Right About Now with Ryan Alford - 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. 

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. Here's your host, Ryan Alford. and why it's important story ads specifically and why those are important um josh you know you have a lot of opinions on this so i'm just gonna let you kick it off and um 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 yeahab. Yeah, right. Your first AdGab. I know. It's crazy. Wow. It's actually kind of wild. Yeah. Stories. Stories are really cool because they're a lot more casual than a entire newsfeed post. It's way shorter. It's only up for 24 hours. Most people know this.

Stories are kind of available on most platforms now. They started on Snapchatchat and then instagram kind of copied it and really kind of owned it now um now facebook has it twitter has it linkedin has it for some god-awful reason but the um the instagram ones are the most yeah those fleets did those even go anywhere have anything even happened 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 a weird way it was very it was a very weird one that that one that one came and went

my business meeting yeah but um instagram's really cool because 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's still takes a long time for people to jump on board and for like a lot of best practices to come out and um 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 on adgab 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 yeah and uh super intense story ads why they're important josh's gonna 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 at 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 right right 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 like here's this piece of information. Yeah, exactly.

You have to see later, man. 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. Like I'm going through and I'm like, click, click, click, click, click. And I'm just like going through. But if something obviously is catching my eye or something is, you know 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

yeah no one's gonna hit back that's kind of the key is like when you're making eye-catching you gotta think like 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 the 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 otherwise i'm going to click past it everyone else is because that's kind of what stories are is there 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 um 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 gonna stop on the story ad and now like pay attention to it yeah i mean it's there's a lot of really cool things you can do um you can really lean into it being like an interesting photograph that's like really immersive right um have a video that has something interesting in it right away um 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 um i wouldn't

when big burger king did that like oh yeah wopper like you're kicking through and it's just a full screen like you couldn't even see it was like half the burger but it was it was taking up the whole screen of your phone and so it's just a big massive moldy whopper on your phone like that's eye-catching absolutely um 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 it's like i'm not gonna 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 no i got friends to stalk no exactly exactly there's a lot there's a lot of things to catch up there yeah but like also using big text in graphics is really great. Okay. The captions are okay.

But, um, and like when you're in your Facebook ads manager too, for people actually like getting in 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 newsfeed. They'll put it on your story, stuff like that. If you are doing 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 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 um like when 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 gonna like i'm not gonna 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 size 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 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 textural 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 like it's like i mean you gotta 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 can't 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 very you want to be to the point because you're like again you're in your Cause you're like, again, you're in your stories, you're walking guy, but there are a lot of cool ways to like add more in.

Like you can do, if you need to put in more information, um, 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, yeah, that's a good point. You want to have your key message. This is what social media advertising like. Oh, yeah. I'm not telling you how to make commercials right now. YouTube videos or whatever.

Like exactly. Have your point. This is just 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 um another cool thing you can do like you can do

carousels which is like multiple slides per ad um 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. 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 main course of the story game. Absolutely. Absolutely. We haven't even said Facebook yet. Facebook stories right there.

They exist. Yeah. But anyway, how would you, what would you use to? I would say make it entertaining if you can. Like that doesn't have to, I know people 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 it's kind of like you don't build interest by

satisfying someone's entire curiosity right like then they are like they're done at that point no right right right no i think i think that's kind of the key to like the key approach to stories just kind of like keep it simple keep it interesting and that's honestly like kind of that's kind of it like 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 iPhone. Interesting. It's still really effective.

Right, right, right. Well, I mean, I think this is good. Obviously, I think we've been really developing as part of AdGap, 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 um but no josh uh this is great and i love being on this our first ones this is awesome this is like a great little uh intro here we're talking about you know story ads yeah happy to have you on here i feel like i'm gonna act like the host now no absolutely take it away josh take it away i'll let you 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 um at josh chill and i don't know your what your at is but it's okay it's all right i appreciate it 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 medias so our social media channels you can find the radcast at the radcast.com instagram at the dot rad dot cast um instagram uh the radcast is a product of radical company so you can look up um 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. See ya. Yo, guys. What's up? Ryan Alford here. Thanks so much for listening. Really appreciate it. But do us a favor.

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