What is a “Scroll/Thumb Stopping Ad”?

Scroll-stopping content is your hook. It’s how you grab the attention of your target audience and stop them from going about their daily lives. 

Your ads should be bold and exciting – you don’t want your target market to forget they’ve seen one of your ads, or even worse, not notice they’ve seen one of your ads.

Depending on the goal of your campaign, you might be interacting with an audience that is already ready to buy, but more than likely, you’re interrupting their evening scroll on social media and they’ve never heard of you before – so you should want to make your ad as exciting and attention-grabbing as possible. 

Your goal is to grab their attention (quickly, you have about 3 seconds) and then hold their attention. Bonus points if you get them to engage with your ad. 

How?

10 simple ways of doing this could include: 

1. Make a bold or thought-provoking statement to grab their attention
2. Tease them with something – perhaps a new product launch
3. Ask them a question – this can encourage engagement
4. Call them out directly in your copy (“Calling all mums”). 
5. Use great assets that are eye-catching and distracting when scrolling
6. Help with a pain point (“sick of spending loads of your time/money/etc on __?”)
7. Emojis – use 1 or 2 emojis in your ad copy (audience and tone dependent)
8. Use keywords or buzzwords that will resonate with your audience
9. Share a shocking statistic 
10. Ask them directly to engage with your post.

However, a smarter way to make your ads truly resonate is to know how your audience ticks. Are they emotional? Impulsive? Easily excitable? What gets their blood pumping? Once you know this, and through lots of testing, you’ll know exactly the kind of content your audience will respond to, enabling you to feel confident reaching out to new audiences and growing further.

Want to know more about Paid Social?
Read part 1 in our series – The Power of Paid Social: A Guide to Boosting Your Brand
And then onto part 2 – The Power of Paid Social: How to Budget, Experiment, and Optimise Results 

Author: Carly Tallentire, Account Manager, Door4