This simple change in Facebook Ad images increased our CTR by 150%
I was the Copywriter for an E-Commerce Hair & Skin Care company, and this simple change to all the images and videos we used for Facebook Ads increased our CTR and RoAS by a huge margin. I will talk about the changes we made and show you the before v/s after images.
You know David Ogilvy.
And if you are from the marketing industry, I am sure you’ve heard of his Confessions Of An Advertising Man. If not, here’s a little information and my review of the book.
In his book, Ogilvy mentions that he’s baffled by other Copywriters’ decision to put white text on a black background. In newspapers, books, webpages, we are used to reading black text on a white background. We are comfortable with it. Then why would someone add white text on dark background in their ads? That’s a brilliant question!
But well, things change with time. Designs change with time. Look at Apple ads, for instance. The majority of their ads have white text on colored backgrounds. And they always do well, don’t they? So, I stopped worrying about text colors. I took creative liberties with different styles, colors, and themes while writing my ads.
Until the day my ads started underperforming.
Last year, I took charge as a Copywriter for a new Hair & Skin Care E-Commerce company. They wanted me to strategize and design their Facebook and Instagram ads to reach new customers.
I was thrilled because the products looked beautiful. And you can take so much liberty with Hair Care and Skin Care products. With that, I set out to design the most creative graphics and copies I ever did. Each ad copy was rife with colors and gradients. But we couldn’t get good conversions on the ads. The overall RoAS of the campaign dropped from 4 to almost 3.
We ran a few ads with a white background, and this was the result. Below is the ad we started with.👇
As you can see, the product blended into the white background, and it looks blurred. Our target audience is on the phone, scrolling through Facebook or Instagram feeds. They must find our ads intriguing enough to stop scrolling and notice the product, offer, etc. And this ad image is not good!
So, we switched to dark backgrounds. Here’s an example of an ad I created (sorry, I had to blur out a few details):
It does seem like a good ad considering the product is white. But, we didn’t receive good results on this. The target audience was definitely noticing the ad, but people weren’t spending time reading it or clicking on it.
That’s when the old rule came into the limelight: back text + white background.
We started creating several images and videos with light-colored backgrounds and dark-colored texts. And guess what? Yes, the CTR and RoAS increased.
For example, the RoAS of the ad above was 3.1, and the RoAS of the ad below was 4.7.
Remember this before your ad hits the platform if you’re a copywriter, graphic designer, or Founder.
In summary,
I took charge as a Copywriter for a new Hair & Skin Care E-Commerce company. They wanted me to strategize and design their Facebook and Instagram ads to reach new customers.
We ran a few ads with a white background, and the product blended into the background, and it didn’t look good. The dark background with white text looked good, but we didn’t receive good results.
Finally, we started creating images and videos with light-colored backgrounds and dark-colored texts. And guess what? The CTR and RoAS improved. For one campaign, it went from 3.1 to 4.7.
Did you ever try testing your ads by changing the background colors? If yes, I would LOVE to hear about your experience in the comments.
