Their target audience is comprised of Gen Z and millennial customers across local markets.

They came up with a synchronized ad campaign based on the Facebook carousel ad format.

The campaign achieved an increased ad recall rate, an increase in the average brand awareness, and saw a growing purchase intent among the targeted audience.

How To Run A Successful Facebook Carousel Ad

You can create a Facebook carousel ad from your page or in the ads manager.

To Create Facebook Carousel Ad From Your Page:

To create a carousel ad from your Page:

Step 1. Click Promote on your Page.

Step 2. Click Get More Website Visitors.

Step3. Enter an optional description for your ad into the Description box.

Step4. Click Select Media.

Step5. On the Browse Media page, upload your images or videos or select existing ones. Add them in the order you want them to appear in your carousel, then click Select.

Step6. Enter optional text into each Headline box. To scroll through your carousel cards, click the arrows.

Step7. Click the Button label dropdown and choose a phrase for your button.

Step8. In the Website URL box, enter the URL you want people to go to when they click your ad.

Note: If you want each carousel card to send people to a different URL, create your ad in Ads Manager.

Step9. Click the Special Ad Category toggle, if applicable, then make your selections for Audience, Duration, and Daily Budget.

Step10. To choose the places where your ad shows, click the Placements dropdown. Check the box next to placement to select it.

Step11. If you have created and installed a Facebook Pixel and want to turn on event tracking, click the Facebook Pixel toggle.

Step12. To verify your payment information, click the Payment Method dropdown.

Step13. To preview your ad, scroll up and click the See All Previews button.

Step14. When you’re done, click Promote Now to publish your ad.

To Create Facebook Carousel Ad From Ads Manager

Step1. Go to Ads Manager.

Step2. Click + Create in the top-left corner.

Step3. Choose an objective that supports the carousel format. Note that you can’t use the Engagement or Video Views objectives.

Step4. Add your Campaign Details, A/B Test, and Campaign Budget Optimization information if needed, then click Next.

Step5. Complete your Budget and Schedule, Audience, Placements, and Optimization and Delivery information, then click Next.

Step6. In the Identity section, select the Facebook Page you want to use for your carousel ad and attach your Instagram account, if applicable.

Step7. In the Ad Setup section, select Carousel.

Step8. In the Ad Creative section, select to manually choose your media or to fill your carousel cards dynamically from a product set.

Conclusion

Facebook Carousel Ads can be extremely effective, but this depends on how well you maximize the available features.

In this post, we have highlighted important tips to aid you in the process of creating Facebook carousel ads.

Follow the steps explained above, to get the most out of your Facebook Carousel ads.

meet the author

Pat Walls

I'm Pat Walls and I created Starter Story - a website dedicated to helping people start businesses. We interview entrepreneurs from around the world about how they started and grew their businesses.

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