How to Design an Engaging Social Media Ad

Social media ads are becoming crucial to generating leads, driving sales, and building brand recognition in every industry.

They can only achieve any of this if they are well designed and tuned to the target audience of the company in question.

If you are aiming to launch your first social media marketing campaign or you are dissatisfied with the results of your existing efforts, here are some tips to follow which should help you master the design process.

Consider Your Aims

Before anything else, you need to set down the specific things you want your ad to achieve, as these goals will inform the rest of the design process.

An ad that intends to encourage viewers to click through to one of your landing pages will be different from one which is built to increase the number of people following your branded accounts, for example.

It may make sense to use on-demand ad design provided by a specialist marketing agency if you just need a social media ad for a one-off promotional push or event, while handling this in-house could be better if you expect to grow your digital presence on an ongoing basis.

Use Text Sparingly

While longer-form marketing content can include more detail, the written word is not the best way of achieving engagement on social media, yet it is a common mistake.

That is not to say that there should be no copy accompanying your posts, but rather that the words you do choose to use should be simple and to the point.

The same approach goes for hashtags; do not overstuff a post with every tag you can think of, as this will have diminishing returns and could actually harm engagement levels, rather than helping them.

Create Something Unique

While it may be quick, easy, and inexpensive to knock up a social media ad using free templates and stock images, it is far more impactful to spend the extra cash to create bespoke content for your posts.

This is certainly true when targeting platforms like Instagram and Facebook, where images and videos are widely shared and generic photos will struggle to gain traction. Studies have shown that consumers are more likely to engage with pics that are highly relevant and unique, rather than off-the-peg and only loosely associated with what is being promoted.

Integrate Customer Feedback

Boasting about the benefits of your latest product or service via social media will only get you so far when it comes to convincing casual viewers to actually part with their cash. This is where including testimonials and reviews from existing customers as part of the post should make a big difference.

You will probably need to pare down longer reviews to make them suitable for snackable sharing on social media, and perhaps even invite your followers to get involved directly by using a poll or survey within the post itself.

Most importantly, remember to look at the analytics to determine whether an ad design is working or not and, if there is room for improvement, do not hesitate to make changes.

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