Facebook advertising can be a powerful tool for your company’s digital marketing strategy, but the platform’s traditional format leaves a lot to be desired. After all, it’s no easy task to give someone an idea of what your company has to offer using 90 characters and a narrow landscape image.
Fortunately, this cookie cutter template has a more robust alternative now available on Facebook. With carousel ads, brands can feature more products, services and promotions in the News Feed, without having to create multiple ads. Using the newly released format, companies can create a more interactive ad to drive web traffic using a series of five square images.
In addition to using a variety of images that can link to separate URLs, advertisers can include 30 characters of text to narrate how the items or features work together. And thus far, this strategy is paying off. When comparing carousel ads to the standard version, advertisers reportedly saw a 30-50% decrease in cost per acquisition and a 20-30% decrease in cost per click.
Still wondering if this new territory is worth a try? Here are four reasons why your business should hop on the carousel format.
Images are in a square format.
Sites like Instagram have caused a boost in popularity for square images, but utilizing an ad format with some cool-factor is only the beginning. Bringing square images into advertising not only lets brands repurpose their most popular photos, but the added vertical space makes it easier for pictures to pass Facebook’s text checker. With a 20% text limit on images, every pixel makes a difference.
Different objectives can be achieved.
Scrolling through a series of images can tell a lot more about a company than an image with a few sentences ever could. Would you like to focus on educating people about your business? You can add a new picture and description explaining what services you offer. Would you rather increase online sales? Ads can be used to give a preview of the items available for purchase. With each new picture, advertisers have a new opportunity to share a different part of their business.
The ads are created for storytelling.
Like any other story, the messaging on these Facebook ads relies on narration. With this in mind, advertisers can arrange their series of images to walk customers through the interesting aspects that their products or services have to offer. For example, a company like Home Depot could show a finished living room in the leading picture, then share the products used to complete each step in the photos to follow.
If advertisers would rather display a set of products in a catalog format, they can also elect to have Facebook optimize the order based on what might deliver the best results
Customers have more chances to buy.
Why feature a single photo telling one story when you can use five? More options give customers additional reasons to click. Each image in a carousel ad is a live link that can lead to a different URL, allowing customers to scroll through and find what appeals to them most.
Have you given carousel ads a try? Share your experiences in the comments! For more ways to make sure your business is set up for success on online, sign up to get our exclusive social media checklist!
