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Creativity: The Key To Successful Social Media Advertising

The average social media user spends approximately 2h 13m a day scanning and reading social media sites – yes, you read correctly, 2 hours a day!

As such, it is no wonder that social media advertising is taking the marketing world by storm; it offers a great ROI, with even the smallest of budgets. However for advertising campaigns to be successful, they need to be creatively executed to capture the attention of social media users.

When I say that they need to be creative, I don’t just mean that the copy needs to be short, punchy and captivating – although that is an important factor – I mean that the whole advert needs to pack a punch, which includes the use of enticing images or videos!

As Catherine mentioned in a previous blog post, not enough value is placed on good quality photography in the construction industry. However, my client Forbo Flooring Systems prides itself on great imagery. With this in mind, it is important that we [CIB] create social media advertising campaigns that reflect the high standards of collateral the company has to offer, in order to maintain its excellent reputation. But that is not the only reason.

Social media platforms are becoming increasingly visual-centric and any ads that don’t fit their perception of ‘creative’ and ‘stand out’ will get ignored. Literally. In fact, Facebook will actually lower the reach of your ads if they contain any text – the more text the ad has, the less likely it is to be shown.

Therefore we are forced to be creative to ensure the ads will be delivered to the target audience. And if the organic content (the feed) is already visual, then it’s time to think ‘outside of the box’ (yes, I said it – please don’t hate me).

With this in mind, both Facebook and Twitter are constantly developing new ad formats that are more creatively focused. For example, Facebook carousels allow users to scroll through up to five different images and captions, and the new interactive Facebook ad, canvas, can take users on an engaging journey – it’s pretty impressive if you execute it correctly. Twitter has also developed a video ad, which will certainly capture the attention of users if the content is relevant and you guessed it…creative!

When it does come to designing creative and inspiring ads, we take into account that the majority of users are primarily accessing social media platforms on their mobile devices, so we have to make sure the ads will stand out even on a small screen. What’s more, as Facebook and Twitter automatically prioritise the best-performing ads, we have to ensure that we test multiple and varied types of creative so we can see what works best – we only strive for the very best for our clients.

Here’s a quick checklist of things you could consider using when developing social media adverts:

* Images
* GIFs
* Videos
* Animations
* Soundbite videos

If you’re still a bit unsure on how you can make the most of your social media advertising, why not get in touch with us? We’d love to give you a helping hand!

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