How to Create Facebook Video Ads that Sell T-Shirts

Facebook Video ads have exploded in use since the platform made them available in 2015. Take a look at the chart below to see their current and projected growth for the next couple of years. There’s no doubting that Facebook’s video ads are here to stay! For t-shirt sellers like yourself, this means you need to understand how video ads work, how to actually create your own and how to optimize them so you can compete effectively. Whether or not you were interested in using video ads to promote your t-shirt designs, you can be sure your competitors will, so read on to get started creating your own Facebook video ads that will captivate your customers and drive sales, or get ready to be left behind!

Facebook Video Ad Spending by Advertisers

Screen Shot 2018 05 31 At 10.34.14 Am

Source – Statista

Why You Should Use Facebook Video Ads?

Take a look at the video above and then consider the following stats to get a clearer idea of just how important and effective videos ads can be for your t-shirt buiness. The 2018 Interactive Advertising Bureau report, a study that surveys 353 marketing agencies, showed that for this year, advertisers will spend about 59% of their advertising budgets on video ads, this is compared to 53% in 2016, showing that the trend doesn’t seem to be going anywhere but up.

Advertiser Spending 2018

Bar Graph 3

Source – iab report 2018

In addition, video ads on social media sites make up 23% of all the video advertising made so far in 2018 with online TV shows coming in second at 19%. So why do I mention all this? To show you what the big guys and gals in the marketing industry already see happening, video ads, and in particular, video ads on social media sites like Facebook are where the the money’s at. This is the new battleground your competitors will undoubtedly try to conquer, so you have to use the best tools available to you to make sure your t-shirt brand reigns supreme! 

Video Budget Allocation 2018

Digital Spending Graph

Source – iab report 2018

Stats Aside, Which Would You Prefer?

Putting the raw data aside, just comparing an average t-shirt ad to a Facebook video ad is enough to make the point. Video is simply more appealing. Not only does a video ad show off your t-shirt designs in a way no image can, it helps your customers really get a feel for what the design looks like in movement. Lastly, adding video ads to your promotion efforts will boost your t-shirt brand’s perception. Video ads for Facebook will elevate how potential customers view your brand and change how valuable they perceive them to be. In other word, influence how much they’ll be willing to pay. Take a look at the following comparison and tell me the choice isn’t clear.

Facebook Ad with Video

Facebook video ad example
✅ Visually Appealing
✅ Boosts Your Brand’s Image
✅ Highly Shareable
✅ High Quality Production

Facebook Ad with Image

facebook ad image example
❌ Static and Forgettable
❌ Looks Generic and Uninspiring
❌ Low Shareability, Looks like an Ad
❌ Amateur Looking Ad

How to Make a Facebook Video Ad

So it’s clear, if you’re a t-shirt seller and you want to stay in the game or step up you game you need to start taking advantage of Facebook video ads. While you might have hesitated to start using video in your ads because you imagined it would be expensive and time-consuming, now there’s simply no excuse. You don’t need to have deep pockets to hire a team to shoot and edit videos and you don’t need try and learn how to do everything yourself and just end up frustrated when your videos come out looking like a high-school project. Simply watch the quick tutorial below to see just how easy it is to create some fantastic, professional video mockups that are perfect for promoting your t-shirt designs on Facebook.

Making Your First Facebook Ad Campaign

A step-by-step guide to setting up a targeted and optimized Facebook ad campaign is beyond the scope of this post and is explained in great detail in the following post. Once you’ve created some great looking video mockups with Placeit, click on the link to jump straight to the guide to configuring your first Facebook Ad.

Facebook Video Ads Best Practices

Facebook Ad Skipping V3
Step 1 Blue

Keep It Short and Sweet

Facebook recommends a video length of between 5 and 15 seconds even though the limit is 31 seconds. Any longer and you risk losing your customer’s attention, especially if it’s the first time they’re seeing your brand. The graph shows how quickly people stop watching the longer a video ad is depending on if it’s in the Facebook feed or a non-skippable video. Placeit’s Facebook video ads tend to be short and are easy to combine so you can quickly make a shirt ad that looks stunning and quickly captures your audience’s attention.

Character Limits
Step 2 Blue

Make the Most of Your Title & Ad Description

This is some of the only text your ad is going to have so it needs to be punchy and to the point. Just like your video, your title and description should focus on the benefits of your brand. If your t-shirt brand is focused on a specific niche, make sure to include any relevant keywords in the title and description. If you’re featuring some sort of promotion or special deal, make sure to highlight it! You only get 25 characters for a headline, 100 for the text and 30 for the link description so make each one count!

Facebook Campaign Objectives
Step 3 Blue

Pick the Right Objective

Just because Placeit’s Facebook video ads make the job easy doesn’t mean you can just use whatever settings you think sound ok when you create your ads. Make sure you pick the correct objective when you’re creating your ad otherwise you could end up trading money for likes instead of sales. Facebook’s ad manager can seem a little daunting at first but don’t feel overwhelmed, with a little patience, you’ll quickly become an ad making master.
Square Facebook Video
Step 4 Blue

Go Square or Go Home

The square video format is here to stay, in fact it’s quickly becoming the main format, overtaking the traditional horizontal format in 2017. The square format with an aspect ratio of 1:1 is better suited to mobile devices and offers 78% more screen space compared to horizontal videos with an aspect ratio of 16:9. To convert your videos to the square format you can use a free online tool to easily convert your horizontal videos to square ones – EZGIF

Pro Tip:

If you’re going to get serious about stepping up your t-shirt selling game you’re going to be making several video mockups at once. The good news is Placeit has a plan for you. A Placeit subscription gives you access to all of Placeit’s video mockups for just $14.95 a month. That’s way less than what it would cost for you to hire a crew to film and edit the videos for your t-shirt ads for a single day, in other words this is a steal. Don’t limit yourself with a fixed number of mockups a month, just go for the plan and you won’t have think about how much each video is costing you. This frees you up to experiment endlessly with mockup styles you might not have otherwise considered before!

What Types of Facebook Video Ads Work Best

As we’ve already seen, short and sweet is the name of the game when it comes to Facebook video ads. However that doesn’t mean you can’t experiment with the actual types of videos themselves. Placeit has a couple of different video formats that you can test out and depending on what your specific niche might be, you’ll find out which one works best for you, or if perhaps a combination of video types works best. The main one you’ll find is live action video but cinemagraphs and stop motion videos can also be quite compelling, especially when every other video is live action, mixing it up with a stop motion video ad can help your shirt ad stand out. Take a look at some the examples below and see the difference for yourself, experiment with the different formats and styles, you never know when you’ll hit upon a style that really resonates with your audience and generates more sales!

Cinemagraph Video Mockup

Cinemagraphs are videos where one element of the video is still, in the case of Placeit’s video mockups, this is usually the person wearing the t-shirt, and where the rest of the scene or a part of the scene is in constant motion. These are great if you want to just focus on the design but still have some sort of visually attractive motion happening.

Stop Motion Video Mockup

Stop motion videos are great if still want to show off your design in motion but want to maximize screen-time as well. They’re a midway point between the full motion videos where the designs is sometimes covered up for the sake of making the video dynamic and seem mora natural .

Live Action Video Mockup

The live action video mockups are the most common ones you’ll find on Placeit and feature a super wide range of people in different settings and situations that you can use to show your customers exactly what your designs will look like in real life. It’s incredibly convenient for you and for your customers.

It doesn’t matter what niche you cater to with your t-shirt brand, if you want to stay on top of the competition on Facebook, you need to start making some stunning ads with Placeit’s Facebook video ads. You don’t need to be a video expert or have deep pockets to pay a video crew to do it for you, in just a few short clicks you can generate incredible video ads that boost the image of shirt designs and most importantly, generate sales! However, if you want to make sure you are making the right moves you can always visit our video marketing guide to apply the best practices on your videos. Don’t put it off for another time, get started today! Also, make sure you address all seasonal sale, here are some great ideas for Valentine’s Day.

Great new! You can now create all kinds of amazing video to promote your brand and upscale your sales! Placeit’s Video Maker allows you to make professional videos with an easy design tool right from your browser! Try our Slideshow Video Maker to create stunning slides on your own!

“Using Placeit video mockups are like having a video and editing team just for me!”
Brent Johnson 5/5


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