Creative Selection

Do you ever have trouble trying to figure out which image’s to use for your ads?

Here’s a simple framework that can help you select images or have them designed to appeal to your audience.

In this post, I want to focus on images, but many of the principles apply to visuals in videos as well.

The ad creative's (image or video) job is to capture your audience's attention and get them to pay attention to your ad by reading it more or by taking the action you want them to take and clicking on the ad.

Here are a few creative ideas to help you choose images. You can use many of these in one image.

Metaphorical

You can use images that catch attention and tell a story themselves. The metaphor should be in line with what the ad is talking about and complement the ad copy used.

For example, last week, I made a post talking about audience targeting and used an image of a needle in a haystack to illustrate finding the right people, but the needle was giant and easy to find. To me, the story it told was, this makes finding the right audience easier.

The image I’ve selected for this post is an example of a metaphorical image. Even though it doesn’t tell a story in line with this post's content, it’s just cool-looking and grabs attention, so it’s an excellent example of a metaphorical image.

I like this strategy a lot.

People

If yo decide to use people in your images, you should try to make sure they match the audience you’re trying to get the attention of.

For example, if your audience is women between the ages of 25-35, then the woman in the picture should be within that age range.

If the person in the image doesn’t line up with the message and the audience you’re targeting, then your ad won’t get their attention as well.

They need to look at the people in the image and subconsciously say, “that’s me!”

If you choose to go with images of people, be cautious that your pictures aren’t too stock photo looking.

If you’re focused on personal branding, you can also choose to use images of yourself.

Eyes

You may not think about it, but where the eyes are looking in an image with people is important.

Think about it. If you’re in a crowd and everyone is looking in one direction, you’re probably going to look in that direction to see what is going on.

It’s human nature.

So if your people have eyes looking in a specific direction, they should be looking at the call to action button of your ad subconsciously directing attention to it.

If the image's eyes are not looking at the button, they should be looking out at the user.

Again, if we’re in a crowd of people and someone is making eye contact with us, it will get our attention. Making eye contact is very powerful and can draw your audience into your ad.

You can find affordable images to use from deposit photos.

Now you may be asking, what about branding? Do I need to have someone design my ads for me?

Those are great questions.

Here’s the general rule of thumb I go by: If I’m advertising to a cold audience that doesn’t know me, I try to make my ad as native as possible. In other words, I try to make my ad not look like an ad. I try to make it look like something a friend posted in their timeline.

If I’m advertising to a warm audience, then I may choose to use branded images or include a logo in the picture.

If you’re looking for help designing ads, then there’s no one on the planet better than my friend Jeff Minnichbach. Jeff has designed ads for the most prominent name brands in business and has an excellent reputation. While you can’t work directly with Jeff anymore, you can work with and get access to his experience by hiring his company NoLimitCreatives.com. An unlimited graphic design service.

I hope this gives you some awesome ideas about which images to use in your ads and resources to help you get started.