Deep dive
One of the most frequent questions I receive is what are best practices for social ads creatives.
Beyond the basic design, text, and technical specs, the challenge is developing creatives that truly make an audience want to buy from you.
Today I will share 6 key creative practices to take your social ads to the next level.
Lessssgo…
1. Understand Top-Performing Formats
Always identify your top-performing formats as a first step in creating highly-converting ads. Formats in this case can include (I also have examples):
Comparison images (e.g., "Us vs. Them")
Before-and-after transformations
User-generated content (UGC) showcasing problem-solution scenarios
Testimonials in image or video format
Founder stories, press features, and statistics
"Ugly ads" that break conventional design norms
2. Don’t Ignore these 2 Video Metrics
I’m surprised how many brands and marketers are not aware of these two very important video metrics.
Hook Rate: The percentage of viewers who watch the first 3 seconds of an ad. This will help you measure your hook's effectiveness (first 3-sec).
Hold Rate: We used to call this Retention Rate when I was back at Meta. The percentage of viewers who watch up to 15 seconds or the full video (if shorter). This shows if your ad is successful at holding users' attention.
These are custom metrics (you need to set them up in Ads Manager), so here are the formulas:
Hook Rate: 3-sec Video Views ÷ Impressions - You want to aim for 30% and above.
Hold Rate: ThruPlays (15-sec) ÷ 3-sec Video Views - You want to aim for 20% ish, anything above 25% is 🔥.
3. Copy your Cusomters
Your customers are your best copywriters!
Dive deep into their feedback, pain points, and those "aha" moments with your product. Their words are your ad’s script.
The best way to do this is to start by analyzing reviews and comments to extract insights about customer pain points, triggers for purchase, and product transformations.
Trust me, you’ll be surprised.
4. Balance Ugly Ads with Branding
Ugly ads = ads that don’t have a typical ad ✨aesthetic✨.
Ugly ads ≠ bad ads.
They look like a story or a TikTok from a friend.
It’s worth testing a mix of “ugly ads” and beautiful branded ads.
Many successful brands will have an unconventional mix of without compromising their brand identity.
It does require some courage to ditch those precious “brand guidelines” though 😉
Note: Let me know if you’d like me to put an issue on ugly ads + examples.
5. Do a "Sniff Test"
Ensure your creative feels genuine and relevant.
How do you do a sniff test on creatives? You ask.
If you’re using content from a creator or a user, does this content feel believable?
If it’s an image, does it feel like it will motivate and attract a customer?
Are you using jargon or marketing-speak, or something so particular to your product that it alienates the viewer?
Listen to your gut about this one. I also recommend asking someone who is not immersed in the brand (a friend?) for their feedback.
6. Apply Good Design Principles
This is a tough one for those of us not trained in design.
Understand visual hierarchy and design fundamentals.
AKA, ask yourself (especially when you’re looking at images): where does the eye want to go? How are you attracting your target audience? How are you motivating them.
Also, how are you using things like white space, padding,
Good
Bad
7. Do you have a Creative Checklist?
This is a tough one, especially for those of us with no formal design training.
It’s going to be a little different for every brand or social media marketer.
Creating a creative checklist will help you assess creative basics (fonts, colors, white space, etc.), brand guidelines, technical specs, engaging hooks, pace, and other elements.
This also includes a section on do’s and don’ts.
I like to treat a creative checklist as a living document (a document that is always being built and edited), flexible enough to accommodate new trends or design elements, but also helps train and maintain a certain creative performance caliber.
It would save you tons of headaches if you’re training a team.
Two cool things…
For today’s edition, I used Foreplay to dig out a ton of ads. I’ve used the tool in the past to spy on my client’s competitors, but they’ve revamped ever since and became an awesome app to discover and spy on literally 1000’s of ads across all social platforms. Love it!
I know several of my readers are very involved in influencer and creator marketing - for those, I want to recommend Creator Spotlight, the #1 newsletter on all things creators. I started following a few weeks ago and love their spotlights (and the design of that newsletter mmmm *chef’s kiss*).
