How to create social ads that sell

Featuring an ancient solution to a modern problem

Here’s an interesting thought: Some of the oldest, and newest, media share the exact same rules for good creative execution. 

Okay, you know what the “new media” is. It’s the topic of this article. Social ads. That’s the easy part. 

Now think. What’s a truly age-old medium that has absolutely nothing to do with social media—it couldn’t be any more different—yet the viewing habits of the audience are strangely similar? 

Here’s a hint: Whereas social ads, such as banners and tiles, are usually small, these ads are big. 

Really big. 

Enormously big. 

Yep: Highway billboards. These date back to the earliest days of, well, highways. Advertisers perceived a new, captive audience—all those commuters or interstate travelers, whizzing by—and saw an opportunity to reach out to them. (This simultaneously blighted an otherwise pristine landscape, but the same can be said for the way that social ads pop up on your otherwise favorite website.) 

So. A freeway billboard might be 60 feet across. A social ad is just a few pixels. How does any of this conversation help you with your creative execution? 

Shift into reverse

Marshall McLuhan notwithstanding, the medium is not the message here. Your client’s value proposition is. So you need to back that into the viewer’s behavior. On the freeway, they’re speeding to where they’re going. That’s what’s on their mind: Getting there, quickly and safely. 

On a web page, your viewer is trying to quickly find and consume the information they need. 

In either case, the ad, whether it’s a billboard or a social banner, is 1) a distraction, and 2) only seen for a second or two.

Ta-dah. You can now see that the creative challenges aren’t just similar. They’re identical. 

Less than less is more

Yes, we wrote an entire article in which we argued that, when the time is right, more is more. (Check it out here; you’ll like it.)  This isn’t one of those times. 

Here, you can barely squeeze in a headline. Sometimes it’s just a phrase. 

Ditto for imagery. No montages here. This is simple, stark, in-your-face. It’s the ultimate exercise in brevity. 

This will force you to make some hard choices. Let’s say your client offers three awesome things. Sorry—you’ll need to pick one. (Hey, you can also do three different ads.) Or let’s say the key art is complex. Then crop it to death. 

Here’s a helpful trick. When you’re crafting your social ads, for both the copy and the imagery, shrink them on your screen. Scale it down to just-legible postage-stamp size. Then it becomes really easy to see if it pops, if it reads, if it grabs your attention. You can use this same “thumbnail” trick to compare multiple ads or iterations at the same time. You’ll quickly see which ones work best. (This is similar to the “squint to see clearer” trick we detailed in this now-classic article of ours.)

Of course, that’s your judgment. The wisdom of the crowd may vary. That’s why you always need to create multiple versions, and A/B test your way to success. 

Action!

There is one important way that social ads differ, significantly, from highway billboards: They’re clickable. Some social ads are just there to grab eyeballs and garner impressions. Others are more direct-response. So you now have an additional challenge: Motivating the viewer to click. 

Sure, there’s always the “Learn More” button. But you need to test other calls-to-action or CTAs. These can be things like: 

• “2-Min. Read” 
• “Get the facts” 
• “Free Download” 
• “Case Study”

Simplicity is hard. Whittling something complex down to its most elemental essence is really challenging. Need help clearing that social-advertising hurdle? Contact us. We solve these kinds of problems daily.