Firstly, let’s look at what a GIF is. A Graphic Interchange Format (GIF) is a short, repeated video on your Facebook feed or Instagram, and they are becoming an increasingly valuable tool for business marketing. They can be funny, clips from TV’s and movies, custom made or flashing text but they are always short, snappy and attention grabbing.
What makes a GIF so successful in advertising and why they are a “must have” for a successful marketing campaign?
The answer is in ‘pattern disruption’. Pattern disruption is exactly what it sounds like, you are disrupting a pattern. In this case the pattern is Facebook posts. From a marketing perspective, a potential customer is scrolling through their Facebook news feed, skimming through posts when an exciting well-designed GIF grabs their attention, even just for a moment. This GIF may only be 10 seconds long; however, it is long enough to have grabbed the attention of the consumer and gives your brand the opportunity to stand out in a crowded newsfeed.
A well-designed GIF has the ability to reach out to the emotions of potential customers, and associate your product or service with a particular feeling or aspiration or even just make them laugh. This link can be extremely valuable when trying to sell a product or service and successful marketers take full advantage of it!
If you are reading this thinking, YES! I have seen these and would love to use them but just don’t have the budget or the skills to pay someone to do this, we have some good news!
Subscribe to
Bright Red Marketing!
Want digital marketing tips, strategies and updates delivered straight to your inbox?
Subscribe to Bright Red Marketing.
There are programs that can help and assist you create some kick-ass GIF’s! They are online based and are generally quite easy to use. We have researched a couple of the Facebook favourites for you:
- www.GIFS.com make creating a GIF incredibly easy
- www.Giphy.com lets you simultaneously create and share your creations *this is the one I use*
- www.andtheniwaslike.co/ perfect for creating original content with your webcam
Creating your GIF can be exciting and fun for you, but if you’re not feeling creative these platforms also allow you to use popular GIF’s. If you do that remember to keep it on brand.
What we mean by this is make it relatable and relevant to your brand and what you are trying to promote or the message you are trying portray. It needs to neatly tie back into your brand. If your brand doesn’t ever use humour, now is not the time to use a funny GIF of a penguin.
There are a few guidelines when making your own, but luckily for us Facebook has provided step by step instructions which can be found at:
www.facebook.com/business/help/1006874066021923
The link includes tutorials such as how to upload a GIF to your Facebook page and how to make and advert with a GIF:
How to upload a GIF to your Facebook page:
- Create a post with a link to your GIF or upload a GIF directly.
- If you used a link, wait for the preview of your GIF to load.
- Post it to your Page.
- Find the post on your Page (you may need to reload).
- You can now open up your Ads Manager and use that post as the basis of your next campaign by using the ‘use existing post’ feature
And remember- If it all seems a bit overwhelming at Bright Red Marketing we are the specialists and we can do it for you!
