Right About Now - Legendary Business Advice - Ad Gab: How to Create Effective Story Ads

Episode Date: January 6, 2021

Happy Wednesday and welcome to today's episode of Ad Gab!In this episode, Josh Hill and Reiley Clark discuss how to create effective story ads.There's a lot to unpack in just a few minutes, so they get right into it! Ad Gab today covers these questions:What's the importance of story ads?What's the difference of information you should put on a story ad verses an in-feed ad?How can you make an eye-catching ad on stories? Enjoyed today's episode? - Share it and leave a review! We love hearing from you. The Radcast is a product of Radical Company, a full service digital marketing and ad agency in Greenville, South Carolina. | Instagram for Radical: @radical_results | Instagram for The Radcast: @the.rad.cast | For more information, visit our website http://www.theradcast.com | #theradcast #adgab #radicalmarketingresults  If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, join Ryan’s newsletter https://ryanalford.com/newsletter/ to get Ferrari level advice daily for FREE.  Learn how to build a 7 figure business from your personal brand by signing up for a FREE introduction to personal branding https://ryanalford.com/personalbranding.  Learn more by visiting our website at www.ryanisright.comSubscribe to our YouTube channel  www.youtube.com/@RightAboutNowwithRyanAlford. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It has to start somewhere. It has to start sometime. What better place than here. What better time than now. You're listening to the radcast. If it's radical, we cover it. Here's your host, Ryan Alford. Hey guys, what's up? Welcome to today's ad gab episode. It's a little different today because I am leading the charge here. Ad gap. Exactly, but we still have Josh. And so that's what's keeping us. normal. And yeah, so today's ad gap is covering story content and why it's important, story ads specifically and why those are important. Josh, you know you have a lot of opinions on this, so I'm just going to let you kick it off. And first of all, like, why are story ads important? And what is the difference between a story ad and a post that you're posting to your Instagram or your Twitter or whatever? That's

also an ad. Like, what would be the difference there? Yeah. Well, first off, welcome to ad gab. Yeah, right. Your first ad gab. I know. It's a good. crazy. Wow. It's actually kind of wild. Yeah, stories. Stories are really cool because they're a lot more casual than a entire news feed post. It's way shorter. It's only up for 24 hours. Most people know this. Stories are kind of available. Right.

On most platforms now. They're on like they started on Snapchat and then Instagram kind of copied it and really kind of owned it now. Now Facebook has it. Twitter has it. LinkedIn has it for some god awful reason. but the um the instagram wasn't the most yeah those fleets did those even go any have anything even happen with those like what is i saw like three and then no one else has posted fleets anymore but that is hilarious i feel like maybe three linkedin stories here and there but that is funny just like weird way it was a very it was a very weird one that one that one came and went pretty quickly so guys i'm at my business meeting yeah but uh instagram's really cool because it's it's

become like almost more popular than the actual news feed more people are posting stories because it's like more casual you can do quick announcements right without having to do a whole post come up with the caption and everything right um and then also it's a really because of that anytime there's a lot of like people like within a certain area of a platform yeah um like that brings up a lot more opportunity to have ads there makes sense now you can have story ads which are super effective. They've been around for a few years, but like it's one of those like social media, like even when things are around for a long time, like it still takes a long time for people jump on board and for like a lot of best practices to come out. And with social media,

it's always going to change like how to use them well. Absolutely. Well, you've even said before. I mean, you feel like sometimes people aren't, you said this before, and I again, I'm pretty sure that sometimes people aren't actually using story ads like the most efficient way possible. So like, that's why I think it's good. We're getting into this today. So again, welcome to AdGab and super intense story ads, why they're important. Josh is going to take it away here. So story ads, first off, these are really great for like building awareness because when people are watching stories, they're kind of looking for entertainment.

They're seeing what their friends are up to. That's a good point. What businesses are up to. And so in between those stories you're watching as you're clicking through, scrolling through watching, like, that's where your story ad is going to appear. And so you want to kind of frame it within that context of we're trying to push our message in here in between people's, like, catching up with their friends, seeing what they're actually interested in, like, what they're there for, and we're kind of like, we're interrupting them. So you want to make it in a way of, like,

ideal, like your ad should be kind of entertaining and informative where it's like, Right. Hey, hey, look, like, real quick before you get back to your next story, like, here's this piece of information. Yeah, exactly. You have to make it like enough, eye catching enough to where someone is going to want to stop and then be like, oh, wait, what was that? And go back real quick. Because like, I feel like most, I mean, I'm putting myself here. Yeah.

Like I'm going through and I'm like click, click, click, click. And I'm just like going through. But if something obviously is catching my eye or something is, you know, giving me information that I'm actually wanting, I'm like, oh, wait, I need to go back. Yeah. And then, you know, you click the back button. But if you're not making it eye catching, no one's going to hit back. That's kind of the key is like when you're making eye.

catching, you got to think, like, a lot of people are like, oh, it's an eye-catching image. That'll work. It's like, no, it needs to be vertical. It needs to fill the entire story screen. And it has to have, like, either the picture of the product, your logo, like, something bright. And, like, the point of the message has to be there immediately. Right. If it's a video, if it's a video, there should be no waiting. There should be no fading in from black, no, like, build up. It needs to be there immediately. Because, like, other. otherwise I'm going to click past it. Everyone else is because that's kind of what stories are. It's rapid fire. You're just throwing it in there and you're like stopping the rotating door almost.

Right. Right. So what are ways to make things that are more eye-catching? I mean, you know, do you feel like it's something that is with animation graphics? You know, do you throw in like something that's super, you know, animated you're doing in After Effects? Or like, you know, what, what's the game plan to make it feel like, okay, I'm going to stop on the story at it. And now like, pay attention to it. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of really cool things you can do. You can really lean into it being like an interesting photograph that's like really immersive. Right. Have a video that has something interesting in it right away.

I've seen like cool ones where it's like a coffee shop and it's just like a big splashing coffee mug right away. Or like I wouldn't win big Burger King did that like moldy wopper. Like you're picking through it and it's just a full screen like you couldn't even see it. It was like half the burger, but it was taking up the whole screen of your phone. And so it's just a big, massive moldy wopper on your phone. Like, that's eye-catching. Absolutely. But I see, I see a lot of other ones where it's like, I've got my phone here,

where it's like a horizontal image where it's part of your phone and there's like a big glob of text at the bottom. I'm not going to look at that. I think it's kind of, it's boring to me. Right. I've got, I've said this before. I've got memes to see. I've got friends to see. I got friends to stock.

No, exactly, exactly. There's a lot of things to catch up there. Yeah, but also using big text in graphics is really great. Okay. The captions are okay. But, and like when you're in your Facebook ads manager too for people actually like getting and running it, like you need to, like I personally set up an entire different ad set where it's like that is dedicated to stories. Okay. Instead of, I know a lot of people who are in that kind of like world are like,

you know, there's like automatic placements where they'll put it on your news feed, they'll put it on your story, stuff like that. If you are doing that, make sure you're editing your post to be cropped when it's on the story placement, like edit it for that. You want to optimize for where it's going and not just kind of like throwing it up and hoping it works. Yeah, you can't just like, I mean, you can't just like throw it out there and like kind of just say, oh, this one size fits all and then expect it to have like great results.

Right. No, it's a really good point. How do you feel like people should, like after they post the story, do you feel like it's worth it to have all the information on one, you know, story? Do you feel like it's something that should be broken down? Like, what have you seen that's the most efficient way to provide information, but not so overwhelming that people are like, okay, there's so much stuff on here. I'm not going to, like, I'm not going to take the time to read. You know what I mean? Like, how do you really break that down?

I think you want to make it like bite sides. like really this stories especially are really digestible like it's a snack it's not your meal like this is where you want to have just like it's like a sample you want to have like one point i think of like uh i think of like old like car commercials right where it'll be like the all new redesigned Toyota Camry and then they're like the only feature they'll call out in the ad of a 30 second like TV spot is like we have a new Bluetooth system and then it's like they have nothing about like the handling performance whatever. It's a good point because they make it feel so intense and so like revolutionary.

It's like, well, I mean, it's good marketing. But it's like, you know, it's like it's like the wording. I mean, to your point about like the random Bluetooth or whether it's like we have these new kind of like textual seats that are leather. And like it's like, okay, actually it's just leather seats that are just in a car, but like you made it sound cool. Like you know what I mean, you got to think about that. Yeah.

Like you want to think like narratively it's like they're only kind of calling out one point. and they're not going they're not reading out the list of features you're getting so like i know with iphone like apple's always a big case study of stuff when they camp the ipod it's like exactly it's this many songs in your pocket it's not a oh we've got storage this much battery life you can put pictures on it too you can do this too you can blah blah blah it's like no like you can put music on it and that's all they said like it's great you want to be to the point because you're like again you're in your stories your whopping guy but there are a lot of cool ways to like add more in You can do if you need to put in more information.

I've seen some really cool things where people do a video where it's like you have your one piece of information at the front. Yeah. And then if people stick around to watch it, you can have some more later on. But like you want to have your. Yeah, that's a good point. You want to have your key message. This is with social media advertising.

Like I'm not telling you how to make commercials right now. I'm trying to like YouTube videos or whatever. Like have your point. This is just your story. Right at the beginning. Right at the beginning and that's it. Right. Like anything.

extra is for the people who are really, really interested. Because everyone else is not going to watch it. That's a good point. And then another cool thing you can do, like you can do carousels, which is like multiple slides per ad. I've seen some where people are like, hey, here's a heads up, screenshot this next message. And it'll be like, I've seen it for like a bar. It's like, here's the upcoming bands.

Like here's the upcoming events for the week. Or it's like, here's a coupon screenshot it so you can use it at checkout. out. That's a really effective way to get more information too. Right, right, right. No, I hear you. I hear you. Okay. So if you were to wrap this up, right? Like if you were to say, you know, this is something that obviously should be done by any brand that's on Instagram, social media, Twitter, Snapchat, LinkedIn. Yeah. Whatever it is, right? You know, LinkedIn stories. But, you know, apart from that, what would be the thing you to, like, if we had to wrap this up and say it in just like a few really good words? What would be your words of like, encouragement of posting an Instagram. Yeah.

Or sorry, I keep saying Instagram because I'm just, I feel like I use Instagram stories all the time. So I just immediately go to like Instagram stories are like the, this is the bread and butter of the, it's the main course of the story game. Absolutely, absolutely. We haven't even said Facebook yet. Facebook stories right there. They exist.

Like, yeah. But anyway, how would you, what would you use to? Um, I would say make it, make it entertaining if you can. Like that doesn't have to, I know people get. get tied up with that word. Entertaining does not necessarily mean funny or like entertaining can be beautiful. It can be serious. It can be anything.

It just provides entertainment and it's like draws interest. And then also like really simple. Just keep it like keep it where it's like leave you want to like stories is kind of like a build interest but like leave them wanting more. Right. You kind of like you don't build interest by satisfying the. someone's entire curiosity. Right. Then they are like, they're done at that point.

No, right, right, right. So I think, I think that's kind of the key to like, the key approach to stories. It's just kind of like, keep it simple, keep it interesting. And that's honestly, like, kind of, that's kind of it. That's kind of it. You can keep it really casual. You don't have to be serious. You don't have to overthink it.

You can be, you can make it really organic. You can, I've seen major brands do like a selfie iPhone video that looks like it's from an old phone. Interesting. It's still really effective. Right, right, right. Well, I mean, I think this is good. And obviously, I think we've been really developing as, you know, part of ad gap, just

like really getting into really technical social media kind of advertising tactics. And I think this is something that hopefully we'll see more in 2021, more brands using Instagram ads and Instagram stories ads specifically and just other story ads, other story platforms, things like that to create more engagement. So hopefully that's something we see more of. I know this was our super ad gabs are super quick, super technical, nitty-gritty kind of talk, part of the radcast. But no, Josh, this is great. And I love being on this.

This is our first ones. This is awesome. This is like a great little intro here. We're talking about, you know, story ads. Yeah. Happy to have you on here. Thank you. I'm going to act like the host now.

No, absolutely. Take it away, Josh. Take it away. I'll let you close it out, dude. Cool. Well, thanks for listening. If you guys have any questions, you can find us on social media. at Josh Chill and I don't know what you're at is but whatever it's okay it's all right I appreciate

we're on LinkedIn we're on Instagram we're everywhere we've got I don't know find us somewhere yeah yeah if you guys are watching this hopefully you guys are technically savvy so you can figure it out I don't know you're fine yeah well I'll get I'll give you our social media so our social media channels you can find the radcast at the radcast dot com Instagram at the dot rad dot cast um Instagram The Radcast is a product of Radical Company. So you can look up Radical at Radical Results on Instagram and visit us online as well at RadicalCompany.com. And we will see you tomorrow when we release Open Mic.

We'll be back with me and Josh on that. We'll see you soon. Yo, guys, what's up, Ryan Alford here? Thanks so much for listening. Really appreciate it. But do us a favor. If you've been enjoying the Radcast, you need to share the word with a friend or anyone else.

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