May 6, 2025

Social Media Ads: Best Practices and Examples

By  
Eliott Wahba

Social media advertising makes up a significant part of a brand’s digital marketing spend. With over 3 billion monthly active users on Facebook, more than 2 billion on Instagram, and over 1 billion on TikTok, there’s a massive audience to tap into and convert.

When used effectively, social media ads can transform marketing outcomes, boosting leads, conversions and revenue. To ensure your ads rise above the clutter and drive results, it’s essential to focus on creating world-class creative.

8 Best Practice Tips for Social Media Ads

1. Make Information Visually Appealing

You have seconds—at most—to capture attention. Infographics, imagery, and video far outperform paragraphs of text. Focus on eye-catching design with minimal copy.

Takeaway: Lead with visuals. Design first, text second.

2. Be Consistent With Your Brand Image

Brand consistency builds recognition and trust. Use the same fonts, colors, and visual style across platforms while adapting the content format to suit each.

Takeaway: Consistency breeds familiarity and recall.

3. Cater to the Right Social Audience

Identify where your audience spends time—whether it’s LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram or elsewhere—and tailor creative to that environment.

Takeaway: Go where your audience already is.

4. Set Clear Goals

Establish what success looks like before designing. Is it clicks, conversions, engagement or lead generation? Goals should guide your creative choices.

Takeaway: No creative should launch without a clear objective.

5. Plan and Schedule Your Ads

A strategic content calendar avoids last-minute scrambling and aligns your creative with broader marketing goals.

Takeaway: Planning allows for higher-quality, more thoughtful creative.

6. Monitor Ad Performance

Track reach, click-through rate, conversions, engagement, and customer feedback. Use data to refine future ads.

Takeaway: Your first version is rarely your best. Learn and iterate.

7. Drive Traffic to Relevant Landing Pages

Your ad should lead to a landing page that aligns with the campaign’s objective, whether it’s a lead capture form or a direct product page.

Takeaway: Smooth, logical user journeys convert best.

8. Curate Strong Calls-to-Action

Every ad needs a clear next step—buy now, learn more, sign up. Craft CTAs that inspire action and remove ambiguity.

Takeaway: CTAs should be simple, clear and impossible to miss.

Platform-Specific Creative Insights

Clever TikTok Ads

Brands succeeding on TikTok focus on storytelling and community. Shopify creates motivational entrepreneur content. Adobe shares creative tutorials. Red Bull uses localized content strategies with niche accounts.

Creative Instagram Ads

Bright visuals, clever copy and trend-savvy content work best. Elementor and LEGO stand out with bold, shareable creative tailored to the Instagram experience.

Effective Facebook Ads

Project Repat demonstrates that simple, authentic creative can outperform high-budget campaigns. Slack’s bold colors and pain-point messaging create stopping power in the feed.

Lead-Generating LinkedIn Ads

Professional audiences demand clarity. Zipwhip, Wix and AWS have all produced high-performing LinkedIn ads by focusing on concise value propositions and clean design.

Making the Most of Your Social Media Marketing

Managing social ad creative in-house can be resource-intensive. Many leading brands now work with external design and creative partners to elevate their ad quality and consistency across platforms.

If you’re ready to increase ROI and streamline your social ad creative,
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