5 Clever Ad Concepts (that you could do)

We always ask our clients to be more ambitious with their advertising. Often, we find that while clients are ambitious with what they want to achieve (which usually means how much money they want to make), they aren’t nearly as ambitious with what they use to showcase their brand.

For example, brands are often put off making videos due to the cost of production and their social ads look like they’ve found an image online, added a bit of supporting text, and thought ‘that’ll do’.

We believe in the need for digital marketing agencies to be rooted in design and creativity and we also believe that high performing adverts can be clever, creative and good looking without costing the earth.

Here are five ad concepts that you could do now…

Age

When it comes to ‘good’ ads, its been said that they should be “personally identifiable and immediately relevant”. Tom.co.uk sell life insurance, a product typically bought by people over 40. In a recent set of ads, they mocked up a relatively bland image ad and signposted it with the age of the person they were targeting. This certainly ticks the relevancy box, and with the use of Facebook’s age targeting, means they can set them up easily. What’s more, they can get a gauge on the better converting age groups, and perhaps even manage the bid by the relative profit of users by age.

Location

Dynamic ad customizers are by no means a new feature in Google Ads. These allow you to dynamically change a headline and reference the searcher’s location (as defined by their IP address). It should come as no surprise to you that being local is a strong selling point – look at the thousands of local gin distilleries that have popped up in the last few years.

What’s also true is that appearing local can be just as powerful. Don’t believe me? Run local ads (such as in the example below) and watch your CTR% increase overnight.

Beyond the advert appearing local, it is also possible to dynamically change the headline on your landing page using Google’s ValueTrack parameters, and a script hosted on your website. This means you can sync your landing page with the headline on your advert, without needing to create 100s of unique location pages.

Video

As mentioned earlier, we find clients are not overly keen to create videos once they factor in the cost and estimated cost per lead/ROI. That said, we know that a video’s value extends beyond whether someone clicks on it, as its a useful way of driving brand awareness. What’s more, we think a good video should logically have a better chance of driving action than a single image or carousel.

Remember on YouTube, you only pay for skippable videos that viewers watch for 30 seconds or more. So, you don’t have to worry about paying for all those people who skip through your video as soon as they can. How many ads have you skipped, but remembered? That’s free branding.

One way to get round the (sometimes prohibitive) costs of videos is to film an FAQ video, like the one for Profit Accumulator above. This video is 3 minutes long and is a straightforward one-shot video of the business owner answering questions.

There’s no need for actors, as who is better placed to talk about their business than the owner, and the graphics are straightforward and professional. Is that a video you could make?

Carousel

Carousel ads are another old format used on most social platforms. Here’s an example of an ad similar to the Disney one above, but for a furniture brand. We liked this ad, as it’s a really simple way of getting existing customers to see your brand in a different way, without forgetting what you might have been known for. And lots of people agreed!

Funny

Ads should be memorable, and a sure-fire way of doing that is by going funny. What’s more, I don’t think you need to be a world-renowned comedian to come up with an amusing ad. Here’s a few that tickled me:

Before you go…

We know that coming up with ad concepts can be hard work. If you’re stuck on ideas, why not check out the Facebook ad library? Beyond that, we always encourage our team (and our clients) to answer the question: what’s your favourite advert? And why?!

If you’d like any help coming up with ad concepts or need an agency to manage your digital marketing. Or you just fancy a chat. Get in touch.