The Do’s and Dont’s for the Best Meta Creative Strategy

What is Meta Ad Creative?

We use the term “creative” to refer to any visual assets that accompany your ads on Meta. This includes images, videos, logos, illustrations, animations and other types of rich media.

Creative is one of the most important parts of any paid advertising campaign. Using creative makes your ads eye-catching and dynamic. That leads to far greater click-through rates than text ads – up to 267% in some cases.

While rich media offers excellent performance, it’s important to choose the correct type of creative for each ad type. The right creative can improve click-through rates, leads, sales, website traffic and any other metric you’re chasing.

How to Make Your Ad Creative Stand Out

Visual elements are key to advertising on Meta. Here are some of the things you can do to make your ad creative stand out:

1. Use High Quality Visuals

High quality visuals are essential for grabbing the attention of social media scrollers.

Any images or videos need to be high resolution, sharp and properly edited. If you’re making creatives from scratch in an app like Canva, the design should be visually appealing and use your brand’s colours and logos.

Using high quality creative helps to build credibility. It presents your brand as professional and increases the chances of customers engaging with your ads.

Here are a few ways we ensure our creative is high quality:

• Choose clear images and videos that have been captured with a high quality camera
• Ensure images and videos follow Meta’s size guidelines
• Check your ads to make sure they display properly on all devices
• Use colours and designs that match your existing branding
• Create visuals that are eye-catching – you have about 3 seconds to attract a customer’s attention

2. Incorporate User Generated Content

User Generated Content (UGC) is anything that’s supplied by your customers. For example, if a customer tags your brand in a Facebook post or Instagram story, that’s considered user-generated content.

UGC is a great way to connect with your customers and build trust. About 92% of customers say they trust UGC more than content that’s generated by your brand, and 85% say it’s more likely to influence their purchase decisions.

Content provided by your users is personal and it demonstrates real people using your products and services. You can also ask customers for testimonials – these can be a fantastic boost to your Meta ad campaigns.

3. Ensure Creative is Optimised for Mobile Devices

The majority of your customers are using mobile devices. More than 63% of all internet traffic comes from smartphones, and we see that consistently in our own data.

Optimising for mobile devices is a multi-part process.

The first step is ensuring your videos and images have the right dimensions for mobile devices. Meta handles this for most ad types – you simply upload the image, and it will be cropped or resized to suit mobile devices. In some cases, you’ll need to supply your creative in specific resolutions.

The bigger issue is video. While video ads can outperform image ads, 75% of people are viewing your videos in public with the sound off. 

Optimising videos for mobile means adding things like captions, subtitles and text overlays. We need to ensure the message is clear, whether the sound is on or off!

We also want to keep the user engaged. The ideal length for videos is 30 seconds or less. Any longer, and you risk losing their attention. This isn’t to say that longer videos will fail – but you can expect less through-plays.

The same applies to any text that accompanies your ad. Users tend to scan text rather than reading it, so it’s better to keep it concise.

Crafting the Perfect Message

The message is the key piece of information you want to convey through your ads.

Your messaging can be almost anything. You may be sharing the latest deals and discounts, discussing the benefits of your product or service, or persuading your audience with a new idea. We’ll cover the most important elements of your messaging below.

Writing Your Ad Headlines

We connect with our audiences through headlines first. The ideal length for a Meta Ad headline is 5 words. This limitation challenges us to create simple but effective headlines.

The most successful headline categories are often:

• Statements showcasing clear benefits and a value proposition
• Questions that encourage the user’s curiosity
• Solutions presented in how-to format
• Lists with numbers for easy reading
• Real customer stories as social proof

Using Strong Calls to Action

The majority of viewers won’t watch your video all the way to the end. But you still need to remind them of what the next step is. This is done using a Call to Action (CTA).

Calls to action are an important part of generating conversions on Meta. Adding CTA buttons can boost conversions by up to 78%.

Your CTA could encourage the user to make a purchase, book an appointment, visit your website or fill out a form.

For best results, your CTA should appear in the middle and at the end of your ad. If you can’t have both, place the CTA at the end of the ad. 

When it comes to static images, you should also aim to include your CTA within the parameters of the creative. This helps to nudge your customer to the next step of their journey. 

Here are some fundamentals when it comes to CTAs:

1. Use action verbs that match your goals 
2. Build urgency by offering time-limited deals 
3. Show clear value to your audience 
4. Add specific numbers and stats to reinforce the message
5. Keep it short – 3 words at most

Telling a Story Through Your Ads

Video and carousel ads tend to follow a “storyline”. Using storytelling methods helps your customers relate to the content. It also encourages them to engage with your ad and follow the story through to conversion.

The simplest form of storytelling is to present the problem the customer is experiencing, how your brand provides the solution, and the next step the customer needs to take.

Showcasing Your Brand

Showing your brand within the first 5 seconds of a video ad is key.

People don’t hang around when they’re scrolling. The average watch time on a Meta video ad is 4.57 seconds. You need to highlight your brand within this short window by showing your brand name, purpose and logo.

You don’t need to be the biggest name in your industry, and don’t be scared to think out of the box! The smallest brands can grow from one piece of content taking off, so make sure you’re showcasing your branding in your ads.

Ad Personalisation

Personalisation is increasingly important in Meta advertising.

Meta offers sophisticated targeting that allows us to deliver ads with greater precision than ever before. This means we can tailor our ad messaging to suit niche audiences, improving campaign performance and ROI.

There’s a range of ways we can segment and personalise ads. We often personalise ads using demographic, geographic, behavioural and interest-based parameters. This type of targeting means we can make the content of our ads as relevant as possible for each audience.

We also use retargeting audiences to connect with people who have previously interacted with our brand or ads. Retargeting audiences are more engaged and are therefore more likely to respond to ad personalisation.

Testing and Optimisation of Ad Creative

Meta campaigns need continuous testing and optimisation to achieve the best results.

Creative accounts for around 50% of campaign performance. Systematic testing can help us identify ads that are underperforming and use data to make meaningful optimisations.

A/B Testing

A/B testing is one of the best ways to compare different versions of your ads to see what works. Each ad can feature different creative, copy or CTAs. The main testing components we use for Meta are:

• Type of creative
• Campaign and optimisation type
• Call to action
• Ad copy and messaging length

In order to gain quality insights, these tests must run for 7 days at a minimum. This allows the platform to collect more user data and identify patterns in how your ads are performing.

At the end of the 7-day period, you’ll have a dataset for both daily and weekly performance, which can be used to optimise your ads.

Monitoring Meta Ad Performance

The overall performance of your ads can help with refining your creative strategy.

We often focus on leads, sales and conversions when it comes to Meta Ads. But if we want to figure out which type of creative works best, we need to prioritise engagement metrics.

We recommend tracking the following engagement metrics:

• Click through rate
• Video watch and completion rates
• Landing page views 
• Form opens (if you’re using lead generation ads)
• Conversion rates

Alongside this, you should be tracking:

• Cost per click
• Cost per thousand impressions
• Cost per acquisition
• Return on investment

By tracking these metrics, we can spot trends and adjust our creative strategy in order to get better results.

Using Performance Metrics to Optimise Your Ads

Once you’ve collected performance data, it can be used to optimise your ads and creative strategy. Making small adjustments to creative elements gives us the best chance of engaging with our audiences.

There are 4 main strategies that we recommend for optimising your ads and creative strategy:

1. Creative optimisation – Small details such as the placement of text, video hooks and the use of colour can make or break an ad campaign. You should create multiple versions of each ad with minor variations. These can be monitored in order to find the best combination.
2. Ad copy – Copy is the text that runs alongside your creative. Your ads will underperform if copy and creative aren’t aligned or if the copy is weak. We optimise copy by testing and tweaking tone of voice, adding rhetorical questions, increasing or decreasing the length of the copy, and more.
3. Audience refinement – While audience optimisations are unrelated to creative, refining your audience can help you with improving and personalising creative. Continuing to tweak audiences can impact whether your creative is working effectively.
4. Formatting – Ad formatting contributes to your overall success.You’ll benefit from testing different formats to see what works best with specific audience segments. For example, carousels work better with e-commerce because they allow you to showcase more products at once.

Nail Your Creative Strategy With Gordon Digital!

Successful Meta ad campaigns depend on eye-catching creative, effective testing and careful audience targeting. These things help you find the best combination of ads and creatives to help you achieve your campaign goals.

At Gordon Digital, we enhance our strategies through regular testing across all campaign aspects. That helps us drive meaningful metrics and boost your bottom line! Get in touch with us today to find out how we can transform your Meta campaigns into real business growth.