Paid Social – Minimise text to make your ad more engaging

When it comes to creating an advert for business social media platforms and networks, there are many ways in which it can be approached. As Paid Social specialists, it is important to us that the ads we create and use are creative, but most importantly, consider certain audio-visual rules, that simply cannot be ignored, in order to make the advert both user-friendly, and to achieve the most out of each paid ad.

It is very common to receive creatives from clients that are not optimised for advertising, in particular, adverts that feature a lot of unnecessary text and information about the company within the advert image. It is important to understand that the Facebook network, which includes Instagram, is primarily an audio-visual platform which exposes users to hundreds of images and adverts daily. In order to make adverts on these platforms effective, an image or video must be creative, original, colourful and feature as little text as possible, in order to stop a potential customer scrolling past.

We are not stating outright that a post that features text, or is only text, cannot keep a user’s attention, but text plays a different role to that of an image within an advert. Text will give a user the necessary information about a company or a service being provided, allowing them to understand the purpose of something, but this is the easiest part. The right image will make them identify and align themselves with the brand, forming a connection. Once a connection is made, the likelihood of interaction with the advert and the brand, is increased. This is the opportunity provided by Facebook and Instagram, which if used effectively, can be highly successful.

The most effective adverts are able to portray a message to a user through an image, without using text. Clients must communicate with their potential customers base using visual language and avoiding text, or minimising it where possible, to maximise engagement. The users on social platforms need to feel that they can identify themselves with what an advert is portraying. It is very easy and very common to have an irrelevant or poorly chosen image with a huge discount or sales promotion covering half of it. Even though the discount might capture the attention of a platform user, a connection is unlikely to form and questions about the brand may arise such as, what is the brand value? What does this brand represent? Why should I interact with this brand over another?