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Facebook advertising tools are used by millions of businesses all over the world.
To interact with their customers, businesses use different approaches while working with pretty much the same tool sets.
Facebook Ads Software: Official vs. Third-Party
There are lots of third-party Facebook ad tools and platforms to create, optimize, and analyze campaigns. Most of them simplified all these processes.
Using third-party software can distract you from understanding the fundamentals of Facebook Business Manager, which is the linchpin of Facebook marketing.
We’re not encouraging you to avoid third-party instruments. On the contrary, if you find their features useful for achieving your business goals, go ahead and use them!
To become a real guru, you should learn the platform’s every feature.
The truth is that some advertisers don’t even know about the existence of other official Facebook applications and platforms. We’ll try to fill that gap with this article.
15 Facebook Advertising Tools You Might Not Have Heard Of
Ads Manager offers an abundance of opportunities.
However, many of these advantages aren’t available unless you’re a programmer.
If you’re a digital handyperson who’s good at more than making Facebook ads, go ahead and create your own tools, apps, and services with Facebook for Developers.
Any way you slice it, you’ll need to cooperate with developers to get the most out of your Facebook ad campaigns. Let’s give an example.
Tool 1. Facebook Pixel
Facebook Pixel is a must-install Facebook ad management software component for any online business.
Once installed on your website, your Pixel is used for creating, optimizing, and measuring Custom Audiences and for creating and automating Dynamic Ads.
With Pixel, you can attract customers who purchase your products or services from any offline and online source, increase the number of these customers by finding the right people to target, and measure your data with 100% accuracy.
Now let’s recall a few Facebook marketing tools that don’t require coding knowledge.
Tool 2. The Facebook Analytics App
Facebook Analytics is a handy mobile assistant to the desktop version of Facebook Analytics.
The app provides notifications so you can handle unexpected anomalies, read and create reports for bots, apps, websites, and events, see sales and other metrics, and view other statistics that are crucial for your business.
Tool 3. The Facebook Ads Manager App
The Facebook Ads Manager app is a mobile version of the standard Ads Manager.
This app allows you to check in-depth analytics and monitor your ad performance in real time; optimize, edit, and turn off your ad campaigns; manage audiences; make and post ad images, stickers, and templates; and more.
Tool 4. The Facebook Pages Manager App
Facebook Pages Manager is a mobile app that allows you to control up to 50 Pages with the help of a smartphone or tablet.
The app allows you to link your Facebook and Instagram accounts, leave and see comments on Facebook and Instagram, send messages, see Page statistics, track Page activity, receive push notifications, and create image and video ads.
Tool 5. Creative Hub
Creative Hub is a useful Facebook ads optimization tool that takes your ad creation skills to the max.
First of all, the tool contains ad specifications.
You can create mockups of ad formats for the following placements:
- Facebook. Carousel, Collection, Slideshow, 360 Video, Instant Experience, Single Video, Single Image
- Instagram. Stories, Stories Carousel, Carousel, Single Video, Single Image
The process of creating an ad is reminiscent of a game. Creative Hub lets you play with every aspect of an ad:
You can save a mockup, share it for review with anyone, even if they don’t have a Facebook or Instagram account, and import it to Ads Manager once it’s ready.
The tool contains asset specifications for every ad format: recommended size, aspect ratio, and length (for video). We recommend checking out the specifications to save time before creating your mockups.
There are also Video Testing and Image Text Check tools to make sure that your ads are 100% ready for publication.
If you have no inspiration to create your own mockups, click the Get Inspired tab.
There are a zillion vivid ad examples in all available formats that will help you get started.
Tool 6. Mobile Studio
Facebook Mobile Studio is the best place to learn how to make Facebook mobile ads.
Use your smartphone to add logos, animate text, create animations, and do other design tasks. In the Mobile Studio app, you can also read about mobile ad best practices and take advantage of numerous creative apps.
Tool 7. Audience Insights
Audience Insights is the major Facebook manager tool for creating ready-made audiences and using them for future ad campaigns in Ads Manager.
This user-friendly builder also allows you to save an audience as a template and use it later.
You can choose among lots of options to make the Facebook audience of your dreams. Audience Insights shows users’ age, location, gender, relationship status, page likes, devices, education, interests, jobs, political views, and more.
Tool 8. Insights to Go
Insights to Go visualizes major Facebook statistical data, giving free access to everyone.
To start working with Insights to Go, choose your filters:
- Region. Global, North America, Europe, Middle East & Africa, Latin America, Asia Pacific
- Industry. Automotive, B2B, beauty & health, beverage, consumer packaged goods, e-commerce, education, entertainment & media, financial services, food, gaming, luxury, restaurants, retail, tech & connectivity, travel
- People. Community, audiences, lifestyle, milestones
- Moments. Seasons & holidays, entertainment, sports
- Campaigns. Creative, measurement, data types
- Platforms. Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Audience Network, channels (mobile, in-store, apps, messaging, television, video)
Once you’ve picked your criteria, click on any insight for more details:
The cool thing is that Insights to Go lets marketers download any card in the form of slides to share with coworkers, clients, and Facebook users. If you scroll down, you’ll see more statistics and articles related to your card.
Insights to Go is a great source full of unique data for developing new strategies, planning budgets, improving ad campaigns by analyzing audiences, and simply getting inspired by success stories of other companies.
Tool 9. Success Stories
Talking of success stories, there’s one more way to review the experience of companies that have prospered on Facebook.
Success Stories shed light on important statistics just like Insights to Go.
But this resource is essential for learning exactly how these statistics were achieved. You can find Success Stories that are relevant whether you’re working at a small company or a big marketplace.
There are case studies for any taste, including stories of businesses similar to yours.
To find a story, pick your filters:
- Business size. Agency, large enterprise, small and medium-sized enterprise
- Objective. Awareness (brand awareness, reach, video views), consideration (app installs, website clicks, app engagement, lead generation, post engagement), conversion (event responses, website conversions, product sales, store visits)
- Industry. Automotive, consumer goods, e-commerce, education, entertainment and media, financial services, gaming, health and pharmaceuticals, charities and organizations, professional services, restaurants, retail, sports, technology, telecommunications, travel
- Product. Pages (Page posts & publishing, Page shops, appointments, events, jobs), ad formats (Carousel, Collection, Dynamic Ads, Instant Experience, Lead Ads, Link Ads, Offer Ads, Photo Ads, Slideshow, Video Ads), ad placements (Facebook News Feed, Facebook Live, Facebook Marketplace, Instagram Feed, Ads in Stories, Audience Network, Messenger, WhatsApp), targeting (Custom Audiences, Lookalike Audiences, Facebook Pixel, international targeting), measurement and reporting (brand lift, conversion lift, split testing, offline conversions, sales lift, reach, attribution), bidding and buying types (reach and frequency, TRP buying, value-optimised bidding), programmes and services (Facebook Marketing Partners)
- Region. Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East, Africa, Latin America, North America
Every success story tells about the positive results and what it took to achieve these results.
Each case study shows which ad formats the company used.
And Facebook recommends other great stories that are related.
So go ahead and find your own inspiration and motivation among the hundreds of stories!
Tool 10. Cross Border Insights Finder
Facebook ads software can significantly improve your results.
Cross Border Insights Finder is extremely useful for companies that are exploring new markets, as it lets you compare your current market to potential markets, understand which markets have potential in your industry, and more.
This analytics tool justifies its name. It lets you compare ad campaign insights from different countries across Facebook, Instagram, and Audience Insights.
After you pick a country, the tool shows three positions of this country in the global ratings:
- How easily users convert in this country.
- How expensive it is to advertise in this country.
- How frequently people see ads in this country.
Then choose your industry:
And choose one of four advertising objectives: conversions, traffic, app installs, or video views.
After you click the Find Opportunities button, the analyzer will prepare a report:
The analysis is based on highest reach, highest conversion, lowest cost, and lowest competition.
You can also take advantage of two options to get different results for different regions:
- Geographical. Africa, Asia, Carribean, Central America, Europe, Mercosur, North America, Oceania, South America
- Economic. Android free store countries, Android paid store countries, ASEAN Free Trade Area, Asia Pacific Economic Cooporation, Commonwealth of Independent States Free Trade Area, emerging markets, Euro zone, European Economic Area
After you’ve analyzed your data, you have two choices. The first is to go to Ads Manager and start an ad campaign based on the advertising objective you’ve picked.
The second is to dig deeper into research: add more countries, specify an ad objective, and set a date.
You can also check out more detailed charts that reflect conversion, cost, and competition indexes.
After you finish your research, you can go to Ads Manager to launch an ad campaign right from this page.
Tool 11. Ad Library
Do you monitor the activity of your competitors’ ads?
Ad Archive is a Facebook ad platform that can help you do this.
To provide full advertising transparency, Mark Zuckerberg’s team has developed this online database to show information about all ads launched by all advertisers on Facebook.
The archive's original aim was to highlight the origins of ads launched by politicians and national issue campaigns.
If you’re interested in how much such organizations spend on their advertisements, you’re welcome to visit Ad Library Report and check their total and weekly spending on the website or download the full report in .csv format.
For businesses, there are several advantages of using this service. After you enter the name of the Page that interests you, you can view all active and inactive publications launched by this Page, the date of their launch, and the creatives used for these ads. All this is in one place.
If a company run a few Pages for different countries, you can see ads for any Page.
Tool 12, 13, 14, 15. Instagram Mobile Apps
People are obsessed with making Stories and posting photos online that portray their everyday lives. Sometimes, too much so.
This makes Instagram one of today’s most popular digital marketing channels. Also, it’s one of the best Facebook marketing tools that allows agencies and businesses to attract customers that are distinct from their Facebook audiences.
Aside from the original Instagram mobile app, there are also a few extra mobile apps you can use to make your video content more appealing and promote your business more effectively.
Boomerang
This app takes photos, speeds them up, and uses them to create a looping video by moving photos forward and backward. You can take up to 20 photos for one Boomerang. As of January 2017, 25% of shared Instagram Stories were Boomerangs.
Hyperlapse
Hyperlapse creates spectacular time-lapse videos, which are stabilized without professional equipment. The app can increase the speed of your video up to 12 times and share it instantly on Facebook and Instagram.
Layout
This app creates only photo (no video) layouts, but they look really awesome. You can mix up to nine images, adding filters and using other tools to beautify your photos.
IGTV
Since television isn’t as popular as it used to be, Instagram has brought its own TV to the internet. You can use IGTV to display longer videos and create a stronger connection with your audience.
Upgrade Your Facebook Marketing Toolbox
Let’s recap. The Facebook marketing toolbox is full of curious discoveries.
There are mobile versions of Analytics, Ads Manager, and Pages. Not to mention four extra mobile apps for Instagram.
It’s possible to get the hang of the entire Facebook ad creation process with Creative Hub and Mobile Studio.
Ad Library and Success Stories are the two best sources for ad inspiration.
Three insight platforms — Audience Insights, Insights to Go, and Cross Border Insights Finder — can help you enhance the performance of ad campaigns with unique, diverse, and useful data.
Facebook advertising software such as Pixel offers endless optimization opportunities for ad campaigns.
Finally, if you need to boost the performance of your video ads by creating product videos at scale and for an image-sized budget, you can do this with artificial intelligence.
