These Tactical Black Friday Ad Campaign Tips Can Increase Your Revenue 200%

There’s no better time than the Black Friday season to boost your sales. From product launches to store-wide promotions, businesses ramp up their sales and marketing efforts during this time to match the high customer demand. 

Not sure where to start? Black Friday ad campaigns are one of the quickest way to drive revenue.

Do Black Friday Ad Campaigns Make a Difference? 

Don’t dismiss Black Friday as just another e-commerce trend. Shoppers still spend as much as $9 billion on Black Friday deals in a given year. You can leverage this audience interest to improve your revenue by using effective Black Friday ad campaigns. 

Here’s how. 

Top 8 Black Friday Ad Campaign Tips

Follow these simple yet powerful strategies to build successful Black Friday ad campaigns. 

1. Make Your Sales Specials Clear

How would people buy from you if they don’t know what you’re selling? 

If you’re launching a Black Friday ad campaign, make your offers clear. For example, look at this ad by First Hotels

black friday ad campaigns example first hotels.

The first word makes it clear what the offer is about. Then, the rest of the ad copy is written in simple language to draw attention to the Black Friday ad. 

Here is another example from the Clash of Clans Twitter account.

Clash of Clans Twitter Black Friday ad campaign

How do you make sure your Black Friday ad campaign makes your offers clear and attractive?

  • Add the words Black Friday in a large, eye-catchy font. 
  • Make it easy to understand with simple ad copy like in the Clash of Clans image.
  • Use striking visuals, animations, and popping elements to draw attention. 

2. Research Which Platforms to Run Campaigns On

The best strategies for creating a Black Friday ad campaign vary from platform to platform. Research the popular ad campaign platforms beforehand to make the most out of your time, money, and efforts. 

This way, you’ll know which platforms work best for your audience and for the type of content you want to post. It’ll also help you tailor your marketing strategies to the unique features offered by the platform. 

For instance, here are some points you need to consider:

  • Do you want your Black Friday ad campaign to be visually engaging? Then use social media platforms like Instagram. This can be great for fashion and food brands. 
  • Do you want to hold the audience’s attention via engaging text? Then use social media platforms like Twitter and LinkedIn. This can be great for magazines, SEO services, and other text-focused businesses. 
  • Do you want to create an ad campaign with both text and images? Then use social media platforms like Facebook. This can be great for most industries, from small home-based business owners to worldwide franchise businesses. 

Your marketing (or ad spend) budget should also be a major consideration when deciding which platform you’ll use for your Black Friday ad campaign. 

I recommend comparing the prices of all social media and advertising platforms to see how much money you would need to get similar results on different platforms. 

Not all results are replicable, but this will give you a rough idea of which platform can help you take your dollar the farthest. 

3. Start Early to Benefit More

Don’t wait for the last day to launch your Black Friday ad campaign. Ad campaign fees can be higher during the holiday season, so it’s best to up your marketing game early on. 

Here’s why it helps:

  • You can launch effective ad campaigns before your competition when there’s little to no bidding for similar products and services. 
  • You save money by buying ads when they’re relatively cheaper.
  • You generate audience interest which can boost sales when your offers go live. 

What’s the best way to start early?

First, plan what your Black Friday ads should contain well in advance. Use audience analysis (more on that below) to refine your plan further. 

Second, use words like “upcoming,” “soon,” and “stay tuned” to build excitement and interest. Audience research is essential here too. If you’ve tried A/B testing with your frequent customers before, you’ll have the data to make informed decisions about the word choice and structure. 

Finally, set an early launch date. Start your Black Friday ad campaign a few days before the average business would so you can leverage the lower competition time and attract audience attention. 

Many businesses typically start advertising their Black Friday deals about a week in advance. However, I recommend considering the period around the first week of November to launch your Black Friday ad campaign. 

4. Cash in on Cyber Monday

“BFCM” is a trending term around the Black Friday season. It stands for Black Friday Cyber Monday and refers to the time between the two days when most e-commerce stores offer massive deals. 

Here’s an example of a Black Friday Cyber Monday ad by Pololu.

Pololu Black Friday Cyber Monday ad

This strategy works because the audience is already in a shopping mode during this season, and receiving combined ads can help increase e-commerce interest

Here are some things to keep in mind when designing a BFCM ad:

  • Highlight both Black Friday and Cyber Monday in your ad copy. 
  • Keep the ad copy clear. Don’t clutter it with too much content and colors. 
  • Make your offers clear. Are you offering discounts, deals, free trials, etc.?

5. Understand Your Audience 

You can design the best Black Friday ad, but if it isn’t tailored to your audience, it’s not going to be very useful. 

Think about it: You don’t want to show a bicycle ad to someone who only travels by car.

For instance, data shows Millennials spent the most money on Black Friday deals. It might be more effective to market your products and services to this demographic if relevant to your business model.

Here are some tips that will help you understand your audience and craft a compelling ad copy:

  • Get hyper-specific about your target customer. What do they like and dislike? What gets their attention?
  • Create a buyer persona to make sure you’re looking at the complete picture. You can use HubSpot’s Make My Persona tool to do this more effectively. 
  • Get direct customer feedback through surveys and feedback forms. Here’s a simple but effective example from QuickTapSurvey.
Best Black Friday Ad Campaign Tips - Understand Your Audience
  • Experiment with different wording to see what best resonates with your audience. Switch up the pronouns from “you” to “we” and vice versa. You can also try using completely different copy to see what works well, which brings me to the next point:
  • Try A/B testing with graphics, images, and headlines. A/B testing will give you live feedback on whether your strategies are working or not. It’ll also help you pinpoint the areas where your Black Friday ad campaign is lacking and how to improve it. 

6. Target Your Ad Campaigns

Now that you understand your audience, it’s time to make sure your Black Friday ads are targeted to them. 

Social media platforms like Facebook can be helpful for this. For example, Facebook offers a wide selection of targeting and retargeting options so you can truly narrow down the customers you want to reach. 

Best Black Friday Ad Campaign Tips - Target Your Ad Campaigns

Refer to your buyer persona and create specific ad campaigns to appeal to your target buyer. This will ensure you are reaching the right people without wasting a lot of money. 

7. Offer Options to Recover Abandoned Carts

Often people will visit your e-commerce store, browse through your products, maybe add a few to the cart, but leave without buying. Research shows e-commerce brands lose $18 billion in sales revenue each year because of abandoned carts. 

You can offer options to recover abandoned carts. Here’s how:

Understand and Change 

First, start by understanding why people are abandoning the process midway. For example, is it the shipping fees? If so, can you offer discounted or free shipping for Black Friday? 

Offer Better Deals

Sometimes customers want to buy the product, but they want to check out competitor products or simply wait for a discount. As an e-commerce business owner, you can use this to your advantage by offering Black Friday discounts and exclusive deals to such customers. 

For example, look at the abandoned cart recovery email below, shared by TargetBay

Best Black Friday Ad Campaign Tips - Offer Options to Recover Abandoned Carts

Emails like this serve three primary purposes:

  • It reminds customers to complete the transaction if they’ve forgotten it while browsing. 
  • It establishes a sense of trust and loyalty because you’re sending targeted offers right into their inbox. 
  • It gives you an edge over competitors who aren’t offering such deals. 

8. Don’t Forget Basic Ad Campaign Optimization

Sometimes, in a quest to create a highly effective ad copy, marketers tend to overlook the basic ad campaign optimization strategies. Don’t be one of them. 

To ensure you get the best results from your Black Friday ad campaign, be mindful of the nitty-gritty details. To make this easier, keep the following checklist handy:

  • Budget: What’s your budget for the Black Friday ad campaign? How can you effectively distribute it across different advertising and social media platforms? 
  • Copy: Is your copy clear and easy to understand? Double and triple-check for spelling and grammar mistakes. 
  • Platform features: Are you using all the relevant marketing features the platform you chose has to offer? For example, are you using the right targeting tools on Facebook? Is your Instagram ad campaign visually appealing? 
  • Platform limits: Be careful about the platform limits like word count, number of characters visible, image display, and page position. This can mess up how your ad is seen if not done right. 

Black Friday Ad Campaign Frequently Asked Questions

Here are some of the most frequently asked questions about Black Friday Ad Campaigns.

Is building a Black Friday marketing plan a good idea?

Yes, Black Friday marketing is essential. E-commerce shoppers collectively spend billions during the Black Friday season, making it one of the most lucrative times to up your marketing game.

How should I pick the keywords I target for my Black Friday tactical ad campaigns?

To pick the right keywords for your Black Friday ad campaign, you can use keyword research tools like Ubersuggest, Ahrefs, and Moz. Studying your audience’s needs and consumption habits can also help you understand which Black Friday ad keywords will and won’t resonate.

When should my Black Friday ad campaign start?

If you want to make the most out of your marketing efforts, I recommend beginning early. Start teasing and promoting your offers at the beginning of November to build curiosity and excitement. Plus, it’s cheaper than starting closer to the event.

What are the top tips for ad campaigns for Black Friday 2021?

The top tips for ad campaigns for Black Friday 2021 include audience research, using targeting and retargeting techniques, cashing in on the Cyber Monday sales, and offering abandoned cart recovery deals.

{
“@context”: “https://schema.org”,
“@type”: “FAQPage”,
“mainEntity”: [
{
“@type”: “Question”,
“name”: “Is building a Black Friday marketing plan a good idea? “,
“acceptedAnswer”: {
“@type”: “Answer”,
“text”: ”

Yes, Black Friday marketing is essential. E-commerce shoppers collectively spend billions during the Black Friday season, making it one of the most lucrative times to up your marketing game.


}
}
, {
“@type”: “Question”,
“name”: “How should I pick the keywords I target for my Black Friday tactical ad campaigns?”,
“acceptedAnswer”: {
“@type”: “Answer”,
“text”: ”

To pick the right keywords for your Black Friday ad campaign, you can use keyword research tools like Ubersuggest, Ahrefs, and Moz. Studying your audience’s needs and consumption habits can also help you understand which Black Friday ad keywords will and won’t resonate.


}
}
, {
“@type”: “Question”,
“name”: “When should my Black Friday ad campaign start?”,
“acceptedAnswer”: {
“@type”: “Answer”,
“text”: ”

If you want to make the most out of your marketing efforts, I recommend beginning early. Start teasing and promoting your offers at the beginning of November to build curiosity and excitement. Plus, it’s cheaper than starting closer to the event.


}
}
, {
“@type”: “Question”,
“name”: “What are the top tips for ad campaigns for Black Friday 2021?”,
“acceptedAnswer”: {
“@type”: “Answer”,
“text”: ”

The top tips for ad campaigns for Black Friday 2021 include audience research, using targeting and retargeting techniques, cashing in on the Cyber Monday sales, and offering abandoned cart recovery deals.


}
}
]
}

Tactical Black Friday Ad Campaign Tips Conclusion

Black Friday can be a huge opportunity to attract customer attention, build brand awareness and boost revenue.

It may sound a little intimidating at first, considering the scale of the event, but I hope the tips above help you outline an effective Black Friday ad campaign strategy.

If you’d like to learn more about audience research and ad targeting, check out my guides to find your target audience and powerful ways to improve your Facebook targeting

Which strategy would you like to start with to ramp up your Black Friday ad campaign efforts?

Top Tips for How to Build Credit for a Business: The Last One May Shock You

Most business owners assume that you build credit for a business the same way you build consumer credit. Honestly, it makes sense.  It’s no wonder this is such a common misconception. With consumer credit, you just get credit accounts, and your payment history, good or bad, is reported to the credit bureaus. It builds passively … Continue reading Top Tips for How to Build Credit for a Business: The Last One May Shock You

Top Tips for How to Build Credit for a Business: The Last One May Shock You

Most business owners assume that you build credit for a business the same way you build consumer credit. Honestly, it makes sense.  It’s no wonder this is such a common misconception. With consumer credit, you just get credit accounts, and your payment history, good or bad, is reported to the credit bureaus. It builds passively on its own, whether you want it to or not. However, when it comes to how to build credit for a business, the same is not true.

How to Build Credit for a Business: Be Intentional

You have to intentionally work to build a business credit profile with a positive score. How do you do that? First, you have to establish a business credit profile. Then, you have to find accounts that will report your payments.  This is how you start to build a business credit score.

How do you establish a business credit profile? Don’t all creditors report payments, or lack thereof? Where do I start? Surprisingly,  you start at the beginning. 

It goes all the way back to the foundation. Business credit is part of a bigger picture we call fundability. You cannot build credit for your business if your business is not fundable, and fundability starts with a fundable foundation. 

How to Establish a Business Credit Profile

The steps you take to build a business credit profile are the same ones necessary to lay a fundable foundation for your business. If you are missing any of these steps your business will not be fundable and you will not be able to build credit for your business. Some of the things that make a difference will probably surprise you.

  • You need an EIN
  • You need to incorporate
  • A separate business bank account is a must
  • Even your business name and NAICS codes can make a difference! 

How to Build Credit for a Business: Pay Attention to the Details

Something as little as your business address, phone number, or email address can cause problems with fundability.  That, in turn, affects your ability to build credit for your business. Your address has to be a physical address where you can receive mail. For example, don’t use a P.O. Box or an UPS Box.  

Your phone number should be toll-free and listed in the 411 directories.  You can have it forwarded to your personal phone, but you need a separate business phone number. Also, a business email address is necessary.  But, you need to be sure it has the same URL as your business website. Do not use a free option like Yahoo or Gmail.

Here is a quick bonus tip. Your website needs to look professional and work well, and you need to pay for hosting. If a lender looks at your website, you want to make a good impression.  

Learn more here and get started with building business credit with your company’s EIN and not your SSN.

How to Build Credit for a Business: You Have to Apply for a D-U-N-S Number

Dun & Bradstreet is the largest and most commonly used business credit agency. Yet, you cannot have a business credit profile with them without a D-U-N-S number. You will not get one automatically. You have to apply for one on the Dun & Bradstreet website. Since lenders use it often, it is important to have a profile with them. It’s free, but be careful. They will try to sell you a lot of things you do not need, including their business credit monitoring services. You can do that cheaper elsewhere. Just apply for the number. 

How to Build Credit for a Business: Recognize That Not All Credit Accounts Will Report Payments

One of the major differences between consumer credit and business credit is that not all business credit accounts report payment history. Of course, pretty much all consumer credit accounts report payment history. You do not have to do anything to make that happen, it just does.

But this is not how business credit accounts work. Even if you do all the work to set your business up to be fundable, and establish your business credit profile, you may still not have a business credit score. Unfortunately, that’s because the accounts you have may not be reporting your on-time payments. 

The solution may seem simple. Just find accounts that will report. However, it’s not easy to find accounts that will approve you before your business credit score is established, let alone those that will do so and report payments. When you are trying to establish a business credit score, you have to find the few vendors that will both extend credit to your business without a credit check and report payments. There aren’t many, so you have to take what you can get. 

Finding Initial Accounts to Build a Business Credit Score

Business owners pretty much have two ways to go about finding these accounts. Of course,  you can just apply for credit accounts and hope you get approved. Then, hope they are reporting payments. You can monitor your business credit to see if payments are being reported. If they are, that’s great. If not, you have to start over.

Complicating matters even further is that you need 5 or more accounts reporting initially. This is a minimum to build a score strong enough for approval from other accounts. As you can imagine, this trial and error method can take an extremely long time.

The other option is to enlist the help of a business credit specialist. This is someone who can help you find those accounts that will both approve you without a credit check, and report on-time payments to the business credit reporting agencies. These are typically net accounts, not revolving.  That means they have to be paid in full completely at the end of the net term, usually 30, 60, or 90 days.

Learn more here and get started with building business credit with your company’s EIN and not your SSN.

How to Build Credit for a Business: Apply for Accounts in the Right Order

You cannot just start applying for any and all accounts at random trying to get credit for your business. Well, technically you can, but if you do not have a strong business credit score, you will be denied. 

The first accounts are those initial accounts that will approve a business without a credit score and report payments to the business credit reporting agencies. Still, even after you have your initial business credit score, you will not yet be eligible for any and all business credit accounts.  In contrast, you’ll have to find those that will approve you based on your still limited credit history.  Furthermore, those new accounts need to report payments as well so that you can continue to build your business credit score. 

This puts you in the same predicament described above. You can either apply at random, using trial and error until you get enough accounts reporting to apply for those with higher limits and lower interest rates, or  you can save yourself considerable time and frustration by working with a business credit specialist. A free consultation with a business credit specialist is one of the best ways to see what they can do for your business. 

Learn more here and get started with building business credit with your company’s EIN and not your SSN.

You Can Build Credit for Your Business

You can build credit in your business name. However, you have to take the initiative to work through the process. It will not happen on its own. Don’t wait either. Start now.  Even if your personal credit is fabulous and you have no trouble funding your business based on it, you need to know how to build credit for your business so that you can keep your strong consumer credit score. Then, you can get the funding you need to run your business, when you need it. 

The post Top Tips for How to Build Credit for a Business: The Last One May Shock You appeared first on Credit Suite.

8 Tips for a Brand Awareness Campaign

Brand awareness refers to how memorable your brand or company is to your target consumers. It’s how easily people recognize your brand when, for example, they hear your company name or see your logo. 

How do you build brand awareness, especially if you’re a new company? Through a carefully crafted brand awareness campaign, that’s how. 

Below, I’ll show you what brand awareness campaigns are and why they matter, and walk you through the steps to building your own successful branding campaign. 

What Are Brand Awareness Campaigns?

A brand awareness campaign aims to improve your brand’s “recognizability” to your target audience. What does this mean? 

You’re trying to ensure your ideal customers have the right impression of your brand. You want them to associate your company with a particular product or type of service. You’re trying to promote your unique selling point (USP) and what makes your business stand out from the competition.  

Who actually uses campaigns for brand awareness? Honestly, every business can use them. Whether you’re a startup just trying to build a name for yourself in a crowded marketplace, or you’re trying to rebrand an old company, you can benefit from a brand awareness campaign.     

Why Should You Create a Brand Awareness Campaign? 

Brand awareness campaigns are worth it for three major reasons.

First, a campaign gives you some control over how people ultimately perceive your brand. Sure, you can’t tell people what to think, but you can certainly promote your brand in a way that nurtures positive associations.   

Secondly, brand awareness helps to build trust between you and your target audience. Why does this matter? According to 53 percent of people in a recent study, trust is the second-most important factor in deciding whether to shop with a new brand (price comes first.) 

The takeaway? Brand awareness campaigns help you build successful relationships with customers based on trust. 

Finally, trust builds customer loyalty. On the one hand, loyal, happy customers will promote you to their friends and family, which brings you more customers in the long run. On the other hand, over time, your customer acquisition costs will decrease. 

8 Tips for Building an Effective Brand Awareness Campaign

Daunted by the prospect of building a whole campaign from scratch? It’s actually surprisingly simple once you understand the eight key steps involved.  

1. Understand Your Target Audience

First, you need to know who you’re actually targeting

To start, look at your existing customer base. Who buys your products or follows you on social media? These are the people who already identify with your brand, so look at what they have in common. Think about what matters to them, what problems they have, and how your products help them. 

Then, do some market research. Where else do your customers shop? Who are your biggest competitors? Chances are that your target audience also shops with your competitors, so spend time doing your research here.  

Finally, analyze your results and build a profile for your ideal customer. What do you want them to associate your brand with? Your answer will inform your campaign.    

2. Focus on the Platforms Your Audience Uses Most

A great brand awareness campaign isn’t just about who you target. It’s about where you target them, too. Where does your ideal buyer hang out? Are they watching videos on YouTube, or posting pics on Instagram? Again, this all comes down to researching your target audience and identifying where your campaign will make the most impact. 

I suggest choosing one or two platforms and designing your campaign to suit those modalities. For example, if you opt for a Twitter campaign, choose a memorable hashtag and get tweeting. if you choose Instagram, create visually appealing posts and short, catchy Instagram Stories.    

Rather than spreading your energy across multiple social media platforms, focus on the ones your target customers use most often.  

3. Set Achievable Goals for Your Campaign

Next, set some concrete short-term and long-term goals. Decide:

  • what you want to achieve from your campaign
  • how the campaign fits into your wider, long-term plans for your brand
  • which strategies you will use to achieve your goal e.g., PPC ads, social media posts, influencer marketing, and so on
  • how you’ll track your progress

Without concrete goals, you risk running a campaign without direction or a clear purpose. Every successful marketing strategy begins with a set goal or outcome in mind, so spend time reflecting on what you hope to achieve. 

4. Partner With Complementary Brands

A brand partnership means working with a complementary brand to create value, increase your exposure, and expand your audience reach. 

You shouldn’t choose a direct competitor, but rather a company with a broadly similar target audience. 

Take the IKEA and LEGO partnership, for example. On the surface, their target audiences look different. When you look a little closer, both companies are all about building cool things. You can imagine yourself building LEGO at an IKEA table, or placing a LEGO toy on IKEA furniture. 

In other words, both brands conjure similar impressions, which is exactly what we’re looking for in a brand awareness campaign built between partner companies:

Brand awareness campaign LEGO and IKEA brand partnership

Choose a brand you can partner with to best show off your USP.  

5. Be Active and Engaging Online 

In a highly competitive marketplace, consumer engagement really counts. Whether you’re replying to tweets, answering customer support messages, or simply liking user-generated content on Instagram, every communication adds up over time. 

Remember, while you’re trying to build your brand’s presence online, you’re also trying to set the right impression. Do you want to be known as a responsive and engaging company that cares about its target audience? Then, start communicating!

Also, make sure you’re creating regular content. If you can’t post daily, then at least get online four or five times per week to build some traction behind your social media accounts.  

6. Highlight Your Brand Personality 

The whole point of a brand awareness campaign is to influence how people perceive your brand, so highlight your company’s personality each time you post something new. Keep your brand messaging consistent, and you’ll bring your target audience one step closer to making the right associations with your business.   

Warby Parker, for example, is a quirky eyewear company. To position their brand as fun, fresh, and engaging, they post content like cute animals wearing their glasses:

Brand Awareness Campaign - Warby Parker Brand Personality

They also engage with customers by sharing user-generated content that most aligns with their brand:

Brand Awareness Campaign - Twitter UGC Warby Parker Marketing

In short, they see every post as an opportunity to promote their personality and build brand awareness. This is what you’re aiming for. 

Remember, your business is unique, so use your campaign to highlight what makes it so special.     

7. Improve the Customer Experience

For 80 percent of customers, the experience matters just as much as whatever products companies sell. Meaning, if you want to leave a positive, lasting impression on your customers, you should work on improving the customer experience.

Finally, on average, UX-focused companies are up to 60 percent more profitable than others. 

In other words, your brand awareness campaign shouldn’t just be about talking up your company. It should be about showing customers how you can help them and why their needs matter to you. 

Not sure how your current user experience stacks up? Encourage customers to leave reviews or send feedback so you can see how to improve your service offerings. 

While it’s impossible to act on all feedback, take note of common themes and identify where there’s room for improvement. Although no one likes negative reviews, they’re actually a key tool for leveling up your business in the long run. After all, you can’t fix problems no one tells you about, right? 

In short, you can quickly boost your brand awareness by prioritizing the customer experience and showing people how much you value their feedback.      

8. Track Your Results

How do you know if your campaign is working? Well, you probably won’t unless you set some criteria for measuring your success. 

The metrics you measure vary depending on the marketing strategy used. For example, if you run a campaign on Twitter, you might track things like the number of impressions, shared tweets, and hashtag mentions. If you decide to run paid ads, you could use Google Analytics to track your click-through rate (CTR) and conversions. 

What’s important is that you measure your results and implement strategy changes if necessary.  

2 Successful Brand Awareness Campaign Examples

OK, so that’s how you can create a campaign, but what does it take to make your campaign truly great? To find out, let’s check out two companies that nailed their campaigns.     

1. Corona: Pay With Plastic

Corona is a hugely popular brand of beer, and it’s often associated with summer, drinking on the beach, and good times. 

Back in 2019, to celebrate World Oceans Day, Corona launched a campaign, “Protect Paradise,” to help protect the environment. They encouraged customers to clean up their local beaches and hand over the plastic in exchange for free beer:

Successful Brand Awareness Campaign Examples - Corona Pay With Plastic

The results are positive brand associations based on social responsibility and protecting our environment. The Twitter campaign alone generated 14.1 million impressions and a 1 percent engagement rate, which is pretty impressive.    

2. MoonPie: Super Bowl Commercial

If there’s one thing I love about MoonPie, it’s their distinctive, instantly recognizable voice. Back in 2020, MoonPie ran a commercial for the Super Bowl, and they released the news to Twitter followers in a typically fun way:

Successful Brand Awareness Campaign Examples - MoonPie Super Bowl Commercial

You’ll note there’s an emphasis on purchasing the product, too, which is a great example of blending voice with persuasive marketing. In the end, the commercial only ran at gas stations, but as expected, MoonPie turned the news into a funny tweet:

Successful Brand Awareness Campaign Examples - MoonPie

The upshot? You can use these types of campaigns to let your distinctive brand personality shine. 

Frequently Asked Questions About Brand Awareness Campaigns

Now we’ve covered all the key points, let me leave you with some takeaway tips. 

What Are Brand Awareness Campaigns?

A brand awareness campaign is designed to improve consumers’ awareness of your brand and what it stands for. It should boost your overall recognizability.   

Why Should I Create Brand Awareness Campaigns?

Brand awareness campaigns can help you stand out from competitors, improve customer loyalty, and even reduce your customer acquisition costs over time. If you’re looking to grow your business and build customer relationships organically, building a campaign for brand awareness may help.  

How Do You Create a Brand Awareness Campaign?

First, set a clear goal and identify your target audience. Then, focus on the platforms where your target audience hangs out the most and work on a few strategies at a time. Engage with followers and make them feel like valuable members of your community.   

How Do You Track Your Brand Awareness Campaigns?

You can track your campaign’s performance using analytics tools like Google Analytics. You can also use the metrics tools offered by social media platforms. However you do it, just make sure you’re tracking your campaigns!

{
“@context”: “https://schema.org”,
“@type”: “FAQPage”,
“mainEntity”: [
{
“@type”: “Question”,
“name”: “What Are Brand Awareness Campaigns?”,
“acceptedAnswer”: {
“@type”: “Answer”,
“text”: ”

A brand awareness campaign is designed to improve consumers’ awareness of your brand and what it stands for. It should boost your overall recognizability.   


}
}
, {
“@type”: “Question”,
“name”: “Why Should I Create Brand Awareness Campaigns?”,
“acceptedAnswer”: {
“@type”: “Answer”,
“text”: ”

Brand awareness campaigns can help you stand out from competitors, improve customer loyalty, and even reduce your customer acquisition costs over time. If you’re looking to grow your business and build customer relationships organically, building a campaign for brand awareness may help.  


}
}
, {
“@type”: “Question”,
“name”: “How Do You Create a Brand Awareness Campaign?”,
“acceptedAnswer”: {
“@type”: “Answer”,
“text”: ”

First, set a clear goal and identify your target audience. Then, focus on the platforms where your target audience hangs out the most and work on a few strategies at a time. Engage with followers and make them feel like valuable members of your community.   


}
}
, {
“@type”: “Question”,
“name”: “How Do You Track Your Brand Awareness Campaigns?”,
“acceptedAnswer”: {
“@type”: “Answer”,
“text”: ”

You can track your campaign’s performance using analytics tools like Google Analytics. You can also use the metrics tools offered by social media platforms. However you do it, just make sure you’re tracking your campaigns!


}
}
]
}

Brand Awareness Campaign Conclusion

A brand awareness campaign allows you to shape how potential customers perceive your company. With the right campaign, you can directly influence what people think when they hear your brand’s name, and you can ensure that customers remember your name for the right reasons! 

In other words, it is the backbone of a successful marketing strategy, and it’s surprisingly easy to implement. However, if you’re still a little stuck on how to get started, check out my consulting services.  

Have you created a brand awareness campaign yet? Which strategies did you try?

10 Tips for More Persuasive Commercials and Ads

The proof is irrefutable. Commercial advertisements are one of the best ways to encourage customers to buy your products, and understanding the psychology behind why certain purchasing decisions are made will help influence your advertising approach for higher conversion rates.

With the right persuasive commercial techniques, you can inspire viewers to get involved with your brand, engage with your new content, make a direct purchase, or better: make multiple!

There’s one vital thing to remember: not all advertisements are equal. Two advertisements selling the same product on a similar budget could have two drastically different results. To be truly successful, you need:

  • a strong strategy
  • an arsenal of marketing technique
  • a true understanding of who your audience is and what they want

In this post, we’ll explore some of the best persuasive commercial techniques as well as some ways to implement them for use in your next (successful) ad.

4 Elements of Persuasive Commercials and Ads

Any persuasive commercial ad should have one goal: to get their customers to do something. Sometimes repeat exposure is required, and it can take a long time for you to convince one customer to move away from a competitor, so increasing communication channels with your target audience is bound to help you in the long run.

For an advert to be truly persuasive, there’s a lot of “behind the scenes” work that takes place. Successful implementation won’t instantly happen. It’ll take ongoing strategy, creative input, and an understanding of human psychology.

Storytelling

A persuasive commercial should tell a story about how your product is “the hero” that saves them from their problems.

After all, people tend to connect with vibrant stories, and often remember them long after they see a commercial. In fact, research suggests that people are 20x more likely to remember stories than facts or figures.

In contrast, simply saying, “Buy this product because it is the best!” is unlikely to stick in the minds of your consumers. You need to find a way to connect your product to a larger story and giving yourself an increased chance of being remembered by your customers.

Tailored Messaging

For any successful advert, you need to know what resonates with your audience—and talk to them on their level in a way that feels authentic and personal.

Persuasive commercials typically only have one overriding message, but there are exceptions. For example, when the ad has an “offer” that you can’t refuse, they are playing on their audience’s FOMO. Or if they’re trying to make you feel sorry for someone, they are using emotion to offer their product as the solution.

Good persuasive ads are creative and memorable because they truly connect with their audience and make them buy the product through personalized, targeted messaging.

Call To Action

Make sure your persuasive commercial includes a clear action that the viewer can take. This could be subscribing to your email list, following you on a specific social media platform, or, if you think the time is right, buying from you in-store.

Here’s an extra little fact: your CTA can be placed at the beginning, middle, or end of your ad. Just make sure it’s there! Call to actions are a great tool in any marketer’s arsenal, and the less “forced” they feel, the better.

Visuals and Sound Effects

A persuasive commercial should have both exciting visuals and sound effects in order to keep viewers engaged.

Visuals can include imagery, video, and even copy. How you break down your advert into digestible sentences can make a huge difference in audience retention times.

Persuasive commercials should also have great sound effects. You can use background sounds, music (both instrumental and vocals), or even moments of silence to create moods for the audience.

10 Tips for Persuasive Commercials and Ads

Now that you know what it takes to create a successful persuasive commercial, it’s time to put the skills to work.

Follow these ten tips for persuasive commercials and ads and you’ll soon be well on your way to improved brand power.

1. Start With a Bold Opener

Start by doing something outrageous to make the viewer pay attention to what you have to say next.

Use powerful words, colors, and images that will catch the attention of your audience.

Add in a bold opener with an “in your face” attitude.

Here’s an example of a Pepsi ad that played during Super Bowl 53.

Moments into the beginning of the ad, we see famed actor Steve Carrell make an explosive entrance. He seems angry at first but quickly turns kind, giving us a comedic twist and a bold opening emotion.

2. Use Creative Copy

Becoming a wordsmith isn’t for everyone, but persuasive copy is key to convincing viewers to take a suggested course of action.

You should play on stories and ideas, but don’t overuse them or overcomplicate your language because it will sound like you are trying too hard.

For example, persuasive copy in a commercial might sound like this: “Find out what your friends really think about you.”

This persuasive copy would work with a scenario where the viewer is watching their video clip and seeing other people’s reactions. The viewer may then start to question themselves about what they should do—watch more of it or leave. This type of persuasive copy is a great example of how to get viewers hooked.

Here are a few stills from Nike’s Dream Crazier campaign featuring inspiring images and copy that ask viewers to reach for the stars.

three nike ad examples featuring famous athletes and inspiring persuasive commercial

3. Understand What Your Customers Want

There are a variety of persuasive tactics that can work for your commercial or ad, but it’s important to focus on what will resonate most with your target audience in order to build the best connection possible.

The persuasive copy in your commercial should focus on the benefits of what you offer and how it can improve your customers’ lives.

For example, if your customers are looking for a quick snack that will fill them up, persuasive content may focus on how your product is satisfying and filling.

4. Use Celebrities or Influencers to Endorse Your Product

Celebrities and influencers are trusted by the public and what they say matters.

Using their influence to promote your product is a great way to make your commercial more persuasive.

This tactic is often referred to as social proof, and it is the idea that people are more likely to support a product or brand if other people they trust are already involved.

Whether you’re using social proof or testimonials from people like your customers and employees, it can be a persuasive technique to use when creating persuasive commercials for your business.

Here’s an example of famous basketball player Steph Curry for Infiniti, embedded below. While he isn’t known for his expertise in cars, Infiniti does a great way of combining his basketball skill with their product to drive home the social proof.

5. Incorporate Trending Topics

Creating persuasive commercials and ads relevant to what people are talking about is a great way to use persuasive techniques.

The idea here is if your commercial or advertisement addresses something going on in the wider world, it will likely be more persuasive because you’re tapping into what’s trending right now.

This can also help with social media marketing, where virality and trendiness rule the space.

If you’re not sure what people are talking about, there’s a way to find out. One option is using the Twitter search bar: just type in your topic, and it will show you all of the latest tweets that match what you typed in. You can even search for hashtags too!

Other tools, such as social listening tools, can give you further insights into what your customers are talking about and looking for.

6. Appeal to Viewers’ Emotions

Customers want persuasive commercials and ads to make them feel better about products they are thinking of purchasing. When crafting a persuasive commercial script, think about convincing customers that the product is worth buying or your brand is worth trusting.

Here’s a great example from Procter & Gamble, that uses difficult conversations of race between African American parents and children.

Warning: you might cry.

This commercial doesn’t persuade customers to buy a product. Instead, it persuades customers that Procter & Gamble is a brand that cares. That kind of trust builds brand integrity that will improve a business’s bottom line for years to come.

7. Offer a Promotion or Deal

Everyone loves saving money.

In fact, 88 percent of consumers use coupons every year.

Promoting discounts, coupon codes, and sales are a great way to encourage your customers to act quickly and buy your product.

When using this tactic, be sure to offer a discount or deal that is enough to convince your customer.

You can offer a percentage off, free shipping for orders over $100, or even gifts with purchase. The sooner you give them the persuasive sentence telling them why they should buy now and what they’ll get if they do—the better!

It all depends on the kind of sale you’re running and who your target audience is, but discounts are a persuasive strategy that will get people to purchase more quickly.

8. Use Repetition

Repetition is persuasive because it exposes customers to your message more than once, helping them remember.

Repetition doesn’t always mean saying the same phrase over and over again.

Instead, try saying the same thing in different ways.

For example, instead of saying, “You’ll get a full refund if you’re not satisfied,” say “We give you 30 days to change your mind.”

Check out this podcast episode about repetition in marketing to inform your next campaign.

9. Use Positive Images and Associations

Persuasive commercials should aim to inspire positive feelings in customers. This is why persuasive commercials often use images of happy families, beautiful people and animals, or other things that evoke positive emotions.

Making your customer feel good about their purchase will increase the chance that they will follow through with your call to action and make that all-important final purchase.

Try using positive images, copy, and associations in your persuasive commercials.

10. Ask Customers to Jump on Your Bandwagon

Everyone wants to feel like they are part of something.

This is why persuasive commercials often ask customers to “join the movement” or jump on their bandwagon.

Persuasive commercials might use phrases like, “We’re not just a team – we’re family,” which evoke feelings of camaraderie and belongingness.

This technique makes persuasive commercials even more persuasive because it appeals to consumers’ desire to be part of a community.

One of the greatest examples of this tactic at work is in Old Spice’s famous “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” commercials.

The commercial tells men that to be the best they can be, they need to smell like Old Spice. If they want to find the woman of their dreams, they better buy this product.

3 Examples of Persuasive Commercials and Ads

Persuasive commercials that we see today are more persuasive because they have caught on to what has worked for decades.

The most persuasive commercial of all time is arguably Apple’s ‘1984’. This commercial was so successful because it directly attacked its competition, IBM, and showed how different their product really was from them.

Another great example of a persuasive commercial is the Dollar Shave Club. The persuasive qualities of this commercial are highlighted in its long-running slogan: “Our blades cost less than Gillette, guaranteed.” This simple argument is enough to convince most people that they should subscribe and save money on their shaving supplies.

The main downside with this advertisement is the fact that it only offers one product. This is persuasive in the sense that it forces people to commit to a monthly subscription. However, if they were looking for higher-quality products or more variety of product types, this might not be an attractive option.

In this Heinz advert, Ed Sheeran makes waves at a fancy restaurant when he breaks out a bottle of Heinz ketchup.

The commercial is persuasive because the famous singer’s endorsement of a staple food item is enough evidence to convince viewers that it must be really good.

This particular advertisement could have been more persuasive by including other product lines such as their tomato sauces and mayonnaise, which are also products with high brand recognition.

Frequently Asked Questions About Persuasive Commercials and Ads

What makes a good persuasive advertisement?

A good persuasive advertisement is persuasive because of its persuasive techniques.

What are persuasive techniques?

The persuasive technique is the method that persuades a person to buy or not buy something, etc. Persuasive advertising can be used in movies and commercials as well.

How do persuasive ads work?

Advertisers use persuasive techniques such as appeals to emotion, peer pressure, social proof, and repetition to convince customers to buy products or services.

What persuasive techniques are in persuasive ads?

The most common persuasive technique used is an appeal to emotions. This means that the advertiser wants you to feel a certain way about their product or service and will use images, music, animations, etc. so that you can relate on some level with what they’re trying to sell.

{
“@context”: “https://schema.org”,
“@type”: “FAQPage”,
“mainEntity”: [
{
“@type”: “Question”,
“name”: “What makes a good persuasive advertisement?”,
“acceptedAnswer”: {
“@type”: “Answer”,
“text”: ”

A good persuasive advertisement is persuasive because of its persuasive techniques.


}
}
, {
“@type”: “Question”,
“name”: “What are persuasive techniques?”,
“acceptedAnswer”: {
“@type”: “Answer”,
“text”: ”

The persuasive technique is the method that persuades a person to buy or not buy something, etc. Persuasive advertising can be used in movies and commercials as well.


}
}
, {
“@type”: “Question”,
“name”: “How do persuasive ads work?”,
“acceptedAnswer”: {
“@type”: “Answer”,
“text”: ”

Advertisers use persuasive techniques such as appeals to emotion, peer pressure, social proof, and repetition to convince customers to buy products or services.


}
}
, {
“@type”: “Question”,
“name”: “What persuasive techniques are in persuasive ads?”,
“acceptedAnswer”: {
“@type”: “Answer”,
“text”: ”

The most common persuasive technique used is an appeal to emotions. This means that the advertiser wants you to feel a certain way about their product or service and will use images, music, animations, etc. so that you can relate on some level with what they’re trying to sell.


}
}
]
}

Persuasive Commercials and Ads: Conclusion

In persuasive commercials, the most persuasive techniques are often a combination of different persuasive tactics.

A persuasive commercial that includes all ten tips will be more persuasive than one that only uses two or three.

Combining powerful images with strong wording and associations ensures an effective persuasive message!

This is your chance to convince them—get started today!

How do you persuade your audience with commercials and ads?

10 Social Media Tips for Restaurant Marketing

If you own a restaurant and aren’t leveraging social media, you are missing out. 

Think about this: you can reach thousands, if not millions, of viewers using popular restaurant marketing hashtags like #foodporn and #foodphotography.

Platforms like Instagram and Facebook let you upload attractive images with location tags, making them ideal for restaurant marketing. 

After all, who doesn’t enjoy looking at delicious food pics when they’re scrolling through their feed? 

The restaurant marketing hashtag #foodporn has 268 million posts.

Most social media platforms are free, and if you use effective marketing strategies, promotions and advertising can be free (or cheap) as well. 

This article will help you understand how to use your existing resources and create a strategic restaurant marketing plan to grow your digital reach. 

First, let’s talk about why social media is a crucial tool for restaurant marketing. Then we’ll discuss how to stand out from your competitors and find the most effective social media marketing techniques for your business. 

Why Is Social Media Important for Restaurant Marketing? 

Using smart social media strategies for restaurants may sound like a lot of work, but the effort will pay off.  If you’re not convinced it’s worth the effort, here are a few reasons why social media is important for restaurant marketing:

  • Brand awareness: More than 3 billion people use social media. You can post pictures of your restaurant, upload videos of cooking new dishes, highlight behind-the-scenes/facts about your business, etc. to reach the ever-growing audience on social media. 
  • Engage with user-generated content: The interactive nature of social media platforms lets you increase engagement by sharing user-generated content (UGC). This can include photos of people eating at your restaurant, graphics featuring testimonials, or stories of how people found your restaurant. UGC encourages other users to visit, and share own content. 
  • Address customer concerns: Unhappy customers tend to take their concerns to social media. This is an excellent opportunity for you, as a business owner, to reach out and solve their problem. It’ll earn you good press and build a positive reputation while increasing customer loyalty.
  • Get feedback: Use social media to start a healthy discussion and get useful feedback. Ask customers what they’d like to see changed, what new menu items they’d love, or what specials would bring them back. 
  • Increase your reach: You can use location tagging on Instagram and Facebook to reach new customers living in and around your target geographical area. This can also attract tourists looking for a local spot to grab a bite to eat. 

10 Social Media Strategies for Restaurant Marketing 

Restaurant marketing through social media can hugely benefit your business, but how do you get started? 

Trending on social media and reaching the right users can be tricky as algorithms keep changing, but using the right strategies can help you grow your audience and increase foot traffic. Here are the top restaurant marketing techniques to get you started. 

1. Create a Cohesive Brand Voice

If you have a large team managing your social media pages, it can be difficult to maintain a consistent brand voice. Marketing teams that employ different people to manage each social media page may end up with a scattered “style.” 

If you upload funny tweets from your restaurant marketing account but maintain a serious tone on LinkedIn, you risk confusing the customer. They may wonder: is this the same brand? 

Research shows consistent branding across different social media platforms can boost your revenue. 

How do you ensure a cohesive brand voice for restaurant marketing on social? 

  • have a style guide for all team members to use
  • post images with a similar color theme 
  • write your captions with a consistent tone of voice
  • if you use humor, ensure it translates well across different social media platforms. 

2. Optimize Your Bio on Each Social Media Platform

Imagine you do everything right. You upload attractive high-resolution pictures, use trending hashtags and geotag your posts for increased reach. 

Customers see your post, and they’re intrigued. They decide to contact you for a reservation, but they can’t find any phone numbers, emails, or location information because you forgot to include it on your social media page. 

This happens more often than you’d think. As you can guess, it’s counterproductive. 

The main goal of restaurant marketing is to drive customers to your restaurant. If you don’t include the necessary information, you can lose out on valuable sales. 

Here’s a checklist of information you can keep in mind before hitting publish.

  • location(s) address
  • phone numbers
  • email address
  • map/directions from popular landmarks
  • restaurant information

Take Just Falafel’s Facebook page. You can see the phone number, email, address, and a map so it’s easier to find all the information potential customers may need. 

just falafel social media for restaurants example

Note: What’s necessary to optimize your Facebook page will differ from Instagram or Twitter page. Take a look at the settings, profile description options, and other users’ profiles to understand what you should and shouldn’t include. 

3. Use Social Media Tools to Monitor Brand Mentions

When users talk about your restaurant online, it’s like free marketing. You can use this to your advantage by commenting on or re-sharing their posts. 

Fortunately, there are dozens of free and paid tools available to make this easier for you. You can automate name and mention tracking to get instant updates whenever a customer (or a competitor) talks about you. 

Here are some options to help you get started:

  • Hootsuite
  • Google Alerts
  • Talkwalker
  • Reputology
  • Mentionlytics

4. Feature Behind the Scenes Content

Even the best of food pics can start feeling impersonal after a while. When this happens, revamp your feed and intrigue your audience by posting behind-the-scenes content. 

For example, look at Sandwich Hag’s Instagram post

Sandwich Hag’s restaurant marketing post highlights behind-the-scenes content

By sharing internal stories, their marketing team establishes a relationship with the audience. 

This works. 

In a study analyzing more than 10,000 responses, researchers found  55 percent of people find stories more persuasive than facts and data. 

You use this to your advantage by posting about what happens behind the scenes in your restaurant. 

Can you post a special story about a particular dish? Can you post pictures of your staff working? Can you share fun facts about your team? Think about how you can offer a personalized feed to your audience. Remember, most users head to social media to be entertained, so make sure to keep their interest. 

5. Promote Seasonal Menu Items

Restaurant social media marketing is ideal when you’re launching new dishes or promoting seasonal menu items. People enjoy novelty. In fact, studies show humans crave newness

You can use this principle to promote special items on your menu. 

Posting about a new menu can work as an effective restaurant marketing strategy

Every time you change your menu or introduce new ingredients to your regular dishes, talk about it on social media. Use your business’ novelty as a focal point for restaurant marketing. 

6. Post Employee Spotlights

Just like Sandwich Hag posted about their employees to offer a peek into the restaurant’s behind-the-scenes, you can dedicate special posts to highlight your employees. 

There are many ways to do this: 

  • Post a picture of your employees when they achieve something (graduation, wedding, birth of a child, etc.) 
  • Share a special Facebook post highlighting who they are, what they do, and how your audience can support them. For example, you might share a profile on your chef, including where they’ve lived and studied and how they’ve impacted your restaurant. 
  • Introduce new employees so long-time customers can welcome them. 

7. Share User-Generated Content

One of the best ways to grab user attention is to post something created by them. Open any social media app and you’ll see hundreds, maybe thousands of people tagging brands in their posts. 

Not all of these are sponsored. 

People love sharing their experiences online. If they visit your restaurant and post a picture on their social media feed, re-share it. It’s free restaurant marketing for you and a spotlight opportunity for them. It also helps establish trust with people who might consider visiting. 

You can share user-generated content in many forms. 

  • re-share user photos taken in your restaurant
  • ask users to leave video testimonials for your restaurant 
  • publish feedback and other kind words offered by frequent visitors

8. Engage With Users – Both Positive and Negative Feedback 

Most restaurant marketing teams are happy to respond to positive comments but tend to ignore the negative ones. This is understandable, but it can harm your restaurant marketing. 

When someone talks about your restaurant, others can see their post, too. You can’t make them delete their post, but you can diffuse the situation by responding kindly. In fact, negative reviews can be a good thing—it shows other users you care about their experience and will go the extra mile to solve issues. 

Understand their concerns, see what they have to say. Did they have a bad experience because something was wrong with their food? Were they expecting a particular type of service you didn’t know about? Do they feel your food is too expensive?

Paying attention and responding to user comments helps you understand how to serve your customers better. 

The best part? It also makes you look responsive and approachable. Plus, it boosts user engagement, so your posts can reach more users. It’s a win-win. 

9. Work With Influencers

Influencers and micro-influencers have an eager audience ready to try something new based on the influencer’s recommendation. 

More brands are reaching out to influencers with various sizes of audiences to boost their brand awareness. 

If you’ve never done this before, here are some ways you can collaborate with influencers: 

  • Offer a free meal in exchange for a review.  
  • Offer a discount coupon for every customer they bring in. 
  • Pay money for custom content on their feed, often called sponsored posts. 

10. Use Promotions

Consider using paid promotions if you want to take your restaurant’s social media marketing to the next level. 

While paid ads might not be ideal for restaurants with tight budgets, seasoned entrepreneurs should experiment with paid campaigns for increased reach. 

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and most other social media platforms offer excellent tools for paid social promotions. You can identify your target audience, set up an ad campaign, and even define a fixed budget for the promotion to run. 

FAQs About Restaurant Marketing

Here are some of the most popular questions people ask about restaurant marketing. 

Can I promote my restaurant on social media for free?

Yes, many social media promotion techniques can be implemented for free. Strategies like using the right hashtags, posting user-generated content, and others outlined above can be executed with little to no money. 

Can social media marketing bring customers to my restaurant?

Yes. If you are armed with a powerful set of marketing strategies, you can reach your target audience and influence them to visit your restaurant. Conversion rates may vary by strategy, but social media marketing can help increase brand awareness. 

How can I promote my small restaurant?

The size of the restaurant has little to no influence on the effectiveness of the social media strategies you use. In fact, as a new business on the market, you have more opportunities to develop your brand voice and intrigue users looking to try something new. 

Which hashtags should I use for marketing my restaurant on social media?

Which hashtags should I use for marketing my restaurant To promote your restaurant on social media, use popular hashtags like #foodporn, #foodphotography, #foodgasm #mealoftheday, etc. You can also use smaller but relevant hashtags like #yummy, #delicious, #brunch, etc. on social media?

{
“@context”: “https://schema.org”,
“@type”: “FAQPage”,
“mainEntity”: [
{
“@type”: “Question”,
“name”: “Can I promote my restaurant on social media for free?”,
“acceptedAnswer”: {
“@type”: “Answer”,
“text”: “Yes, many social media promotion techniques can be implemented for free. Strategies like using the right hashtags, posting user-generated content, and others outlined above can be executed with little to no money. ”
}
}
, {
“@type”: “Question”,
“name”: “Can social media marketing bring customers to my restaurant?”,
“acceptedAnswer”: {
“@type”: “Answer”,
“text”: ” Yes. If you are armed with a powerful set of marketing strategies, you can reach your target audience and influence them to visit your restaurant. Conversion rates may vary by strategy, but social media marketing can help increase brand awareness.  ”
}
}
, {
“@type”: “Question”,
“name”: “How can I promote my small restaurant?”,
“acceptedAnswer”: {
“@type”: “Answer”,
“text”: “The size of the restaurant has little to no influence on the effectiveness of the social media strategies you use. In fact, as a new business on the market, you have more opportunities to develop your brand voice and intrigue users looking to try something new. ”
}
}
, {
“@type”: “Question”,
“name”: “Which hashtags should I use for marketing my restaurant on social media?”,
“acceptedAnswer”: {
“@type”: “Answer”,
“text”: “Which hashtags should I use for marketing my restaurant To promote your restaurant on social media, use popular hashtags like #foodporn, #foodphotography, #foodgasm #mealoftheday, etc. You can also use smaller but relevant hashtags like #yummy, #delicious, #brunch, etc. on social media?”
}
}
]
}

Restaurant Marketing Conclusion

Restaurant marketing is an ever-evolving process. As you get used to interacting with customers online, you’ll encounter new strategies better suited to how your business operates. 

You can start using the strategies outlined above one by one to see what works and what’s not worth the ROI. You can also experiment with your own method to see what resonates with your audience. 

Whether you have a brand new restaurant in one city or operate a chain restaurant across the country, remember to focus on what your target audience enjoys. That will help you create an optimal restaurant marketing plan. 

Which restaurant marketing strategy do you think will work for your audience? 

7 Tips to Highlight Product Features on Your Website

Whether your customers are shopping for tennis shoes or a marketing automation tool, they care about your product’s features. Features (along with price and design) are one of the main factors people consider when comparing products. 

Would you buy a computer without knowing how much storage it has? Or a pair of yoga pants without knowing whether they stretch? 

Despite their importance, many brands fail to make their product’s features clear on their websites—and that could cause revenue to drop. 

Your product’s features are massive selling points, so they need to be clear and compelling. Here’s how to get your product features right. 

What Is a Product Feature?

A product feature is a characteristic of your product that differentiates it from other products in the market. It could be how it looks (a design feature), how you can use it (a functional feature) or what it comes with (an added-value feature).

Let’s take running shoes as an example. The material of the shoe is a feature, so is the technology in the shoe. Both are highlighted in this example by Nike. 

Nike product features

What about a software product? 

Features typically center on the product’s functionality (what you can do with it), but they can also include integrations or data security. Slack’s feature page below highlights these types of features: 

Slack product features

Features don’t have to be unique to your product, though. As design, technology, and manufacturing processes evolve, some features become standard. You’d be hard-pressed to buy a smartphone without a touchscreen, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a feature brands can talk about.

Whether your product comes with ten features or two, you need to be talking about them across your website including your product descriptions, landing page, and even your homepage. 

Make your product features clear so customers can easily compare you to your competitors. It’s even more important if your product boasts the best features in the industry. The more you shout about them, the more likely consumers are to take notice—and maybe make a purchase. 

7 Strategies for Highlighting Product Features

You know what features are, and you know why they’re important to include on your site. Now let’s look at seven ways e-commerce stores and SaaS tools can effectively leverage them. 

Include Social Proof

Talking about how great your features are is nice, but every other company does the same thing. Even if your product features are superior, customers may not believe you. After all, only one-third of customers trust the brands they buy from. 

You need social proof to convince them your product delivers. Add quotes and testimonials from your customers or trusted third parties that mention your product features to relevant pages. Better yet, include images and videos of them using your product.

Featuring real people showing off your product’s features instantly makes them more credible and makes it much more likely consumers will trust your brand.

UK maternity brand Isabella Oliver does a great job of this, including a quote from Vogue in the product description of a maternity tank dress.

Strategies for Highlighting Product Features - Include Social Proof

Speak to Your Target Audience

You need to understand your target audience to write about your product features effectively. If you have buyer personas, make sure to refer to them while writing. This will help you prioritize which features your customers care about most.

Start by looking at reviews for your product and those of your competitors—G2 is a great place to start for software companies and Amazon for e-commerce brands. Identify the top features customers talk about and prioritize them.  

Be wary of trying to target everyone. This is particularly important for SaaS products that can have a dozen different use cases. Each target customer should have a dedicated landing page where you speak exclusively about relevant product features. If you try to speak to everyone on one landing page, you’ll end up not targeting any audience well. 

Everlane is an example of a brand who knows their target audience and what they care about. Each product description includes a link to the factory it’s made in and other information related to sustainability.

Strategies for Highlighting Product Features - Speak to Your Target Audience

Focus on the Benefits

Consumers only care so much about what makes your product special. What they really care about is how it benefits them.

Talk about a benefit whenever you mention a feature.

Writing about benefits requires a bit more effort and creativity. Your product’s features are fairly obvious, especially to you. What isn’t so obvious is how the user benefits from them. Think about your customer personas and spend some time reading product reviews. These will help you get into your customers’ minds and focus on the benefits they care about. 

If you really want to do a good job, interview your customers to find out exactly how they benefit from your product. It takes a little more effort, but this is hands-down the best way to tease out the benefits of your product.

One of Hootsuite’s most popular features is the ability to track social media mentions on their dashboard–but that’s not how the brand sells the feature to its users. Instead, they focus on the benefit: finding out what customers really think. They even follow this up with another user-generated benefit of the feature.

Strategies for Highlighting Product Features - Focus on the Benefits

Draw Attention to the Important Details

There are some features you’ll want customers to take note of more than others. That’s why it’s important to create a hierarchy of features and look for ways to draw attention to the features consumers care most about. 

To do this, break your page into sections and devote each section to a specific feature. Use a bold heading to grab your reader’s attention and back this up with short, sharp copy and eye-catching imagery. 

Google takes this to the extreme by letting each feature take up all of the screen’s real estate. There’s no way to miss them: 

Strategies for Highlighting Product Features - Draw Attention to the Important Details

Another is to remove the navigation menu from your landing page. With no way to move away from the page, users are forced to focus on your sales copy and read about your product’s features. Don’t get carried away using this tactic, however. Most customers won’t be happy with you removing the navigation bar, especially if you’re an e-commerce site. 

Make Information Scannable

Your customers are busy, and most aren’t going to read every word on your page. Instead, they’re going to scan it for key bits of information. It’s your job to make your product features as scannable as possible while still getting across the core message. 

Bullet points are an excellent tool because huge chunks of text are a massive turn-off for readers—especially if you want to share a lot of information. 

Target includes a bullet list of each product’s features on their listing page, so you don’t even have to click them individually to get the need-to-know information.

Strategies for Highlighting Product Features - Make Information Scannable

Use Video and Images

Words aren’t the only way to get across your product features. Images and videos are usually a much better way to get across exactly what your product can do. 

Images are an easy way to show customers how key features look and work. They are particularly powerful for design-focused features and most e-commerce products in general. Bonus points if you include user-generated photos in your descriptions.

UK furniture brand Made did a great job of including user-generated images in their product listings. Potential customers can see exactly what each sofa will look like in a range of settings. 

Strategies for Highlighting Product Features - Use Video and Images

Videos take a little more work, but they can be even more effective. For example, you could create an explainer video that highlights your product’s core features, or a separate video for each feature.  

Your feature-led videos can also be used as part of your onboarding process and by your sales team during client calls. They can even boost your search rankings, especially if you host them on YouTube

Write Blog Posts and Emails

If you have a SaaS product, blog posts, emails, and other forms of content marketing are one of the best ways to highlight your product features—particularly if those features come in the form of new software releases.

Make sure your blog posts talk about the benefits that users can gain from the new features and don’t just talk about the features alone. Plenty of screenshots are also a good idea, so is a video if you can create one.

Unlike other forms of content marketing, there’s no need to post these articles regularly. Writing them when you have a new feature to describe is enough.

Email updates should also be sent sparingly. Only email when you have a new feature to announce and keep your email succinct. Only include the key details in the email and link to a more in-depth blog post if necessary.

Existing users will learn about the new features when using the software, so it may be wise to only send an email about features that may re-engage lost customers.

Asana’s blog is filled with feature-focused blog posts. Note that many don’t focus on individual features. Rather they cluster feature releases around a particular topic and write about that instead.

Strategies for Highlighting Product Features - Write Blog Posts and Emails

3 Examples of Product Feature Highlights

If the examples above weren’t enough for you, I’ve got three more examples of brands that do a great job highlighting their product features.

Apple

Examples of Product Feature Highlights - Apple

Few companies are better than Apple at creating buzz about their products. There aren’t many better at highlighting their product’s benefits, either. 

Apple makes a point of creating a new banner for every feature, pairs each with a user benefit, and includes high-quality images and graphics. Even if you already have an iPhone, reading their product pages makes you want to upgrade.

Amazon

Examples of Product Feature Highlights - Amazon

Amazon is famous for its in-depth product listings, but those listings are also great at highlighting each product’s most important features. 

The clear layout makes it easy for customers to skim the product description, and bullet points highlight the most important features. There’s even a video showcasing the product in detail. 

Tesla

Examples of Product Feature Highlights - Tesla

Tesla combines several of the tactics mentioned above to highlight the key features of the Model 3. Each feature is given a hierarchy—security is first—and takes up the entire page. They also use graphics to illustrate points and annotations to draw attention to specific features.

Frequently Asked Questions About Product Features

What are product features?

Your product features are any characteristic of your product that makes it stand out and separates it from your competitors. It can include the look and design of the product, how it’s made, or what you can do with it.

What are examples of product features?

For an e-commerce product, the material the product is made with can be a feature—if it’s made from recycled plastic, for example. For SaaS products, features include the functionality of the product. The ability to instantly message colleagues is a feature of Slack, for instance.

What’s the difference between a product feature and a benefit?

A feature is a characteristic of your product. A benefit is how a customer can use that characteristic to overcome a pain point.

How can I highlight the features of my SaaS product?

A sales page is an excellent way to highlight all of the features of your SaaS products. Blog posts, videos, and demos are also great ways to highlight SaaS features.

How can I highlight the features of my e-commerce product?

Your product description is the best place to highlight the features of your e-commerce product. Make sure they are easy to read and stand out from the rest of your copy.

{
“@context”: “https://schema.org”,
“@type”: “FAQPage”,
“mainEntity”: [
{
“@type”: “Question”,
“name”: “What are product features?”,
“acceptedAnswer”: {
“@type”: “Answer”,
“text”: “Your product features are any characteristic of your product that makes it stand out and separates it from your competitors. It can include the look and design of the product, how it’s made, or what you can do with it.”
}
}
, {
“@type”: “Question”,
“name”: “What are examples of product features?”,
“acceptedAnswer”: {
“@type”: “Answer”,
“text”: “For an e-commerce product, the material the product is made with can be a feature—if it’s made from recycled plastic, for example. For SaaS products, features include the functionality of the product. The ability to instantly message colleagues is a feature of Slack, for instance.”
}
}
, {
“@type”: “Question”,
“name”: “What’s the difference between a product feature and a benefit?”,
“acceptedAnswer”: {
“@type”: “Answer”,
“text”: “A feature is a characteristic of your product. A benefit is how a customer can use that characteristic to overcome a pain point.”
}
}
, {
“@type”: “Question”,
“name”: “How can I highlight the features of my SaaS product?”,
“acceptedAnswer”: {
“@type”: “Answer”,
“text”: “A sales page is an excellent way to highlight all of the features of your SaaS products. Blog posts, videos, and demos are also great ways to highlight SaaS features.”
}
}
, {
“@type”: “Question”,
“name”: “How can I highlight the features of my e-commerce product?”,
“acceptedAnswer”: {
“@type”: “Answer”,
“text”: “Your product description is the best place to highlight the features of your e-commerce product. Make sure they are easy to read and stand out from the rest of your copy.”
}
}
]
}

The Conclusion of My Product Features Guide

Showcasing your product features is a hugely underrated tactic. Marketers and salespeople will tell you to focus on the benefits of your product rather than the features. While benefits are important, they rely on explaining your features clearly first. Features are also one of the most common ways potential customers compare your product with your competitors. 

Take time to determine which features are most important and get opinions from current customers if you can. Then use the seven tactics I’ve listed above to make them as clear as possible on your site.

Which features of your product are you most proud of?

7 Tips for Successful Small Business Content Marketing

If you own a small business, content marketing is a tactic you should consider to grow your audience base and increase your brand’s name recognition.

Content marketing refers to the creation and dissemination of online materials that grow traffic to your website. Content types can include blogs, infographics, and whitepapers that are geared toward creating interest in your products or offerings. 

In this post, we’ll break down why business owners of every size should deploy a content marketing strategy and how to create one.

Why Should Your Small Business Do Content Marketing?

Serving up useful, timely content allows your business to become a thought leader in your industry, increasing your business’s recognition and building consumer trust, respect, and loyalty. 

Content marketing also allows you to identify your consumer’s pain points and speak to how your products solve those issues. This can lead directly to sales. 

Another lasting benefit of content marketing is any evergreen content you create. This refers to assets that do not become outdated, like blog posts about the history of your industry or an infographic on how to complete a process that doesn’t change.

You can also find use in content marketing when you create assets that can be used across multiple channels and marketing campaigns. For example, if you write a blog post about the needs of a certain community, you can create a YouTube video on the topic and use the video in your blog post. Then you can link to the post and/or video on your social media channels. This saves you time and money, all while firmly establishing you in your field of expertise.  

Small Business Content Marketing: 7 Steps for Success

The rest of this post will break down the seven steps every business owner should undertake to build a successful small business content marketing strategy. 

1. Start a Blog

Blogging is a completely free way to market your services and capabilities, while simultaneously establishing yourself as an industry expert.

In fact, with 21-54 blogs on your website, you can drive 30 percent more traffic to your website.

In addition to driving traffic, blogs can help:

  • boost your search engine optimization (SEO) rankings 
  • deliver increased value to your consumers
  • increase exposure 
  • generate leads and increase conversion likelihood 

Resources for Starting a Blog

To help you get started building your blog and giving a voice to your business, here are four resources to help make your blog dreams a reality:

2. Build a Social Media Presence on the Social Channels Your Audience Uses

If you’re actively involved in selling a product or service, you most likely have a social media presence of some variety.

Unfortunately, simply being present isn’t enough. You need to be active on platforms that your audience uses.

How do you choose which social media channels among the multitude of options are right for your brand?

Before you start posting anywhere, you need to identify your target audience. On social media, you’re not speaking to everyone; you’re speaking to a specific set of consumers with specific interests. After you’ve established who you’re speaking to, you must determine how to reach those individuals. 

You can use a variety of strategies to determine where your audience is active.

  1. Aggregate all existing consumer data to see where your audience is spending their online time.
  2. Visit your competitors’ social profiles to see where they have the most active users
  3. Use tools like Google Analytics to determine consumer online behavior.

These three steps can help you begin to identify where your target audience is active and begin delivering content to them on those particular platforms.

Resources for Building a Facebook Presence for Your Small Business

3. Start an Email Newsletter

Email newsletters are an excellent way for small businesses to wade into the world of email marketing. They alert your readers to new products, upcoming events, industry-related news, and any other notable business-adjacent happenings. 

With historically high return on investment (ROI), for every dollar spent on email marketing, expect an average ROI of $42. Email marketing is an excellent tool for small businesses to use. In addition to sheer ROI, email newsletters can help small businesses:

  • build goodwill with your audience
  • promote sales, deals, and coupons
  • increase customer value

Resources for Starting an Email Newsletter

4. Create Content Corresponding to a Basic Customer Sales Funnel

Finding the right consent to correspond to your consumer’s needs is key to getting them to actually make a purchase.

With a basic customer sales funnel and an accompanying content strategy, you can identify which stage of the funnel your customer currently occupies and deliver them content that speaks toward that stage.

A marketing funnel is the process people go through to reach the conversion phase. The funnel includes everything from getting introduced to your brand until they convert. Most marketing funnels have four steps: 

  1. Attention: a would-be consumer sees your ad, social media post, or learns about you through word-of-mouth
  2. Interest: consumer wants to learn more
  3. Desire: consumer wants to convert
  4. Action: consumer acts (buying your item, subscribing to your email newsletter, etc). 

To align this four-step process with your content creation, be sure you’re targeting customers within the various stages of the funnel with relevant content. For example, you wouldn’t want to overburden a potential consumer in the attention phase with an in-depth content asset.

Resources for Creating a Basic Sales Funnel/Content Journey

5. Build a Content Calendar

While it’s important to do the work to establish your buyer personas and to deliver them the content they need during their respective buyer’s journey stage, it is also important to keep delivering relevant content in a cadenced fashion.

Instead of scrambling to create content in a reactionary manner, build monthly calendars that include social posts, blog posts, emails, and whatever other content you would like to create that month.

Not only does this strategy keep you organized, but it also allows your readers to get comfortable with a schedule of content and to build continued trust and familiarity with your brand.

Resources for Building a Content Calendar

6. Create a Variety of Content Types

In a competitive landscape, it’s important to stand out however you can. One way your small business can achieve this is through your content marketing strategy.

Do a deep dive into both your existing content and your competitors’ content. See what is resonating with audiences and what isn’t. Once you’ve established efficacy, it’s time to try to replicate that success with your upcoming content. 

Then it’s time to get creative. Don’t be limited by what already exists. Take your latest blog post and turn it into an infographic. Take your infographic and turn it into a whitepaper. Take your white paper and make it a series of quote-centric social tiles.

The content creation possibilities are limitless.

Resources for Building a Diverse Content Library

7. Mine Customer Reviews and Testimonials

97 percent of local consumers use online media, including reviews, to search for local services. If you’re a small, local business, that means your reviews are driving your business. 

Make those reviews work as hard as you do by bringing them to life through social posts and testimonials on your website and blog.

By sourcing the best quotes and ascribing a face to the name, you make that review much more personal, creating a consumer-generated ad that speaks for itself.

Resources for Building Effective Customer Testimonials

How to Create a Small Business Marketing Strategy

  1. Fine-tune your buyer personas

    Building buyer personas allows you to establish a better understanding of your audiences and their respective pain points. By determining who is purchasing your products, you can assess which content they need and when. 

  2. Identify valuable consumer content 

    Consumers don’t want content for content’s sake. They want content that can solve their problems. After you’ve identified buyer personas, work to identify what content assets can best serve your buyers’ unique needs. 

  3. Set business goals

    Setting business goals that align with your marketing strategy can feel overwhelming at first. Use the principle of SMART goals to make your benchmarks reasonable and reachable. small business content marketing goals

  4. Solidify distribution channels 

    You’ve got your content ready to go and your goals ready to measure. It’s finally time to start sharing your content. While it would be nice if every piece of content performed well on every channel, that’s sadly not the case. Determine which pieces of content are appropriate for which channel to ensure success and reach. 

  5. Establish cadence 

    It’s not good enough to deliver one piece of content and rest on your laurels. You must establish a cadence that regularly delivers quality content to your consumers. 

Small Business Content Marketing Frequently Asked Questions

Why do small businesses need content marketing?

Even though you’re a small business, you most likely have big competition. To make your business stand out among the crowd and grow your audience, you need a content marketing strategy that allows you to demonstrate your value to future and current consumers. 

What are some examles of content marketing?

Examples of content marketing include blog posts, infographics, social media campaigns, podcasts, white papers, ebooks, downloadable PDFs, and YouTube videos. Any type of media that is free to access and brings in leads to your website is content marketing.

What is the best content marketing strategy for a small business?

Having clearly delineated buyer personas is vital for a strong, small business content marketing strategy. Without these personas, your content won’t have clear direction or purpose, resulting in low audience interaction.

How should small businesses create content for their content marketing strategy?

Small business content marketing is all about solving for the buyer’s pain point. After you’ve identified personas, all created content should center both around the respective pain points and what point the buyer is within the funnel. 

{
“@context”: “https://schema.org”,
“@type”: “FAQPage”,
“mainEntity”: [
{
“@type”: “Question”,
“name”: “Why do small businesses need content marketing?”,
“acceptedAnswer”: {
“@type”: “Answer”,
“text”: “Even though you’re a small business, you most likely have big competition. To make your business stand out among the crowd and grow your audience, you need a content marketing strategy that allows you to demonstrate your value to future and current consumers. ”
}
}
, {
“@type”: “Question”,
“name”: “What are some examles of content marketing?”,
“acceptedAnswer”: {
“@type”: “Answer”,
“text”: “Examples of content marketing include blog posts, infographics, social media campaigns, podcasts, white papers, ebooks, downloadable PDFs, and YouTube videos. Any type of media that is free to access and brings in leads to your website is content marketing.”
}
}
, {
“@type”: “Question”,
“name”: “What is the best content marketing strategy for a small business?
“,
“acceptedAnswer”: {
“@type”: “Answer”,
“text”: “Having clearly delineated buyer personas is vital for a strong, small business content marketing strategy. Without these personas, your content won’t have clear direction or purpose, resulting in low audience interaction.”
}
}
, {
“@type”: “Question”,
“name”: “How should small businesses create content for their content marketing strategy?
“,
“acceptedAnswer”: {
“@type”: “Answer”,
“text”: “Small business content marketing is all about solving for the buyer’s pain point. After you’ve identified personas, all created content should center both around the respective pain points and what point the buyer is within the funnel. ”
}
}
]
}

Small Business Content Marketing Conclusion

While your small business content marketing may be minuscule, it doesn’t mean that you can’t undertake most, if not all, of the above eight strategies.

After successfully defining your buyer personas, you’re well on your way to developing a winning content marketing strategy that can grow your audience and increase overall sales. 

What’s the most effective strategy you’ve seen for small business content marketing?

10 Snapchat Ads Strategies, Tips, and Resources

Snapchat is one of the most popular social networks in the world.

It boasts 293 million daily active users on average. 

That’s a ton of people sharing and engaging with content on a daily basis.

On top of a huge user base, the engagement levels are off the charts. People open the app 30 times a day on average, over 75 percent of 13 to 34-year-olds in the U.S. use the app, and over 5 billion Snaps are created every day.

It’s no question Snapchat has potential in numbers and engagement, so why don’t you see results with the platform?

Below, you’ll find some of my top Snapchat ad strategies, tips, and resources to help you run successful campaigns. 

However, before we dive in, we need to establish if Snapchat ads are actually worth your time and money. 

Why Should You Advertise on Snapchat?

If your brand appeals to Gen Z and millennials, you should look at Snapchat as a way to increase user acquisition, brand awareness, and sales.

Why?

Snapchat has over $1 trillion in direct spending power between these two generations. With one-third of users more likely to make purchases on their phones,  it’s a platform that’s worth a second look.

On Snapchat’s Inspiration page, you can see tons of businesses have found massive success with Snap Ads.

Spinnaker Nordic tried Snapchat ads for three days and had incredible results. With $759.04 ad spend, the company achieved:

  • +300,000 ad views
  • +1,300 Swipe Ups
  • +24,000 site visitors 
  • 52 phone calls

What if you don’t have $700 to blow on ads? No problem. You can advertise on Snapchat for as little as $5. With such a low daily minimum spend, you can test, learn, and optimize your ads on any budget.

Not enough to convince you?

Snapchat also has a partnership with Amazon. If a user sees a product they like, all they need to do is point their cameras at the barcode or product and long press on the camera screen.

Snapchat will then show a card with a link to the item on Amazon. The app has created one of the fastest ways to shop online and is one of the frontrunners for augmented reality e-commerce.

10 Snapchat Ad Strategies and Resources

If there is anything we can learn about finding success on Snapchat, we can learn it from experience.

Multiple brands using Snapchat find massive conversion rates and increases in sales on-site and for their mobile apps.

Here are some of the best Snapchat ad strategies and resources to help you mimic their success and grow your business.

1. Add Polls to Your Snapchat Ads

Why should you care about poll ads?

Well, it can increase your engagement and views. 

On Instagram, polling stickers in Story Ads increased the number of three-second video views in 9 out of 10 campaigns.

The insights you gain from your audience can also strengthen your ads, help you stand out from the competition, and potentially increase your sales.

The only downside? Snapchat doesn’t have a built-in polling feature like Instagram.

However, by using an app called Polly, you can mimic Instagram’s polling success on Snapchat. Polly lets you create polls and share them to Snapchat, where your audience can answer anonymously.

Snapchat Ad Strategies and Resources - Add Polls to Your Snapchat Ads

How to Use Polls in Your Snapchat Ads Strategy

  • Brand announcements: Ask your audience to vote on your newest flavors, colors, or product varieties. You can use social media trends like Selena Gomez versus. Miley Cyrus battle and pit your products against one another.
  • Trivia questions: Who doesn’t love a good quiz night at the pub? Put your audience’s wits to the test, and add some game show flair to your Snapchat ads. You can also redirect people to your website to see the answer.
  • Audience insights: Need to know what makes your audience tick? Poll them! It’s a great way to see what content resonates or what people want to see from you next.

Polling Ad Resources:

2. Link Your Snapchat Ads to the Correct Landing Page

Once you have your audience’s attention, you need to direct them to the next step, i.e., your landing page. You don’t want users to watch your ad and move on. You want to instigate an action that will get users into your sales funnel and create conversions.

What is a landing page?

It’s a stand-alone webpage created for an advertising or marketing campaign.

The page usually has a goal like:

  • sales
  • email list sign-ups
  • white paper downloads

For example, if you’re an app developer, you would redirect people to your Google Play or App Store download page. If you’re an e-commerce brand, your landing page could link to sign up for a newsletter and get a 15-percent discount code.

 On Snap Ads, there are three different types of ad links you can use:

  1. Web view attachments: This is a great option to drive online sales. Users swipe up, and your landing page will instantly load.
  2. App install attachments: Use the “Install Now” or “Download” buttons as your CTA and redirect users to your app install page.
  3. Deep link attachments: This option helps you to re-engage users who have your app. If an existing user swipes up on your ad, you can direct them to a location in your app, e.g., the latest collection or an exclusive sale.

The one you choose depends on your landing page goals and the types of products you’re selling on the app.

If you need help creating a high conversion landing page, use these resources below:

Landing Page Resources:

3. Write Catchy Copy

For your Snapchat ads to find success, you need:

  • great visuals (no blurry, pixelated images or videos)
  • a short, snappy, message (i.e., what is the purpose of the ad)
  • enticing call-to-action (CTA)

With the short attention spans of Gen Z and millennials, Snapchat recommends writing copy that’s easy to understand, is localized for your audience, and has an offer message within the first two seconds of the ad.

Subway used this approach to announce its new cheesy garlic bread. The ad is only five seconds long and uses two short sentences to get its message across.

Ad Copy Resources

4. Use Split Testing on Snapchat to Create Higher Performing Ad Content

Spit testing or A/B testing is crucial to improving your conversion rates. It helps you hone in on what’s working and get rid of what isn’t. Most importantly, it helps save you money.

Gone are days of blowing your entire ad budget on a campaign with lackluster results. With split testing, you can combine your more effective elements to boost ROI, lower the risk of failure, and create a winning ad strategy.

How does spit testing work with Snapchat ads?

Inside your advertiser’s dashboard, you can test different variables such as:

  • creative
  • audience
  • placement
  • goal

For example, let’s say you want to test an audience. Maybe you’re not too sure if you should target 18 to 25 or 30 to 35-year-olds for your next campaign. Your creative, placement, and delivery will be the same with the split-testing feature, but each ad set will target the different audiences you’ve created.

The winning test is the one that achieves the lowest cost per goal. A goal can be:

  • swipe-ups
  • app installs
  • shares
  • story opens

When you’re done, create a campaign with the winning variable, and start getting better results from your ad spend.

Snapchat Ad Strategies - Use Split Testing

Split Testing Resources:

5. Use the Shoppable AR Lens Feature

In a study with Deloitte, 94 percent of people expect to use AR for shopping, making Snapchat’s AR Lenses one of its most valuable features.

Snapchat Ad Strategies - Use the Shoppable AR Lens Feature

What is AR for shopping exactly?

The filter lets users interact with a brand or product. For example, MAC has four Snapchat lenses to try on 20 different lip and eye products

The feature is immersive. It brings the in-person shopping experience into your home, evolving the e-commerce experience.

However, it’s not only for brands selling products.

You could create a filter with iconic makeup looks from Ru Paul’s Drag Race and use it to promote the new season.

For games, you could create a filter of one of your characters or create a branded filter for specific times of the year.

For example, Burger King could do something for International Burger Day or the Fourth of July.

Here’s an example of how Starling Bank used the AR lens in a campaign to increase brand awareness:

The result? A 61 percent lower cost per install versus other platforms.

You can choose from three shoppable AR categories:

  • Website: Comes with a “Buy Now” button. It has the option to link to a product page and works best for e-commerce brands.
  • Video: This option has a “Watch” button and is great for promoting content like movie trailers.
  • Install: The “Install Now” button takes users to the Google Play or App Store to download an app.

What are the benefits of creating a Snapchat ad strategy around AR lenses?

  • Brand awareness: Lenses from their Creator Community have over 2 trillion views, and 2 million lenses have been created with their Lens Studio.
  • Increase in sales and a decrease in returns: Users who engage with AR are twice as likely to make a purchase and are 30 percent less likely to return a product.

Snapchat Shoppable AR Resources:

6. Use Audience Insights

Snapchat’s Audience Insights is a powerful tool for marketers. It provides a wealth of information about your audience and can help you tweak your campaigns to improve your conversion rate.

Inside the dashboard, you can compare and create new audience segments. The data, a mixture of demographics, Snap Lifestyle Categories and external third-party partners, tells you more about your current audience and helps you discover new segments for your brand.

Snapchat Ad Strategies - Use Audience Insights

By using the Audience Insights dashboard, you might discover that 70 percent of your audience is also interested in rock climbing. You can use this interest to optimize and create more relevant ads that appeal to your audience.

Pretty nifty, right?

Well, Snapchat’s wealth of data doesn’t end there.

One of the best features on the dashboard is purchase intent. You can see at a glance what is the likelihood of your audience purchasing your service or product. 

You can also compare the purchase intent across different audiences and use the information to adjust your Snapchat Ad bids.

Analyzing Your Audience Resources:

7. Use User-Generated Content

If you’re not incorporating UGC into your Snapchat ads strategy, you’re missing opportunities to convert your audience into paying customers. 

There’s plenty of data that shows it’s an effective marketing strategy. 

  • A study by Stackla reveals 79 percent of users said UGC impacts their purchasing decisions and find UGC 9.8 times more impactful than influencer content.
  • Thirty-one percent of consumers agree that UGC content is more memorable than traditional ads.
  • When analyzing watching habits, YouTube found Gen Z and Millennials are more likely to watch UGC than older generations.
Snapchat Ad Strategies - Use User-Generated Content

According to Snapchat, not only is it more likely to get viewed in full, but your ad will feel more authentic and less over-produced.

If you don’t have any UGC yet, create ads with a similar look and feel. Use Snapchat’s features, have someone speak directly to the camera, and keep your ads five to six seconds long. It will appear more organic and come across as an extension of other Snaps rather than an intrusive ad.

User-Generated Content Resources:

8. Choose the Right Ad Format to Match Your Snapchat Ad Goals

If you’re using the wrong ad format, you’re not going to see results with your Snapchat ad strategy.

Each format is designed to help you achieve specific business goals, such as:

  • brand awareness
  • increase conversions
  • drive sales
  • increase app downloads

Here’s a brief guide to what each format can help you achieve:

  • Dynamic ads: These include collection ads, story ads, and single image or video ads. Dynamic ads are great for driving sales and increasing sign-ups.
  • App install attachments: If you’re promoting an app, this ad format is made specifically for you. It adds an Install Card at the bottom of story ads, single image or video ads, and lens AR experiences.
  • Retargeting: Want to target users who didn’t convert or have engaged with your brand in the past? Story Ads is an excellent ad format to re-engage, boost brand awareness and increase customer loyalty. 

Ad Formats Resources:

9. Design Your Snapchat Ads With Sound

I know. 

This advice might seem odd, especially when there are statistics like 69 percent of people watch videos without sound.

Shouldn’t your Snapchat ad strategy follow suit and design for no sound?

Nope.

According to Snapchat, 64 percent of ads are watched with sound on. 

This isn’t surprising. 

As I mentioned earlier, the best Snapchat ads are the ones that fit natively within a user’s feed and don’t disrupt the experience. Most Snapchatters are watching their friends’ Snaps with sound, so your ads should do the same.

  • Create ads with your customers talking to the camera giving a testimonial. 
  • Use sound to get more information across (remember you only have about six seconds).
  • Put a face to your brand and do a quick tutorial.

Video Ad Resources:

10. Use Goal-Based Bidding

The final Snapchat ad strategy you need to implement is goal-based bidding.

What is goal-based bidding?

It’s a feature that allows you to optimize your ad spend toward a specific action you want a Snapchatter to take e.g., downloading your app or making a purchase.

By setting this cost-per-action, Snapchat will deliver your ads in the most efficient way possible to achieve the desired outcome.

The result?

Your ads will go out to people most likely to complete the action, and you’ll see higher conversions.

Snapchat Ad Bidding Resources:

Snapchat Ad Frequently Asked Questions

What are the types of Snapchat ads?

There are six different ad types on Snapchat: Single image of video ads, filters, lenses, story ads, product catalog ads, and commercials.

How do I know which type of Snapchat ad is right for my business?

It depends on your campaign objectives. For example, filters help you create a branded conversion, lenses create interactive moments, the product catalog showcases a series of products, and commercials are great for driving brand awareness.

How much do Snapchat ads cost?

Snapchat Ads have a minimum daily spend of $5. 

Why should I advertise on Snapchat?

If your audience is Gen Z and millennials, Snapchat is one of the best social media networks to engage with them and drive sales. The app reaches 75 percent of Gen Z and millennials in the U.S., has 293 million daily users, and on average, people spend 30 minutes on the app each day.

{
“@context”: “https://schema.org”,
“@type”: “FAQPage”,
“mainEntity”: [
{
“@type”: “Question”,
“name”: “What are the types of Snapchat ads?”,
“acceptedAnswer”: {
“@type”: “Answer”,
“text”: “There are six different ad types on Snapchat: Single image of video ads, filters, lenses, story ads, product catalog ads, and commercials.”
}
}
, {
“@type”: “Question”,
“name”: “How do I know which type of Snapchat ad is right for my business?”,
“acceptedAnswer”: {
“@type”: “Answer”,
“text”: “It depends on your campaign objectives. For example, filters help you create a branded conversion, lenses create interactive moments, the product catalog showcases a series of products, and commercials are great for driving brand awareness.”
}
}
, {
“@type”: “Question”,
“name”: “How much do Snapchat ads cost?”,
“acceptedAnswer”: {
“@type”: “Answer”,
“text”: “Snapchat Ads have a minimum daily spend of $5.  ”
}
}
, {
“@type”: “Question”,
“name”: “Why should I advertise on Snapchat?”,
“acceptedAnswer”: {
“@type”: “Answer”,
“text”: “If your audience is Gen Z and millennials, Snapchat is one of the best social media networks to engage with them and drive sales. The app reaches 75 percent of Gen Z and millennials in the U.S., has 293 million daily users, and on average, people spend 30 minutes on the app each day.”
}
}
]
}

Snapchat Ad Strategies and Resources: Conclusion 

With almost 300 million people using the platform, Snapchat is not a dead social media network. It still carries weight, especially with the younger generation.

If your brand appeals to its user base, it’s worth investing in Snapchat ads. With such an affordable minimum daily spend, almost everyone can afford to roll out successful Snapchat ad strategies.

Get creative with AR technology to create unique campaigns and build hype around your products. Use split testing to figure out what works for your business and what needs to go, and you will see your acquisition cost go down with more conversions. 

The above tips and resources will make sure you create ads that resonate, engage, and drive action with your audience. 

How do you get the most out of your Snapchat Ad investment?