Facebook carousel ads have revolutionized the marketing game. Brands looking to live in the spotlight have found the platform to be a great way to go about their campaigns.
Not only are Facebook carousel ads popular in providing unique ways of sharing content, but they are also quite cost-effective.
Gone are the days when brands would have to splash thick wads of cash just to have a social media presence.
Carousel ads are engaging, high-performing tools that are quintessential for your marketing strategy. Already, Facebook has proven to the world just how effective they are at attracting customers.
Since the social media behemoth owns the platform, they seem hell-bent to help marketers get the very best out of it. By providing you with metrics to optimize engagement levels, you can easily track performance to ensure your ad gets to every sphere of your audience.
Given the versatility of Facebook carousel ads, finding your footing can be quite tricky. You can use a two-pronged approach when using the ads, to promote products and to showcase just how special your brand is.
To achieve that, you need to have the power to spin an interesting yarn.
Here are 7 unique ways you can make great use of carousel ads for your marketing campaign.
Facebook Carousel Ads – 7 Creative Ideas
1. Showcase a product
This tactic is an excellent idea for businesses looking to make audiences aware of their products. You can use carousel ads to showcase different shades of a single product. Alternatively, you could opt to showcase different items on offer.
As users swipe through each listing, they’re likely to feel tempted to like, share, and comment. Of course, it all depends on your presentation. As such, you need to strive to make it as engaging as possible.
Tieks is a renown ballet shoe maker who has successfully use carousel ads to showcase their products. In one of their posts, they focused on different aspects of a shoe they were promoting.
While at it, they also made use of headline copy to ensure that readers understood the context of each image.
Why it Works
Facebook’s multi-image feature is the perfect set up for brands to educate the masses on product offerings. Given the fact that they are more interactive than single image posts, carousel posts are able to capture your audience’s attention over extended periods.
2. How to use a product
How-to content is all the rage these days. Once you step away from the traditional static image to the expansive carousel ad option, the doors open up.
With the added opportunity to display progressive information, you can walk your audience through various steps.
Importantly, you should cease worrying about how you’ll push a particular sale to your target customers. Instead, you need to use carousel ads to educate the masses. To successfully do this, you need to capture their interest in your brand by introducing value-adding topics.
Tyme Hair has used this concept to demonstrate how users can make use of their products. In the post, they shared how curling irons worked.
In each card section of the ad, they revealed a step-by-step guide together with a complementing image. This proved to be a big hit with audiences looking to try out the curled hair look.
Why It Works
As the adage goes, an image is worth a thousand words. You can say much more by using a sequence of images following a particular theme.
How-to content has picked up pace in recent years thanks to the inherent need for humans to learn new skills. Once you’re cognizant of this fact, you can use it to your advantage by pushing your brand agenda.
To ensure that the message hits home, try to make the content as scintillating as possible. That way, you’ll have the eyes and ears of the world while appealing to their heart by solving problems they face.
This strategy is considered one of the best ways to sell a particular product. The concept also works brilliantly with new products on the market.
3. Tell a story
Numerous studies have suggested that storytelling is at the very crux of every sale. The ability to sequentially arrange your ideas into a story is an effective way to leave a lasting impact in the minds of viewers.
This is because people can easily recall such type of information.
To really execute this, you need to go above and beyond just sharing pictures of your product. Rather, you should try connecting it to a story that is enticing enough for people to willingly scroll through.
Each slide you present to viewers needs to reveal something new from the previous one. By implying continuation, you’ll be teasing the masses to keep swiping. Given how the brain works, the swiping action will feel like a mini-reward to users.
They’ll believe that they’re slowly progressing through your narrative every time they scroll.
To expand on this idea, you can try to link your images panorama-style. This is a great tactic to share a bigger story with audiences.
Project Repat, the famed t-shirt making company, has successfully used storytelling in their carousel ads. They used the strategy to inform audiences how their memories can transform into quilts overnight.
Why It Works
A well-crafted story makes your brand more personal and helps you connect better with prospects. In addition to this, stories can also help you boost brand loyalty.
The art of storytelling has long been used by humans to intrigue the rest of society. It’s a powerful medium has existed before written word and language. Cave drawings were the very first forms of storytelling before humans developed language as we know it.
Having said that, it’s quite obvious that storytelling is an intrinsic element of the human psyche. As such, you can leverage the power contained therein when you use it to promote your brand.
4. To give a product tour
Facebook carousel ads can be efficaciously used for a product tour. Irrespective of what you’re selling, you can promote your mobile app and build excitement about the product. This is usually achieved by sharing a foretaste of what to expect in the app, even before they download it.
You can layer the cards to show a demonstrate a feature on the app. Alternatively, you can organize the images for a step-by-step layout. Whichever way you decide to sell the concept, this tactic works because it lets people know what they can expect.
Deezer, the popular music app, has previously used carousel ads to give people a glimpse of what to expect. Since the message was broadcasted to audiences before actual download, they were able to showcase the benefits of the app.
This prompted many people to check out the app and try out the neat features demonstrated before.
Why It Works
As the world’s biggest social media platform, Facebook presents the ideal opportunity for marketers looking to generate hype on their products. The buzz generated from such campaigns usually helps companies register mega sales as the ad airs.
With Facebook Carousel Ads, the field of play is quite expansive. You can curate the ads to give specific demonstrations of what’s possible. By making people want to be “in the know” with Carousel ads, you’ll be pushing the brand message to new frontiers.
Bringing consumers closer to a product and letting them see how it can help them meet their needs is very effective. They are likely to become invested in the final outcome and willing to check out the product. All in a bid to experience the thrills in real-life.
5. Share an article & content
Facebook carousel ads are a good fit for brands that aggressively push more services than products.
If you’re looking to position yourself as a thought leader in your industry, the platform is made just for you. This means that you can promote some of your top-of-the-funnel content with great success.
Thankfully, the metrics and reporting section will inform you about the content likely to draw the highest organic traffic. That way, you’ll make wise choices on what content to push.
Effectively, you’re bound to realize more generated leads and prospects willing to go deeper into your funnel. You can share articles to formulate a slick campaign designed to give you exposure to a larger audience.
Precision Nutrition was able to masterfully use carousel ads to promote their content in this fashion. Since their ad focused on healthy eating for athletes, they were able to entice people eager to live a healthy lifestyle.
The result? 6,000 new newsletter signups, a massive boost when compared to single-image-based link ads.
The carousel concept was able to bump up their clickthrough rate by as much as 50%. Incredibly, the company was also able to lower the cost per lead by about 50%.
Why It Works
Sharing is caring. The more you share awesome content, the more Facebook propels your articles to a broader audience.
Sharing content puts you in the front seat of your campaign. People naturally feel inclined to share content that they believe is helpful to them and likeminded people. The more shares you register, the more likely that other blog posts will be formulated that reference your original post and/or website.
This multiplier effect can have numerous rewards for your campaign.
When it comes to boosting website visibility, social media platforms are nowadays just as effective as search engines.
Today, people can access specific content and pages with ease based on their social media standing.
6. Capture imaginations with picturesque visuals
Facebook’s newsfeed is awash with all types of content. To get noticed, you need to push beyond the conform of what normal brands do. Not only is it a struggle to get your content number one on customers feeds, but it’s also quite tricky to produce scintillating content that makes thumbs stop at the sight of your carousel ad.
Having pointed that out, it’s crucial that the very first image in your carousel is visual-candy. Importantly, the very first image doesn’t need to compel clients to convert.
It’s also not important that you spill all the beans about your project in the very first image. Instead, focus your attention on getting the image just right such that people to feel duty-bound to stop and view what you have to say.
When it comes to creating stunning visuals, restaurants and various food chains have this down to a science. Many establishments usually showcase close-up shots of mouth-watering foods.
Once the taste-buds start to tingle, many people feel a need to swipe left and see what else is on offer.
Foodpanda is one company that has been able to do this with great success in recent times. So much so that they noticed a 180% spike in conversions. This uplift was sufficient enough for them to lower the app cost per installation by about 39%.
All they had to do was showcase a pizza teaser as the next item after displaying a saucy sushi serving.
Why It Works
For businesses, an image is everything. Many people tend to judge brands on first impressions. In light of this, you need to try to tailor your campaign on creating favorable impressions with the masses.
If you keep serving amazing content, these fans are likely to become loyalists at the end of the day.
7. Social Proof Injection
Prospects love hearing testimonials, reading reviews and looking up ratings before they engage with a brand. If you are looking to appeal to a larger audience, make sure you share your success stories to boost your chances of conversion.
During the launch of Fallout 4, the video game, Bethesda Game Studios made a point of using carousel ads to promote the game. Their visually appealing ad used a panoramic view of the game complete with ratings and reviews from major gaming industry websites on each slide.
Why it Works
Research by Spiegel Research Center has shown that about 95% of customers look up peer reviews before embarking on a purchase. With carousel ads, you can mix in social proof as you promote your products.
Facebook Carousel Ad Sizes:
The recommended image size for Facebook carousel ads is 600 x 600 pixels. An image ratio of 1:1.
In terms of the recommended copy character counts, see below.
Facebook Ad Text: 90 characters
Facebook Ad Headline: 40 characters
Facebook Ad Link Description: 20 characters
Conclusion
You can register impressive returns with carousel ads. This is because they are competitively priced and they outperform many other display ads on social platforms.
Facebook carousel ads can also elevate the social engagement of your business. You can use the aforementioned tips to come up with quality carousel concepts that will put your brand on more prospects’ lips.
