Five Types of Ad Creatives that Boost Sales & Engagement

If you want to boost sales and engagement, ad creatives are a great way to do it. A creative is an ad served to users on a webpage, app, or in any other digital environment.

There are a whole host of options for ad creatives, at least one of which is bound to match your brand and boost user or customer engagement. And with over 60% of the US population using mobile apps and browsers, capturing attention there is key to boosting sales.

Let’s dig into the details and find an ad creative that will work for your company.

What are ad creatives?

Ad creatives take a variety of forms. Basically, they include all behind-the-scenes actions that show the brand off in a relatable light and bring attention to features, functions, offers, and company culture.

A few of the many options for ad creatives include voice-over, video content, carousels, UGC testimonials, and "Us vs. Them" advertising.

Let’s look a little closer at each.

Voice-over

Narration, whether over a social media video or a casually styled ad, humanizes the brand and builds trust. The voice of someone who works at your company or the voice of an influencer relevant to your niche are two of the most relatable options for voiceover.

Voice-over works well for "how-to" videos, product walkthroughs, and ads of many kinds.

Video content

Casual video content allows your audience to build a closer parasocial relationship with your brand. Particularly for larger companies or apps that don’t involve a lot of one-to-one communication, casual video content allows customers to feel connected to brands while finding out more about them. Lyft, for example, recently ran a series on Youtube called Undercover Lyft. In the series, celebrities posed as Lyft drivers, picking up and surprising real customers.

Overall, visual content gets 80% more click-throughs than text alone. Additionally, 80% of internet users can recall a video ad they’ve seen in the past month.

Carousels

Carousels work particularly well for eCommerce and SaaS companies. Carousel ads can include images, text, links, and short videos arranged to scroll through on a mobile device.

That means you can cover all your product's features or every service you offer in one interactive ad. You can even include testimonials or images of products in use. Some social media platforms let you build dynamic sorting, showing different carousels to different customers, ordering slides in unique ways for different users, and otherwise customizing based on purchase and search history.

UGC testimonials

UGC means user-generated content. Testimonials from users are particularly valuable, demonstrating to potential users or customers that you understand their pain points and offer a solution to each one.

Users can talk about how to use the product or service and the positive benefits. And people buy from people! They trust other humans more than brands, even if those brands are doing everything right. In fact, 80% of ad respondents said user-generated content (UGC) strongly impacts their purchasing decisions.

Us vs. Them advertising

Us vs. Them advertising may sound a little negative, but it’s all about showing what sets you apart from your competitors.

These USPs or unique selling points can motivate your audience to take action and choose you over another brand with similar offerings. Remember those Mac vs. PC commercials? They were a fantastic example of us vs. them advertising.

You can use us vs. them advertising to show your processes and functions and how and why they're more intuitive or offer more features than other brands in the same space.

The Issue of Ad Fatigue

Ad fatigue occurs when customers repeatedly see the same one-note ad for your business. After a while, they stop taking it in!

This can be avoided by using a mixture of ad creatives and customizing them to the apps they will appear on. The creatives work even better if you can customize them to each user, which is becoming increasingly possible with advanced social media knowledge. You’ll certainly find that at Fifth & Cor!

The mix of ad creatives that will work for your brand depends on your audience. Remember, audience research and mapping the customer journey is always the first step in great marketing.

Fifth and Cor can help you with all types of ad creatives. With our team of experts, we strive to make sure your brand’s message and products are highlighted effectively. Schedule a discovery call with us today to amplify your marketing strategies!