When you’re making decisions about the creative side of your Facebook ads, you can often end up spending lots of time tweaking small details in copy or images, to test out what brings you the best results. But there is one specific change you can make to your Facebook ads at the creative stage which makes a big overall difference, rather than having to find lots of elements that make a small difference and combine them. The best change you can make to generally improve your Facebook ad’s performance is to change the images you use.
This article will explain which type of images work best, and how to start using them in your Facebook ad campaigns.
What types of images work best for facebook ads?
To optimise the photos in your Facebook ads, it’s worth looking at what image ads are most effective, meaning which generally perform best. The answer is a simple, but underused Facebook advertising strategy: using influencer images. Though you may not often see Facebook campaigns which do this, ads which contain a picture of an influencer in a related field often perform far better than ads which use images of solely the product or service.
Of course, it is still important to make sure your ad copy emphasises the benefits of your product, and reel in your audience that way. However, certain people have influence over different target markets, and push them to actually take the action your ad is asking of them. So, if you use the image or video content of an influencer your target market is likely to recognise as part of your ad, you’ll see a bigger difference than with any other small creative changes.
How can you use influencers in your facebook ads?
Often when we think of using influencers to market a business or product, the approach we think of is contacting them and asking them to create content to feature the product on their platforms. However, there is another under-appreciated and highly effective approach you can take.
You can reach out to influencers to get permission to use their likeness, meaning existing images or even video of them, within your own content. This way, you run your own ad campaigns, but get to add an influencer’s endorsement or association to your ads.
Why is showing influencers in your Facebook ads worth it?
Using the image of an influencer in your ads gives your brand more credibility to anyone who recognises that influencer. Remember that someone with influence doesn’t necessarily have to market themselves as an influencer. Anyone with an online presence who has influence in your field is worth considering. If the influencer you choose has a connection to the sort of topics you would target with your Facebook ad to find your target audience, then there will be enough people in your facebook audience who recognise them for their face to stop them scrolling and make them more likely to take action after seeing your ad.
Using an influencer’s image in your campaign also reduces the effort you need to put in to get results. You can take the exact ad you have now, whether image or video format, and simply add an endorsement from someone known to people in your field to the end of the video or to your thumbnail, and this could half your cost per lead.
For an image ad, it is very easy to use existing content from that influencer, so you don’t even need to get them to record anything new or specific to your product. This approach also saves you time in that you can tap into someone else’s established influence and credibility by association, rather than waiting until you have spent years building your brand to get that same level of impact and reach.
How much does it cost to advertise with an influencer?
Influencers will have different price points, both from each other and for different levels of effort on their part. For example, asking to use an existing image will often have a lower price than asking an influencer to record an endorsement.
That being said, a good approach to keeping things affordable is to think what kind of content the influencer will be most willing to make. Often, if you suggest simply paying an influencer a fee to use their image in your adverts, they will charge less and be more willing to collaborate. This is because asking an influencer to create new content takes more time and effort so has a higher price point (though this may be worth it for an endorsement on a video ad).
Also, influencers are often wary of overwhelming their audience with branded content, and reducing the quality of their feed. By suggesting using their image or even a short video to advertise to your own audience rather than asking for space on their page, you allow influencers to maintain balance on their feed, which often makes them happier to work with you.
If you are on a budget, you can still use this a good marketing strategy, it just might take a bit more research. There are influencers on a huge range of levels, both in audience size and in how specific their content is to a certain topic or field.
Even these smaller influencers have an influence that can help your campaign, so research influencers in your sphere, and there should always be one to fit your budget. After starting small, you can always work your way up to approaching bigger influencers as this technique pays off for you.
How do you find influencers?
If you already know the influencers you would like to have on board for your campaign, it’s as simple as sending them a message on one of their social media or content platforms. The worst possible outcome is that they are out of your price range, or not interested, and neither really sets you back, so it’s always worth reaching out.
If you’re looking to discover smaller influencers, you can start by following hashtags related to your product or the field you want to target. Focus on following these hashtags on Instagram and Facebook, as this is where your ad will eventually end up so it’s good to target people who already have an audience there. You can then see who is getting engagement on these hashtags and decide who has the most influence on your target market.
Another approach to finding influencers is to simply search on Google for your field and then ‘influencers’. For example, if you were trying to sell a new sports drink , you might search for ‘fitness’ + ‘influencers’. This will usually lead you to fairly comprehensive ‘top 10’ style lists of relevant influencers. The more specific your search terms, the more niche and therefore more affordable influencers you will find.
If you want to streamline the research process, there are sites such as ‘upfluence’ which act as databases of influencers who you can connect with. These sort of sites are a more expensive approach, but could be worth it if your priority is to save time.
Overall, using influencer images in your own Facebook ad campaigns is a more affordable way to gain the credibility of an influencer promotion, and a quick way to see big results just from changing the creative side of your ad campaign.
Even if you spend 10% of your planned total spend for the ad campaign on using an influencer’s image, if it improves your results by more than 10% as it often does, then this strategy is more than worthwhile.
Facebook marketing is a competitive field, and especially if your product is in a competitive market, an influencer endorsement can really make your ad campaign stand out, and get you great results.
To learn more about influencer advertising and how effective it can be for you, click on the link https://www.regalroye.com/influencer-assistant-services and you will be directed to our main page for more details.
If you would like to know more about how to optimise the creative side of your Facebook Ads contact Regal Roye today and we'll get you started.