Advertisers aren’t just competing for their audience’s attention with other brands. “Nowadays, the digital environment is so busy that we’re also competing against our best friend’s new babies and puppies, as well as really great food pictures,” Rebecca Debono, creative director at Jump 450 Media and formerly director of creative strategy at 3Q Digital, said at SMX Create.
With so many platforms, technologies, and distractions available, creating ads that actually engage consumers can be extremely difficult. Debono and Julia Thiel, VP executive creative director at 3Q Digital, shared their thoughts on creating visually stunning ads to help brands cut through the noise and address customers’ motivators as well as barriers that may be clogging your sales funnel at SMX Create.
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Create a design for the section of the funnel you want to target
Using different ads to address each stage of the sales funnel ensures that you have a pipeline that speaks to all potential audiences, whether they are completely unfamiliar with your brand or are on the verge of converting. The following are some of the objectives that Debono associated with ads at various stages of the funnel.
- Top of the funnel: Introduce your brand and pique the interest of your audience.
- Middle of the funnel: Educate and entice audiences about your brand/product.
- Bottom of the funnel: Inspire the audience to act.
“Starting at the top, it has clear logo placement, which really helps to build brand awareness,” Debono said, referring to an example of a top-of-funnel ad (shown above). The logo is also prominent on the product, which is enhanced by an on-brand background pattern. The ad’s background may also stand out on a white or black website background, and it may use the company’s brand colors.
With a strong CTA, the text elements clearly showcase the product’s value proposition and encourage potential customers to move further down the funnel. Advertisers can also use movement or animation, as well as text overlays, to catch people’s attention, according to Debono.
“As we move down from the top of the funnel and into the middle, I want to talk about how to really speak to certain audiences,” Debono explained, noting that the typical creative process may involve iterating on a top-performing creative asset so that it can be used to target a broad audience.
“It’s not a bad process, but we’ve found that as we get more mid-funnel, this process is frequently missing a step,” she explained. “And that step is what motivates people, what gets them to buy, or what is their barrier to entry.” Debono believes that delving into customer personas can assist advertisers in addressing both customers’ motivators and barriers.
“Perhaps the barrier is that there won’t be a flavor for me,” she explained, “and so we could hit them with the message that there are 36 flavors that they could try.” Similarly, your messaging could help strengthen your connection with audiences by appealing to their motivators (for example, “freshly picked ingredients” for health-conscious consumers) or removing barriers (such as local availability, with incentives like free shipping).
Debono displayed a collection of assets for Kombucha brand Suja as examples of successful bottom-of-funnel ads (shown above). She cited the following factors as the driving forces behind successful performance ads:
- For greater visual impact, the product is prominently displayed. This also informs audiences about what they may be purchasing.
- Savings offers may persuade bottom-of-the-funnel customers to convert.
- Strong CTAs give customers a clear idea of what to do next.
- Because bottom-of-the-funnel customers are likely already familiar with your brand and products, the text and visuals are simple.
Differentiate your brand by varying your advertisements
“Being different and standing out in a sea of sameness is super important, especially if you’re in a crowded category,” Debono said, adding that customers may not understand what brand an ad is from if every brand appears visually similar, as it does in the image above.
She highlighted an ad that breaks the pattern in the example below: Instead of focusing on the product itself, the advertisement attempts to connect with the target audience directly by emphasizing the lifestyle that the brand wishes to associate with the product. It’s also accompanied by a unique CTA (“Follow your gut”), which adds to the ad’s uniqueness.
Although showcasing product imagery is typically best practice, advertisers should keep an eye on the landscape they’re advertising in to know which type of creativity to use.
“Being disruptive doesn’t mean throwing your brand guidelines out the window and doing something that doesn’t even look like it’s from your brand,” Debono said, citing another example (below) in which a company used the same fonts and colors to create a sense of cohesion.
“You can tell that both of these ad themes are from the same brand,” she said, “but they’re just noticeably different, and that’s what makes a really great disruptive ad.”
Using original graphics and photos rather than stock images can also help your brand stand out. “There’s nothing wrong with the stock image… except that everyone in the world can use that same image if they want to,” Thiel said, adding that the same is true for stock video footage, stock illustrations, and stock icons.
For advertisers who are forced to use stock images (due to budget constraints, for example), she suggests “at least putting your own spin on it and overlaying your brand colors on the image, maybe you use a different crop,” or adding your logo to it.
Think about the components of your brand kit
Choosing the right colors to represent your brand often boils down to the psychology of each color and what you want your brand to be associated with. Colors that your competitors are already using, as well as the right color combination to ensure that your ads catch your audience’s attention (usually by including a brighter color), are also important considerations.
“Your logo is your storefront — you want it to stand for everything you do,” Thiel explained. “Think about what your brand should say before designing a logo.”
She pointed out that the intertwining of the “3” and the “Q” in her agency’s logo is meant to convey partnership. She also mentioned using a combination of strong and contrasting colors, as well as unique iconography, to create a visual signature on your advertisements. “Last but not least, the typeface should always complement your logo and, in the context of digital advertising, it also really needs to be highly legible,” she said.
“At a minimum, you should always use your logo, brand font, and brand colors in your ads — not all of them at once, but some of them,” Thiel added.
Consider the format
“There are some challenges when working with RDAs [Responsive Display Ads], for example, when it comes to image and on-image text, some of the banners are very, very small, and they leave very little room for your image,” Thiel explained.
Because the placement is responsive, the cropping of your banner may also be beyond your control. “In my opinion, having on-image text on RDAs is not a good idea, period,” she said, noting that on-image text can impede your visual branding.
“When served, headlines and descriptions in RDAs are mixed and matched,” Thiel explained, “so all of the combinations have to make sense.” Because the banner image can be matched with all of the different combinations of headlines and descriptions, the visual must also work with all of them.” Furthermore, the copy can be served without the banner image, “so it [the ad copy] really needs to speak for itself,” she stressed.
Thiel suggests the following when designing for Responsive Display Ads:
- Instead of cramming all of the content into the visual part of the banner, be concise with your copy.
- Remember, the copy is just as important as the banner.
- Creating strong on-brand headlines and descriptions that can be combined.
- Filling the image space with vibrant, eye-catching imagery that is simple to understand at first glance and at a small size.
- Don’t overlook the creative — it’s one of your most powerful tools.
As the PPC industry becomes more reliant on signals and automated systems, advertisers may feel as if they have fewer options for differentiating their brand or directly influencing campaigns.
“It used to be that the best bidding strategy or the best targeting strategy would kind of win out,” Debono explained. “But in an age of automation, truly, creative is one of the biggest levers that we have to pull in order to stand out and make a great campaign.”
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