Marketers revel at the thought of having successful campaigns that convert consumers to customers.
Being able to have that gleeful euphoria embarks marketers on a long journey that may take many turns and involves considering a plethora of media channels to connect to consumers. But this connection requires more deliberation given the need to be relevant and authentic. By 2018, advertisers will have spent a projected $21 billion on native advertising.
More consumers prefer the natural marriage of an advertiser’s messages and the content they enjoy. Or simply put, native advertising is gaining consumer engagement within the content feed being viewed. It’s clear that content is the future of advertising.
When you have the happy union of content and advertiser message, there is higher recall, longer time spent, and lower bounce rate. Bounce rate describes a consumer’s action of not moving to an advertiser’s message that takes them to another site. The consumer will favor staying with the content they originally came to view.
Consumers are no longer interested in being interrupted. Hence, to disrupt the consumer, you must really determine unique means to seamless integrate your brand’s message in content that is valuable to a given target audience to heighten their engagement. Nonetheless, the marketer’s job isn’t over just because you have content integration. One must continue to optimize best performing sites to maximize your budgets to drive higher conversion. Other items to note include:
- Create visually dynamic ads and content to enhance performance
- Use retargeting to improve performance
- Utilize content/brand influence study to measure core brand affinity and purchase intent
- Rotate fresh content every few weeks
- Use real people (customers) versus actors
- Deploy storytelling method vs. selling your brand
There are many publishers who offer robust content solutions. They can assist in cracking the DNA of this puzzle. Consider the consumer first as you go about planning marketing communications. Use of consumer insights will go a long way in making the right decisions about which content is best to reach a desired consumer set.
Adele Lassere is a marketing/advertising consultant with 20+ years experience, freelance writer and author of “Elements of Buying” (a self-help advertising guide), available at Amazon.com. Adele was listed as Black Enterprise’s 2011 Top Execs in Marketing & Advertising and Black Enterprise’s 2013 Top Women Executives in Advertising & Marketing. Contact: [email protected]
