Trends in digital advertising are rarely abrupt and unpredictable. They tend to be gradual and happen over time. In social advertising, strategies that work will always check two two boxes: does this improve the experience for the social media user? And will this get better results for the advertiser?
Refresh your 2019 social advertising strategy with these 8 strategies in mind:
Create Product Catalog Ads For A Better Mobile Ad Experience
Facebook discovered that many of the brands using their ad platform had slow landing page mobile experiences, which caused users to bounce quickly before getting to the point of shopping. What did this mean for advertisers? Low conversion rates. What did this mean for Facebook? Unhappy customers. What did this mean for users? A bad experience. Facebook has done a slight hack of the system to build better mobile ad experiences through their platform.. There are many options for creating ads using your Facebook Product Catalog where users can first shop through a a highly mobile friendly, high converting and fast-loading Facebook landing page. The final sale will still happen on your website, but Facebook’s product catalog helps bridge the gap between the ad and your website.
Produce (Even) Shorter Video
The average attention span of Facebook user has the attention span of a gnat. And it’s getting worse. The best ecommerce ads I’ve seen at the end of 2018 have a series of 9-second videos, with a theme, linking to a dynamic product catalog ad. A very small percentage of your audience is going to go on to watch your 1:30, 1:00 or even your :30 second video ad, regardless of how good your story telling is.
Focus More on the Core and Less On The Masses
The 80/20 rule still reigns true in 2019. 20% of your customers make up 80% of your revenue. And so, as it is still important to bring new people into your tribe, a portion of your budget should be put towards engaging, marketing and coming up with special programs to keep your loyal customers and followers feeling Super Special. Capital S. Your core base will cost less to convert. So yes, keep up those organic posts, comments, likes and customer service emails.
Design Ads Specifically For Placements
The social media user is savvy. And Facebook cares about the experience their users are getting. So when you create ads that don’t keep the experience in mind the user isn’t engaged and Facebook will give you a low quality score which will spike the cost of running ads. Create Instagram story videos for instagram stories. Create product videos for your product catalog. And create carousel ads the cause the user to scroll from left to right to discover more.
Reduce Overspending Before Scaling
Many times brands have a set budget. A number decided by people sitting around a board room that “feels right.” The digital marketer then uses this money down to the exact cent that they were given without much additional thought (I’ve been there!). Many times your budget isn’t as big as it should be, and in many times it’s actually too big for the objectives you’re going after. From all of the account audits I’ve done over the past year, I’ve seen brands, more times than not, spend more than they need to reach their goals. Overspending $5-$15/ day on a low funnel ad could mean wasted budget, but it also could mean a bad user experience as you’re hammering your audience with ads multiple times per day and your frequency gets out of hand. Before you think about spending more money, look at where you’re spending too much money throughout your ad sets. If you’re not reaching a high enough frequency to convert on certain ads, scale up your budget.
Adopt an Omni- Channel Approach
Customers are platform agnostic. As much as I am a social advertiser, I realize the end user might convert to sale from a variety of different digital channels. Google ads, organic search, email, social ads, podcasts and word of mouth marketing all still matter and need to work in unison with each other. 86% of shoppers are regularly channel-hopping across at least two channels. So that means if they see your Faceboook ad, and then search for your product on Google, you better hope your name shows up first or else you’ll lose the sale to a competitor.
Improve You Pre-Purchase AOV
There are many ways to increase your average order value (AOV), but some of the lowest hanging fruit you have is to improve your pre-purchase AOV so you can make more money from each sale thus getting a better return on ad spend (ROAS) from your ads. Some ideas include:
- Bundling popular items into deals; 1 product for X price; 3 products for X price (better value); 6 products for X price (Even better value).
- Priority Shipping
- Bundles of complementary products at better value
- Warranting your product
Write Copy That Tells The Problem You Solve
Images inspire. Words sell. The copy you write in your ads should succinctly tell your audience the problem you solve for them. People buy things for two reasons; it take them closer to pleasure or further away from pain. Maybe it does both. What does yours do? Make sure that message is throughout all of your messaging.
Social advertising is the art of engaging your target audience with a message that inspires them to learn more about your product and how it can solve their problems. In 2019, you should expect the cost of social advertising to increase as Facebook is going to be even pickier about protecting the experience of their users on Instagram and Facebook. Your number one focus should be on creating content that enhances the Facebook experience instead of detracting from it. As always, reach out with any questions.
Happy New Year,
Becca