A 4-minute read.
So many people are confused when you start talking about advertising with Facebook and Instagram (“New world” advertising). People are still obsessed with the idea of TV commercials, magazine ads, billboard ads and outdoor media. The problem with traditional advertising is that it is massively overpriced!
Barely anyone pays attention to TV commercials anymore, they tend to pick up their phones once the commercial airs. I actually don’t think a single person watches TV commercials and its an $80 billion industry. People rarely look at billboards or magazine ads anymore either. The demand for this advertising has gone down so much that advertisers have increased the price of it to keep their ROI positive.
Facebook and Instagram have created a “new world” of advertising. With this new world advertising, we are seeing companies use similar strategies on Facebook and Instagram as they do with TV. Similar to when companies went from Radio to Television (go Youtube the first 100 TV ads), the ads were a man narrating a sign or image. Smaller companies need to take advantage of this new world advertising before big companies start to come in and drive up the price.
It takes a lot to win in this new world of advertising, but if done right the ROI can be MASSIVE!
Strategies
Here are some of my favourite strategies/tactics to use:
1. Create tons of audience segments
A lot of businesses are creating a dozen or so pieces of content for the year and putting massive budgets behind those pieces of content.
It’s much more effective to segment your customer base as much as possible, 20-100+ segments I would recommend. Create content specifically for each of those segments. For example, if you are a shipping company you a segment could be small woodcraft shop owners. You would create content that included your shipping company and a small woodcraft shop. You are more likely to get a reaction from them than if your content was your shipping company and Jane’s Cupcakes.
I am not a big fan of Heineken, but if they targeted me on Facebook with a piece of content tied to the Toronto Maple Leafs, I would be interested.
The moral of the story here is that you are much more likely to get a reaction from your audience if you created content contextual to who they actually are.
You need to be matching your content to your demographics as much as possible. You need to be constantly testing to see where money is best spent. You need to be creating massive amounts of content.
2. Don’t worry about the high cost
You will notice the more narrow you go on your targeting, the more your CPM or CPC will increase. For this reason, a lot of people are afraid to go narrow on targeting. However, the broader you go the more basic or vanilla your messaging needs to be.
This is why a lot of brands like BMW and McDonalds have used slogans like “Designed for Driving Pleasure” or “I’m Lovin’ It.” With traditional advertising, it wasn’t possible to go narrow. You only had a few pieces of content that millions of people would so, so your content had to be vanilla.
Going narrow increases your cost, however, your ads have a much better chance at converting because you can tailor your messaging and content to your segment.
Don’t get thrilled like most companies to pay a lower cost for a higher reach, then get confused when your content doesn’t translate to conversions.
3. Run retargeting ads on engaged users
This is by far my most favourite strategy. Here’s how it works.
Create a contextual, long-form video and get 50,000+ people to see it.
From there, take the viewers who watched 2-3 minutes of that video and retarget them with a call-to-action. These viewers have already expressed interest in your brand or product. Retargeting them with a call-to-action ad will work unbelievably well.
You will be blown away at how many of those viewers convert.
4. Test and learn before spending big
As the saying goes “always be testing.” So many companies spend insane amounts of money on advertisements based on tiny focus groups and subjective opinions of internal decision makers. When I say an insane amount of money, I am talking a quarter million and up. $250,000, that is insane!!!
Rather than putting all your eggs in one basket, there are smarter ways to test what content to bet your money on.
You could test out your messaging through a tweet or blog post. If that works, you could create another piece of content that goes more in depth, such as a picture. Now if that starts to get traction, you could make a video that goes in to even more depth. If that works then you can expand to something much larger.
5. Use the same agency for media buying and creative/content
This is extremely important. Your creative and media need to work together in tandem. For that reason, you need to have them done at one place. You will most likely find yourself in a situation where you are getting an extremely low CPM and vanilla creative. This happens because you have a creative agency and a media agency that never have a single conversation.
6. Take the time to do it RIGHT
Don’t try to take shortcuts. Use the data and keep testing. Keep segmenting, creating content, testing and optimizing. There is always room for growth. You could see a 60% increase one month and stop testing OR you could continue testing and optimizing and next month all the sudden you increase by 600%! Segment, Content, Test, Optimize, Rinse & Repeat.
These same tactics work very well with Google Ads as well. If you look at some big brands like Wish and Amazon, they are doing billions in sales and 98% of their advertising is spent on Facebook and Google. If you are looking to discuss further strategies and tactics that will work well for your business, please contact us.
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Jason Puckering
[email protected]
416-522-4407
Tracy Swinscoe
[email protected]
813-820-2783