Facebook carousel ads could be one of the most powerful tools in the social media marketing kit. Offering a valuable way for companies to showcase their products and services on the world’s most popular social platform, carousel ads have phenomenal potential.
While new social channels are emerging all the time, Facebook is still holding onto its title as the environment with the broadest reach, with around 2.936 billion users as of April 2022.
This means Facebook offers a fantastic landscape for capturing audience attention and boosting traffic to your website. However, in a saturated environment, business leaders and Facebook marketers need to work a little harder to grab their audience’s attention.
Carousel ads, first introduced in 2014, could be the hidden gem your team is missing in its social media advertising strategy. Today, we’re going to look at why carousel ads are so effective and give you some of the inspiration you might need to start using them yourself.
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What are Facebook Carousel Ads?
As the biggest social platform around, Facebook has a number of tools available to business leaders looking to capture the attention of their target audience.
In fact, Facebook’s advertising ecosystem is considered one of the best around, thanks in large part to its versatility and exceptional targeting options. Carousel Ads represent just one of the many visual tools marketers can use to connect with customers through Facebook.
A carousel is an ad format containing between 2 and 10 video clips or images in a single ad. You can use this solution to tell a story, advertise multiple products, or just create a unique visual effect. Users can flip through the pages in the carousel panel by panel, learning more about your company, products, and events.
One great thing about carousel ads is they’re suitable for both desktop and mobile engagement. While on desktop, users skip through panels using arrow buttons. On mobile, they can simply swipe through your visual cards.
What Are Its Advantages Over Other Facebook Ad Formats
According to some studies, these ads are up to 10 times more effective at generating engagement than standard ads. Plus, they have a 72% higher click-through rate than most other Facebook promotions.
If that wasn’t compelling enough, Facebook’s own studies have shown massive benefits for advertisers using carousel ads. For instance, many companies achieve a 30-50% lower cost-per-conversion and 20-30% lower cost-per-click with carousel ads compared to single-image ads.
Perhaps the biggest benefit of carousel ads is their natural ability to engage viewers. With static ads and videos, the audience usually adopts a passive role, viewing or reading what happens in front of them. With carousel ads, your audience is invited to interact with the content, scroll through panels, and click on your CTA buttons whenever they choose.
Carousel ads are also a great way to showcase a lot of valuable information at once. You don’t have to choose a single item to promote at a time. Instead, you can advertise entire collections with a single ad. Just some of the things companies can do with carousel ads include:
- Show a product from multiple angles: Showcase the various angles of a product to give your customers a more complete view of what’s on offer, or use each slide or panel to highlight a unique value or feature.
- Share useful information: Provide how-to guidance for a product or offer your customers tips on how to leverage your items with your carousel. This could help companies convince their clients to give new items a chance.
- Showcase multiple products: Allow your audience to window shop through various pictures of your latest collection of products. This could even allow you to target different kinds of customers at once with a wider range of items.
- Deliver social proof: Many companies use carousels as a way of drawing attention to customer reviews and testimonials. A number of happy quotes arranged into a carousel can make your business appear more reliable and credible.
- Highlight brand personality: A carefully-constructed carousel ad can link multiple panels together to tell a story about your business or show off your unique personality. This is a great way to make your business stand out.
7 Exceptional Facebook Carousel Ad Examples
Despite all the benefits of carousel ads and their unique uses, many companies still aren’t taking advantage of this unique promotional format. One of the main reasons for this is they don’t know how to showcase their content correctly. The following examples of exceptional Facebook carousel ads could be just the inspiration you need.
1. Barkbox
Dog toy and treat subscription company Barkbox are experts at leveraging all the unique promotional opportunities Facebook has to offer. The company combines its playful tone of voice in its Facebook ad captions with fun and eye-catching images in its carousels. This immediately grabs the audience's attention, while giving an insight into the company’s values.
The adorable carousel ad below is an excellent example of how Barkbox uses carousel content to share valuable information about the latest products in its boxes, and its special offers. Pictures of real dogs combined with illustrations help the company to stand out on Facebook news feeds.
Today, Barkbox has earned more than 1.8 million followers and 3 million likes thanks to its eye-catching advertising and great attitude.
2. ColourPop
Highly visual brands, like the ColourPop cosmetics company, benefit most from creative ads capable of showcasing their products in the best possible light. ColourPop regularly uses a combination of video, photo, and carousel ads in their Facebook campaigns.
The example below demonstrates how ColourPop leverages unique themes for each of its ads to leave a lasting impression on its target audience. By choosing a specific aesthetic, Colourpop helps to ensure its users want to keep scrolling and seeing more of what the company has to offer.
The carousel ad, combined with its “Shop Now” CTA buttons, helps to boost engagement while showing off ColourPop’s creative side. Today, ColourPop has more than 10 million followers and a massive 2.2 million likes on its Facebook page.
3. The Sill
One of the best ways to use Facebook carousel ads is to tell a captivating story. The Sill, a company committed to bring natural beauty into the home, is excellent at using this strategy. The company regularly promotes carousels telling customers how to accomplish various aesthetics at home.
In this Carousel ad, The Sill uses its natural storytelling abilities to appeal to the curiosity of its audience by asking them a question in the very first slide, “Want free plants?” The question encourages customers to continue scrolling through the pictures where they can see what their house might look like with a few of the company’s products.
The final slide allows you to click through to the brand’s website where you can enter into a prize draw to win free plans. The Sill has more than 93,000 likes and 830,000 followers on Facebook.
4. Gusto
A fantastic example of how carousel ads can help companies showcase the unique benefits of their products comes from Gusto. This company serves around 200,000 businesses worldwide with its modern payroll and HR tools, and it advertises itself effectively through Facebook.
In this Carousel Ad from Gusto, the company uses a brief introductory caption to highlight one of its main selling points. In the carousel panels below, each image highlights a specific value business leaders can get from signing up with Gusto—from unlimited payroll runs to custom benefits.
The eye-catching ad uses a combination of branded illustrations and clear value statements to grab audience attention and keep them scrolling. Today, Gusto has over 50,000 likes on Facebook.
5. LinkedIn
Even other social media channels can generate exceptional results by advertising through Facebook ads. LinkedIn, the world’s leading B2B social network, regularly posts video and carousel ads to capture the attention of professionals looking to connect with like-minded individuals.
In LinkedIn’s carousel ads, the company asks users questions about their business processes. This Carousel ad introduces the benefits of LinkedIn ads with a series of panels “redefining” what the B2B journey can mean to clients.
The creative and eye-catching ad is a great way to draw attention to the potential of LinkedIn as an advertising platform. It’s also great for generating brand recognition. The LinkedIn Ads logo is placed at the bottom of every image. LinkedIn has a massive 2.5 million likes on Facebook!
6. Picsart
Picsart is a popular app for editing photos and videos in the visual advertising world. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to convey what an editing app can do with just one static image. To overcome this issue, Picsart takes full advantage of the unique capabilities of the Facebook carousel ad.
In this campaign, we see how you can import a picture into the app and turn it into a video using the filters and capabilities of the app. Along with the ability to add filters, stickers, and text to your images, Picsart also lets you clear away photo backgrounds, providing a professional look to your visuals. At the same time, Picsart uses a creative caption that is designed to attract clicks.
7. Dell
In today’s ecommerce focused world, it’s often difficult to give your customers the same immersive experience they’d have interacting with your product in real life when you’re reaching them online. Fortunately, Facebook carousel ads can help with this.
Leading computer company Dell used a carousel ad to not only list some of the top features of its latest laptop, but also to demonstrate the different ways its screen can be configurated. This makes it easier for potential buyers to get a clear understanding of this laptop’s versatility before they decide to buy.
With more than 3.9 million likes on Facebook, Dell takes full advantage of its position on the platform to introduce the information customers need about new products in a way that’s fun, engaging, and eye-catching.
How to Create Facebook Carousel Ads
If the examples above have inspired you to create your own Facebook Carousel ads, the process is much simpler than you’d think. You can actually create a carousel for both Facebook and Instagram at the same time since the two platforms are connected.
To begin, head to your Facebook account “Ads Manager” page and select a marketing objective suitable for the carousel format. Your options include reach, brand awareness, app installs, traffic, catalog sales, conversions, and lead generation.
You can proceed through most of the ad creation process as normal, choosing your targeting requirements, bidding, and more. Once you get to the “Creatives” section, click “Carousel”.
When you choose the carousel format, you can decide if you want to input images from your product catalog or choose them manually.
Next, you can create the specific ad text you want for each card. Common choices include product titles, value statements, or unique selling propositions. Keep in mind, you don’t get a lot of space on each card before the text cuts off.
You’ll also need to choose an image or video to go with each card. All images and videos are cropped to a square shape, so keep this in mind when selecting your assets.
Remember to add a unique link to the product page or landing page you want to send people to when they click on your carousel ad. You can include up to ten cards in your campaign, and decide which order to place them in manually. Alternatively, Facebook has a dynamic placement option available.
The dynamic option automatically shows high-performing cards first, so make sure you only choose this if there’s no chronological order to your slides.
Finally, preview your ad to see how it might appear on desktop and mobile. If any crucial text or information is cut, you might need to spend some time editing to ensure your carousels have the right impact. When you’re ready, submit your ad for approval by the Facebook team.
Make the Most of Carousel Ads
Despite being one of the most powerful ad options in the Facebook toolkit, carousel ads rarely get the attention they deserve from marketers. Ideal for showcasing valuable information and ensuring engagement, these promotional tools are fantastic for all kinds of businesses.
If you haven’t started using carousel ads in your Facebook campaigns yet, now might be the time to start. Use the inspiration above to guide you through your first successful campaign.
