You’ve decided to invest some of your marketing funds in paid social media advertising. How can you be sure that your ads will deliver a positive return on investment (ROI)? The answer is design, and the good news is that you can control many of the elements that determine just how good your ROI is for social media ads through design.
Take a look at four guidelines that can help your social media ad design deliver measurable returns (and when you are done reading go to sign up to learn about how to take your brand to a new level).
Measure Quantitative Results: Start by focusing on what you’re trying to accomplish through paid advertising, which will inform your design. Get past vanity metrics, such as likes and followers, and get to the behaviors that indicate growth, such as click-throughs, conversions and sales.
Choose Design That Stands Out: Your audience is being flooded with ads in their feed, so your design needs to be able to capture their attention. Think of ways to stand out, such as choosing a minimalist ad design where others seem s a bit cluttered, or featuring bold humor or a no-text, all-visual ad design.
Identify Your Audience: Ideally, you’re designing your Facebook ad for exactly one person who epitomizes your target audience. If you make the mistake of trying to cast a wider net in order to make the most of your ad, you’ll instead find that it falls flat. Your audience needs to have the impression that you’re marketing directly to them as an individual.
You should also create an ad that’s designed specifically for that social platform. An ad created for Facebook may not do well on Instagram, for instance.
Avoid Making Rules: There’s a wide spectrum of design options that will work for telling your brand story in a paid ad, so be careful about putting stringent boundaries around your marketing. What seemed cast in stone six months ago may suddenly be completely irrelevant and require new thinking. Give yourself a wide berth for creativity.
Is it time for your brand to dip a toe into paid social advertising? Contact us at SJC Marketing to get some ideas rolling for paid ads that pay off. Our in-house design team can create ads that distinguish your brand from the crowd and deliver a healthy ROI.