7 Ways to Make Your Social Media Ad Stand Out
Have you wondered why your social media posts are not getting traction for you? Here are 7 ways to make your social media ads work.
Consider the following staggering statistics on why your business should place advertisements on social media:
- Over 50% of marketers engaged in social media marketing have reported an improvement in sales over two years.
- Almost 90% of marketers have reported an increase in exposure to their business. 74% of them say an increase in traffic.
- More than 1 of 3 internet users say they go to social networks to look for information about a product or brand.
The scale of the market is also massive. 246 million Americans were engaged in social media in 2019. This is expected to grow to 257 million by 2023.
Making a well-executed social media ad is necessary. Your social media ads need to stand out, given the amount of noise and traffic. With so much going on, a hastily assembled social media advertising campaign will not gain traction. Having goals, a defined target market, appropriate means of delivery, creativity, and strategy will help your ads stand out. Here are ways on how to pull this off:
First, define your social media advertising campaign strategy by having clear goals: Of course, the ultimate goal of starting a social ad campaign is to achieve higher sales.
But to shape your strategy, you need definite and clearly defined goals. Is it to drive more traffic to your webpage? Or is it to drive traffic to your social media page for more followers?
Make it definite and focused.
Your target audience should have been considered during your branding process.
This means you have an idea of your demographics. Note that all age groups widely use Facebook more than they use either Instagram or Twitter.
But younger audiences have a substantial presence in Instagram and Snapshot. This will enable you to shape your campaigns specifically targeted to a defined audience on the right platform.
- Make Your Social Media Ads Relevant:
Now that you have determined your target audience and the social media channels you will use, you will shape your strategy. But before you think about the content, pictures, videos, and other forms of advertising, you should make sure that your ads will be relevant.
Being relevant means the content should be worth their attention.
First, you need to find out your target audience’s demographic profile, buying preference, needs, and interests. Some marketers create an “avatar” or a personification of their target audience.
The purpose of which is to make simulations if the advertisement will be relative to this avatar. Another way is to acquire data on customer feedback.
Thirdly is to make keywords and phrases easily searchable by using SEO techniques.
2. Use Videos:
Video marketing is currently the best performing media type, driving more views, engagement, and shares than other content options posted on social media. Here are a few statistics that will convince you to consider using video content in your social media feeds:
- Video content is shared 12 times more than images and text content combined.
- 72% of customers prefer learning about a product or service through a video.
- Viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch it through a video.
- 65% of impressions from an ad on Instagram come from videos.
- 75% of users take action after viewing a brand’s video. In some cases, users click up to product checkout.
- 83% of video marketers that used webinars claim success.
- Most importantly, 93% of businesses gain a new customer due to posting a video on social media.
Given these statistics, it can be concluded that video marketing opens a gold mine of lead-generating possibilities. However, keep in mind the quality of your content and consider the limitations imposed on video content on different social media sites. You have to be creative on Twitter, for instance, because video content to be posted there should be limited to 15 seconds.
Twitter users appreciate and engage with videos that feature beauty or videos that contain pleasing scenes. You need to make sure every second counts.
Note of caution, do not rely on audio, especially for short advertisements. 85% of Facebook users prefer to watch a video without the sound on.
Captioned video ads can increase video view time by an average of 12%. This means you need to be creative here and rely on intelligent imagery and cinematography to send your message to your consumers.
Posting a link to a webinar is a great option. Webinars have a high conversion rate and, in the case of live ones, can be an opportunity to be in touch with customers. Direct engagement is more likely to convert a lead than merely a reaction to a Facebook post. Moreover, this is a chance to send a direct message on the benefits of your product and how your product addresses the needs of your customers.
3. Incorporate Humor Into Your Content:
The best way advertisement to appeal to consumers is through their emotions.
Emotions, after all, sell. What more if humorous content is shared on social media. It could be in any media form, such as text content, images, videos, and GIFs.
However, it would help if you exercise caution and prudence. It would
help if you considered that humor can be appropriately applied to your product
and that your target audience will appreciate the humor. 
4. Provide a link to Your Site and Provide Content Downloads:
Many consumers prefer businesses that have a thorough knowledge of the
product that they offer. Aside from videos, long content has a higher chance of
conversion for B2B engagements. A link leading to your website or a download
option for a blog, article, or brochure can help project your business as knowledgeable
of the industry where your product belongs. An Ad posted by Vidcaster
illustrates this point:
5. Make CTA the focus:
You have approximately 1.7 seconds to grab a Facebook user’s attention
on mobile (and 2.5 seconds if viewed on desktop). You need to make sure your
presentation is simple yet compelling. Note the example below by Optimizely.
Their very simple design helps draw your eyes to the call to action button
below. Of course, they have a niche audience, but the texts are easy to read,
and the design is eye-catching. 
6. Use Compelling Images That Makes A Strong Point:
Since we need to consider the attention span of consumers, you need to make sure that the images you post are clear, concise, of high quality, and relevant to your target customers. If possible, as cited in item 6 above, you may need to lead the eyes of your prospective customers to the call to action.
On the point of relevance, you need to consider the occasion when your
ads are shown. For example, the company AWAY shown below posted this ad before
the 4th of July. Notice the placement of the pieces of luggage and the
connotation of a holiday. The message is clear, “go to our site, buy your
luggage from us, and enjoy your holidays!”:
Recess sparkling water seeks to communicate their message faster. Since
their message is providing a refreshment that helps with stress, they used a
Venn diagram, combined with refreshingly rendered colors and lower-case
lettering, to put their message across in one fell swoop:
Another technique is for your images to latch on to a trending topic.
Just be careful in choosing the appropriate event with your product. Wrong use
of the topic might backfire. Messaging is clear and appropriate in the case of
Bones Coffee Company below: 
7. Use GIFs:
GIFs is the acronym for Graphics Interchange Format introduced way back in 1987. Its limited color palette and compressed file size made it ideal when bandwidths were narrow. This is now used nowadays to make low-resolution video clips that loop endlessly.
GIFs are eye-catching and do not require the same amount of investment as video ads. GIFs, though, can achieve almost the same impact on engagement as videos.
Moreover, videos in GIF format can still work at lower bandwidths than
normal videos (which won’t load at all at narrower bandwidths). You can capture
users’ attention in a better way than by using image ads, especially when the
GIFs are combined with catchy captions. Remember, you only have 1.7 seconds to
grab a Facebook user’s attention, and using GIFs has a better chance of doing
this job than any other content outside videos (it is a form of a video
anyway). Product choices with a wide range of colors were mixed in to showcase
the variety of options on offer to customers in the case of HeadtoToe’s ad
below: 
Adding humor into your GIFs has the added benefit of appealing to your
consumers’ emotions:
The fastest way to create a GIF ad is to find suitable GIFs from several sites such as Giphy. However, you can’t use copyrighted content for your commercial gain, that is, to create paid ads. The best way, on the other hand, is to create your original content. Apps that can help you make GIFs are available on the internet for free. The easiest GIFs to make are created from existing videos. GIFs similar to those shown above were created using Photoshop for the first one.
Ads similar to Duolingo’s can be created with Adobe Flash.
Summary:
Engaging in social media ad campaigns is imperative for even small businesses.
This is one of the fields even small companies can go toe-to-toe with bigger companies by posting impactful content in a medium with seemingly limitless potential for reach and engagement.
The cost of producing an ad for posting on social media pages is not prohibitively expensive. The availability of tools and know-how are within reach of consumers. There are companies that specialize in helping businesses produce social media ads at affordable rates if businesses need help.
For a social media ad to stand out, the objective is to make the ad relevant, unique, and valuable enough for the users to click on it willingly. With the amount of noise and clutter on social media feeds, following the tips discussed in this article can help your ad gain consumers' attention for that 1.7 seconds they will pass through it.