If you want to get the best ROI from your social media advertisements, you should be creating more video ads, instead of image ads. Image ads can get great results, but video ads stand out as something moving attracts more attention. They can generate more clicks than image ads and can also generate more leads.
So, to help you create better social video ads, I have put together this quick guide for you…
#1 Pick the right networks:
There are so many social networks you can advertise your products and services on. But you don’t have to use all of them. You should pick the ones that suit your product and audience best. So, make sure you do the research and understand your audience before you choose the networks.
You can then choose the networks. If you want to reach a younger demographic, a network like TikTok will suit you best. While if you want to reach a younger but slightly older demographic, Instagram works best. And if you want to each an older audience, Facebook would work best.
You can also pick social networks based on preferences. For example, if you want to reach a B2B audience you can use LinkedIn.
And if you wanted to reach more women you can use Pinterest.
#2 Do a ton of competitor research:
Ads require a lot of work to get right. If you dive in without any competitor research, you will eventually get positive results but it will take longer. One way to cut short this time is by doing a lot of competitor research.
Your competitors have already done the hard work of researching what others are doing and have gone through their own rounds of experimentation. So, if you spy on them and figure out what they are doing, you can implement some of their tactics and get a higher ROAS sooner.
When you do this research, make sure you study both their ads and landing pages. As ads help drive the traffic. While landing pages help convert traffic to sales.
#3 Create short videos:
Most ad networks allow you to create videos that are several minutes to hours long. On Facebook, for example, videos can be up to 4 hours long. But you shouldn’t create extremely long videos just because they let you.
Shorter videos work best when it comes to driving conversions. Even Facebook recommends you to create video ads that are less than 6 seconds, even though Facebook ads can be up to 4 hours long and Instagram ads can be up to 2 minutes long. This is because short videos contain less information. So, people need to complete the loop by visiting the landing page to get more information.
So, create short video ads. You should only create long video ads if your aim is to generate brand impressions, not sales. Make sure you use a free video editing software to help you shorten your videos.
An example of a short video ad, is this one from CXL.
It’s only 10 seconds long.
#4 Use thumbnails:
Usually, your ads will autoplay. But on some networks such as Instagram, people have the option to turn off autoplay. So, instead of the video, they will see a thumbnail.
This is why if you want more people to view your ads, you should add an attractive thumbnail. The thumbnail needs to do two things – these are – attract attention and generate enough curiosity that it gets people to click on the play button.
An easy way to create a thumbnail is by taking a still from the video and then removing the background with a background remover.
You can then add this still on top of a very attractive background that generates attention using a photo editor such as Stencil.
To generate curiosity you can add the title of the video to the image as overlay text. This will help drive views.
#5 Combine conversion ads with consideration ads:
If you want to sell more expensive products. Just using conversion ads won’t suffice. You will need to first warm up the audience with consideration ads. These could be to get people to watch a video or sign up to your email list or do another action.
Consideration ads help nurture your audience with free content or a trial. These will warm up the audience and you can retarget them with conversion ads and generate sales.
Many social networks like Instagram actually let you target people who previously viewed your videos. So, you can share organic video on them and then retarget people who watched them with video ads.
Here’s an example of a video ad being used to nurture the audience from Smartly.
It is a 30 minute ad without a call to action. They can use this ad to attract viewers and then retarget the viewers with conversion ads.
You can also nurture the audience with organic and live video content.
#6 Start with small budgets:
As I mentioned, it takes time to create successful ads, and experiments play an important role. This is why you should create several versions of your ads in the first attempt and experiment with smaller budgets for over a week.
You can then pick the winners and discard the rest.
When experimenting try to target a high converting audience such as your email subscribers. This will help keep risk low. Most email automation software like Aweber, ActiveCampaign, Drip, and ConvertKit have features that make it easy to retarget subscribers. So, take advantage of them.
#7 Scale best performers:
Once you know which ads are winning you can scale the budget and drive even more sales. But don’t stop with the experimentation right over there. Instead, continue with it and create newer versions of the winners and test them out too. You can change the captions, videos, targeting, etc. to see what works best.
Conclusion:
These are 7 important tips for creating better social video ads. Use them today to generate more engagement and sales from social media.