Running a Facebook Ad campaign isn’t very tricky.

The tricky part is running multiple campaigns at the same time, and ensuring they are all performing as well as they possibly can.

Dynamic ads are designed to give marketers the freedom to be creative and experimental in their approach, but it’s important to come equipped with a toolkit of ideas which you know will add value to your ads.

In this article, we’re taking a look through 6 key Creatives for Facebook Ads, and outlining why they’re important.

1. Choose a recognizable, credible image for your ad

Before we even dive into the possibilities of exciting creatives, I want to start at the most basic element of any dynamic ad: the product image.

Even if your ad copy is engaging and entertaining, the very first thing your potential customers are going to see is that image.

The human brain is hard-wired to look for the image first. Around 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual. Our brains prefer it and it makes more of an impact at a quick glance.

What this means: Start with an image which is engaging and eye-catching

Your ads are competing against thousands of others selling similar products. Instead of using stock images from manufacturers, consider showcasing images that display your products in a different way.

If you’re not listing too many SKUs, consider whether you can take original photos of the products

Note: Follow Facebook’s 20% rule.

Even though your ads will no longer get rejected by Facebook if you cover 20% or more with text, it’s still good practice to avoid doing this.

The more text on an image, the less effective it becomes. Keep in mind, all of the following count as text on your image:

• Numbers
• Text-based logos and branding, regardless of alignment or size
• Watermarks, even if they’re mandatory to use

2. Showcase your brand & logo – early and often

The first recommendation above doesn’t mean you should avoid branding your ads though. It just means it shouldn’t dominate the image. We’ve all heard the statistics before. The first few seconds of attention your ad is given matters...a lot.

Even if your potential buyers aren’t clicking on the ad here and now, they are seeing your products and, most importantly, your brand. According to research from 2019, 45% of consumers say they are loyal to their brand - so building that recognition from the first touchpoint you have with them is key.

Inclusion of the logo and brand name within the ad image will help to boost that recognition further down the buyer’s journey.

The most effective mobile-first video ads include branding in the first three seconds and convey a brand's key message in a quick, easy to understand and attention-grabbing way.

• Focus on how users or customers will feel after using your product
• Be imaginative with your ad creative/imagery
• Consider whether a snappy, memorable tagline (i.e. “Make Work Better”) will work for your ad

3. Try using both images and video

As I mentioned above, the beautiful thing about Dynamic ads is the amount of flexibility and choice you have at your fingertips.

It hardly needs saying that video should be explored as an option for your campaigns. A 2019 study found that video marketers achieve 66% more qualified leads per year (compared to conventional image ads), plus a 54% increase in brand awareness. If you have both images and videos available for ecommerce products, create different ads with each.

The only way to learn what resonates best with your audience is to get your products in front of them across a variety of formats and styles - then establish the underlying features which they respond to most.

4. Include people in your ad visuals

Join me as we take a scroll through a typical Facebook feed.

You’ll notice that the vast majority of visual advertising assets include people in them. In both video and images, it’s the body language of the person – or people – which matters.

Confidence, success, healthiness, happiness and other feelings can be quickly visualized through a person’s body language.

It’s a nonverbal language that a person transmits by how they stand, smile and move. Whether the person in the graphic is a model, an actor, a famous professional, a regular person or even an animated character – the way they move or stand is important.

It’s been proven time and again that models wearing, interacting with or using products outperforms products simply displayed on their own.

5. Combine creatives and adjust approach seasonally

In point #3, I mentioned how you could try using both images and video for your Dynamic Ads. There are other options when it comes to this, such as combining multiple images into a slideshow to create a video, or adding multiple product images to a carousel so that people can click through them.

Another approach for adding value to your ads is to use Custom Labels in your product feed to segment your product listings according to the time of year, or specific festivities and events. Bear with me here!

Custom labels are optional, additional columns that can be added to your product catalog. You can set them up from within your campaigns and group certain sets of products according to a huge range of criteria.

This is probably one of those cases where it’s easiest to explain with an example.

Facebook allows you to group your campaigns based on their pre-made product sets. This includes factors like category, brand, price, gender, color, pattern, product type, etc.

But sometimes that’s just not what you want!

These additional columns could instead be based on seasonality, by creating a Custom Label for summer, Christmas or Halloween, you can then add seasonally-relevant products to that label and build creatives around that group:

These labels can be a really effective way of gaining more control over which products you are driving conversions through, and can allow you more freedom in trying out new creatives for specific groups.

6. Provide a complete Product feed to ensure high-performing ads

You might have built excellent ad campaigns with beautiful visuals and outstanding copy.

I hate to say it, but if the actual ecommerce product data you are sending to Facebook from your online store is of poor quality, you aren’t going to see positive results.

Facebook doesn’t have many required fields for the product feed you send to them (fields like id, title, price, image_link). This doesn’t mean that you should only provide these fields though.

In the same way that SEO works for the product copy on your ecommerce site, adding those optional fields to your Facebook Product Catalogue (e.g. additional images, color, category, and size) gives a far greater chance of boosting clicks and conversions through your dynamic ads.

This is because the Facebook algorithm understands your product ads better based on more detailed descriptions and can find more engaged audiences for your ads.

What’s more, potential customers browsing your products can better understand your offering and how they can use it.

Applying these Creatives to your campaigns

Of course, the recommendations in this post are simply intended as a means of inspiration. The creatives for your ads are going to differ depending on your audience and industry, and it's up to marketers to experiment with creatives to find what works for their brand.

You’d be surprised that even the smallest changes in creatives can lead to massive positive changes in ad performance. With Marpipe, marketers have the ability to create controlled creative variations, allowing you to keep optimizing top performing ads by understanding the underlying features that make audiences respond.

To get started with Facebook Ads for your ecommerce business, consider a feed marketing tool like WakeupData, which will help you automate the process of sending your product catalog to channels, as well as optimizing the data to create high-performing social ads on Facebook and Instagram.

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