How to Use Tips from Graphics Experts to Create an Engaging Facebook Ad

Eleventh in a series

Facebook ads, billboards, YouTube commercials – while they’re all advertisements, they each have their own best practices. So, what do the experts suggest for a winning FB ad?

Once we decided to make a Facebook Slideshow ad, it was time to actually make it. Read on to follow our process and learn our reasoning so you can apply these tips to your own Facebook ad creation.

Clarify the objective

We want the people who manage business organizations to complete our free SEO audit. The Call To Action, therefore, is simple and not obscured by any secondary messaging that might confuse a viewer.

You have no doubt heard the maxim that every purchase is motivated by emotion, and the two most common emotions are fear and greed. That sounds horrid, but it’s true. Fashion trends feed on people’s fear of relevance and “get rich quick” schemes appeal to people’s greedy hopes.

Biz owners aren’t afraid that their current SEO will drive them out of business, but they do suspect that improving their SEO would bring in more clients, so the emotion we went with was “greed.”

Map the story

“Buy my product” is not a story. Just like any book or movie, a marketing story needs to introduce the character, challenge the character with a conflict, and then resolve the character’s problem in order to have a happy ending. But this isn’t War and Peace. Facebook gives you fifteen seconds, max, to flesh out this narrative and Facebook viewers give you even less time.

The hero of our little story is feeling down because the phone isn’t ringing. The phone doesn’t ring because the hero’s online presence is poor. Sprocket offers a solution to improve their online presence, which makes the phones ring. Happy hero! Then we show how to get your own audit so you can be happy, too.

Attend to details

If you know a graphic artist or have some graphic skills yourself, you can create your own images for uploading into Facebook’s Slideshow template. To improve your chances, however, remember to design for the FB platform specifically. Some tips to keep in mind include:

• Avoid stock photography
  Studies show these are a turn-off. Use images that show you are unique and not like everyone else.
• Include bright or dark colors
  Selling shoes? Showcase the neon yellow ones instead of the white. Also, dark backgrounds stand out on the Facebook page better than pastel colors.
• Use sans serif font
  Serif font is usually considered easier to read because the little “tails” tie the letters together, but data shows that viewers prefer ads with sans serif text.
• Promote a “thing”
  It’s easy to show photos of food or clothing or other tangible products, but how do you photograph a service? It sounds strange, but marketing studies report that viewers respond better if your service is depicted as a physical package.

Test and measure

Even though we put a lot of planning and effort into creating one story, we’re going to run two different versions to see which one resonates best with viewers.

Here is our “best shot” creation, and our alternate where we change up the text on the Slideshow graphics using different search terms.

We also plan on testing different headlines, post content, and CTA buttons. Facebook Ads have an option to automatically turn off the poorer-performing versions, but we’ll be monitoring it ourselves so we can report the results here.

Next, we’re deciding who should be seeing this ad. Have you run Facebook ads before? Did you do A/B testing, too? If you think it’s time to up your ad game, talk with our team about what how you can improve. Give us a call today.

Kate GingoldKate Gingold

I have been writing a blog with web marketing tips and techniques every other week since 2003. In addition to blogging and client content writing, I write books and a blog on local history.

Other posts by Kate Gingold

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Full biography

I have been writing a blog with web marketing tips and techniques every other week since 2003. In addition to blogging and client content writing, I write books and a blog on local history.

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