13 Styles of Meta Ad Creative to Use for Your Brand

When you start planning your Facebook ad campaigns and working on creatives, there are a variety of styles you can choose from. Whether it's something simple that you can do in house, or something that you will have to hire external creators to produce, deciding which styles will work best for your campaign can be a tough decision. In an ideal world you will want to try multiple styles to test which work best for you, but if you are short on time and budget, we have broken down some of the common styles to help you decide which you want to go ahead with on your campaign.

1. Us vs Them

Showing why your product is superior to similar products in the market is a great way to convince potential customers why your product is the one they should buy. This is where an us vs them ad can be used to highlight the differences between your product and either a specific brand or a more generic term like ‘market leader’.

When deciding which features to highlight, make sure you are only using the ones where your product stands out (or at least matches) and don’t overfill it with features that customers are unlikely to care about. This can include highlighting pain points in the industry that aren’t being met, and how your product will solve them.

While you are comparing your product to a competitor, it is important to not bad mouth them. This can not only cause issues with them, it can also give off a bad impression of your brand as it looks like you are saying why you shouldn’t purchase their product, and not why they should be buying yours.

2. Features Point Out

You can promote your product by using a fairly simple product image, but sell it to the customer by highlighting the features. This can be used in a Features Point Out style of ad, where you will write text around the image, linking it to the product to show its benefits. These features will be most effective if they are either addressing pain points that customers might have, or by using statistics that show your products' worth.

You want to make all the points impactful, rather than just listing them. For example if your product is a health drink, rather than just listing the ingredients, you want to say how much of it they make up, how many vitamins the drink contains, how these vitamins can help your body etc.

While you want the product image to be interesting, you want to make sure that it doesn’t distract from the text, so a white background can sometimes be the answer. If you want to add some more personality you can add a colour that works with your brand, just make sure that the text is easily readable for people scrolling through their feed.

3. Text in Context

Rather than simply placing your text over your images to create your ad, you can get a bit more creative and make your text part of the image instead. This will not only make it stand out more to potential customers, but will look like you have put more effort into the creation of your ads.

Examples of this would be when promoting a kitchen product, you can write on the fridge with magnetic letters, if it's an office product it could be written on a post it note, or if you are selling toiletries, it could be written in the steam on the bathroom mirror.

4. Statistic Based

Rather than trying to advertise your customers with purely well written text, adding in a statistic of some form can be far more effective. This can be a stat that reflects how your customers feel about your product, i.e 98% of our customers loved this product. Or it could be a stat that backs up a feature of your product such as, this drink contains 99% off your daily vitamins and mineral needs.

Statistics in your ads work as it can be easy for your customers to see and understand while they are scrolling through their feed. So with that in mind, make sure that your statistic stands out and is prominent in the ad.

5. Testimonials

Your customers' thoughts on your company and products can have much more impact and provide more trust to potential customers than any statements you can make. This isn’t copy that has been written to sell your product, but is how customers feel your product has benefited them, meaning it will likely help potential customers too.

When choosing quotes to use on your Facebook ads, you want to make sure that they are not only interesting and convincing, but that they can create some form of emotion. This could be funny to make people stop scrolling through their feed, or an emotional quote that they will be able to relate to. Using numbers in your quotes can also make it stand out, such as I tried 14 different products before I found the one for me.

6. Carousels

When you either sell a number of products, or you have more information than you can fit on one ad, then you could look at using the carousel style that Facebook offers. In this style, you can upload multiple images that your customer can then swipe through to find out more.

There are some important things to remember when running this style of ad however, as getting this wrong could end up confusing you customers and resulting in them scrolling by. You want to make sure that your ads are not sequential, and can make sense in any order. So while you can have lists on individual ads, don’t list different features on separate ads. This is because you can then have Facebook test the order that these ads are shown in, to find out which perform better nearer to the front than others.

Ad types that work well in a carousel are point outs, testimonials, grids and listicles. These can either be repeated styles throughout the carousel or a combination.

7. Long Form

Sometimes you may want to provide a lot of information to potential customers that you can’t provide in either a short video or static ad, and that is when you can look to produce a long form video. These videos will go into detail about what your product is and how it works, and can run to around 3 minutes long. Because of this, the amount of people that watch the whole thing will likely be lower, and the production costs will be higher, but the people who do watch the video til the end will have a higher chance of converting.

Long form videos usually have four main parts that work to capture and keep the attention of your audience, and finally get them to click on your ad. The first is a compelling hook, which like all video ad formats, has to really grab their viewers attention in the first couple of seconds. Once you have their attention, you can move into the main body of the video. This part will address pain points that potential customers might be experiencing, and you can then explain how your product solves these problems.

After you have explained the effectiveness of your product, you want to then back it up by providing validation. This could be in the form of publications you have been featured in, the number of positive reviews you have or any accreditations your product has. The final section is a call to action that will persuade them to click on the ad. A good way to seal the deal is to provide them with an offer that seems too good to miss out on.

8. Simple Explainer

If you don’t want to create a long form video with high production value, an alternative can be a short explainer video. This will most likely be filmed as someone, usually the owner or someone important in the company, talking into the camera, and by doing so talking to the customer.

These videos will usually be around one minute in length, and can even be filmed as someone talking into their webcam, as it is the messaging that is important, not the video quality. While you can make graphics and use b-roll to make your video more engaging, the content itself is what you are looking to get across.

Short explainer videos work like a mini sales pitch, you need to grab their attention and sell why they should be interested in your product in a short amount of time. Don’t fill the video with unnecessary information, just use the important and captivating stuff that will make the viewer want to find out more by clicking on the ad.

9. Social Proof

If your products have been featured in articles, publications or videos, you can use this as social proof to show your customers who is valuing your product. When it comes to creating this, the bigger the publication the better as it will be recognisable by most of your potential customers and they can see that your product is highly rated. However, if the publication is related to your industry but not widely known, this can also work as the people who are interested in your product are likely familiar with the publication as well.

When creating the ad, it is important to not just take a screenshot of where you were mentioned in the article, as this could lead to it being taken down. Instead you want to repurpose the information, and create an ad in your own style, while still keeping the important information. This could be as simple as writing a quote from the article that positively reflects your product, and including the name or logo of the publication that said it.

10. UGC

While it is not as effective as it once was, User Generated Content should still be an important part of your ad strategy. This is because it can not only be used as its own ad, but the content can be repurposed across a variety of ads, and can even form content on your website.

Two UGC styles that perform well are the problem = solution video, and the how to video. The problem = solution video will usually begin with a statement or questions addressing a problem either other products have or in that industry, and the solution to solve this will be your product. The how to video simply involves someone explaining what your product is, how to use it and ending with the final result.

11. Before and After

Showing before and after images in your ad can really show the effectiveness of your product, however you have to be careful with this type of ad to not be misleading. When creating this ad you want to be showing the actual results of using the product, as customers can easily tell when it has been faked. There are plenty of ads out there showing weight loss results which have been clearly edited, and you want to make sure that your customers believe what you are saying.

There are also certain guidelines for the type of product you can promote with this, with things such as cosmetic treatments and weight loss often leading to your ads getting taken down. What this works well for are things such as make up or cleaning products, where you can show the difference your product makes without being misleading.

12. Education Grid

A great way to use the real estate on your ad efficiently without it looking crowded, is to organise your content into an educational grid. This will usually be a 2x3 layout, where you can list 6 things that relate to each other but don’t necessarily promote your product. For example you could have 6 things you need to prepare for your trip, and then list 6 important things, with your product being the answer to at least one of them.

While this ad doesn’t just promote your product, it still puts it into the mind of the audience and can convince them to click the ad to find out more, as you have also provided them with information they might be interested in.

Using icons to go alongside the text can also help to increase the style of the ad, as you don’t want to use too much imagery that will make the content hard to read.

13. Listicle Image

Similar to the educational grid, the listicle image will list points that are beneficial to the viewer, but unlike the educational grid, will focus more on your product. This could be simply listing out the key benefits of using your product, or the features that it has, or it could be something like a list of 10 ways to stay healthier, with your product being the answers to one of these points.

Lists work well as they are easy to read due to their formatting and simplicity, so can grab the attention and convince the viewer to stay on the ad longer than a block of text would. You want to make sure that you are providing value as well as promoting your product, so that it doesn’t immediately come across as a sales pitch to the viewer.

You can now experiment and test a combination of these ad styles to find out which works best for your brand. If you are looking to advertise on TikTok as well, you can read our post on TikTok ad creatives here, and if you need help creating and running your ads, Contrast can create ads that convert for your business.