Make Interactive Ads that Deliver | A Detailed Guide & Expert Tips

A well-rounded advert holds the power to transform your business numbers or drive desired revenue. Research shows that digital ads can increase brand awareness up to 80% and 70% of customers are more likely to buy from a retargeting ad.

However, contrary to popular opinion, an online ad is more than just grabbing the viewer’s attention. Rather, a well-organized commercial tells a story, piques the viewer’s interest, and encourages desired action, regardless of the objective.

So, how to make an advertisement that is compelling, engaging, and interactive? It’s simpl3 once you know the right steps. In this guide, I will take you through the process of creating a video ad that resonates with your audience and translates into your marketing objective.  

Part 1: How to Make an Advertisement: A Step-by-Step Guide

The key to a successful advertisement is personalization. The more tailored your ad is, the better it resonates with your target audience and the more successful the outcome. So, let’s see how you can make an advert that delivers.

1. Define Your Target Audience

The first step of making an advert is researching who it is for. Narrowing down your target audience will make your ad cut through the billions of users and reach the right people who will most likely interact with your product.

So, consider user preferences, behaviors, demographics, psychographics, and other data to decide on the right ad strategy. You can also use surveys, feedback sessions, and social media analytics to carry out this research. Remember! The goal of this research is to find your audience’s pain points, communication preferences, and purchasing habits.

For instance, while promoting a fitness app, my target audience would be busy professionals, between the ages of 25 and 40, interested in fitness through cardio and intensity interval training.

Such details will help you create personalized adverts that reflect your audience’s needs and interests. According to McKinsey, ad personalization reduces customer acquisition costs to half, increases revenues by 5-15%, and lifts the ROI by 10-30%.

2. Decide on the Ad Format

Now that I know what my audience is, the next step is choosing the most effective formats for delivering the message. Each type of format has its unique strengths and it is important to understand them, so you can select the right one, depending on the target audience and strategy goals. Let’s break down the most popular.

• Display Ads: Popup or display ads typically appear on websites and apps. Having a specific CTA call-to-action, these ads make up around 30% of the digital advertising spending in the States. 
• Audio Ads: Appearing in audio streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music, these ads are typically 15-30 seconds long. Marketers use music, sound effects, and voice-overs for audio ads to attract customers.
• Social Media Ads: One of the fastest-growing advertising mediums, social media ads work best for modern-day audiences. By 2028, the social media ad spending is expected to reach $255.8 billion. These ads come in several formats like text, images, videos, carousels, and sponsored content on partner network websites.
• Video Ads: Video ads work best in conveying information and interacting with the audience. Around 91% of businesses use video marketing across social media, out of which 88% of marketers only use videos for their digital strategy. What’s even better? These ads can be personalized to the desired advertising platform. 

Here are some other social media ads in addition to the popular formats.

• Pay-per-click ads that appear on search engine result pages.
• Banner ads use a mixture of text and images. You will find such ads on display and video channels.
• Carousel ads are a combination of multiple ads, images, videos, or text.
• HTML5 animated ads are interactive animations (text, images, and videos) on social platforms.
• Promoted account ads are sponsored by a business and shared through a social media post.

Pro Tip: Incorporate a combination of ad formats across different social media platforms to make the most out of your ad campaign. 

3. Determine the Ad’s Purpose

Once the ad format is decided, you have a clear idea of your ad’s goal or what to include in the ad. Here are the three most popular reasons brands launch ad campaigns.

• Brand Awareness: Businesses aiming to promote positivity and familiarity toward their product and services. The long-term goal is building credibility for revenue generation.
• Product Awareness: Unlike brand awareness, this objective is focused on the product and sales.
• Conversion is also a product-focused approach for businesses trying to improve their sales.

Hence, when creating an ad for a product, your focus should be on the item, its features, or how it can help them, rather than the brand. For brand commercials, let the audience know about your brand values, company culture, history, and more. The latter emphasizes the long-term emotional connection rather than a quick sale.

4. Choose a Platform

Though there is no shortage of platforms for advertising, finding one that satisfies your selected ad format and target audience is hard. Even a perfectly interactive ad can fail, if not on the right platform. Confused about where to begin? Use your audience data, ad goals, and chosen formats to select the platform with the most potential for your ad campaign.

• Don’t limit yourself to one platform. For instance, if my market finding indicates that the target audience for the campaign consumes YouTube content and shops via Instagram, a multi-platform approach may work best. Find out more about choosing the right platform for your social media ad campaign.

5. Set Your Budget

Ad campaigns across platforms cost money, so set your budget! However, when it comes to ad spending, it’s no one-size-fits-all.

So, take your time to consider the purpose of the ad, ad format, platform, video production cost, and how much you can afford. Industry research can also help you establish a decent starting amount. For example, apparel and fashion advertisers pay around $3 per click on Instagram.

• Pro Tip: Start small and gradually scale up your budget with time. Test different strategies to see what works for your target audience and optimize your campaigns with a larger investment.

6. Craft a Message

You might have an idea of what to include in your video ad. Getting your message is vital, the information needs to be correct and engaging enough for the target audience. Here are some inputs to consider, even when you have employed copywriters. 

• Revisit the Audience Needs: Always revisit your audience’s needs and desires before writing. Question yourself, about what they want, their desires, and more. It will help you speak directly to them.
• Emphasize Benefits: Don’t stress on specifications. Audiences are more interested in finding out what your product solves, and how it will favor you. So, rather than saying a vacuum has strong suction power, write something like, “It cleans the smallest dirt particles in one pass.”
• Choose Attention-Grabbing Headlines: The headline is making or breaking your ad. Incorporate something that piques the audience's attention, like a question, a fun fact, or a benefit-driven statement.
• Set Your Product Apart from the Competition: Communicate your product’s USP (unique selling points) in the ads. Ask yourself, why would someone choose your product over competitors? Promote things like superior quality, customer service, price, etc. 
• Add a Call-to-Action (CTA): Never let your audience think about what to do next. You must add a compelling call to drive the desired action. However, place CTAs carefully, so the audience doesn’t miss them and draws the user’s eye naturally.

7. Develop Creative Content

Once you have decided on the message, create interactive visuals to support it. A good ad captures the audience’s attention in the first seven seconds, for most social media platforms. It is your time to let your creativity flow, make the ad approach unique, and use digital technology.

Tools like Adobe Photoshop work best if your budget allows for creating engaging video ads for your brand. With forgiving resources, you can also hire freelancers or a professional agency for sound mixing, video capturing, and even copywriting. 

However, for startups, it’s not feasible. Affordable video creation tools like Wondershare Virbo and Canva work best. Both these tools have a free version, so you can see what is suitable for you. The AI capabilities and range of voiceover options make Virbo my favorite. Using its montage maker, you can transform the product’s URLs into engaging visuals.

Let’s see how you can make a YouTube short video ad using Virbo. 

Before you begin, download, install, and launch the Wondershare Virbo desktop version and register yourself if it is your first time.

1. Now, select the AI Montage Maker from the dashboard.

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2. Select whether you want to create a video using existing media or a product URL. I will be using a product URL for this guide. So, copy and paste your product page link to the search box and click Analyze URL.

3. After a few moments, you will see the ad on your screen with an Additional Info section. Read the script and modify it to reflect your brand’s values and ad message.

4. Similarly, set the ad Ratio, Duration, Language, and Video Type. As I am making this ad for YouTube Shorts, I will select the ratio 4:3, duration 1 minute, language English, and video type AI Avatar and Voiceover. You can adjust these preferences accordingly.

Pro Tip: Once you have selected an avatar for an ad campaign, be consistent and stick to it. It can give your brand a trusted face with an easily recognizable voice.

5. Once done, click Generate Video.

6. Now, you will see three different videos created in the left tab. Select one that matches your requirements and click Export Video. Want to personalize it more? No worries, select Edit to enter the customization panel.

7. Have fun with everything. Try out different avatars, voiceovers, and frames for the avatars. You can also modify the script and make it interactive according to the montage. Lastly, adding background music to the video may work better in capturing the audience's attention.

8. Finally, preview the video you have edited. Satisfied? Export it to your device.

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8. Optimize Your Ad for Conversions

The ultimate goal of an ad is conversions, be it a customer buying something, signing up for a service, or something as small as liking a post. And, it does not happen without optimization. So, what to do now?

• First, set a clear objective for your ad campaign. Depending on this, set performance indicators to measure success.
• Once the ad is running, constantly test it. Experiment with your ad’s design, placement, and targeting options to see what works best.
• Use A/B testing to run several versions of your ad to see which one gets more conversions.
• Data is your way to achieve desired goals. So, use analytics like Google Analytics or more to keep a check on interactions, engagements, click-through rates, impressions, and leads.

Part 2: 3 Best Tools for Creating and Managing Ads

Ad creation and management are easier with digital tools. Here are my top three tools for marketers, trying to reach a wider audience.

1. Wondershare Virbo

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Wondershare Virbo is an all-in-one marketing tool for startups trying to achieve desired conversions on a budget. Its AI capabilities let you create fun and engaging interactives that resonate with your audience and leave a lasting impression. With Virbo, you can also turn your videos into small clips to fit the ad standards across social media platforms.

Key Features

• Customizable AI avatars with several voiceover options and moving pictures.
• URL-to-video converters that transform your product pages into interactive video ads.
• AI montage maker that lets you infuse your content with AI-generated scripts and improve your storytelling experience.
• Text-to-speech that converts your text or written scripts into natural sound. It supports multiple languages, so you can expand your reach and tailor content for localities.

Virbo is expected to launch an analysis function soon. With this, you can analyze market trends and get ahead of your competition. So, stay tuned.

2. AdRoll

Adroll is yet another video ad management tool that offers meaningful and personalized advertising strategies for maximum results. It caters to teams of different sizes and budgets. Though most people associate it with e-commerce ads, it has much more to offer in terms of targeting audiences and visual elements. 

Key Features

• Choose between display, navigate, social, and video ads to boost brand awareness.
• Generate traffic and attract an audience using advanced targeting and retargeting techniques.
• Tailor ads that attract and retain customers per your strategy.
• Use advanced algorithms to understand how your ad campaigns are working to influence conversions and revenue.

3. 6Sense

Looking for an intuitive B2B platform that uses data to launch effective ad campaigns? Try 6Sense. This platform uses big data, AI, and advanced machine learning algorithms at every stage of advertising, be it identifying target audiences prioritizing sales, managing marketing accounts, and creating engaging content.

Key Features

• Predictive analytics uses data to help engage potential buyers and target audiences.
• Conversational AI email to craft personalized messages in a human tone.
• Intent data insights to understand audience needs and promote data-driven decision-making.

Part 3: The ABCDs of Effective Video Ads

An impactful ad follows the ABCD of advertisements. Once you master these four principles in ad planning, getting maximum output from the audience is no hard work.

1. Attention

Start with the hook and pique your audience's interest in the first three to seven seconds of your ad. Sustain their attention using narration or interactive visuals.

• Use fast-paced visuals in the first. Use tight framing, so your audience doesn’t get a chance to leave.
• Keep your visuals bright and platform-specific, so the ads seamlessly integrate into the user’s scrolling experience.

2. Branding

Build your brand! Introduce it, reflect your principles in the story, and stick to themes. Tell viewers who you are and how you can benefit them. Whatever the ad is about, focus on maintaining your brand’s strong presence.

• Show up early in the first ten seconds of the ad and don’t leave. Maintain a presence throughout the video.
• Combine visuals and audio to engage viewers.

3. Connection

Create ads that make people think or feel. Establish emotional connections. If you are targeting an existing audience, evoke relevance through strong storytelling.

• Humanize your story by featuring people in the ads.
• Avoid adding too much to the story and focus on the message. Keep it simple yet engaging.
• Add elements like humor, intrigue, surprise, and melancholy to evoke emotions.

4. Direction

Don’t let your audience wonder what to do next. Direct them to take action, whatever the conversion intention is - a purchase, login, or even subscription.

• Include a call-to-action (CTA) to drive a specific conversion objective.
• Clearly communicate rewards and offers.
• Back up your CTA text by reinforcing audios like voiceovers.

Conclusion

Next time you launch a campaign, promoting your brand, or selling a product, you know how to plan and launch an ad campaign. A quality ad does not have to be expensive, rather, it should have the right elements.

So, if you are limited by the budget, don’t worry, and follow the ABCD of online advertisements. Employ useful digital tools to streamline video ad generation and data analysis. See how your brand grows with the right marketing techniques. 

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