Let’s be honest, epic fails are only funny when no one gets hurt and in the advertising business, if your ad campaign flops, your brand suffers. There’s definitely no single recipe for an ad campaign to succeed there are some top reasons that it won’t. Don’t fall victim to an ad that falls short of the mark. Do the research and understand what to do and especially what not to do. Here are our top reasons that we believe some ad campaigns fail epically. While, this list is nowhere near exhaustive, it’s a place to start.
Creative Ways to Advertise
Did you know that it typically takes 5-7 brand interactions before a consumer remember the brand? (Start Up Bonsai) We’ve written articles in the past on how to make your advertisements stand out from the crowd with the use of Interactive Advertising. We’ve also talked about what contributes to the effectiveness of an advertisement. Creativity will always win in advertising campaigns so why should the way that you advertise be any different? Not only should the advertisements themselves stand out, the way that you advertise should as well.
Top Reasons to Adopt UGC Into Your Advertising Strategy
It’s no secret that we love user generated content pieces. We’ll scream it to the mountain tops and swear by its effectiveness. We’ve written articles on the cost effectiveness of UGC, building brand trust with UGC and overall UGC statistics for making our case. But…just in case you aren’t sold yet, we’ve decided to put a list together to show you just why you should incorporate it into your advertising if you haven’t already.
1. Increased customer engagement. People are more likely to share content created with UGC. Millennials share more UGC as well. There is a “28% increased engagement rate when UGC and product videos merge” (Comscore).
2. Brands are focusing on UGC. 16% of brands have an effective UGC marketing strategy already and 86% of companies understand the importance of it according to an article in Taggbox.
3. Increases return visitors. Digital Information World Brands claims that brands featuring UGC on their sites have a 20% return rate.
4. High impact. People spend more time watching UGC than produced content and it has a higher impact on the viewers.
Do you believe us now? We hope we’ve made you a believer as we fully trust what UGC has to offer in the advertising space. Contact us now for your consultation to get started!
Neilson Global Marketing Report 2022
The Power of Email Marketing
Performance Marketing vs Affiliate Marketing
A hot topic right now is performance marketing. It’s somewhat similar to affiliate marketing but has a lower risk involved and encompasses a wider umbrella that includes affiliate marketing as its sub category. It’s not something that is new but is now rising to the top as a new way to market. Let’s define each for some more clarity. Affiliate marketing is where a relationship is set up between a brand and an individual or organization where partners will receive a percentage commission of the sales they help create. Performance marketing where brands only pay when a certain objective has been met, such as clicks, leads or a sale. Here, advertisers connect with agencies, publishers or influencers to design and place ads on their company channels.
Advertising Effectiveness Contributors
What makes an advertisement effective? Take a second to think about it. We’ll wait…. Now that you’ve thought about it, we’re going to give you a hint. It’s not a cut and dry answer. As we’re sure you’ve guessed, it’s not just one thing that will make an advertisement effective, it’s multiple aspects. That being said though, turns out that creativity is still the most important part of advertising effectiveness. There are 5 other important contributors to advertising effectiveness. According to a study done by Nielson Catalina Solutions, creative lands on top at 47% but the other 5 include reach at 22%, brand at 15%, targeting lists at 9%, recency at 5% and lastly, context at 2%.
Emotional Advertising
Of course, we all buy things out of necessity or want! However, as it turns out a lot of us buy things driven by emotions. A study done showed that “70% of viewers who experienced an intense emotional response to an ad were very likely to buy the product” (Unruly). This brings to mind that overly drawn out commercial for the SPCA. In the ad you’re shown sad faced, pitiful looking animals while Sarah McLaughlin sings in a melancholy tone the background. Yea, you know exactly which one I’m talking about. They’re really selling it home hard with triggering the emotional response here. This is the text book example of an emotional ad. Makes sense to advertise this way. IPA Research showed that, “ads with purely emotional content perform twice as well (31% vs. 16%) compared to those with only rational content.” It appears we are emotional beings rather than rational.
Multicultural Advertising
Gen Z is the most multicultural generation to date and it’s expected that multicultural advertising budgets are going to increase in the coming years. It’s estimated that the white population in the U.S. will actually be the minority by 2043 according to the U.S. Census. Large cities all across America are now enmeshed with loads of diversity and with the social justice movements during the pandemic, inclusion is now necessity in conducting good business. Yesterday we wrote an article on cross-cultural advertising, so today we’re going to focus on the importance of multicultural advertising. As essential as it is today, it is still no easy feat to create multicultural ads that resonates with its audience and does not offend or alienate them. Thus, we thought we would put together a tips list to help you get started.
Cross-cultural Advertising
First off, let’s note that cross-cultural and multi-cultural advertising are not the same. Multi-cultural advertisements are created with a specific ethnic group(s) in mind where cross-cultural advertising is created in order to reach many different cultures simultaneously. Although it may seem straight forward, multi-cultural advertising is a little easier to achieve than the broader spectrum audience of many cultures. Specific ads that may do well in one country may not always do well in another and in countries that are melting pots, such as the U.S., you want to make sure your message gets across the way you intend. Thus, cross-cultural advertising brings with it certain challenges. That being said, cross-cultural advertising has never been more important in today’s global society. Different cultures are more accessible in every part of the world with technology and transportation. It’s imperative that agencies adopt a cross-cultural approach to their advertising strategies. It’s not straight forward but the work will be worth it! Here are some things to consider when creating cross-cultural advertisements.
The Rise of Interactive Advertising
Did you know that there is a term called ad blindness? It is a term to explain the phenomenon in response to how people have begun to cope with being subject to constant advertising. People have developed a coping mechanism to subconsciously and sometimes consciously tune out advertisements. In fact, 82% of Gen Z skip or ignore ads completely according to A List Daily. You can check out our article from yesterday on tips to make your advertisements more engaging but there is another kind of ad emerging that seems to increase engagement; interactive advertising. Actually, interactive advertisements have been shown to increase consumer attention by 47% and 32% more memorable according to a study conducted by Magna Global. So, let’s talk about some different types of interactive advertisements.
Social Media Stats 2022
Upon all our blog research here at Locomotive, there is always a recurring theme in advertising with social media. It’s now one of the most important parts of an advertising strategy in today’s world. We found some really interesting stats that we wanted to share with all of you. We know it helps us see a clear picture of who is watching what and where. It’s important to know where your target audience is to better serve them.
Ways to Engage Consumers for Advertisements
Whether on a streaming service, online or when watching a video, at some point we’ve all been just waiting for the “skip ad” button to pop up so we can click on it to get to what we’re there for. It occurred to me that I do this almost 100% of the time and I’m not alone. A study done by IPG showed that 65% of people skip video ads as soon as they get the chance. Some even stated that it is purely habit at this point.
UGC Stats
We’ve all heard it a million times now. People trust people more than paid actors. It’s for this reason and many others that user generated content is now at the forefront of digital advertising. The purpose of this blog is to shine some light on some statistics about user generated content, otherwise known as sourced content.
Programmatic Advertising
The future is digital! Making sure your company is up to date on the newest software and techniques for their advertising is going to be a key component to their success. Taking advantage of software that performs programmatic advertising will save your brand money, streamline your digital ad space buying process and help you reach a wider audience than before. Why wouldn’t your brand want to take advantage of this when it seems like a no brainer right?! Happy advertising!
Understanding Purchasing Motivations
We all buy things… but why? What is the reason you bought that new pair of shoes? Well, actually there are really only 6 reasons that we buy things. It’s important as a business to understand these motives in order to align your product or service to your audience. You will need to define what problem your product or service solves for the customer in order to define what motive they will have in purchasing from you. Let’s take a look at the 6 buying motivations.
Tapping Into Gen Z for Advertising
Who’s ready for some changes? We know we are and Gen Z is proving to be new type of market when it comes to the advertising world. They are like no other that came before them. Let’s talk about the biggest difference between Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z. Millennials remember a time before social media whereas Gen Z does not know a world without it. Even more, their Gen X counterparts grew up on MTV with zero social media. I don’t think it really comes as a surprise that Gen Z is a unique group who can’t imagine a world without tech.
Silent Video
“Silence is a source of great strength”
-Lao Tzu
Imagine that you’re in a quiet work environment. You get on your phone to look something up. As the page finishes loading, a loud blast of sounds starts coming through and you fumble to get your volume button pressed down to zero. We’ve all had this happen to us. It’s disruptive and it affects people negatively. Turns out that 66% of people hate it when ads automatically play with sound on according to an article by Teads. In response, advertisers are trying to mitigate this by producing ads that begin to play automatically without sound. Since outstreamed videos are going to become a thing of the future, advertisers should focus on silent plays with captions. According to Facebook, captioned video ads increased views by 12%. Ads should be able to convey an emotional message without the use of sound. This can be done with the use of motion graphics and text within the campaign. This new trend will be a way for advertisers to use their creative license to make videos impactful despite not having any sound. We’re certain your team has the creative abilities to do this but here are some quick tips to get you started on ways to make your silent spots stand out and perform well.
1. Use bold visuals and/or animations. This will help catch the viewers eye and keep them engaged. It’s also very visually striking to see good fonts and animations that blend well together within your brand’s signature look.
2. Use Call to Action buttons. Make sure to insert in a way that it is natural flowing. You can even run tests before it launches to see where it receives the most clicks. CTA buttons are imperative to getting conversions. Using a download button seems to yield the best lead results (HubSpot).
3. Subtitles. If your brand feels it won’t be able to get its point across 100% without sounds then subtitles can offer a lot of relief. Facebook now offers a feature where you can automatically add captions to videos.
4. Write unconventional scripts. This is always a fun way to entice viewers to keep watching your campaigns. They’ll want to know what is about to happen next. I know I always appreciate a good creative ad that keeps me on my toes or just completely blows me away with how unconventional it is! A prime example would be the recent OutHorse Your Email Campaign for Visit Iceland.
5. Share your offers/discounts early in the ad. Since attention spans are shorter and shorter each year, you want to get the most important message out first. Research suggests that you have about 10 seconds to hook, line, and sink em’!
6. Be short and concise. Again, for those in the back who didn’t hear. Attention spans continue to lessen so it’s important to make your campaigns shorter than 60 seconds. The ad must also grab the attention of the audience immediately in order to keep them engaged in watching.
7. Don’t ditch the audio. Sometimes people do still listen to ads with sound on. Be able to convey your message without it but really drive the point home with the audio on. Make that emotional connection deeper with your audience.
In the words of the infamous Will Rogers, “Never miss a good chance to shut up!” This is definitely one of those times! A time for advertisers to harness the opportunity to creatively grow through the rise in popularity of silent ads is here. Let your campaigns say a lot through saying nothing at all! Happy creating!
The Importance of Marketing Research
Research shows that businesses are 60% more profitable when they are customer-centric according to an article written by Lucid. Market research is one of the best ways to do this by getting to know your customer base. This is done through gathering data to learn more about demographics and marketing trends as well as other important aspects of business goals. First, there are many subcategories of marketing research and I will only touch on a few in this article.
Google 3rd Party Cookie Phase Out & Advertising
What are third-party cookies? Well, think about it like this, you’re thinking about buying yourself a new pair of work boots. You research on the internet with search engines and end up on some of your favorite boot makers websites. Now every time you open up your browser you’re seeing ads for work boots everywhere. This is no coincidence and there is a reason you are now seeing these ads. It’s called third-party cookies.
