The incredible power and results of online marketing is more widely known than ever. That’s why individuals and businesses are leveling up their strategies by using online platforms.
Advertising online allows you to create your perfect ad campaign easily and efficiently. With online ads, you can reach and engage with a huge audience and target your ideal clients.
The tools of modern internet advertising also allow you to expand your creativity in making ads, get customer insights from your ads through metrics and analytics, and generate leads at an affordable price.
Creating an effective animation ad can be a challenge. You may be overwhelmed with all the steps you have to take and the information you need to know to make your own animation ads. Or you might be worried about being creative enough to make thumbnails or videos for your ad.
Are you planning on starting advertising your animation business online but don’t know how? You’ve come to the right article.
In this blog post, we share with you the 7 most important steps for running profitable animation ads.
1) Decide How You Will Begin Your Ad
GIF via GIPHY
When it comes to ads, you should begin with the end in mind. As Marketing 360 says, you can’t get where you’re going unless you know where you want to end up.
Before jumping into getting your ad out there, first think about what you want your ad to look like. Ask yourself the following questions:
- What is your online animation ad about?
- What copy do you want your ad to contain? Do you want to get more leads, sales, a bigger following, etc.?
- What do you want to accomplish with your ad?
- Which social media platforms will you use to promote your ad?
- What will your landing page look like?
2) Know Your Target Audience
GIF via GIPHY
Besides thinking about what you want your ad to look like, think about your customer and get to know them. Understanding your target audience will help you make ads that make an impact by targeting an audience that will relate to and get interested in what you want to offer.
AdEspresso says a great place to learn about your target customer is through your Facebook audience insights.
These metrics provide tons of useful demographic information about those who follow and view your Facebook animation business page. You’ll be able to know their location, age, gender, interests, and more.
Here are some guide questions to help you narrow down your ideal customer for your ads:
- What problems does your target customer have that they want to solve? What do they want to achieve or have?
- What product or service will you offer them to solve their problems and fulfill their wants?
- What actions do they have to make on your landing page? Will they input their email, download a file, etc.?
Once you know what your ad will contain and the kind of audience you want to target, you will have a better idea for your ad.
3) Think of Your Solution to Your Audience’s Problem
GIF by The Daily Show with Trevor Noah via GIPHY
After defining your target audience, you still need to address another part of the perfect ad equation: convincing your audience of what they should do to achieve their goals or solve their problems. What’s the most important thing that they need to know to deal with their pain point and achieve what they want?
Once you know the thing you want your audience to know or do, ask them for a call-to-action along with a bonus. A bonus is an additional thing that your audience will get once they do what you want them to do, such as signing up for your newsletter
For example, if you want them to sign up for your email list, they will enter their email address and, in return, get access to your podcast, ebook, cheat sheet, exclusive video, etc. Doing this will help them find value in your ad and attract the customer to your offer.
4) Tell a Story
GIF via GIPHY
A proposed solution to your customers’ problems is not enough to turn potential client into loyal customer. You need to tell your story with your ad that will be compelling enough to make them buy your animation service or product.
Just as The Next Scoop says, you should plan your narrative and develop it until it becomes inspirational for your target animation clients. The story can come from your own experiences or your past client’s experiences that perfectly show how your clients will benefit from paying for your work.
To add credibility to your narrative, you need to add statistics to your ad to make your solution seem more believable.
According to a bestselling author, high-performance coach, and personal development trainer, Brendon Burchard’s podcast, your story should include a narrative of struggle that ultimately ends in a solution.
This is the basis for any good story and, in turn, any good ad. The story should have a struggle, search, and success.
Now that you’re done with all the planning and strategizing, it’s time to get down to the technical aspects of making an ad.
5) Make Different Versions of Your Ad
GIF by Kim’s Convenience via GIPHY
For video ads, Brendon Burchard suggests that you create 10 square 2-minute videos in the same format for your animation ad. This kind of video is what works for businesses now.
This video includes your audience’s obstacle or struggle and the number one thing you’d like them to do. Ask yourself: what are some barriers getting in the way of your customer’s success? Then, make a video adaddressing every obstacle.
You will end up creating many versions of basically the same videos. From there, you will edit your list to the best ads. You’re going to see 10 of these, but 3-5 of them will completely blow away the others. That’s why you need to create 10 square videos. Then, add a headline above it.
6) Make Vertical Selfie Videos
After making ten videos, create three vertical 60-second videos. These can be 60-second selfie videos of you talking about your or your customer’s obstacles and ambitions, the number one thing you want them to do, and the bonus you offer if your audience does that thing you want them to do.
Remember not just to film your face but also to add animation and background music to your ads to make them engaging to watch. Run those three ads all day long as well, along with your ten 2-minute videos. These vertical videos can be places as Sponsored Ads within Instagram Stories and Messenger’s My Day.
7) Test Your Headlines and Thumbnails
When starting an online campaign, it is best to start with a few platforms, like Facebook and Instagram, before jumping to other platforms. Since Instagram is owned by Facebook, their information is integrated. This means that you can use Facebook Ads Manager to manage both your Facebook and Instagram ads.
Facebook and Instagram are the most used social media platforms. They have the most incredible data set that will give you an insight into your customers, such as your audience’s demographics, interests, behaviors, and even their most recent purchases.
The Next Scoop suggests that you start with baby steps on a smaller scale. Build small online campaigns and build yourself from there. This will help you understand how to make an online campaign and have more time to plan your animation business operations.
Now it’s time to test all the video ads you made to see which ones perform best. Testing is critical since it allows you to build your business instead of shooting and editing a video ad every day.
Once you find 3-5 ads that outperform the other ones you made, it’s time to test your ad by changing your ads’ thumbnail or headline that performs the best. Switch them out and run a thumbnail with the exact copy in the post for the video ad.
Check if your new thumbnail is attractive enough to beat your video ad. There are cases that this kind of ad testing works, and there are times that it does not.
Once you’ve got great working ads from your testing on Facebook and Instagram, it’s time for you to go cross-platform. Go hard on advertising on Facebook and Instagram, then reformat your animation ads for platforms such as Google Ad Words, YouTube Ads, and Pinterest.
Do that until you reach $10,000,000 a year before scaling to anything else, or else the creation and monitoring of your online animation ads will get too complicated. Before scaling to other platforms, test your ads, change the headlines and thumbnails first.
If you use many platforms when you’re starting will exhaust you unless you have a small team of 3 people who runs your ads the whole day each day.
Wrapping It Up
There you have it: the seven steps in running profitable animation ads for you to attract animation clients. Follow these seven steps from planning to creating ads, and you will surely attract a broad audience, target your ideal customers, and get animation clients in no time.
If you enjoyed and learned a lot from this article, share it with your colleagues who are also figuring out how to promote their products or services online.
If you are ready to get more ideas on gaining animation clients and learning about how to have a freelance animation business, join our free masterclass and download our free marketing handbook.
