NATIVE ADS SUPPORT CONTENT MARKETING

In the world of marketing, good content captivates, informs, and/or entertains. That said, even the most thoughtful and attractive content doesn’t necessarily deliver an audience. As former BuzzFeed VP Jonathan Perelman noted, “Content is king, but distribution is queen and she wears the pants. It’s not nearly enough to create a good piece of content.”

Relevance, digital marketing agency, publication, and events producer, asked Storygize CEO David Osman his thoughts on mistakes marketers commit within native advertising. Following is the resulting article, highlighting over a dozen industry experts. We're honored to be featured in such great company!

Regardless of what format a content asset takes (e.g., a blog post, a bylined article, a guide, a white paper, etc.), the actual words, visuals, and other elements constitute the collective message that will be delivered to a target audience. So, it’s important for a brand to prudently craft its messages.

This generally takes the form of aligning content production with each buyer’s journey. This is the exact process marketers take when building out lead nurturing or email drip campaigns. Brands that use marketing automation tools in a robust way should have this done already. If not, appropriate research of the audience, analytics, competitors, media, and trends can help align content to the buyer’s journey.

Programmatic native advertising supports content marketing. That means, in order to use in-feed native ads to promote a brand or product, a brand must have a solid content and distribution strategy. We’ve observed mistakes some marketers commit seemingly stemming from a misunderstanding of how in-feed native works.  The good news is, they're fixable! But first let's acknowledge what goes wrong.

Four major mistakes as follows:

We’ve mentioned it before, but we’ll say it again. Native Advertising kicks butt in today’s ever-changing world of online advertising. It’s a tactful way to deliver valuable content—your brand story—to prospective customers, leading to impactful impressions and brand lift. Advertising that’s beneficial to both the consumer and brand? Yeah, that’s pretty powerful. Of course, sponsored content doesn’t automatically guarantee engagement. Creating relevant, meaningful content is only part of the equation. You also need to take a strategic approach by using quality metrics to inform and ultimately define the success of your Native Ad campaign.

Just as five feng shui elements can help you to balance your environment, five native ad elements can help you to place your campaign on the road to success. Native Advertising provides an opportunity to reach, engage and build a relationship with prospects in ways traditional ads simply can’t. Although the nature of native ads is to seamlessly blend in and appear native to the page—hence the name—the goal is to encourage consumer interaction in a less invasive, more impactful way that benefits both the consumer and brand.

Images have always been a powerful tool in advertising, but strong imagery is even more essential in today’s competitive world of online advertising. The image needs to grab the attention of the visitor and entice them to click; this is especially important with Native Advertising, since the ads are meant to match the look and feel of the content around it.

As we mentioned in our previous post on writing a strong native ad headline, an effective native ad should stand out, inform, and encourage interaction. Along with a great headline, images are one of the first things to attract attention from a user. Whether the image is eye-catching or triggers an emotional response, you’ll want to create a reason for a user to not only pay attention to your ad, but to then click. In part two of our Native Advertising best practices series, we’ll help you choose a Native Ad image to not only stand out, but capture the right audience for your brand.

When it comes to creating an effective native ad campaign strategy, there’s a lot to take into account. Who is the target demographic? What headlines and creative elements will draw them in? Will the ad blend suitably with publisher content? It can be overwhelming.

But undoubtedly the most important element to consider is the content that the consumer will be directed to after clicking the native ad. Campaign strategies that prioritize strong, shareable content are by far the most successful. Not all content is suitable to achieve native advertising goals. It can’t be too dry, or a blatant sales pitch, or somehow unaligned with the brand’s image; the list goes on.

The beauty of native advertising is that the ad matches the look and feel of the content around it, blending in. The tricky part about this form of advertising is that, well, the ads blend in. Because of this, brands must compete for the attention of the consumer—a consumer who likely has an attention span of less than 25 seconds—and the only way to do so is by creating something interesting, catchy and of course, relevant. That’s where the headline comes in.