How To Create Standout Ads This Holiday Season + Examples

Digital Marketing / September 16, 2022

Even on a plain ol’ Tuesday afternoon in the middle of July, there is an avalanche of noise and online clutter to break through. So how does one stand out during the busiest time of year when quite literally all brands from nearly every industry are trying to do the same?
Here’s a quick briefing on how to create ads that will stand out which you’re more than welcome to use as a point of reference this upcoming holiday season.

Step 1: Identify your brand tone

Your tone of voice needs to reflect your brand’s values and personality: inspirational, funny and quirky, emotional, elegant and simple, etc. Once established, it’s important to keep it consistent from the get go as it will help build an emotional, trustworthy and familiar connection with consumers. Coupled with the high sensations of the holidays, your unique tone should echo that mutual connection and not start deviating, especially in your holiday campaign creatives.

Step 2: Determine what motivates holiday shoppers

There are more than one reason why consumers shop during the holiday season. An obvious one would be to find the perfect gift in order to show someone how much you care about them. Consumers could also be shopping to treat themselves after a difficult year, or even to enhance their home’s holiday hosting.

Once you’ve identified the different motivations for shopping that are applicable to your brand, you’ll be in a better position to diversify your creative mix and speak to how they can influence holiday purchases.

Step 3: Choose your value proposition

Why would consumers click on YOUR ad and visit YOUR site? In a sea of offers, if you can’t explain why your idea, product, or service makes someone’s life better, then why should anyone pay attention?

Think of the experiences of your customers and the capabilities of your product. What they do illuminates what they value – or what they’d like to value. By establishing their wants and needs, you can figure out how to get them what they want in a new or better format.

Other than grabbing your users’ attention quickly with an unmissable offer, whether that’s an additional gift with a purchase, a discount or free shipping, ensure that you’re also aware of their pains. There’s no point in promoting a discount strategy if you don’t even know what risks and annoyances are getting in the way. How can you position your product to help alleviate any pains? If that angle doesn’t apply, then you could look into creating gains, meaning you could create an opportunity for your audience to live better than how they were yesterday, all thanks to your product or service.

According to January Digital’s latest consumer report, these are the key motivators for holiday shoppers (insert horizontal bar chart):

Fast, free delivery for online purchases
Free returns
Pricing
Discounts and promotions

To recap, when creating your value proposition, always keep in mind who your target audience is, what they do, their pains and potential gains.

Step 4: Check out what’s trending this year

Mixing your holiday offers with popular creative guidelines will help grab users’ attention. Selecting hot topics and trendy designs will increase relevancy and therefore, engagement.

This year, short-form videos are more popular than ever, whether that’s on Instagram (Reels), YouTube (Shorts), or TikTok. Make sure to follow the latest best practices when editing your videos. You can make your video more engaging by adding infinite loops, montage key elements, adding short burst clips, or applying fun transitions. Some brands are even opting for ultra-short, but especially engaging video ads in order to avoid the dreaded “skip” button on YouTube.

The past few years have also seen the rise of AI. Advertisers are using AI tools to improve their data processes by testing and optimizing impressions, click-through rates, bid levels, and targeting. However, marketers walk a fine line between automation and the current need for authenticity from Millennials and Gen Zers’. In fact, studies have shown that 75% of consumers trust content from average people and small creators more than content from brands.

Marketers are particularly turning to social media in order to create a balance between typical brand content and user-generated messaging that conveys their more human side. The influencer marketing and employee advocacy industries are also booming with many businesses tapping into their existing fan base.

Step 5: Determine the formats you’ll need

Depending on your media plan and the placements you choose to advertise on, you’ll need various ad formats.

We recommend designing your banners and social ads in a variety of formats including landscape, square, and vertical to fit as many placements as possible.

Once you know which platforms you’ll serve your ads on, you’ll also want to adapt your creatives to how users navigate the ad network. For example, for stories on Instagram, tweak your creative to incentivize people to swipe up. On Pinterest, users tap on Pins to learn more. Different animations can equally reinforce this behaviour.

Step 6: Start Creating!

Not everyone is a pro at making and editing creatives on big platforms and that’s okay! There’s a wide array of user friendly, less expensive tools to help you create content that will bear the same results that a giant like Adobe would deliver.

Here are some of our favourites:

CapCut is a free downloadable app that makes video editing seem like child’s play. You can easily import, trim, and order clips, change aspect ratios and backgrounds, add music and sound effects to inject emotion, captions and stickers to create interest, create stunning effects with filters, transitions and animations as well as set a cover and export the whole video right into your camera roll.

Depending on your payment plan (whether you use the free version or not), Canva, just like Bannersnack (now Creatopy), offers exceptional, foolproof editing and design tools for all types of content, from static images to fast-paced videos, for all platforms, from website to any social media medium. Features such as inviting your team to edit at the same time to special services like brainstorms and workshops per industry are just the tip of the Canva iceberg.