Today, on the Effector blog, we take a sneak peek at some of the brands who are utilising social media advertising to really engage with their audience in a great way.
These brands have big budgets to spend and now that they’ve done all the preliminary work to see how certain things work and why other things don’t, you can use their trial and error to your advantage. We encourage you to read the following with an open mind and the spirit of experimentation for when we are willing to try new things, we can really amaze ourselves with the results.
Carousel Ad as used by M&M
Carousel ads are a staple of digital marketing. They allow the marketer to showcase some of their best images in an appealing way and to tell a story while we’re at it. However, carousel ads are not just for traditional websites, they can be used extremely effectively in social media advertising to draw your audience into your campaign. This is what M&Ms did for the launch of their caramel line in the United States. Using their two friendly characters, Red and Yellow, they presented a number of images across the carousel to tease their audience into clicking the ad to see the full story.
The interactive nature of a carousel ad allows the person to engage with the ad rather than passively consuming it – and when they do they are rewarded with perhaps a product offer, or maybe just some great, fun content!
With up to 10 images or videos allowed in a carousel ad on Facebook you can get a lot of information in there. Just be careful not to overload or bombard your audience with thick, hard to digest information, keep it light, fun and engaging, just like M&M’s did for maximum effect.
Vertical Video as used by Ben & Jerry’s & Netflix
If you’ve been following digital marketing and social media developments at all over the past number of years, you already know how big video is at the moment. But now, there isn’t just video, there’s different types – and they have different levels of engagement too.
Vertical video ads take advantage of the full-size phone screens people now have in their pocket and show a video in the best way for the user while utilising as much screen space as possible.
Ben & Jerry’s Instagram Stories ads for their pint slices, a new product range, used fun graphics of the product with bites taken out of it showing the product to best advantage.
In a completely different product launch, Netflix used the same technology to build excitement and awareness around their new wrestling series, Glow. Again, the advertisement video is optimised for mobiles and uses a video to showcase the characters, get the important information across, such as ‘from the team that brought your Orange is the New Black’, and create some 80’s energy with a rock track, big hair and glitter confetti.
With Facebook video reaching almost 40% more teens in the US than TV, it’s not surprising that big brands are taking the time to utilise the video options presented by social media advertising.
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Image as used by Slack
Even if you want to keep your social media advertising simple, there are still plenty of ways to get creative with images. In this example, Slack, the online team collaboration workspace advertised their service through bright, fun imagery. The use of an office worker sitting amongst a carnivalesque setting gives the impression that their service makes work more enjoyable, showing the value up front. They have cleverly used the image alongside a statistic which grounds the fantastical image in reality.
Rather than developing a complicated advertisement using lots of moving images, Slack have opted to use striking images with the proof that their service works. This simple Facebook ad from Slack illustrates that you don’t necessarily need to spend a lot on producing your ads, as long as you can get creative with the process and work with the tools available.
How could you transform your social media advertising in a similar way by developing more creative engagement using your existing images?
This is just a snapshot of some of the brands who are creating unique, engaging advertising content on social media. The tools are there waiting to be explored and used, why not give them a whirl in your digital marketing strategy?
It doesn’t have to be hard work, if you don’t have the time to create amazing social media advertising, Effector can help!
We hope you enjoyed this article. If you would like to learn more about how you could apply this to your business, please feel free to reach out to us using the form below.
