Facebook is home to more than 6 million advertisers. Even though it’s such a crowded marketing space, Facebook offers the highest return on investment of any social media platform, but it must be used properly.

Hello world! My name is Mike Ploger and I’m here with Visme which empowers everyone to create beautiful and engaging advertising visuals , social media graphics and other visual content.

Now, the ultimate goal of creating a Facebook Ad is to make a viewer stop their seemingly endless scrolling and take action with your brand. If your ad is not motivating a viewer to engage with your product or your service, it’s not an effective ad.

The best way to interrupt a Facebook scroller is with a well thought out visual. And over the next few minutes, we’ll tackle a number of tips to help you create stunning visuals, stopping scrollers in their tracks and changing the way you market through Facebook.

Shall we?

Showcase Your Products

Now there’s no better way to sell a product than by putting it front and center. Scrollers are scanning pages just waiting for something to catch their eye, so you need to make sure you grab their attention.

One of the best ways to do this is with your own high-quality photo of your own product. Facebook is a sea of low quality images. Nike is not one of them.

They highlighted one of their cleats with a simple high resolution image, and notice the only text that they use in their post is the name of the cleat followed by a few powerful words. Clean and simple on what they’re selling.

Now, maybe you are asking, but Mike, what if I’m selling multiple products? Well, don’t worry. Facebook offers a carousel ad which lets you showcase up to 10 visuals within one single ad.

These are particularly useful because they stand out and they’re interactive. Users can swipe from image to image, making the ad more engaging and effective.

Now, we’ll actually discuss carousel ads a little bit more here shortly as they can help in more ways than one.

And even if you’re not selling a tangible product, you can still use some professional quality photos to sell a service or a virtual product.

An e-book is an example that comes to mind for a virtual product. You would want to showcase the cover or even the first page to draw a reader in.

Or if you’re selling a service like maybe your own photography business, use some photos from previous clients. Showcase your work as best you can so a customer knows what to expect if they hire you.

Use Icons and Illustrations

Now, if you’re a B2B or a SaaS company, product photography isn’t much of an option. What would be much better is creating your own illustrations. These are totally customizable allowing you to cater your image to your target customer.

You can get creative and have fun with it just as Mailchimp did here in these Facebook ads.

Incorporating icons in your illustrations can be beneficial as well. They’re recognizable and can save a ton of space if you use them to replace text.

Just be sure to use this similar icon style if you are using multiple icons in one image. You don’t want your image to look sloppy.

This is actually one of the services that Visme can help you with. You can create your own beautiful Facebook ads with thousands of free built-in graphics, illustrations, icons and more.

Try us out at Visme.co, but not just yet as we still have more tips to cover before you begin.

Choose the Right Color Scheme

Believe or not, colors are more than just colors. Colors actually have meaning. This infographic sums up what emotions a color can elicit in a viewer.

If you’re thinking of using a color different from your logo, take a look at this graphic and decide what you want your viewers to feel. Is it optimistic? Is it creative? Is it neutral? You start to get the idea.

You can also check out Visme’s own blog post where we dive deeper into color psychology.

With that in mind, remember you’ll be advertising through Facebook. Since the social media giant primarily uses white and blue, your best bet is to advertise using anything but that color scheme.

Use bright colors and create strong contrast to that Facebook blue. And Air Asia like you see here, couldn’t have done a better job. They went with that popping red which immediately catches a viewer’s eye.

And no matter what color you decide on, make sure there’s a variation between the background color and the elements in your photo.

If you use a dark background, use lighter text to make it more noticeable, as you have here with Harley Davidson and G2 Crowd. The same goes with a light background and darker text.

Tell A Visual Story

Now whatever photo you use, make sure there is a purpose behind that specific photo. A deeper meaning should lie within the image itself. Don’t just use an image because you thought it was a good picture.

When starting to determine your reason, think of why you created the ad in the first place. Are you showcasing a product? Supporting a cause? Solving a problem?

You want your message to resonate with your audience. Your target audience will share the same values, interests and beliefs as your company.

Dollar Shave Club crushed gender stereotypes in their Facebook ads. Through visual storytelling, they’re able to immediately connect with their audience and in turn, sales will soon follow.

Now, we mentioned carousel ads earlier, but here we see them again. With multiple pictures, it’s a little easier to tell a story. WeWork used a carousel ad to highlight the various benefits of booking a work space through their website.

Now, what was previously known as a canvas ad is now known as the instant experience. With the instant experience ad, you can take your viewer on an interactive, full screen visual journey.

These allow you to create a fully customized experience that is sure to grab and keep a viewer’s attention.

Coca-Cola took advantage of the opportunity here when debuting their new aluminum bottles. They took advantage of the opportunity to use photo and, before I get ahead of myself, let’s look into ways that you can do the same.

Use Video to Your Advantage

What if I told you that people spend five times more time on video content than static images? What about the fact that people are nearly two times more likely to make a purchase after watching a video?

Facebook videos have changed the game for advertisers as they’re engaging, interesting and tell stories as we just talked about. In order to connect emotionally and make the most of your video ads, here are some tips.

Number 1, keep your videos short. I’m talking no more than 15 seconds. Grab your viewer’s attention right away and lock them in. Your viewer doesn’t have all the time in the world to watch sponsored content.

And number 2, ensure your video makes sense without audio. The majority of people won’t have sound enabled with their autoplay, so make sure you have subtitles or text overlays to help them better understand your video.

Additional Tips for Maximizing Performance

Now we’ve covered the tips for making the most of your visuals, but that’s not all you need to know when it comes to advertising on Facebook.

With 97% of B2C businesses and 89% of B2B businesses using Facebook, creating stunning visuals is just the beginning of creating compelling ads. You need your content to land in front of the right audience and most importantly, convince them to take action.

Here are a few tips to do so.

1. Ad Copy

Ad copy. Yawn, right? Not necessarily. Visuals can be very important but great ad copy can also boost an ad’s success.

Characteristics of effective ad copy include keeping it short and sweet, finding a way for it to offer value, ad copy can instill a sense of urgency in a viewer and it can also reduce uncertainty and build trust in your viewers.

2. Call-to-Action (CTA)

No online ad is complete without a call-to-action button. You can have the most compelling story imaginable but if you don’t guide a viewer with what to do next, you won’t see any results.

Examples can include a “Shop Now” button if you’re showcasing a product. Or try a “Register to Win” button if you are promoting a contest.

Marketo encourages users to download a free sample in their Facebook ads as you can see here.

3. Targeting

Facebook offers a variety of targeting options to ensure your message is reaching the right audience. Take advantage of their help. You can customize colors, tone of voice, the call-to-action button or the message to better your chances of a response.

1-800-Flowers used Facebook ads to target men into buying flowers for their significant other on Valentine’s Day and trust me, it worked.

4. Ad Placement

Where will your ads be placed on Facebook? Well, that’s completely up to you, but optimizing an ad for a specific occasion is key as your ad will appear differently depending on where you place it.

If you plan on advertising in the newsfeed, they will appear on both mobile and laptop/desktop computers, however if someone is viewing it on their phones, there’s a lot less room for ad copy so you’ll want to keep it concise.

If you advertise on right column of Facebook, it will be cheaper, but that’s because it’s not visible to those who are scrolling on their phones.

And the right column ads are much smaller and more difficult to read, so these work better with customers who are already well aware of your company.

5. A/B Testing

Finally, don’t just create one design and throw it out into the world. Come up with multiple ad versions and split test them to see what works best.

You can test ad copy, your call-to-action button, visuals, colors, all the characteristics that we’ve talked about in this video. You might be surprised with the results. And after testing, you’re ready to go. It’s time for your ad to be seen by the world.

At the end of the day, it’s all about grabbing a Facebook scroller’s attention with the right visuals and ensuring that they take action with your brand.

I hope this video helps you as you embark on the next challenge and with whatever you’re taking on next, don’t hesitate to check out Visme’s channel for more content on how to help your design adventures.

Thank you so much for watching. Don’t forget to subscribe and for now, I’m Mike Ploger with Visme helping you Make Information Beautiful.