Why Your “Pretty” Ads Aren’t Working
Why Your “Pretty” Ads Aren’t Working
Let’s set the stage: you create a beautiful ad, perhaps even purchase a premium template, launch your social media campaign, and wait for those interactions to start rolling in. And you wait… and wait some more. Assuming you set up your campaigns correctly, why isn’t your ad gaining traction?
All ads have three goals, in this order:
- Get the user’s attention.
- Explain as quickly as possible why they need your product.
- Get them to interact with your ad.
Easy peasy, so why isn’t your ad working? Probably because it’s too pretty. I’m sure your ad is very nice looking, as are the multitude of other ads made with the same template. There’s nothing that makes your ad stand out. Even if you didn’t use a template and spent hours making a gorgeous ad from scratch, if you didn’t do the proper research beforehand or conduct extensive testing, your pretty ad won’t cut it.
Let’s start over with a blank slate. Before you even begin to design an ad, do your homework. What platform will your ad be displayed on? Who is your target demographic? Who are your competitors, and what do their ads look like?
The key to being a great and effective marketing designer is not creating something that appeals to you; it’s creating something that appeals to your demographic. Since you are rarely going to be your own demographic, you need to conduct user research. You also need to be conscious of the platform. If your demographic is Gen Z, don’t place your ad on Facebook or a new website. Go where your users are.
Let’s look at some examples.
Ad 1
Ad 2
Ad 1 is a bit difficult to read, the headline doesn’t have anything to do with the product or CTA, and it isn’t visually appealing, Ad 2 had cute kids dressed up as professions, it’s easy to read, has a bit more design thought put into it and it aims to get an emotional reaction. Which one do you think performed the best? Yeah Ad 1, it took minimal effort to create, it’s ugly to me, I loathe it, and it works. These ads were both on Facebook, where the age the user’s that interact with our ads are 35+, so the candles and tagline got that demographics attention, the text under the headline got them a bit more curious, and the CTA got them to click.
I get this is not a true A/B comparison, but you get the point. It doesn’t matter how pretty your ad is, if you aren’t getting the demographics’ attention, then your efforts are fruitless.
