Today, almost every company use social media advertising to promote its products. And that causes a problem. Since modern users see dozens of social media ads, and it’s getting more and more difficult to grab their attention.
For this very reason, it’s crucial to develop a social media ad design strategy. If you want to boost your marketing efforts, you should create an ad that will stand out from the crowd.
In this article, we will explain to you how to craft a catchy social media ad copy and increase the conversions rate.
So let’s get started!
The process of ad design
First of all, let’s talk about the ad design process. The process itself consists of six steps:
- Learn. The first step you should take is to analyze your current ad design strategy and define its weaknesses and strengths. It will help you to get an idea of how your new ad design concept should be like.
- Research and sketch. Once you get an idea, you should research it thoroughly. And after that, you can start sketching your first ad design.
- Concept and present. And this stage, you should utilize plan structure and present the first layouts of design.
- Revise. Know the opinion of your team and edit ad design if necessary.
- Deliver. Once everything is ready, release finale versions of ad design files.
- Launch. Start your advertising campaign, and see how effectively new ad design works.
Take a look at the following infographic designed by IIH Global. The infographic brightly presents all six steps of the design process.
Image source: https://www.iihglobal.com/
It’s worth mentioning that each stage of the design process is equally important. So if you want to achieve high results, you can’t skip any of these steps.
Know what ad designs are currently trending
The design of your social media should look trendy and be relevant. And it should meet the current expectations of the target audience.
So before you start your work, you should scroll through social media feeds and pay attention to the ads you see. You should define what fonts, colors, and CTAs companies use the most. And then, you should consider using these trending elements of the ad design for your campaign.
Take a look at strategies of your competitors
If you want to design a competitive ad campaign, you should be aware of rivals’ marketing strategies. You should conduct a little research and find the answers to the following questions:
- Which social media platform your competitors use for advertising the most?
- What type of ads they use (e.g., sponsored posts, Stories)?
- What ad designs your competitors use (e.g., minimalistic, quirky)?
This information will help you to understand what type of ads work the best for your target audience. Also, it will give you an idea of what kind of ad you should design to make your brand stand out from the competition.
Pay attention to the design dimension
Keep in mind that you can’t use the same ad design across all social media platforms. A one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work here.
You should create different ad designs for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.
Why? Firstly, you should understand that there is a difference between your audiences on Instagram and LinkedIn as well on other platforms. To create a high-converting ad, you should create a design that appeals not to your target audience in general, but your audience on a chosen social media app.
Secondly, it’s crucial to optimize your ad based on where and how it will be displayed. It’s the only way to ensure that your ad will not appear broken or incomplete.
Different social media platforms allow businesses to use different design dimensions:
- The standardized size for all Facebook ads is 1,200 x 628 pixels
- An ideal Instagram ad size is also1200 x 628 pixels. And recommended square image ad size is 1080 x 1080 pixels
- On Twitter, the image size should be a minimum of 600 x 335 pixels. The maximum size of an image file on twitter.com is 15MB and on ads.twitter.com – 3MB.
- Pinterest recommends using images of the size 1000 x 1500 pixels
- What about LinkedIn, it provides companies with three options:
- The medium rectangle ads – 300 x 200 pixels
- The wide skyscraper ads – 160 x 600 pixels
- The leaderboard ads – 728p x 90 pixels
Keep your ad copy short
The maximum length of ad copy also varies from platform to platform. So before you start writing an ad copy or using websites that write for you, look through the following requirements:
- The maximum length of Facebook ad copy is 90 characters, the length of a headline is 25 characters
- On Instagram, caption text of the sponsored post can be up to 2,200 characters, but it’s best to keep it around 150 characters
- The maximum length of a sponsored Tweet is140 characters
- On Pinterest, the length of the title copy shouldn’t exceed 100 characters, and the description copy should be no longer than 500 characters
- The maximum length of LinkedIn ad copy is 90 characters, the length of a headline is 25 characters
Be aware of Facebook’s 20% text rule
In accordance with Facebook’s ad policy, your ad cannot contain more than 20% worth of text overlaid on the image. It means that if you add a few extra words to the image, Facebook may block your ad.
The app measures the amount of text in a rather tricky way. It breaks the ad into a 5×5 grid and counts any amount of the text in one block as 4%. So when you are working on ad design, you should use the Text Overlay Tool that allows checking whether your image complies with Facebook’s ad policy.
In conclusion
If you want to boost your marketing efforts, you should revisit your approach to social media advertising campaigns. You should pay more attention to the ad design and should be more attentive to the differences that exist between different social media platforms. Now it’s time to review your current marketing strategy and tweak it in accordance with your customers’ latest expectations.