Three Awesome Facebook Ad Image Tips
According to Buzzsumo, Facebook posts with images see 2.3X more engagement than those without images. That's great, but how do you go about choosing images that get 2.3X more engagement than the ones you are currently using?
One word summary? Experiment. Especially if you are running Facebook ads. Facebook's Power Editor makes it easy to set up more than one Facebook ad in a campaign so you can pause more expensive per click ads. Why not set up a few with different images?
Here are three tips for Facebook ad image experiments. Try them out in different variations and see what works for you and your audience.
Tip #1: Ditch text within the image.
This is where Facebook ads differ the most from other social media advertising channels. Where other channels encourage call to action text within images used for ads, Facebook is slowly forcing marketers to ditch text within ad images or watch their results suffer. For years, Facebook enforced a 20% rule where ad images would be flat out rejected by the Facebook ad team if there was text over 20% of the image. In mid-2016, however, Facebook transitioned to text image rating guidelines. Under these guidelines, instead of rejecting images for having too much text on them, the ad's ability to reach people on Facebook becomes dependent on the rating of the image.
At least in the old system, marketers were notified that their ad wouldn't run because it had too much text. Now, it's a bit murkier. To know where ad images land in this rating system, run images through the Facebook Text Overlay Tool. Don't run any ads unless the image gets the OK rating. That way you know your ad will run optimally and not get penalized for something trivial like text overlays.
Even better, ditch text within the images all together. Facebook clearly wants text in the text areas and images to be just images, otherwise they wouldn't have all these rules and systems in the first place. I personally find that images with just a small logo in the corner or no text at all consistently performs better anyways.
Tip #2: Make sure your image is mobile-friendly.
Check out how your ads will look on mobile devices using the preview tool within the Power Editor. Make sure the image is simple enough to look good but dynamic enough to catch someone's attention even when the image is shrunk down for a mobile screen. I typically see 60-70% of my Facebook ad conversions coming from mobile clicks. So I actually design Facebook ads with a mobile-first mentality.
Tip #3: Consider NOT using a professional photo.
I don't have any hard numbers to back this one up, but I have consistently seen my organic posts, paid ads, and videos all perform better on average across different industry pages when I use less polished images and videos. Perhaps people have seen the professional photos somewhere else before or professional photos scream HEY THIS IS AN AD! Whatever the reason, consider trying a photo taken with a cell phone. An ad with images that are more genuine and closer to the heart of the message you are trying to get across may resonate with your audience and stand out when you need it to.
Along with not using the standard editing and poses that professional photos typically have, experiment with using Instagram-like filters on the ad's photo. According to Canva, Clarendon and Gingham are the two most popular Instagram filters used in the U.S.
