Five new Facebook features to boost holiday campaigns

But how can you stand out among the thousands of advertisers competing for your audience? Making use of Facebook's newest and most focused features can lift your messages above the crowd.

Lead Generation

The holiday season signifies a shift from desktop to mobile, as people step away from their desks for social engagements and vacations. Facebook's Lead Generations objective allows you to set up adverts designed to collect leads with an easy mobile form that will pre-populate fields containing information already on Facebook, providing a solid alternative to desktop lead generation forms.

Brand Awareness

For campaigns designed to increase reach and promote awareness about your brand, the Brand Awareness objective is an interesting option. This objective serves your ad to people who are more likely to recall your ad and brand, based on two factors, gleaned through user behaviour: attention and reach.

Local Awareness

In a move that mirrors app push notifications and text message campaigns based on proximity, Facebook's Local Awareness campaigns allow you to target audiences that are in the vicinity of your business and drive foot traffic directly to it.

Slideshow video

Facebook's enhancement of video campaign capability has made a great impact in Q4, allowing advertisers greater control over how they bid and pay for video ads on Facebook. But what about those who can't afford the steep cost of producing a good quality video? You can now combine images into a slideshow that will be served as a video ad, allowing for a more interactive message without having to produce a video.

Instagram campaigns

Making Instagram ads available within the Facebook Ad Manager has been the social platform's biggest advertising move this year. Though new, Instagram campaigns are already rivalling standard Facebook adverts. With both image and video capability, and the ability to target audiences on Instagram based on their Facebook interests makes Instagram ads an attractive and crucial component of holiday campaigns, especially for retailers.

With the shopping season in full flow, and advertisers trying everything possible to stay ahead of the curve, capitalising on little used and innovative features can help distinguish your ads, reach the most relevant and engaged audience, and provide an always welcome boost to results.

Source: https://www.facebook.com/business/news/ad-week-2015-announcements