Nowadays, there are so many different ways to grab users' attention in your ad campaign that you really want to make it stand out. As you know, there are going to be many ads on a publisher website, so you want to make sure a good number of users notice yours and get interested in it.
What you want to do to get high click-through rates (CTRs) is optimizing your creatives in the ad campaign. Creatives are simply ways to make your ads stand out. In this article, we have collected all the useful information you need to optimize your creatives and really grab all the attention.
What are Creatives in Advertising for Affiliate Products
As an affiliate, you should constantly be looking for new ways to drive traffic to the affiliate products you are promoting or your affiliate website. What better way to grab that attention than to start an ad campaign? For your ad campaign, things are not going to look that easy, since the competition is super tense, especially right now in 2022. So you should be looking to optimize your ad campaigns with creatives.
Creatives are the strategies you can use to make your ads more creative. There are several types of creatives, the same way that we have different types of ads:
- Textual. These creatives can be used anywhere, including native ads, email campaigns, etc. Usually, these creatives provoke the curiosity of the visitor or prompts them to do something.
- Images. Images on ad banners are great, but they are not the most effective, since they are only static and don’t grab the attention of all the users.
- Animations. These are fairly new and amazing types of creatives. Even though making them might be a little challenging, the results are more rewarding than other types.
What to Consider When Making Creatives as an Affiliate
You know that the ads you will be creating should be a little different from ads that other advertisers create, since you are an affiliate, not the main company or business. That is actually good news, because you can benefit from this. Here are some points about creatives for affiliate marketers.
It is self explanatory that if you have an advertisement with static images, there’s a good chance nobody will ever notice it. Take a look at the examples below.
Don’t ever assume that by putting lots of random information in an ad, you will get more users. That never works. Instead, include the most important information in the ad that will get users to notice you. Don’t worry, you can always include more information in the page you redirect users to, for users who are actually interested.
Look at the ad below. The company has highlighted the most important information with the green color, just to pique your curiosity.
For sure you have once or twice come across ads that are built into the website. You’re watching YouTube or other websites, and you notice that one of the content boxes is actually an advertisement. This is one of the best ways to integrate your ads into a publisher’s website or get more clicks as a publisher. Take a look at the example below. This is from Dribbble and SquareSpace’s ad is just built into other designs on the platform.
You would definitely notice that it’s an advertisement, but it will grab much more attention than if there was an ad on the sidebar.
Other businesses could use this, but the good news is that they only occasionally do. As an affiliate, you can always drop some coupons or discount codes or even your own promo codes on banner ads. This will grab the attention of any customer if you have attractive affiliate branding. Keep in mind, that the strategies mentioned above are just the basics. Coupons are the real game changer.
This is usually the most important part of the whole display ad or any other type of ad you want to use to promote your affiliate product. People want to know that their action is required for something. This means that they probably won’t pay much attention to an ad that is just playing on its own for itself. Give users something to look out for, like “Grab this deal” or “Start your journey.” Calls to action of this type will make users understand what to exactly look for on the page you’re trying to advertise.
So you did all of that and you managed to get your audience to your affiliate landing page. Now it’s your time to shine. Use some power words on your copies to keep the visitors interested and increase your conversion rate. Don’t attack them with lots of information all at once. Instead, show them some relevant visuals of what your affiliate brand is all about, what you are trying to sell, and where they can shop or learn more information.
Another type of page you can redirect people who click on your ad to are blog post articles. Here are some ideas for effective blog post articles that can gain the attention of your users.
- A "Top products…" list article that lists the best products related to the ad you were promoting so the users who end up there are going to actually be interested.
- A blog post about how to do something related to your niche.
- Blog post about a sale you’re doing on seasonal or holiday-special offers to encourage people to buy that product with your link.
Best Tools for Making Creatives for Ad Campaigns
As mentioned before, some types of creatives might not be easy to make, especially if you don’t want to spend lots of time on it, and even more, if you are not comfortable using graphic design software. Here are some super easy tools anyone can use for making creatives.
Canva
Canva is the #1 most popular and useful tools for quick graphic designs for your affiliate needs. Here is how it works. You can sign up and use the ready-made templates to create your offers. However, if you want to get more out of Canva to create even better and more unique designs, you can purchase the subscription, which starts from $12.99 a month. Starting out with Canva is not super hard, and you can learn all about it by a simple YouTube tutorial. You can even make animations in Canva, which makes it a versatile tool.
Powtoons
Even though Canva is pretty good when it comes to creating animations, especially instant ones, we still have another tool if you’re wanting something more specialized for your animation needs. Powtoons is a platform specialized in creating animations of all types, explainer videos, marketing animations, etc. There are so many templates to choose from, and you even get a free trial. Everything is so user-friendly on this platform, and you can get started with a template in less than a minute. If you want the pro version, you can always start at $89 a month.
Unsplash
If you’re thinking about where you can get stock photos from, no worries because there is a whole big directory of stock photos on Unsplash. You can enter the website and search for what you are looking for. Sometimes, the images require you to credit the photographer or the creator, but generally, these stock photos are free.
Where to Get Ideas for Creatives
You might be asking yourself, now that you’re on the path to making your creatives, how can you be even more creative to stand out. Here are some suggestions.
- Follow design trends. One of the easiest ways to find creatives is following designers, and what better platform than Dribbble. You can easily search for ‘advertisements’ or ‘creatives’ and look at the designs to get inspired.
- Get knowledgeable on user experience design. User experience design is the basis of optimizing your ad campaigns. Keep asking yourself the question: What does my audience want to see?
- Look at competitors. It’s always rewarding to watch your competitors and check where they got their inspirations from, and how their numbers are looking. Compare yourself with them and try to make your ads even more outstanding.
Examples of Creatives in Different Affiliate Niches
In this section, we thought of adding some examples for you to know what to look out for the creatives of each niche. Take a look at the example below from gambling. One common thing that you will be noticing a lot in gambling ads is the CTA. Usually there is a CTA that says ‘Play now’ or ‘Start Winning’ on all gambling or betting ads. Some others try to include an example of a big win you could have if you deposited money on a specific gambling website. Some other make it interactive and ask you to use a slot machine, and when your 3 trials are over, they invite you over to their website.
For another one of the most profitable niches out there, ads usually contain not just good visuals of the products trying to be sold, but also a discount number on huge fonts, plus a discount code or promo code they can apply while checkout. These ads are very common and very effective too, especially if they are related to seasonal discounts or events.
Even though these are just examples, each niche has its own creatives you can optimize your ad campaigns with. Just look around and see what is the most effective for your niche.
Conclusion
This article has put forth some essential information on how to optimize your ad campaigns as an affiliate. You can always check how ad networks work and how you can use them to make money. Learning more about creatives and knowing how to make money off ads on your website can lead to more cash generation. There are all types of ads you could also be focusing on, like push notifications, in-page push ads, popunders, and videos. Make sure you are also using the right networks for your ad campaigns. Keep in mind that not all networks are suitable for promoting your content, as they might downgrade your reputation and show your ads on irrelevant websites. So if your CTR is low, one of the reasons could be that your ad network is also not the correct one. Don’t be afraid of trying different ads and comparing them. The effort always pays off.
