How Design Plays Into the Success of Social & Digital Ads
The Importance of Good Digital Marketing Design
Good digital marketing design involves more than just a “pretty” visual element. Rather, it requires care, flow, and consistency when it comes to interpreting creative strategy into meaningful action.
Some of the things that have to be considered from a design perspective include website design, a consistently branded social presence, original marketing copy, well-crafted communication, and creative funnel flow. And, one of the most important design aspects is creating effective social and digital ads.
Since your audience is spending time online, you have to grab their attention with well-designed social and digital ads to drive the conversions you want.
Is Digital Marketing Art or Science?
Obviously, businesses need to grab their customer’s attention so good design is very important throughout the whole marketing process. The fact is that the art and the science of digital marketing work together. Keep in mind that even when working with unique data, creativity is involved. While “science” is important, “art” is a major factor in digital marketing.
For example, having a perfectly designed social media ad will not yield the desired results if it is not placed where the correct audience will see it. But on the other hand, the placement doesn’t even matter if you have a digital ad with a boring design and copy.
What is the Job of Digital Marketing Design?
Every aspect of digital marketing should be built with an intentional strategy that delivers your message. A digital ad design is successful when it gets your audience to click. The end goal is always to convert and/or make sales.
The job of digital marketing design, in its simplest form, is twofold.
- Get the potential client or customer’s attention so you can educate them on the products or services being offered.
- Lead users with ease through the process of buying so that they become a customer (and hopefully advocate for your business!).
ATTENTION: The average person is now estimated to encounter between 6,000 to 10,000 ads every single day.
That’s a lot of ads to compete with for someone’s attention!
How Do You Get Your Audience’s Attention?
It’s been repetitively iterated now that grabbing the user’s attention is fundamental to successful digital marketing ads. Doing so is not always easy. If you can’t get your audience’s attention they will not see your message and there’s no opportunity to present how your product or service can improve their life.
Well-designed ads will stop your audience from scrolling and get their attention!
Today’s users are exposed to so many ads. Oftentimes they are on multiple screens and are absorbing several types of media all at the same time. Getting attention is getting harder and harder. The answer lies in good social and digital ad design.
How Does Design Help You Communicate Through Social and Digital Ads?
A well-designed ad is what will get your social and digital ads noticed. For businesses to have a chance to communicate with their audience the design has to attract attention. Design is what visually communicates with your audience. Well-designed digital marketing ads require strong visual elements that deliver the right message. This initial visual connection is what allows businesses to deliver content that drives the user into their marketing funnel.
In the various digital ad platforms, marketers are able to highly target the right audiences but if you miss the mark in ad design, none of that even matters. Why? Because, again, without strong digital design, people won’t pay attention to online ads and the message is not delivered!
What Is Involved with Social and Digital Ad Design?
Designers must visually communicate a message through digital ads and this is no small task. A design concept is realized through the visuals that users see first. Ads should be eye-catching. There are several things to consider that help make a good design.
- Branding – Is the business well represented in the ad design?
- Color choices – Are colors that relate to the brand or catch the eye used?
- Imagery – Do the images make sense and are they of good quality?
- Movement – Does the design have movement to attract the eye?
- Typography – Does the message stand out and is it consistent?
- Messaging – Is the right message clear and concise?
- Call to action – What are you asking the user to do?
- Functionality – What happens after a user clicks on the ad?
The design needs to be cohesive. It should have a defined concept in addition to having appealing visual elements. It needs to be clear what the ad is about and prompt the desired action.
What Makes a Successful Social Ad Design?
Successful ad designs get users to stop scrolling, be enticed enough to click and will convert to form fills, phone calls, and ultimately a sale. It can be tricky to always know what will attract your audience’s eye. When you’re not seeing conversions, different imagery, different messaging, or perhaps even a different type of ad altogether could help.
There are several formats that can be used for ads and some will be more successful than others depending on several factors.
Carousel ad designs are often used for a more interactive experience and can showcase several images or products.
Images ad designs can use a compelling picture to attract user’s attention or to include more information in a simple, still format.
Video ad designs make it easy to tell a story about a product/service and give even more information to users who may not know your brand.
Animated ad designs provide motion that helps get your audience to stop scrolling and see what is being presented.
For different industries, different types of ads will work to fill different parts of your funnel. It’s important to also have well-designed remarketing ads to keep moving your audience through the buying process.
What Does Data Tell Us About Design?
The ultimate metric to measure the success of a social or digital ad design is a high click-through rate (CTR). That is what marketers and businesses are paying attention to. With social ads, we’re also paying attention to engagement. If you see that your audience is engaging with your content through likes and comments but are not clicking through to the website, then only part of the process is working. Furthermore, driving website traffic is not really the end of the ad design. Beyond that, if users are clicking through to your website but there’s a high bounce rate, the page design could be a problem.
Marketers have to constantly test digital ads, formats, and messaging to see what gets the best results. Trying different designs and variations will help narrow down what works. Plus, different ad design strategies may work better for different audiences or products/services. Once a design is launched, the data will tell you what is working and what needs to be adjusted.
Successful social and digital ad design starts with grabbing the user’s attention.
Beyond that designers have to present information that will earn the initial click. But the digital marketing process doesn’t end there and neither does effective ad design. There is so much to consider for successful communication through social and digital ad design. Design plays a role through all aspects of any marketing strategy and is as important as the data driving it!
