🚀 Facebook For Writers: How To Create Free Ad Images With Canva 💅
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- Опубликовано: 21 июл 2024
- This tutorial on how to use Canva to make free ad images for Facebook will show writers how they can turn their book covers into effective ads.
00:00 Intro
02:17 Use Your Book Cover In The Ad
09:02 Creating A Background For Your Ad
12:56 Using Canva Filters
14:17 Twelve Free Graphic Design Tools For Authors
19:00 The Three Key Elements Of Effective Ad Design
20:47 Importance of Font Choices on Price Tags
23:45 Contrast Colors To Make Something Really Pop
25:40 Dialing In The Genre With A Tagline
26:55 Little Finessing Touches Which Make An Ad More Pro
28:57 Converting Your Ad Into Other Formats
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Hello, this was really helpful. Should you also have a CTA (call to action) as well?
Strictly speaking, yes, having a CTA in your image and ad text - particularly one that lines up with your goals and your chosen campaign objective - is the ideal. However, sometimes that can make your image too busy so there can be a trade off. It's always good to test various approaches and see what your own audience responds to best, but I've personally found that a big 'ol price discount is hooky enough to act as its own call to action and adding a BUY NOW button or whatever didn't add anything - the price tag is often designed like that kind of button anyway so the additional CTA became superfluous for me and just having the large price tag tested better, especially when there was an attractive discount to highlight. I will also stress that discount in the ad text, where I usually use a more standard CTA for reinforcement (e.g. "Download on Kindle for just 99¢.").
I am aware of the "don't use your cover" advice - I think someone did a test and determined that having the cover *did* reduce the click-through BUT increased the sales per click. Presumably because those who clicked knew they were heading for a book page so were more likely to buy.
I've done a huge amount of testing on this and I can't speak to anyone else's data but mine very clearly shows that once you factor in conversion that ads with book covers almost always perform better - and that's a very clear pattern I've seen across multiple genres. But feel free to test and compare yourself.
Sir. I have been devouring your work (books and videos) since I discovered you on YT. As a KDP newbie who is about to publish his first novel (in a week!), I can't thank you enough for the quality, humor and straightforward approach. These longer videos make it easier to follow along, plus you have a personal style that makes it feel totally doable and fun. Although you're making me miss tilting a few at a pub. Keep it up!
*clink*
😭
Thanks David, that's very helpful. I always like to see how people put their visuals together for ads, it's quite inspiring. I'm a huge Canva fan, have used the Pro version off and on over the years and as I'm about to start FB advertising again I think I need to go Pro!
I'm from Denmark. I know exactly what you mean at 22:12. Great video!
Brilliant. Learning so much from you
Thank you David - a very interesting video. I found you as I am currently reading your book Amazon Decoded which I thoroughly recommend to others!
Been using Canva for a couple of years. But I learned some new stuff with this vid. Thanks.
David, missed your videos, updates. Looking forward to seeing more. Glad to hear that more updates are coming soon. Cheers!
Lots of excellent information that's totally on-target for authors who advertise.
Holy Smokers David Gaughran; this was an awesome video! I linked through your newsletter and really appreciate this. I also appreciated your previous newsletter that explained that you were still alive. Whew. So now I have all the tools to create my first Facebook ad. So terrifyingly exciting! *thinks a mo* Or I could spend the morning linking to your videos...
Just subbed thanks for the tips!
Thanks to you, I designed a decent ad for my first release with minimal frustration. I'm so excited!
Huzzah!
Wow, I really feel better able to handle ad creation now, THANK YOU! I particularly like the idea to blow up the image from your book’s background to form the background of the ad. So simple!
Thanks! Make sure to check out this video which goes into that method of using the cover art as background in much more detail: ruclips.net/video/Flj_EPEcLCg/видео.html
Thanks!
This has been really helpful! Thank you so much. Don't say you don't have a design bone in your body.
Perhaps a heel spur
Thank you for the video and walking us through your ideas as you come up with them!
Very useful tips - thanks!
Oh and to reply about using people in the background, my main tip would be to be careful of contrast - so that the book doesn't get lost in the background and still pops. So look at the palette of your cover, and then find a background shot with a matching but contrasting palette, if that makes sense. Filters can help also. Drop shadows around the cover can help it pop. Little things like that will help you handle any kind of busy background.
After reading your newsletter, I am now on the edge on whether I should get stencil or stay with canva🙈
Go with Canva if you are unsure. You can start with the free plan - which is really comprehensive anyway. Unless you are one of those cases I mentioned in my email (do a high volume of social media graphics and want the most efficient solution) then I think Canva is the clear winner. But if you purchase Stencil via AppSumo you can try it and return it if you don't like it for a full refund, within 60 days. So you have options. But Canva is the winner, for me.
Oops you said you are already with Canva. I'd stick with them. If you are curious about the paid version, I think I'll do a video breakdown soon of free vs. paid features if you are curious.
@@DavidGaughran Thank you for the reply. A comparison would be great, I think I like how I can make templates and resize with premium, but I am still not sure whether I will use it enough to justify the cost. My book business is still tiny.
It would be great to know which function of pro you use most frequently and how your workflow is.
Thank you for making all these videos and books!
Very helpful, thank you! I hope to be able to do mine after seeing this. However, I think this was a rare case where the method didn't work. The original cover is already a kind of "ad" that presents three covers on one background. And you're not selling this value proposition (3 books!) in your ad (unlike the original cover, which isn't very visible). Maybe in this case, it would work better if you just zoomed in on the bottom part of the original composition with the three covers.
If it was me, I'd probably test a few vastly different approaches - just to cover all bases - but the author happily reports it is performing well. I'm OCD enough that I often end up making three or four variations and testing each. Funniest part? My favorite rarely wins 😅
Loved the video - so much great info. My question is what if you are running ads on a full-priced book and, therefore, there is no enticing offer? Do you not recommend running FB ads for full price?
I think that topic is probably worth a video on its own, but let me split my short-version answer into two:
1) Advertising full price books is certainly possible, but quite tricky - especially when you are learning the ropes with Facebook. I definitely recommend starting with discounts as price offers are often the most compelling.
2) Existing readers are the most inclined to pay full price for your books so the very best way to sell lots and lots of full price books is to develop a strong and healthy author platform - particularly your mailing list.
@@DavidGaughran Thanks for the reply! Looking forward to the video on the topic!!!!!
Great video. I've noticed that FB ad graphics rarely have a call to action, such as "Order now." And only some text in ads have a call to action. Many ads are merely information. Shouldn't ads spur the viewer to action? Or is this something FB discourages?
Text in ads WAS actively discouraged by Facebook at various times in the past - to the extent that they would actually throttle your ad (making clicks super expensive) or reject it altogether if it had too much text. These days, that restriction is gone but Facebook strongly advises to keep text to a minimum as that performs much better. My own experience tracks that also. I do see some CTAs in ads though - a button with DOWNLOAD on it or something like that. And you could argue that a price tag is basically a quasi-CTA all on its own if it is a heavy discount - that's how I view it at least. Keep in mind that Facebook ad images tend to be paired with text and that's where you are more likely to see a CTA. That's certainly what I do, and what I get best results with (but you are always free to test the alternative!). Also keep in mind that there are a couple of other places (like the headline + description of the ad, below the image) that are strong candidates for a CTA. Finally, you get to add a CTA button to all Facebook ads these days as part of the ad creation process - which is highly visible to users and sits just below the image. And all those thing - in my experience - are better places for a CTA, even if you are doing more than one.
Great info. Not sure if you have a video on this, but would you ever use a video(book trailer) as a facebook ad? or do you stick to just image ads?
I generally recommend learning the ropes with a simple image ad first, pointing to Amazon, to minimize variables while you test things like targeting and ad copy and so on - even aside from the learning curve with video for most people. But there are some really cool things you can do when you start playing with video ads. An advanced strategy I like to use with video is to do an Awareness campaign and push it out to a wide audience with more of a teaser approach, and then run a re-targeting campaign aimed at anyone who has engaged a certain amount with the video. You can do that approach with images too but the great thing about video is FB gives you all sorts of retargeting options, so you can segment out an audience which has watched a certain percentage of the video, so you know they are great targets for a harder-sell ad. Producing a good video can be a lot harder than making a nice image though.
@@DavidGaughran Thanks David. That's good info!! I create videos so my first thought is always to start with videos. But probably best to start with an image until I get my feet wet.