When attempting to attract audiences on Facebook, ads are your first (and sometimes only) opportunity to make a good first impression. Therefore, making them compelling and relevant is essential to your marketing campaign.

So wouldn’t it be nice if once in a while, Facebook allowed you to scale a regular ad unit and add more content to it?

You’re in luck, THERE IS A WAY TO DO JUST THAT.

All you need to do is hit that rewind button.

Because in the midst of all developments (featured videos, advanced remarketing features, etc.), you’ve not paid enough attention to multi-product ads.

Yes, the same ad feature we informed you of earlier in the year.

A recap for everyone who missed that post and remain ill-informed about these ads.

Multi-product ads (also referred to as carousel ads) is a Facebook ad format that enable businesses to display 3-5 images within a single ad unit (regular ads allow only one image) in the mobile or desktop News Feed.

In the main section, you can place a customized copy, while each image can be given its own headline and description. Desktop users click to navigate through the images, while mobile users swipe left and right.

Why should I consider multi-product ads?

Good question. You need a good reason to use any Facebook feature. The thing is these ads have come a long way since their roll-out and now there are new ways to utilize them for your campaign.

Not only that, many brands report them as effective.

Facebook published a case study about Jewelscent, a retailer of fragrance and beauty products, which revealed that by using multi-product ads, the brand reduced its cost-per-click rate by 3x and invested less to drive more visitors to its landing pages.

Also, pilot brands like Target and Shutterfly reported a 20 percent increase in conversion and click through rate when they utilized these ads (compared to other ad formats they’ve tried and tested).

Having more images and links inside one ad gives any marketer the ability to achieve different goals. For example, media brands get to showcase different stories in a single ad unit rather than creating multiple ads to promote different stories.

Some pointers you need to follow for these ads:

• Text should be limited to 90 characters
• The headline should be limited to 25 characters
• The description of the link should be limited to 30 characters
• Images should be limited to 600 x 600 pixels (1:1)

You can read about how to create multi-product ads here.

7 New Creative To Utilize Multi-Product Ads

With any Facebook ad or retargeting program, your ROI will depend on how you execute the campaign. Here are 7 unique ways of targeting audiences with multi-product ads:

1. Utilize UGC

If you’ve used Facebook over the years, you’ve likely experienced the power of UGC (user-generated content) in your marketing campaigns. Ads with user-generated content receive far greater engagement than average ads.

To be specific, ads with UGC were reported to have a:

• 50 percent lower CPA (cost per acquisition)
• 50 percent lower CPC (cost per click)
• 300 percent higher CTR (click-through rate)

For encouraging further UGC and enjoying the benefits mentioned above, you can use images of people in the multi-product ads. Here’s an example of Levis:

The brand uses images that were submitted by consumers for its advertising campaign. They’ve also included a hashtag.

Multi-product UGC ads will give you a better chance at conversions. Use it as a powerful customer acquisition tool. Later, you can retain the acquired customers by using UGC on your Facebook page.

By the way, there are several ways to collect UGC content from Facebook itself (here’s the guide) to use in these ads or on your brand page.

2. Explain a process/different steps

One of the shortcomings of the usual Facebook ad is that you have to outline steps or a process in the copy. That’s because you can only use a single image, so marketers have to resort to words to fill the gap, which may not be the best option if you have a character limit.

Also, people prefer visuals over text when it comes to social media ads. With carousel ads, you can explain steps/a process via visuals.

Here’s how the Australian Institute of Business does it:

The 4 steps (graduate diploma, graduate certificate, MBA, website) give a perfect explanation of what people need to do to earn an MBA in 12 months.

The landing page for each image can be the same, or you could use different landing pages for each image depending on the nature of the process or steps you decide to use.

This approach to multi-product ads can be used to explain:

• Steps to sign up for a service
• Process to take part in a competition
• Steps to take advantage of a holiday discount
• Etc.

Remember to write a unique description and headline for each image in the step. Another thing you could do is use a bigger font for the call-to-action used in the last step.

3. Promote your culture

You know the importance of having a company culture for better productivity and employee motivation, but have you ever thought of promoting your culture through Facebook ads? That’s some great (unused) content right there.

For the ad content, you can use:

• Images of your core values
• Images of your office
• Images of your employees having fun (can also be used as user-generated content)
• Images of your customers having fun (can also be used as user-generated content)
• Etc.

These images will increase people’s awareness of your business. If they see what happens inside your company/what kind of culture they’re going to be a part of, they can click-through to learn more about your company.

Here’s an example of such an ad:

ATXcursions shows why it is one of the best tour companies around. It shows that fun-loving culture is at the core of their service.

Point the images to landing pages on your site that explain the culture in detail, so people understand the value of being associated with you.

4. Create a catalog with striking images

With a barrage of ads in sidebars and newsfeeds in the form of paid ads and sponsored stories, marketers need to stand out from this crowded space. On way to do that is to create a mini product/service catalog using multi-product ads.

Do you have a unique product line, or different varieties of the same product? Multi-product ads enable you to showcase them in more detail than plain Facebook ads. All you have to do is group items together while creating an ad.

Here’s an example:

In this ad, Beepi highlights the different cars it has in stock with striking images in the form of a catalog.

Note: Always use striking images while creating a catalog, with one focal point for each image so that it’s easy to caption them for consistency with overall branding.

However, this strategy is not just for eCommerce businesses. Companies in every industry can take advantage of catalogs.

For instance, if you’re selling real estate, you can create a catalog that highlights different attractions around the property you’re promoting. Attractions would include nearby schools, parks, restaurants, shopping centers, etc. – whatever is the best fit for the area you’re marketing.

5. Location works

Ad relevance is the key to improve chances of conversions. For certain types of business (local coupon sites and travel agencies for instance), multi-product ads would work well (and would be perceived as more relevant by target audiences) when they are used as “multi-location ads”.

To be specific, the ads can be used to promote various locations for, let’s say, a city. The first question anyone would ask while researching a city is where to go. Likewise, people in a particular area might be searching for restaurants in that area.

So instead of showing them one attraction related to a city, or recommending a single restaurant through a normal ad, why not display a couple of more options in both cases?

Take a look at this ad:

It is targeting the location Las Vegas and promoting museums in Las Vegas.

This is a great example. While your main competitor might be in the same location, customers don’t necessarily know that.

6. Offer deals, promos and discounts

Another way to use multi-product ads is to include content related to deals and discounts. This is useful in the sense that you don’t have to create multiple ads for multiple deals as 3-5 offers can just be promoted in a single unit.

This is a way to attract audiences looking for a specific deal with a single advertisement.

For example, someone might not be interested in a 10 percent discount on a 3-day subscription to a service, but could be motivated to click-through the ad when they swipe left and see a 50 percent discount on a monthly subscription to the same service. It could be the opposite case as well.

Another thing you could do is promote deals and discounts on a seasonal theme. For example, a chocolate maker can promote discounts on different types of chocolate in the Christmas season, varying the discount given on each chocolate.

Take a look at this multi-product ad:

In the ad above, Buffalo Boots picked the winter theme, and offered varying sale prices for different items.

Always give options – you don’t know what might tempt people to check out your offering.

7. Build anticipation through a time-lapse canvas

Multi-product ads can be used to illustrate the ultimate goal or a journey consumers will take through the passage of time. Because these ads act as a sort of time-lapse canvas, they can be used to build suspense, unfold a narrative or portray a story.

Companies that target mobile users, such as mobile game development companies, can create “a flipbook” to showcase the player’s progress when they reach different levels. Likewise, they can create a canvas of different upgrades a player gets by collecting points/completing objectives.

Take a look at this ad:

It is building anticipation of the car’s interior with each image. The whole interior is complete if you combine all the images.

Final thoughts

For any targeting objective, multi-product ads provide marketers more real estate in ad units. You can leverage the tips mentioned above to increase campaign engagement and drive more visitors to your main site.

What are your thoughts? Do you know other creative ways to use multi-product ads? Feel free to leave comments.