There are always trends in Facebook ads; what worked last month may not work this month. While this can be things like the time of year and who else is competing with you, there are also trends in design.
One of the trends I have seen in the past few months is people creating ads that less look like ads. I think there are a couple or reasons for this – people don’t come on to Facebook to buy and so zoom straight past the ads and the ads that look like ads have all got a bit the same. Think people pointing at words.
It has all been a bit done to death. That isn’t to say the pointing at words thing won’t work for your audience, especially if it is to a warm audience who will recognize your face and wants to work with you. But if it is an audience who knows nothing about you then this image is probably not going to get them to stop scrolling.
Other than thinking about a great image that will get people to stop scrolling and pay attention to you there are other things that you can do to make your ad look less like an ad and more life fantastic content to be consumed.
But one of the easiest to test out is that button you include on your ad. For me, nothing screams ad like having that button there.
This is an ad I ran last year with a button:
While there is a quite a bit this ad that makes it look like an ad, especially the headline, the button is the dead giveaway.
I am running ads at the moment to my new Get Facebook Ad Ready mini course and have just done a week of ads with a button. But I am about to test a new ad without a button:
This one looks more like a piece of content than an ad and I think the key reason for this is there being no button.
I’ll keep you posted on which does better though in this case I think timing may muddy the results. The first week of January may have been a good week to motivate people to take action or they may still have been on holiday. I should have run the ads at the same time but like the builder who has unfinished jobs all over the house, my own ads often are not as organised as they should be.
If you are looking to do some testing on your ads this is such a small change to make in terms of workload so it is an easy place to get your feet wet with some testing!