How to Design a Facebook Ad Creative That Converts
As we know Meta is one of the largest and trickiest advertising platforms in the world, and because of that, your creative needs to work hard to stand out against an increasingly busy feed.
Meta advertising has become an indispensable tool for businesses looking to reach their target audience and drive conversions. In this article, we’re going to look at some ideas you can try to get the most from your Meta ad creatives. Do you know that in the news feed on Facebook, people spend an average of ‘1.7 seconds with a piece of content on mobile compared to 2.5 seconds on desktop.’? (Meta)
We’re an unlimited graphic design subscription service based in Manchester, and we’ve worked with hundreds of UK businesses to help design a whole host of graphic design projects including Meta ad creatives. So, how do you design a Meta ad that actually works? In this article, we’re going to share some tips and ideas we’ve picked up along the way so that you can try to get the most from your Meta ad creatives.
Understanding the basics of Meta advertising
Before we dive into the nitty-gritty of creating a Meta ad creative that converts, let's first understand the basics of Meta advertising. Meta offers businesses a powerful platform to showcase their products or services to a highly targeted audience. With over 2.7 billion monthly active users, it provides an unparalleled opportunity to reach potential customers.
However, with such a vast user base, it is crucial to craft a well-crafted Meta ad that cuts through the noise and captures the attention of your target audience. This is where the importance of a well-crafted ad creative comes into play.
A well-crafted ad creative can make all the difference in the success of your advertising campaign. It can grab the attention of your target audience, convey your message effectively, and drive them to take the desired action. Whether your objective is to generate leads, increase sales, or boost brand awareness, a well-executed ad creative is the key to achieving your goals. So, how do you do it?
Defining the ad objective and audience
Firstly, you need to define your target audience and tailor your ad to resonate with their interests and preferences. Understanding your audience will enable you to craft a message that speaks directly to their needs and desires.
Additionally, your ad should have a clear objective. Are you looking to drive traffic to your website, generate leads, or promote a specific product? Defining your objective will not only help you measure the success of your campaign but also guide the creative and messaging of your ad.
1. Pay attention to your image to text ratio
With Meta ads, it’s best practice to make sure that the creative uses more imagery than text. Keep any copy that’s used as punchy and short as you can, so that you can communicate your message to your audience as quickly as possible. If you can’t make the copy much shorter, another recommendation is to try a smaller font size so that the ratio of image to text is still larger. Meta themselves have found that ‘images with less than 20% of text perform better.’
2. A/B test creatives
When you’ve decided on an image creative, try A/B testing that ad so that you can continually tweak and improve as the campaign progresses. A/B testing is done when you change one variable about an ad, and see which of the options performs best. For example, you might try the same imagery and copy against a different coloured background to see how the colours of the ad affect the engagement rate. Alternatively, you could try different headlines on the same creative to see which copy performs best and gets the most clicks.
When you A/B test, make sure to isolate the changes you make so you can clearly track what is affecting the performance. Run the ads for the same amount of time, and check back in after to see which ad truly performed best. By doing this as you introduce new ads, you can keep on improving the ad creative based on real data.
3. Ensure right dimensions for different placements
When setting up your Meta ad campaign, take into account that different placements will require your creative matching different dimensions. Meta provides all the aspect ratios you need to optimise your creative for across all the different placements, making sure that your ad performance isn’t hindered due to a bad crop or an image being zoomed in.
You can view more information on aspect ratios for the various placements on Meta here.
4. Make use of carousel formats
If you have a lot of information you want to display and don’t want to run multiple separate ads, the best option is to make use of the carousel ad format. This format allows you to run multiple images in an ad that you can swipe through, offering links and relevant information to each slide in the carousel.
To make your ad creative flow better across the set in a carousel format, create your graphics so that they flow from slide to slide.
In this article, we’ve considered some additional steps you can take to help your Meta ad creative have more of an impact. From the dimensions you’ll need to the features you can try A/B testing, every detail can make a difference in the performance of your overall campaign. For more like this article, check out the Design Cloud blog here.
