Fill Out Your Creative Brief Now that your product is out, it is time to leverage it with ads.
With the increasingly competitive digital landscape, advertising is necessary to cut through the clutter and get noticed; it also helps you connect with customers, engage users and eventually drive sales. A good ad is not only a space taken on the user’s newsfeed, but it also transmits a brand message, generates value and captivates attention without suffocating.
Not every version of an ad will be spun into gold, but many factors should be executed correctly to form a great ad. In this ad-soaked world where every other platform is loaded with ads and if you are a brand, not only do you have to be competitive but creative as well. Don’t know where to start?
In these 6 steps you are guided through how to create successful ads with the best tools on the market. Follow these steps to find out how you can create ads that speak directly to your target audience in the noisy digital landscape and, more importantly, get feet through the door!
Let’s get started!
The Significance of Ads for Business Growth
So before we start with creating ads, let us first demystify the importance of ads. In a world overwhelmed by advertising, the only ads that truly communicate are those that reveal themselves. Ads help you:
Brand visibility
Regular advertising places your brand in the forefront and establishes it as a known hashtag over time
Start by targeting
Not every ad should reach everyone. Modern ad platforms make it straight forward to target an ad so that it is relevant and spends from the right eyes.
Drive traffic and conversions
Good ads, when well optimised can make website visits happen, signup, sales and more depending on your business objectives.
Boost engagement
Interesting ads, do not just grab eyes but also generate likes, shares and comments, which means their life can be prolonged organically.
Making an Ad in 6 Easy Steps
Hopefully this explanation makes clear why ads are critical — now, we proceed to the 6 steps you should follow while making an ad. Each of these steps are how you take from concept to execution that helps ensure your ads are resonating with the people you’re targeting and converting.
Step 1: Research about your target audience
Understanding Your Buyers Before Creating An Ad Ultimately the more directly your ad speaks to who you are trying to reach, the higher likelihood that it will resonate and generate action.
You can begin with buyer personas, which are semi-fictional representations of your ideal customers. These personas should establish the demographic details of an ideal customer, for example, age, locality, gender, job profile etc. But you need to go deeper by looking at psychographics: the behaviour, interests, values and pain points of your customer.
A few ways to do this research:
Surveys and other feedback sessions: The best people to tell you what they want, where they have the pain is your customers.
Social media analytics: Facebook and Instagram report detailed data on user activity.
Audience research tools: Google Analytics, Semrush, HubSpot.
The objective is to find out what makes your audience unique, how do they do business and how do they communicate. After you learn all of these things — now make your ads directly speaking to what your “Ideal Clients” need and want most.
Key Questions to Ask During This Step?
What is most important to my audience?
How Does my product or service solve their pain points
– What messages will they listen to?
Creating Buyer Personas
Make sense of those mountains of research is by building buyer personas as you turn that data into something that’s actually usable. For example, if you are targeting a tech capable millennial your ads should look modern with innovative visuals and creative unique messaging. For example, working professionals would likely respond better to ads that highlight convenience and time-saving benefits.
Segment Your Audience!
If you have a different buyer persona, break down your demographic and make ads specific for that group. This ensures that your ad is as targeted as possible, and speaks directly to a subset of your audience, making it more effective.
Step 2: Understand your wanted Advertisement type
Ads come in a lot of flavors here, and each has its purpose. This will have to depend on your ultimate business objectives and patently the interests of your audience as well. Common ad types
1. Display ads: These are visual representations of your brand or products on websites, mobile apps, or social media platforms. These typically include some combination of an image, text, and a call-to-action (CTA).
2. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Ads: PPC ads show as sponsored results in search engines, and advertisers are charged for each click a user makes on the ad. With the unique design and layout of these ads, you can be sure that your audience will trust whatever URL is presented in them leading to sky-high CTRs back to websites.
3. HTML5 ads: Standard advertisements that are available either in fixed or animated form and used to make the rich media advertisement with some level of motion and interactivity which activates a user.
4. Banner ads: Banner ads are a combination of text and display advertising as it is channeled through clickable images like banners on websites or contain some info about the brand you promote in-app. They may be basic, but they work in terms of raising brand awareness.
5. Carousel ads: allow you to add multiple images, videos or text elements all within a single ad unit, this means you can use carousel ads to tell a story or show off multiple products at once.
6. Video ads: You see video ads on YouTube and interstitials in social media streams. Because it is dynamic, video has a high level of ad engagement.
7. In-stream video ads — As we mentioned above, these are the advertisements that play before, during or after a streamed video— on YouTube or Facebook for example. Best for brand awareness
8. Promoted account ads: Your Twitter or Instagram accounts can be promoted to get more recognition. Advertisement Advertisement This content is paid for by the advertiser and published by WP Easy.
Step 3: Select your Platform (iOS or Android)
After selecting the type of ad, the next step is to choose an attractive platform. Each platform comes with its pros and user data in place, so selecting a particular platform for your ad is most important which could give you the best ROI.
Quick Overview of Top Advertising Platforms
Facebook and Instagram: You can target the audience to granular levels like age, gender, locations, interests, behaviors etc. Since Facebook boasts a massive user count, it is an ideal platform for upping the exposure time historically linked to brand and Instagram are the best fit for ads that really creative on visual scale.
Google Ads – This is Google’s implemented advertising service, built around keywords: advertisers pay to display brief advertisement, service offerings or video within the Google ad content network. So it is good for video, as you can only be served to someone who is at a high intent to convert.
Google Display Network: Used across millions of websites, apps and videos, the display network is where your ads can appear. For example, as a means to broaden your reach and increase brand awareness, it works perfectly.
YouTube — Video ads on YouTube can use sight, soundm and motion to engage users. These in-stream ads are a great way to insert your brand into the conversation, and boost your overall brand awareness.
LinkedIn — If you are a B2B oriented startup then LinkedIn is where your audience spends their quality time. CryoFX used LinkedIn ads targeting by job title, industry, company size and other.
Research the average age, location and interests of users on each platform so you know whether or not it fits your target audience.
Key Platform Features to think about:
- – Ad pricing (CPC, CPM)
- – Targeting capabilities
- – User demographics
- – Creative ad options
Step 4: Polish Your Messaging
You have chosen an audience, the type of ad and selected your platform; all you need to do next is create a message for your ad. The best ads are clear, thrilling and short. So, what does it take to make sure you have some appropriate messaging:
Clear and precise: User does not have enough time to understand what you are trying to convey by your ad. Ensure your messsage can be delivered with just a glance.
Clearly state the offer that stands out: Your ad must define why your product or service is so important to folks. How does it solve something for the user and which problem is addressed?
Embrace emotions: Emotional ads are more memorable! Well, somewhat traditional if you keep up with any or all of the dry humor my friends and I sprinkle into blog posts.find a way to appeal emotionally.
Stay On Brand: Since the ad is an extension of your brand, it is essential to connect the messaging back to your broader branding tone and values. And be serious if your brand is a serious one with your ad to reflect that.
For example, this is a straight-to-the-point advert on Instagram by Heropost stating clearly it is a cheaper option compared to its competitors. The type of messaging that works here is disruptive — in two words the value proposition as well as a call to action.
End with a Call To Action (CTA) in your messaging. A Good CTA Tells Your Audience Exactly What To Do Next If it is to — Buy Now, Learn More, Sign Up.
Step 5: Create Content that Rocks!
This is where the creative content comes in that will distinguished your ad from other competitors. Your ad visuals, text and overall design should all promote the same look and feel to tell a coherent story
Here are a few tricks to nail ad-copywriting Note :
Focus On a time when the print industry is in distress and well known that readers are less willing than ever to pay for anything in print, when getting people to pay online comes with its own share of problems, knowing what makes your brand different from and better than anyone else’s should be job one. Your ad needs to speak to this “special sauce,” and do so in an entertaining manner.
As much as you want to include images, information and media in bars, users can get overwhelmed if the content is too dense with conventional ones. Sometimes less is more. Opt for minimalism and highlight one strong message.
Utilize High-Quality Visuals: Be it images or videos or animations, use visuals that are sharp and professional to look at. Ads with low quality visuals don`t do great.
Ultimate branding: Use your brand logo, colors and fonts to maintain consistency between all your marketing materials. It helps establish a brand.
For an example, see this amazing creative ad from KitKat
