With forethought and creativity, you can create a high-converting native advertising campaign that will outperform other marketing channels.
There are several factors that help to ensure a native advertising campaign will maximize its potential and deliver an optimal ROI.
At Brax, we make it easy to create and manage native advertising campaigns. However, the success of these campaigns still depends on the quality of the content being published and the way native ads are managed. There can be a world of difference between content that meets your company’s objectives and content that meets the needs of your target audience. And although creating native ads is reassuringly straightforward, it’s much harder to create a high-converting native advertising campaign.
These are some of the steps, shortcuts and secrets that will help to ensure your next campaign optimizes its conversion rate.
They go low, you go high
Here in 2021, a high-converting native advertising campaign isn’t just desirable—it’s essential:
- Audience fatigue with traditional ads is manifesting in banner blindness, ad blocking, and click-through rates (CTRs) for full banner ads of just 0.04%—even for videos.
- Native advertising is regarded as credible and ethical by adolescent audiences, who are often a key demographic—as well as being future decision-makers.
- Acceptance of native advertising has actually increased among consumers in recent years, according to research by three of America’s leading universities.
This provides reassurance that a native advertising campaign will achieve tangible results. But as we explained in the introduction, there’s still a great deal to consider in terms of ensuring your next campaign is high-converting. Below, we look at some of the factors that will determine CTRs and the success (or otherwise) of a native ads campaign.
1. Identify an objective and work backward
The best native ad campaigns are designed around an end goal: attracting leads, building brand awareness, or increasing sales. Only when an objective has been identified can an appropriate and relevant campaign be assembled, with every step laser-focused on the goal.
2. Follow the buyer’s journey
Consumers tend to follow a three-stage journey to solving the problem outlined in the previous paragraph: awareness, consideration, and decision. Native campaigns can guide them along this journey, with sequential ads helping to reassure and advise at each stage.
3. Know your audience
It’s easy to waste ad budgets if you don’t focus on who’s being targeted. A strength of native advertising is its ability to drill down to the most relevant audience demographics. Use these granular analytics tools to segment audiences and retarget wavering consumers.
4. Maintain your brand standards
It’s vital to ensure your brand ethos and tone of voice carry over into native ads. If you regularly add value by publishing long-form guides online, promote these via native content. If your blogs are loaded with pop-culture references, use topical headlines in your ads.
5. Pose a question, then answer it
Intrigue is one of the main motivators for clicking through on a native ad. That’s why images are often cropped to create ambiguity, as we recently discussed. Campaigns that promise to answer a question or resolve a problem can be extremely effective.
6. Review and revise
Don’t create a killer campaign and then simply leave it to run. A/B testing, budget revisions, and other real-time revisions can direct more ad spend to the most productive platforms, reducing wastage and ensuring ads are only seen by suitable audiences.
7. Ensure the landing page aligns with the ad
A recent Outbrain blog uses the example of a native ad promising to teach people Spanish in 20 minutes a day. If click-throughs land on a page that doesn’t directly reference this promise, consumers will leave—and high bounce rates will cripple conversion rates.
8. Retarget wavering consumers
Native campaigns can evolve with a customer’s journey. An ad might show a product, which they view but don’t buy. Follow up with product reviews or user guides, which may see the item put in an online cart. Finally, basket reminders or discounts can encourage checkout.
Conversion therapy
If your previous native advertising campaigns haven’t achieved the objectives you hoped for, there are probably underlying issues with the campaign itself. Native advertising is an extremely powerful tool when harnessed correctly, and the eight steps above should help to ensure every marketing dollar is spent effectively.
At Brax, we’re enthusiastic advocates of running multiple campaigns. This lets clients compare results before refining or dropping less effective campaigns. Find out how we offer granular control over multiple native ad campaigns across all the major platforms, all from a single dashboard.
