PAID PROMOTIONS

& HOW TO   USE THEM

VIP DEPARTMENT | BRANDYOURSELF

03 /2017

Megan Bradley

THE 411

Unless otherwise specified, 3% of each campaign's monthly budget should be allocated towards paid promotional campaigns. These campaigns serve as crucial tools in achieving client goals, whether that means shifting search results, increasing their brand/content visibility, or growing their following. 

PROMOTIONAL ADS SHOULD BE VISIBLE, VALUABLE, RELEVANT & HAVE A CALL TO ACTION

FACEBOOK ADSPage post engagements - Page likes - Click to Website - Video Views

Let's talk about...

FACEBOOK ADS

With billions of users on its platform, Facebook is a great place to spend promotional budgets. For our campaigns sake, let's look at Facebook Ads in two ways: 1) How can they help to shift search results? 2) How can they help amplify my clients brand or content? 

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SHIFTING

RESULTS

STRATEGY 

IS KEY When executing PostEngagements or Website Clickscampaign, you can strategicallytarget and promote properties

with the strongest chance ofovertaking negative results.

Additionally, Page Likecampaigns will help in boostingyour clients Facebook profile in

search results.

AMPLIFYING

CONTENT

Utilizing Post Engagements, Page Likes and Video

Views allows us to expose our unique content to a wider

audience.

IT'S VISUAL

Lots of people are familiar with the Amazon Prime logo, but not in neon lights in a window display. It made me do a double- take while scrolling through Facebook.

Why is that a great ad?

IT'S RELEVANT

This ad was a result of tracking and targeting certain user behaviors -- the user who discovered this ad was an Amazon shopper and Bustle reader. 

IT'S VALUABLE

"Brilliant" is a strong adjective to describe products, which makes me curious to learn more about purchasing them.

CALL TO ACTION

The ad entices me with information about useful and "brilliant" gadgets I can get delivered to my door within two days, which I'm happy to click to learn more about.

TEXT

90 Character Limit!

Things to consider when building an ad...

IMAGES

For single image ads, make sure your Image ratio is 1.91:1 and Image size is 1200 pixels x 627 pixels. For multi-image ads (Carousel Ads) use Image size 600 x 600 pixels with an image ratio of 1:1.

LINK TITLESKeep it under 25 characters

AUDIENCE

If you're wavering between choosing a specific audience over a broad one, consider your objective. If you're looking to drive traffic, you'll probably want to focus on the type of people you know will be interested in your offering. However, if you're looking to build brand awareness or promote a widely appealing offer, feel free to focus on a more general audience. 

BUDGET

Daily budget- this means that FB will pace your spending per day. Keep in mind that the minimum daily budget for an ad set is $1.00 Lifetime budget - this means that FB will pace your spend over the time period you set for the ad to run.

TWITTER ADS

Followers - Website Clicks - Promoted Tweets

Let's talk about...

TWITTER ADS

With more than 302 million active monthly users and 500 millionupdates sent per day, Twitter continues to be a rich marketing avenue for brands. While most of Twitter's products used to be about brand awareness, now it offers more action-oriented, ROI-focused products. But where do you start if you are still a beginner to advertising on Twitter? And how do you know which type of ad product is the right fit for your client's campaign? 

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If you are just starting out on Twitter or you're launching a

new brand, increasing your Twitter following can help build

initial brand awareness. You can also use this type of ad

option to attract more potential customers and people in

your target market so your content reaches more

interested followers.

Followers campaigns appear as tweets in the home timeline

and in the Who to Follow boxes on the Home, Notification,

Profile, and search results pages.

FOLLOWERS

CAMPAIGN

IT'S VISUAL

The image also does a nice job of looking serious at first, only to showcase their dry wit in the end.

Why is that a great ad?

IT'S RELEVANT

By playing to their audiences humor and intelligence, they are able to use the creative within their ad to relating to the problem they solve to other extinct things.

IT'S VALUABLE

The brand is able to pull-off clever humor in less than 140 characters while also relating to the problem their brand solves.

CALL TO ACTION

The ad entices users to follow them using direct language and a reason to look on further.

This type of campaign should be used to drive traffic and

increase form conversions on your website. The tweet will

include a headline, link, image, and a call-to-action.

If you choose to run a website clicks or conversions

campaign, you will pay on a cost-per-action basis or when

someone clicks the link. You will not pay for retweets,

replies, and other types of engagement. .

WEBSITE

CLICKS

IT'S VISUAL

The ad utilizes emoji's in the creative as well as showcasing the user-friendly interface of #TheoryWars in the image.

Why is that a great ad?

IT'S RELEVANT

Verizon is piggy-backing off the relevance and popularity of the newest Star Wars film, as they understand that a mobile carrier brand may not have the richest organic content to promote.

IT'S VALUABLE

Verizon wisely side steps focusing attention on themselves, instead highlighting a co-branded campaign with Star Wars to capture interest.

CALL TO ACTION

The ad entices users to participate in a greater action for a chance to win a prize. 

Promoted Tweets are tweets with paid promotion behind

them to expand the reach of the content. They can be

retweeted, replied to, and favorited and should be used to

drive brand awareness, traffic to the brand's site, or to

promote events, offers, and specials. Promoted Tweets are

clearly labeled as promoted, but in every other respect,

Promoted Tweets act just like regular tweets.

PROMOTED

TWEETS

IT'S VISUAL

They use an image that further complicates the mystery of being unclear about what, exactly, intelligent people do. Read in bed? Rest coffee without spilling it? Wear anklets?

Why is that a great ad?

IT'S RELEVANT

They are offering something of value to users; being intelligent or like intelligent people is relevant to success today.

IT'S VALUABLE

Ideapod masterfully creates interest andintrigue through a few different techniques, namely using an aspirational ideal (i.e. if you want to be intelligent, you should be doing this...)

CALL TO ACTION

They create an open loop by posing an interesting topic without providing the answer or solution.

Do: Include “follow us” in your Tweet when running

follower campaigns and let them know why they

should follow you

Don’t: Add extra links and hashtags that distract

from the Follow button 

THINGS TO   CONSIDER

FOLLOWER CAMPAIGNS

EMPHASIZE URGENCY

Tweets that use phrases such as “hurry,” “fast,” “now,”

“quick,” “running out,” “supplies last,” and “limited time”

see a 10% lower cost-per-acquisition (CPA) and a 10%

higher link click rate (LCR). 

We only have 140 characters here (and the most

successful are using only 40-60) and only

include hashtags if you must (Promoted Tweets

with hashtags see a 24% higher CPA and a 3%

lower LCR.)

SHORT & SWEET

Tweets that ask a question have a 9% lower

CPLC and a 16% higher LCR.

SPARK INTEREST

OUTBRAIN CAMPAIGN

Outbrain is a content discovery platform, which give advertisers the opportunity to fill inventory slots on other sites with their own content. They use an algorithm to match your content pieces with relevant posts on other sites and blogs that your target audience enjoys, giving you real estate at the bottom of these relevant pages.

Sharing your content through these content discovery services can get your brand some great exposure on top sites, such as CNN, Slate.com, and Inc.com. But beyond the exposure, these platforms can help you make a real dent in your traffic and lead gen numbers. 

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Before you dive in and begin creating your campaigns, the

first thing you should do is ask yourself what your goals

are. Are you looking to generate new leads for your sales

team? Are you trying to drive as much traffic as possible to

your site? Are you simply looking to gain more brand

exposure? Stating clear goals up front will help you stay

focused on the ultimate objective of your campaigns

throughout the setup and optimization process.

IDENTIFY YOUR

OBJECTIVE

Once you’ve identified your goals, you should look through your blog posts and other

content pieces and decide which ones will be the best fit for this platform. If you’re

focusing on brand exposure, why not leverage this service to promote some of your

earned third party pieces? If you’re focusing on clicks and conversions, you’ll want to

select content that performs well -- blog posts that have gained a lot of views,

content pieces that have received many downloads -- in order to maximize the impact

you’ll drive from further promotion.

Also, given that the nature of this service is to recommend other content at the

bottom of blog posts, a best practice is directing these readers to your own blog

posts, rather than jumping to something like a social media property or landing page.

DETERMINE WHAT

TO PROMOTE

That said, you can still generate interest without sending viewers directly to

your landing pages or social profiles! You do this by optimizing your blog posts

with calls-to-action to connect with you online. Make sure that the content of

the profiles you’re promoting and the topic of your blog posts are closely tied,

though, otherwise this is not likely to work well. You should include links to your

lead gen content throughout your blog content, and you can also create a larger

visual call-to-action at the end of your blog posts, mimicking the “recommended

next step” setup.

If your blog post is compelling enough and your calls-to-action are relevant and

enticing, you should see great success in taking readers from viewing a

completely different site, to reading your blog post, to following you on Twitter.

OPTIMIZE

CONTENT

When you have your list of pieces to promote, upload the URLs to the platform

dashboard (most content discovery platforms are self-serve).

Another feature you’ll want to take advantage of is the opportunity to create

numerous variations for the titles of your blog posts, which will appear when

they are promoted. Think of this as running an A/B test, only with many more

variations. You’ll be able to see which titles are performing best and pause the

ones that are bringing your averages down.

CREATE TITLEVARIATIONS

STUMBLEUPON CAMPAIGN

StumbleUpon is one of the best traffic generators among the top seven social media sites, referring more than other social bookmarking and voting sites such as Digg and Reddit according to Statcounter.

Why?

Because when a user likes, or stumbles, a particular page, it is put into the StumbleUpon lineup. As other StumbleUpon users are randomly searching for new content on a specific topic using the Stumble button on their toolbar, any pages in the lineup for that topic will be displayed to them.

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Before we go any further, the main secret to StumbleUpon success is having great content.

Sales pages and product info pages will not get you far, unless you happen to be Amazon or

have some kind of extremely popular product like an iPad. Poorly written articles and blog posts

may get them on there, but users can hit the dislike button just as easily as they can hit the like

button and ultimately bury your content. So what kind of content thrives on StumbleUpon?

 

Tutorials – if your guide is the end all guide to a particular topic, then you’re in.

Videos – entertaining, informational, or visually stimulating videos from YouTube, Vimeo, and

other video networks can do quite well.

Images – the photography community on StumbleUpon is pretty huge.

Infographics – most networks love infographics, and StumbleUpon is definitely one of them. You

can see the ones with the most views here.

Lists – people love lists and will often stumble them for their followers..

GREAT

CONTENT

TOPICS

ou can let StumbleUpon guess, or you can choose up to 10. You can choose to split your

campaign per topic or keep one campaign for all the topics you select.

AUDIENCE

StumbleUpon can automatically optimize your campaign for you, or you can manually set the

demographics for age, gender, location, and device (desktop browsers, iPhone, Android, or iPad).

BUDGET

After determining your highest daily spend, It will calculate based on your plan and your budget

how many visitors you will receive in one day. For example, under the normal plan and a budget

of $25 a day, you will receive 250 visitors per day.

SCHEDULE

You can set the scheduling to automatically start when the ad is approved and continue to run

until you run out of funds (which you will deposit – a nice way to put a cap on your ad spending)

or you can manually set a start and end date for your campaign. 

THE

BASICS

GOOGLE ADWORDS

Google Adwords can be extremely successful for individuals and businesses alike if used correctly. When executing an adword campaign, it's key you understand how to:

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Use Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads as a part of a well-rounded inbound marketing campaign Use the right keywords to create relevant (and highly searchable) ads and landing pages Recognize keyword match types and when to use them Create your Google AdWords account and set budgets Optimize your ad copy to maximize clicks Determine the right goals and metrics for your ads

Google AdWords is a marketplace where companies pay to have their website ranked at the top

of a search results page, based on keywords. This marketplace works as an auction. People bid

money for clicks. But, the highest bid doesn’t always win. Google combines the money factor

with a quality factor, in order to create the best experience for the user.

Quality ads + solid bid = win!

THE

BASICS