The short answer
Merchants read the picture before the words, and decide from it whether the ad is for them. One of our ads that produced at least 250 qualified leads says only “business owners” in its copy, over a photo of a nail salon, and the leads it brought were nail salons. So the visual is part of the targeting: a real kitchen for restaurants, a job site for construction, a broken-down truck for trucking.
The last check on our creative list is the easiest to skip: a relevant visual. It sounds like decoration. It behaves like targeting, and in one of our best ads it did more of the targeting than the copy did.
The nail salon ad
The ad asks “Running your business on 24% credit cards?”, says a business line of credit costs less, up to $500K, and invites the merchant to compare. Nowhere does it name an industry; the headline is “business owners”. The photo behind the text is a nail salon, rows of pedicure chairs and all. The leads it produced were nail salons.
That is the creative-is-the-targeting rule working through the image rather than the words. A merchant scrolling past sees their own kind of business before they read a line, and self-selects on it. Whatever is in the ad is what comes back as a lead, and that includes the picture. It cuts both ways: even a weak brand ad with a real person in it will tend to attract that kind of person.
What to put in the picture
| If you want | Show |
|---|---|
| Restaurants | A real kitchen |
| Construction companies | A job site |
| Trucking companies | A broken-down truck, or an owner working under an open hood |
| Nail salons | The salon floor |
| Any industry | Plain text laid over a real photo of the business |
Trucking is the clearest case. One of our best-performing creatives is nothing more than a man working on a truck engine with the hood open, visibly frustrated, with the text laid over the photo. It is a relevant visual and a situation in the same frame, and a trucking owner recognises it before reading a word.
The picture still has to leave room for the rest of the checklist. One idea per ad applies to the image as much as to the copy: one industry, one scene, and a situation on top of it if the ad has one. It is also one of the cheapest things to change when an ad wins, because a new photo of the same industry under the same message is one of the ten variants every winner gets. The full formula is on the creative checklist.