Anyone that has started marketing on Facebook at all knows that coming up with a Facebook Ad designs isn’t exactly the easiest thing in the wold to start off doing. Between all the varied aspects that go into creating something that will stick, it’s no wonder that even a lot of professional marketers and brands have trouble coming up with something.
Luckily, this guide will help change all that for you.
In this breakdown, our ultimate objective is to ensure that you are able to run the most effective and profitable Facebook Ad campaigns as possible.
16 Evergreen Secrets in order to Create Phenomenal Facebook Ad Designs
The fact of the matter is this. Facebook advertising has always been a tough square to circle, and now that more and more people are jumping into the ring it’s gotten even more difficult for the average person. Ads that, yesterday, would have been a huge winner may pretty much be a waste of time today.
That said, don’t let that for a second convince you that it can’t be done. Because it can! In fact, the reality of the situation is that successful Facebook Ads have traditionally pretty much only come down to 2 things: Having a Great Design and targeting your audience with Laser Focus.
Facebook has gotten a lot better though at finding your audiences for you if you give them a broad enough audience, budget and time to figure it out. Most people will however run one ad, see that it’s not working immediately and bail saying Zuckerburg stole my money.
In online marketing, there is no best, just test. So, make sure you focus on the design and copy and test multiple audiences, creatives, headlines and main text in different phases so you know what’s working or not.
Having a great design for your ads means being able to instantly grab a prospective customer’s attention while simultaneously creating a desire for the product. This means that they not only are willing to stop on your product, but they are actively interested in potentially buying it. Basically, you’ve got to get both their curiosity, as well as their attention.
When it comes to having a laser-like focus, we mean making sure that only the right people see your ads. Rather than trying to buckshot your ad and shoot it to anyone imaginable, you want to rifle shot it and ensure that only those that are most likely to click are given the chance to. Time is money so don’t waste either on people that aren’t even going to be interested.
Here are 16 super effective tips that have worked since the dawn of time on the platform and will probably work all the way until Facebook shuts down.
#1. Always Test Multiple Designs
First things, first, one thing you must always know is that you should NEVER ASSUME ANYTHING. While there are certainly going to be things you have to factor and take into account, never assume that something will do well or poorly “just because”.
Whenever creating a new campaign, come up with around 4 different Ad Designs at least and test each of them. Not only does this cast a wide net, but it lets you know what actually works and what doesn’t (fun fact: it will always surprise you based on what you assumed).
There are a lot of factors that we will go over in making a great Ad Design, however the first thing you need to know is that assuming things will aways make a… I’ll assume you know the rest.
#2. Create a Buyer Persona
Another part of targeting your viewers and potential customers, every person has their own individual wants and needs. By establishing a “Buyer Persona” you can improve your Ad Designs as well as the overall customer experience.
The way this works is by creating a person for each potential customer type. Is it a man or a woman, what is their job or profession, and what is their overall biggest “pain point” that your product will help solve?
By establishing “who” this person is, you can more accurately pin them down in the demographics and put yourself in a better position to place your ad in front of them.
Creating a Buyer Persona is vital for all people as it takes the focused demographics from a nebulous “oh it could be a person like this” to as clear as possible. Get as in-depth with this exercise as possible and simply transfer those characteristics into Facebook’s marketing options. Even to this very day I create Buyer Personas for all my new stores. It’s just an activity that works.
#3. Add Social Proof
One of the most important factors in human nature as well as ad marketing is being part of the “cool kids”. When people see that others endorse and recommend your product, either through reviews or testemonials, they are infinitely more likely to give it attention.
As you once said when your mom asked why you did a bad thing as a kid, “I did it because everyone else was doing”, so too does it work for making a purchase. When people feel that they are potentially missing out on the next big thing, they are much more likely to get involved.
Be sure to add reviews, testemonials, and endorsements to your products to show people that your product is “where it’s at, yo”.
#4. Create a Call-to-Action
Creating a Call-to-Action is vitally important for a Facebook ad. While it won’t have anything to do with getting a person to click on the ad, it WILL have a lot to do with converting a person to your site.
Why does this work? Well, the long story short, people love a good deal and they love to be herded. A call-to-action does both of those things. It promises them a chance at getting something that may benefit them while also telling them what to do.
This is even more prevalent by including a benefit upfront in the call. Saying something like “Check it out now for a free…” or “Download to get our Free eBook”. These tell a person to do something while clearing “giving them a deal”.
By including these things to your ad, you are more likely to get conversions and individuals that want your product actually clicking on and purchasing it.
#5. Choose Stand-out Images
You are going to want to have images that immediately draw a person’s attention. Like I said earlier, Facebook has only grown more difficult now that more and more people are trying to market their ads and products. You are going to need to stand out more than ever just to get the person’s attention.
Carefully select an image that looks great and stands out, consider adding some different filters and captions so that someone has no choice but to turn and see just what that thing is to their right.
Word of warning, while you want to stand out, don’t try to go overboard. Posting anything offensive or too strong will ultimately result in the ad getting rejected and Facebook potentially putting on a suspension… and NOBODY wants that!
#6. Address Logic as well as Emotion
While we certainly are logical creatures, that’s only when our emotions don’t jump in the way. Think about it. “Logically”, every person knows that all it takes to be physically fit is to eat less and exercise more. Yet, every year, obesity goes up around the world. Why? Because, while “logically” I may know something, “emotionally” I want to do something else.
Your job as an ad design marketer is to marry the logic with the emotional. If you show a high-quality watch that looks great with pinpoint precision, be sure to include a woman being impressed by it. This stimulates the logical part of a guy’s brain (this watch tells time very well and is well made) as well as the emotional (if I wear this watch, girls will like me).
Marrying together and bridging the emotional with the logical removes resistance for making a decision (remember the obesitiy metaphor from earlier). A cleanser may logically pull away dirt and grime from your face, but you also need to show that, emotionally, it will make you look beautiful.
#7. Always Be Consistent
Consistency is key. That is the reality of the situation. The more consistent you are, from the ad design, to the ad placement, to the ad copy, to the landing page, to the overall website and product, the more “at ease” your viewer and customer will be.
If they get a certain level of decorum with your ad, there is an expectation that this will translate over to your page. This means that you should show the same level of care for your ad as you do for your website. If one is different from the other in terms of quality or presentation, that will instantly give of “scammer” flags and run them off your page… if not much worse.
Keep things consistent and ensure people have no reason to distrust what you have to offer.
#8. Pick the Right Placement
Next up is ensuring you are placing your ad in the right place. This is critical for optimizing your conversions. Here is a brief breakdown on the different placements for you ads and what benefits each offer:
Manual Placements:
- Desktop Newsfeed: A great option for getting engagement and generating conversions and sales. This is going to have the longer written copy as well as the description link. This should be where a good portion of your ads should be placed to get the most bang for your advertising buck.
- Desktop Right Column: A cheaper option compared to the Newsfeed, albeit less effective as well. These images are smaller and less readable. Right column ad placements are excellent for retargeting a user that may already be familiar with your products. The best option for them is a high-quality image to catch their eye.
- Mobile Newsfeed: A great option that you will likely find yourself using more and more as time goes by (more on that in #21). This is ideal for getting engagement and speaking to the ever growing mobile crowd. You’ll want to have short responses. Be careful that it stays in the Newsfeed and not the Right Column as the Newsfeed is just short enough that things may be a problem otherwise.
Automatic Placements:
If you are running conversion ads you can often just leave it on automatic placements and let Facebook figure out what’s working best. For this you will want to use their campaign budget optimization and they will add more budget to the placements and ads that are working and less to others.
#9. Showcase Credibility
This is another one of the vital aspects of an ad that reduces the anxiety in a viewer. By showing some form of credibility for your ad, that greatly relaxes a person’s fear that they may be getting taken advantage of.
Some easy ways to show credibility would be not to mislead a person with unrealistic expectations. If you are selling a fishing rod, don’t show a person catching a treasure chest of gold next to it. Instead, show them catching potentially a trophy-sized fish or something huge.
It ideally should be the next step for a person. In this example, if the first part of the ad is showing a person being unable to catch a fish, the credible and reasonable next step would be them catching an impressive fish. Similarly, if they are only catching small or modern fish in the Facebook ad design, the next step for them would be a trophy sized fish.
The results should always be reasonable and realistic achievements in the person’s mind. Using gimmicky and unreasonable ads may work on some people, but the vast majority will see right through it.
#10. Consider Color Psychology
Now, you might be laughing at this, and that’s ok. The fact of the matter is colors react differently in the mind and elicit different mental and emotional responses. Older people, for example are more apt to respond well to purples, greens, and blues while younger people will gravitate more towards a yellow or red color.
While color psychology isn’t the single one thing to get a conversion (especially if the product isn’t good) but it may be that extra nudge for or against anyone that is on the fence. Use it to help bring in those last indecisive people that may be considering without yet pulling the trigger.
#11. Use Location-specific Imagery
One of the great aspects that come with Facebook advertising is its almost scary level of precision. Not only can you pinpoint exactly what type of person you want to see your add, you can determine what part of the world they are in, all the way to the specific country and state.
To take full advantage of this feature, you want to make sure that any ad you use is as geographically linked as possible. If you are dealing with New York prospects, showing a bunch of Irish-heritage clothing is probably not going to go over well. If you are marketing to people in Texas, presenting an ad with a Dallas, Houston, or Austin theme will instantly turn on a person’s “tribe mind” mentality.
When leveraged with hyper focusing on a specific demographic, using location-specific imagery can greatly improve your sales all by itself.
#12. Leverage the word “FREE”
There’s something about us as people that certain things just “trigger” us. If you see a baby or something cute, you automatically want to say, “aww!”. When you see something scary you automatically become afraid. And when you see the word “FREE” you automatically stop and pay attention.
When our minds see “FREE” boldly in front of us, it basically says, “oh wow, there’s something I can get without putting in any effort. They’re just going to give it to me.” We have a incessant desire to want something for nothing. It’s just the reality of the world.
So, instead of just letting that reality go to waste, make a point of capitalizing on it. You clicked on and read this FREE guide, didn’t you? See? It works! Including a free gift with a purchase or a “Free plus shipping” arrangement will greatly increase conversions, even if that product would normally cost ‘less” than what you are charging to “give away”.
#13. Use Customer Testimonials
If you understood point #3 about adding social proof, this tip will make perfect sense to you. It basically takes that point and amps it up to “11”. By using testimonials from customers, you are essentially saying that, “yes the product is awesome. How do I figure the product is awesome? Well, all these people agreed with me that the product is awesome.”
By including customer testomonials in your ad, it subconsciously removes an objection that is constantly running in a viewer’s mind which is, “is this legit?”. By hearing from someone who decided to prove that “the water’s fine”, they are much more likely to take the plunge and actually consider buying what you have to sell.
#14. Intersect Interests
One of the most powerful techniques you can implement is intersecting interests with one another. It’s one thing to cater to dog lovers. It’s another to cater to people that hike. But by catering to dog-loving hikers/ hikers that love their dogs (they are two different focuses), you dramatically improve your chances of conversion.
The reason for this is that you are hyper focusing on your target audience with laser vision. While it does limit your audience, it will, paradoxically, lead to a higher number of conversions.
You want to focus on your target audience with laser-point focus! The more you are focused on a single demographic, the more personalized it will be and the more they will want to learn about, engage with, and ultimately purchase from your ad.
However, one way of doing this aprt fromtrying to be ultra targeted in your audience is to use “dog whistle copy.” This is where you run your ads to a broader audience and use your copy to get your ideal customers to self select. So, experiminet and test,test, test.
#15. Include Faces in Images
For some strange reason, we as people are so vain that we try to find a face in just about everything. Not only that, but there have been studies where it has shown our brains actually light up when presented with a person’s face.
All this is said for the simple fact that, where a mega fisherman’s rod may normally get a ho-hum response, showing a fisherman use said fishing rod while smiling may instantly turn that same person into a fan. Seriously! Think about all the different cute cartoon animals and emojis. We love putting a face on everything.
Since that is the case, you definitely want to make sure there are plenty in your ad designs. Pictures of women in general alwys to better in Facebok Ad designs.
#16. Create a Sense of Urgency
Creating a sense of urgency is very similar to the earlier point on a call-to-action. The big difference between the two is that this aspect comes with a perceived consequence. If I tell you, “what are you waiting for? click this now!” all I’ve done is tell you to do something. Now, if I say, “the first 100 people to click this video will win a free doodad!” you instantly understand that you are both getting something by following the call to action while missing out on something if you don’t.
The biggest point behind this is that you want to create scarcity and a fear of loss. If people feel like they are going to “miss out” on some benefit, their natural instinct is to jump at the opportunity.
Here are a few phrases you can include to help induce that sense of urgency in a person:
- Only Today!
- For the next [#] hours!
- Limited Time!
- Last Chance!
If this has been helpful you may also like our post “17 Powerful Ways To Get Massive Traffic Online.”
Advanced Facebook Ad Design Secrets
Now, the aforementioned tips are what are known as the “evergreen” tips. They and are the tips that you can expect to work no matter what year it is.
Still, that doesn’t mean there aren’t new things to learn. In addition to those 16, these additional tips reflect the additional campaign options and updates with Facebook that are worth keeping in mind. While they were certainly useful in 2018, in 2021 they are practically essential.
#17. Use Multiple Ad Formats
Originally there was pretty much just a picture on the side that was offered to prospects. Now Facebook offers Carousel Ads, Video Ads, Collection Ads, Canvas Ads, and so many more. While this may be a bit daunting and intimidating, you’re going to want to take all of these things into consideration to get the best ads out on the market.
For those looking for where to get their feet wet, you’re going to want to do carousel ads first. These have some of the higher engagement and conversion rates and allow you to more easily tell a story and offer value. Still, as you cut your teeth, you will want to try implementing as many of these as possible (so long as they are effective, that is).
#18. Automate the Designs
Facebooko has a feature known as Facebook’s Dynamic Ads. This basically allows you to create your own templates under product catalogs, automatically generating ads for your targeted viewers. This means that people that are most likely to say “yes” now are going to be offered more chances to, all without you going through the hassle to manually create it on your own.
#19. Incorporate Video
I honestly wonder what life was like before video marketing. I mean, you really can’t get more connected with a person other than outright talking to them personally. Particularly when it comes to Facebook ads, while the other methods are certainly effective, you’re ultimately going to want to put up some video ads.
When setting up an ad, you need to keep in mind that audio is, as a default, not going to play. As it is often an extra step for most people to take when scrolling past an ad, you have to assume they aren’t going to do it. In fact, results show that upwards of 85% of videos are watched without sound.
This means that you are going to want captions explaining exactly what’s being shown while also using headline and fonts that are going to pull people in.
Video length should be ideally within the 10-15 second range, with 30 seconds being the absolute longest (and even that is probably going to cut your conversions in half). The name of the game is short and sweet. They aren’t reading a guide on how to market Facebook ads, you are. And guess what, there’s probably a number of people that saw this and decided it was too much. (congrats on making it this far, by the way).
#20. Offer Value
When designing your ads, the first thing you need to realistically keep in mind is just where does “value” present itself. Not just for the ad itself, but also the product, your store, and your brand as a whole. Why should they click on your ad over someone else’s? Why should they go to your page when they don’t have to? Why should they buy from your store when they can check Amazon instead? These questions are all related to the question of value.
Here are just a few things to consider when looking to add value to your ad and product:
- What does the Product look like: Your goal should be to ensure that there is always a visual component to your ad. Regardless if it is a single image or a video, people need to see exactly what they are buying.
- What are the Benefits: Next, after they see it, they need to know what is so special about this product that they “have to get it now”.Keep in mind that all the other steps are being implemented so all you realistically need to do is just outright elaborate or break down the benefits your product will give them.This could be a visual tutorial, a “before and after”, or a fun story surrounding it (more on that later). Ultimately you just want them to realize that this is something that they should get and should get from you right away.
#21. Go Vertical
The fact of the matter is that we are becoming an increasingly mobile world. iPads, as an example are now becoming the new laptop because of how mobile and easy they are to take with you. Because of this, you can expect that your ads are, 9 times out of 10, going to be seen on a phone or tablet rather than a desktop.
Why is this important? Well, it means that you need to completely cater your ads to mesh with what the prospective consumer uses. This, in the case of mobile devices, is going to be vertical content. If you aren’t optimizing your ads for vertical, you are leaving money on the table. It’s just that simple.
#22. Tell a Story
While it may seem like a no brainer, incorporating a short story in your Facebook Ads is an exceptionally powerful tool that virtually no one does. Stories bridge the analytical part of the mind with the emotional impulse of the heart. It gives the viewer something to connect to and actually forms something of a bond with them.
Like I just said, you want to incorporate a short story. Key word being “short”. You aren’t writing a novel here. Even a single image with a few captions to set the scene would constitute as a short story. You can also use Carousel ads as well as the best of them all; the video ads, which can truly make an effective connection.
What will You do to optimize your Facebook Ad designs?
As you can see, there are a variety of factors that all go into creating a Facebook campaign that can ultimately result in you achieving high conversions. From choosing the right audience, to scripting out the ad, to even its placement on the platform. All of these things play a vital role in you turning a would-be prospect into someone that will actually check out what you have to offer.
By combining these 22 tips, you can create an ad design that beats out 99.9% of all the competition and will skyrocket your overall success. Follow these tips and succeed in Facebook ad Marketing… or don’t and try your luck through some other method.
Either way, the choice is yours. Hopefully you’ll choose the right one.
Make it happen,
Liam