Does it keep you up at night worrying that the faucet may eventually run dry on your Search and Social campaigns? If so, you’re not alone.
I often hear from marketers that performance is incredible across Search and Social campaigns, but they fear it’s impossible it will stay that way forever. As an industry, we know Search and Social Media can drive solid results and are practically prerequisite for any and every brand out there; however the well can, and often does, dry up.
So what can you do to consistently add NEW customers to your purchase funnel?
I believe the most important thing you can do as a marketer is to test new platforms and avoid relying on 1 channel. If you’re afraid to stray too far from Search and Social media platforms, Native Advertising can be a great way to dip your toes outside of the walled gardens.
Below are my recommendations on how to diversify beyond your search and social media campaigns with native advertising.
1. Continue optimizing to performance goals with Native advertising.
Most Native platforms are activated on a CPC (cost per click) similar to Search and Social Media. You can continue to earn impressions as added value and only pay when a consumer is interested in learning more about your product.
You’ll also want to lean into native platforms that leverage pixels and can optimize to your performance goals. This will help you continue to drive leads and sales while extending your media campaigns.
At Taboola, we’ve recently launched a platform enhancement called Maximize Conversions. Maximize Conversions gives marketers the ability to remove the guess of bid strategy or bid optimizations and allow Taboola’s technology to deliver predictable conversions at scale. To date, our customers have seen a 15% decrease in their CPA numbers.
2. Repurpose your Social media creative assets as Native units.
You may not always have creative assets that can fit the specs of a native placement. If you’re running social media campaigns, that’s a great place to start by repurposing what you already have. Your native campaigns’ creative assets can mimic the look and feel of social media assets. Typical, native campaigns will perform similarly to social media and search, at no additional cost to creating a brand new campaign.
Most native platforms require a compelling image or video along with a headline and caption. I recommend pulling your most performant image / video and top CTR captions to test across native advertising. Sometimes all you get from your creative team or shop are some banners.
If you don’t have creatives to repurpose, Taboola can help you there. Taboola’s launch of GenAI Ad Maker has taken the guesswork out of building new creatives for a native campaign. Taboola is utilizing the power of Generative AI tools such as Chat GPT and Stable Diffusion to make it easier for brands to diversify their media mix. Our GenAI Ad Maker leverages Taboola’s best practices and content policies to create high-quality ads tailored to your brand’s unique identity and target audience.
3. Extend your reach and find consumers outside of walled gardens.
Find your audience beyond the walled gardens of Search and Social. While it can be very comforting to keep your brand within the walls of Google and Meta, a Native advertising platform that is fully transparent can help you engage with your audience while they are reading or watching content from their preferred websites. This is an opportunity to reach your audience while they’re in a different mindset as well.
If you’re looking for the comfort of brand safe environments across publishers you know and trust, Taboola Select could be an option for you. Taboola Select lets advertisers access 15% of Taboola’s top-tier publishers, engaging millions of users on platforms like Yahoo, Business Insider, and The Associated Press, ensuring brand safety. Ads can be placed on premium sections of publisher sites, including homepages and mid-article spots, with a new Featured Placements option. Taboola Select can be contracted on a CPC basis, enabling users to leverage our Maximize Conversions bidding in a curated premium environment, reducing CPAs by an average of 17%
What else can you do?
If budgets are tight, as they normally are, you can start with identifying key tentpole events or holidays for your brand. You can still drive an impact by activating additional platforms during these key times. Launching across a fully transparent platform like Taboola can give you the control to target your audience while keeping efficiencies and driving performance.
It may also be helpful to identify and highlight key trends and seasonality across the current landscape. Taboola has launched a tool called Taboola Trends to help our clients better gauge and analyze trends across topics and creatives. Gain a better understanding of how current market engagement sits and what types of creatives could resonate with your audience.
If you lie awake at night worried about only leveraging bottom of the funnel tactics for your brand, reach out to us at Taboola. We can help you diversify and connect with your audience in efficient, performant ways.