How to win at advertising on Facebook — according to Facebook

Ads with images outperform those without. Put your brand name at the top. Change your ad’s image or title every couple of days so it appears fresh. And always, always tell your audience exactly what you want them to do, even if it’s as basic as “Click here to get started.”

These are among the dozens of tips and examples in a new section of Facebook aimed at helping advertisers on the almost-500-million-member social network get the most bang for their buck. Guide to Facebook Ads, officially launched today, contains dozens of pages that cover the basics of advertising on Facebook and on the Internet in general, since many Facebook advertisers are Internet first-timers lured by the site’s reach and buzz.

Advertisers were “looking for more proscriptive help,” a Facebook spokesperson emailed me this morning. The guide has separate multi-page sections on ad creative, reach and targeting, billing, budgeting, and more. There are three success stories including Japanese airline ANA, which used creative grouping of keywords to target Facebook users who might be fantasizing about a trip to Japan.

A multipage section of best practices goes beyond the basics to say what works and what doesn’t. Facebook suggests you run multiple ads in parallel and check daily to see what works and what doesn’t. Try adjusting the targeting to be both less and more restrictive, because either direction might be the key to a better response rate.

And while this seems obvious, Facebook’s guide reminds advertisers it almost never hurts to make the ad simpler. Goal #1: Make the product or brand easy to recognize.