Facebook Ad Creative: Tips and Best Practices for Effective Advertising
Oct 16, 2023
If you're looking to promote your products or services to a large audience with minimal effort, Facebook ads are a great option. As one of the most popular social media platforms and a favourite among marketers, Facebook ads can help you reach a wide audience and increase your brand's visibility. However, creating high-quality Facebook ad creatives is crucial to ensure the success of your campaigns.
In this article, we'll discuss everything you need to know about Facebook ad creatives, including what they are, how to create content for them, and tips for optimizing them. By the end of this article, you'll have all the knowledge you need to create effective Facebook ad creatives and take your campaigns to the next level.
What is a Facebook Ad Creative?
A Facebook Ad Creative is a visual element that contains advertising data, serving different campaign objectives. It is an integral part of the Facebook ad structure, which can be thought of as a filing cabinet. Inside the filing cabinet, you add your ad sets, which are like folders. Inside those folders, you add multiple files, which are your ad creatives.
Using multiple creatives allows you to use A/B testing to see which piece of content performs best to convey your message. As soon as you figure that out, you will also know which ad to scale.
The 4 Most Prominent Ad Types on Facebook
1. Video
The first type of ad we will discuss is the video ad. Video ads are an incredibly effective way to showcase new products. In fact, social media users view around 8 billion video ads per day! It's no wonder that video ads are among the most popular choices among digital marketers. In fact, half of Facebook's advertising earnings come from mobile-focused video ads.
Aside from being the most popular Facebook ad format, video is the preferred type of content consumed by internet users. Specifically, as much as 54% of a survey's respondents reported that they would like to view more videos from brands. Not only that, but 84% of consumers say that they were inspired to make a purchase after watching a video posted by a brand. There's no doubt that video ads are among the most effective ways to advertise a service or product.
2. Image
Image ads are a simpler method of showcasing a product. But that doesn't make them less effective. In fact, 48% of marketers prefer image ads over videos.
The ad image below is a perfect example of how you can attract users' interest with high-quality photographs.
Does an image have the same advertising potential as a video? It depends on your campaign goals. For example, a Databox case study discovered that image ads reached a higher number of people and generated more impressions than video ads. On the other hand, Facebook video ads got a 47% higher click-through rate (CTR). So, images are great if your objective is to increase brand awareness among Facebook users.
3. Carousel
The first ad type that allows you to combine multiple images and videos is the carousel ad. It's a very engaging way to include multiple products or multiple images or videos of the same product from different angles.
When to use this ad type? Apparently, the carousel ad is great for driving traffic to your website. Digiday states that the slideshow ad is 10 times better than single image ads in terms of getting users to visit a landing page or a brand's website. Moreover, according to Facebook, carousel link ads can help marketers reduce their cost-per-conversion by 30-50%. Plus, the same source reports that carousel ads generally have up to 30% lower cost-per-click (CPC) than single ads with images. Therefore, carousel or slideshow ads are better to be used for boosting app installs, website traffic, and conversion rates.
4. Collection
Similar to carousel ads, collection ads enable you to promote multiple images and videos simultaneously in a mobile-only format. For instance, the collection ad in the screenshot below used several images to promote their best-selling products in the same ad. When users tap on such an ad, they are immersed in a full-screen experience where they can have a closer look at the showcased products.
It's best to use this type of mobile ads for:
Brand discovery and intent generation
Interest and intent nurturing
Conversions
In addition to these four popular ad types, there are a couple more you can read about inside our comprehensive Facebook ads guide. The guide covers insightful info on:
Ad placements
Ad spend and ad performance metrics
Image sizes and other ad specs
Audience retargeting
Creating a new ad using the Facebook Ads Manager
Now that you know what the main ad types are, you can go ahead and work on the content for your campaigns. Below, you can read all about how to create ad creatives for your Facebook advertising efforts in just three easy steps.
How to Make a Facebook Ad Creative in 3 Simple Steps
Step #1: Select the Products and Services You Want to Promote
Before starting with content creation, you need to select the products or services you want to promote. To understand what people your ads can potentially reach on Facebook, let's look at Facebook's audience demographics.
According to Statista, the most prevalent age group of U.S. Facebook users is 24-35 year-olds, accounting for 26.4% of the total U.S. Facebook user base. Additionally, 60% of the users are aged between 18 and 44 years old.
This information tells us that you can reach any age group of 18+ year-olds when advertising on Facebook, but you would harness the best result with products that appeal to a younger audience.
Step #2: Define Your Target Audience and Create Ad Creatives that Resonate with Them
Defining your target audience is crucial when using any pay-per-click (PPC) marketing channel, including Facebook. You need to make sure you're advertising to people who are most likely to be interested in your products.
Properly defining your target audience will not only help you get a better return on ad spend (ROAS) but can also give you a better idea of what content is relevant for your audience.
A good method to define your target audience is by looking at brands with similar audiences as yours. Identify their best-performing posts and analyze the ad copy, images, videos, CTA buttons, etc.
As soon as you have a better understanding of what an audience similar to yours expects from a brand, you can start experimenting with different content formats and types. Use multiple creatives as part of the same ad set to see what drives better results. For example, you can use the same ad copy with different ad creatives or create different ad texts for the same image.
To deliver relevant and engaging content to your audience, avoid using stock photos for ads. Instead, work with great content creators in your niche.
Step #3: Collaborate with Great Content Creators in Your Niche
Collaborating with professional content creators is the easiest way to get great content for your Facebook page. Regardless of your graphic design or video-editing experience, creating content on a regular basis by yourself might not be sustainable.
Insense is a platform where businesses can effortlessly collaborate with creative influencers and creators. Our platform helps brands like yours fulfill their high-quality content needs in a community based on trust and skills.
To get the content you need, fill out a brief where you provide as many relevant details about your project as possible. Then, your project will be visible to creators looking for work. The content creators interested in collaborating with you will submit their application that you can then review and decide whether the respective creator's proposal aligns with your vision and budget.
Another method to find the right creators for the job is to access our Creators Marketplace. Here you can filter-search content creators based on multiple criteria, including audience demographics, location, social media platform, price, category, and more.
To get the best results with your ads, keep in mind the following three tips:
Select products that appeal to a younger audience.
Define your target audience and create ad creatives that resonate with them.
Collaborate with great content creators in your niche.
3 Tips to Make the Most of Your Facebook Ads
Tip #1: Create Diverse Content to Stay Ahead of Creative Fatigue
Creative fatigue is a real issue that can cause your target audience to lose interest in your ads. To avoid this, it's important to create a high volume of diverse content to use in your ad campaigns. With Insense, you can easily create high-quality content by filling out a detailed influencer brief that includes relevant details about your campaign and the creative assets you need. You can specify the format, placement, number of creatives required, technical details, and even provide examples for inspiration. By creating a large volume of diverse content, you can keep your audience engaged and interested in your ads.
Tip #2: Use Facebook Library to Perform Competitive Analysis
Facebook Ad Library is a useful tool that can help you find inspiring content and analyze the content produced by your competitors. To use it, select the country you want to see content from, choose the ad category you want to explore, and input a keyword in the search bar. You can examine the related searches suggested by Facebook and click on the advertiser you want to analyze. Once you click on an advertiser, you can see all the ads they're currently running and get details on whether the ad is still running or not, the date on which the ad was launched, the platforms the ad is running on, and whether the ad has multiple versions or not. By gaining insights into your competitors' content, you can create better ad creatives that stand out and engage your target audience.
Tip #3: Do Quantitative Creative Testing
After launching an ad campaign, it's important to keep an eye on the metrics to see how your ads are performing. However, you can take a more active approach by experimenting with quantitative creative testing. This means testing simple variations of the same ad in terms of ad copy, media files, image format, CTA buttons, and more. For example, MAC Cosmetics runs six variations of the same ad. By testing different variations of your ad creatives, you can learn more about your audience and see what content best fits their preferences. This allows you to create better content with each campaign and improve your overall ad performance.
Now Over to You
If you're looking to take your content creation process to the next level, have you considered outsourcing it? Insense offers a platform that can help you create quality content for your Facebook ad creatives. Book a free demo with us to see how it works and how it can benefit your brand. We're confident that our insights and tips, combined with our platform, can help you meet your advertising goals. Let us show you what we can do for you!