How to make an ad that converts

When every scroll, click, and glance counts, crafting an effective ad has never been more competitive. Whether you're an illustrator, a designer, or a marketer, understanding the intricate dance between creativity and strategy is the key to standing out and converting your audience.

This guide isn't about abstract theories or nebulous concepts. It's a practical, step-by-step guide through the world of ad creation. We want to equip you with the tools, insights, and strategies to craft ads that inspire action. 

We'll delve into the intricacies of understanding your potential clients, shaping a clear message, choosing the right platform, and harnessing the power of collaboration. Whether you're a seasoned professional or just starting your creative journey, you'll find valuable insights to help you succeed.

8 steps to making an ad

One of the fundamental pillars of crafting a successful advertisement is a deep understanding of your target audience. Your ability to resonate with, connect to, and ultimately influence your audience hinges on your knowledge of their needs, preferences, and behaviors.

Knowing your market is the first step toward making an ad that converts, so let’s start by understanding who you are talking to in your advertising and what they want to hear from you. The customer, after all, is always right (right?)

Know your customers

Understanding your audience allows you to create content relevant to their lives, needs, and desires. Instead of taking a one-size-fits-all approach, you can tailor your ad to specific demographics, behaviors, and interests, increasing the chances of your message reaching the right people.

For instance, knowing your audience's pain points, aspirations, and values means you can craft an emotionally resonant ad. Emotional connections drive action and loyalty (cue every emotionally devastating lost dog or pet ‘find your way home’ ad of all time).

For instance, if you're creating an advert for an educational program, like after-school tutorials, you should consider who the target market is. It would be easy to think the market is students. But the target market for after-school tutorials could also include parents or teachers who want to enroll their children or pupils. They're likely the ones who will follow up on the advert and, most importantly, pay for the lessons.

Targeting the right audience also goes a long way toward saving resources. By targeting the right people, you can allocate your budget better, saving you precious time and money. Here are a few tips for conducting audience research and creating customer personas:

• Surveys and questionnaires: Use online surveys and questionnaires to gather insights directly from your existing customer base or potential customers. Ask about their preferences, pain points, and what influences their decisions.
• Social media listening: Good ads respond to the time, so monitor social media platforms to understand the conversations, trends, and sentiments relevant to your industry or niche.
• Competitor analysis: Study your competitors. Who are they targeting, and how are they engaging their audience?
• Data analytics: Leverage data analytics to gather quantitative insights about your audience's behavior. Track website visits, click-through rates, and conversion data to identify patterns.
• Create customer personas: Once you've gathered everything, start creating ideal customer personas (ICPs)—detailed, fictional representations of your ideal customers.

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Define your ad's purpose and message

Now that we know who we’re talking to, let’s work out what we want to say and how your client will understand it. It starts with defining a clear purpose and crafting a concise message across every aspect of your communications:

• Engaging design: Your audience's preferences should guide the visual elements of your ad. For instance, if you're targeting a younger demographic, keep it relatable and vibrant, while an older audience may respond better to a more classic, mature aesthetic.
• Tailored message: Craft your ad's message to address your audience's pain points and aspirations, but use a language and tone that resonates with them. If your audience values humor, say something they’ll find funny. Keep things formal if they’re looking for reliable professionalism.

Before you start crafting your ad, it's crucial to define your goals. Are you aiming to generate leads, increase sales, boost brand awareness, or drive traffic to your website? Clearly identifying your objective ensures that every aspect of your ad—from design to copy—aligns with the intended outcome. This clarity helps you focus your creative efforts and resources on achieving a specific result, making your ad more effective and your strategy more streamlined.

Once your goals are set, the next step is establishing measurable key performance indicators (KPIs) that will allow you to track the success of your ad. KPIs are the metrics that reflect your progress toward your goal. For instance, if your goal is to drive sales, you might monitor metrics like conversion rate, cost per acquisition (CPA), or return on ad spend (ROAS). If brand awareness is your target, you might focus on metrics such as reach, impressions, or brand recall. 

Choose the right platform

The choice of advertising platform is a pivotal decision that can make or break your ad campaign. It profoundly influences your design, targeting options, and overall strategy. And it informs the types of ads you’ll be working on.

"The medium is the message"—Marshall McLuhan

Your platform dictates the canvas on which your ad will be displayed. Whether it's social media channels, print, digital, or any other medium, each has design considerations. 

Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of different advertising channels will help you make an informed choice. Consider the pros and cons of social media, print, and digital advertising:

Social media 

• Strengths: High user engagement, precise audience targeting, and the ability to leverage social sharing for organic reach.
• Weaknesses: Crowded space, user ad fatigue, and evolving algorithms that can affect visibility.

Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and X (formerly Twitter) offer visually rich ad formats. Your design must be attention-grabbing and fit seamlessly into the user's feed. Images and videos often take center stage, demanding high-quality visuals and compelling storytelling.

Oreo's Dunk in the Dark (2013) campaign on Twitter did this really well:

During the 2013 Super Bowl blackout, Oreo seized the moment with a clever, real-time tweet. Their simple message, "You can still dunk in the dark," went viral, showcasing the power of timeliness and relevance on social media.

Power out? No problem. pic.twitter.com/dnQ7pOgC

— OREO Cookie (@Oreo) February 4, 2013

Print

• Strengths: Tangible, enduring presence, often trusted by readers, and an opportunity for creative, visually impactful design.
• Weaknesses: Limited reach, inability to track engagement, and difficulty in A/B testing variations.

Print advertising in magazines, newspapers, or billboards relies on static visuals. Design elements must be striking and legible and convey the message effectively within a fixed space.

Apple's Shot on iPhone campaign:

Apple's Shot on iPhone print campaign showcased stunning user-generated photography. These ads leveraged the beauty of print to feature captivating visuals and authentic stories.

Digital 

• Strengths: Wide reach, real-time performance tracking, and the ability to personalize content based on user behavior.
• Weaknesses: Ad blockers, banner blindness, and competition for user attention in a cluttered online space.

Digital advertising encompasses various formats, from banner ads to interactive web experiences. Here, design versatility is key. Interactive elements, animations, and responsive designs may be necessary to engage users effectively.

We love how Nike did this in their Dream Crazy campaign:

Nike's ad featuring Colin Kaepernick sparked conversations and controversy. By embracing digital channels, they reached a global audience and created a powerful, polarizing message that resonated with their brand ethos.

Choosing the right platform is a strategic decision that should align with your campaign objectives, target audience, and budget. Fortunately, Linearity's intuitive software revolutionizes how marketing teams conceptualize and design, cutting design time by half. 

With Linearity Curve, the design process is intuitive and enjoyable. For this tutorial, we'll customize a Linearity Curve design template on a MacBook.

Create a new document in Curve

In Linearity Curve, start a new project and select the Artboard size that suits your channel.

From square Instagram stories to portrait-orientation Facebook posts, Linearity has all the formats you need set up in advance, making the start of your advertising process easy, fast, and fun.  Remember, the digital format allows for flexibility in layout and design, so feel free to experiment.

To move even quicker, we’ll make an advert for Instagram using one of Linearity’s template designs. We tried the Pastel Circles template, one of the thousands of free Linearity Curve templates available.

We started with the Instagram post template, but within this template design, there are options for Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and even LinkedIn. Select the correct template design for your purposes. 

In case you didn’t know, with Linearity Move’s latest update, your animations can now include video content—an exciting new feature that takes your creative projects to the next level. Do you want to highlight a product, share a brand story, or create engaging social media posts? Combining vector animations with video clips will make your message more impactful.

What’s even better? Everything happens within the same platform. No more juggling multiple tools or dealing with complex workflows—Linearity Move’s video support streamlines your creative process, keeping it smooth, fast, and consistent. Your creativity is no longer limited to static designs. 

Customize the template

Linearity Curve’s templates are 100% customizable, so start by tailoring the template you’ve selected to your brand. 

How to download Linearity Curve templates

• Click Open Template, and your chosen design will download.
• Open the file in your Mac (or iPad) Downloads folder.
• With Linearity Curve installed, the template appears in your Linearity Cloud Gallery.
• No Linearity Curve yet? Create your Linearity Account and get started for free.

Take a look at two social media ad templates below that will work great as the base for your adverts:

Update your colors

The pastel colors and sophisticated, book-ish fonts used in the Pastel Circles template will perfectly fit our Beyond Books brand and planned campaign. The advertising tone and voice will resonate with the bookstore's slightly older, more educated customer base.  

The perfect template design should be customized to incorporate your brand’s identity and company style guide. You want your colors to be recognizable, appeal to your audience, and align with whatever elements your design may include, like images or illustrations.

“My favorite thing in design is the power of contrast: 1 tiny dot in color can make a design extremely powerful and attract the eye. Once the eye is attracted - the chances that your message will be delivered are increased. That’s what I like to practice in my work.”—Nastassia Rybak, Graphic Designer

Change your fonts

Updating the fonts in your Linearity template will create an ad that more closely resembles your unique brand and stands out from your competitors. Thankfully, Linearity Curve provides an extensive font library that makes it easy to find the perfect font for your needs, and you can customize your fonts, too. 

Craft the visual elements

Visuals are the soul of any advertisement, but you wouldn't be here if you hadn't realized that. They can capture attention, convey messages, and leave a lasting impression. 

In this instance, Beyond Books has a ‘Big Blue Book Sale’, so we want something that says ‘Books’ and communicates the color blue. To find the perfect image, we’re using Linearity Curve’s integrated Unsplash Library, which boasts over 1 million royalty-free images you can use. 

Using this tool, you can easily find and use the perfect picture in your design without closing Curve to search the internet.

To access this feature, navigate to the Library Tab and locate the Unsplash option in the lower right corner. In the search bar, type your search query to find your desired image.

Browse the options and select the image that best suits your advert.

Add compelling copy

If you want to save the world with great adverts, words are your superpower. They’re the bridge that connects your audience to your message and inspires action. Compelling ad copy is the voice of your advertisement, and it serves several critical functions.

To add text to your Linearity Curve design, choose the Text Tool or edit the text on your template by selecting it directly using the Selection Tool. 

We updated the template text to include some copy that gets straight to the point. 

Because the audience enjoys reading, we also wanted to try a typography-based advert. So, we removed the images and played with the template layout to focus only on the text.

Get your budget and bidding strategies right

Begin by assessing each channel's performance based on past data to identify which platforms offer the best ROI and allocate more budget to these. Put your money where your target audience is most active; for example, if your audience prefers Instagram and LinkedIn, prioritize these platforms. 

Align your budget with your campaign goals—spend more on channels that drive high-quality leads for lead generation or spread the budget for broader brand awareness. Adjust your budget based on seasonal trends and upcoming events to maximize peak consumer activity.

Choosing the right bidding strategy is crucial for controlling costs and optimizing ad performance. Here are some common bidding options:

1. Cost Per Click (CPC): You pay each time someone clicks on your ad.
2. Cost Per Thousand Impressions (CPM): You pay for every 1,000 impressions (views) of your ad.
3. Cost Per Acquisition (CPA): You pay only when a user completes a desired action, such as purchasing or filling out a form.
4. Return on Ad Spend (ROAS): You bid based on the revenue generated from your ads relative to the amount spent.
5. Cost Per View (CPV): You pay for each view of your video ad.

Publish your ads

Creating a compelling ad is just the beginning. The final step is putting it out into the world so your audience can see it.

Choose the right timing

Timing matters in advertising, especially regarding social advertising. In the case of Instagram, for instance, we need to consider when our target audience is most active and receptive. Different days and times may yield varying results. For example, releasing your ad on a Friday evening might be optimal for promoting a weekend event.

Monitor and optimize in real-time

Once your ad is live, continuously monitor its performance in real-time. If you notice that some aspects of your campaign could perform better or that audience engagement could be better, be prepared to adjust swiftly.

Engage with your audience

Engage with your audience when they interact with your social ads. Respond to comments, answer questions, and encourage discussions. Building a rapport with your audience can enhance brand trust and loyalty and help you build a community. 

Remember to stay agile, adapt to changing circumstances, and refine your approach based on learning from each campaign. With persistence and the right strategies, your ads can, and should, continually evolve and deliver impactful results.

You next steps

After a few simple steps, you made an ad that will resonate, inspire action, and deliver results. Whether you're an illustrator, a designer, or a marketer, remember that success in advertising often comes from the marriage of creativity and strategy.

And that’s a skill that takes practice.

Ready to explore Linearity Curve for your design and advertising needs? Its versatile tools and features will help you bring your vision to life with efficiency and flair. 

From over 3,000 inspiring templates, 1 million royalty-free images, and hundreds of tutorials and inspirational blog stories, Linearity empowers you to create, innovate, and make lasting ads. Plus, you can try our limited free version before you buy:

Frequently asked questions