This month, we are pleased to introduce guest blogger Joel O’Flaherty. Based in Reigate, with a keen interest in developing his marketing career, Joel approached Your Marketing Team with a passion for copywriting, digital marketing and strategy. We met with him over a coffee and invited him to write as a guest on our Insights page. He’s started with the subject of personalised digital advertising – love it or loath it, it’s here to stay and can be a great tool for consumer products and services. Thank you so much Joel for this insightful piece, we look forward to working with you in the months ahead.
Harnessing the power of personalisation on social media
With 5 billion active users worldwide, it’s safe to say that your ideal customers are on social media. Connecting with them though, is a different matter. There’s so much content online that it’s easy for yours to get lost in the crowd.
If you’re struggling with engagement, now might be the time to consider a personalised ad campaign on social media. But what exactly is personalised advertising? And how might it put your business centre-stage for the perfect audience?
Let’s get personal
Advertising through Social media is all about tailored content. Think of TikTok’s ‘For You’ feed, YouTube’s recommended videos, or Facebook’s suggested friends list. The things you view and interact with allow these platforms to predict what you want to be shown. The ads here are no different.
A personalised ad is one that has been tailored to a specific audience via user insights. These insights can be based on demographic information or individual interests, such as your hometown or how many hours you spend watching cat videos. Using tools like Pixels and hashed lists, insights can also be collected from activity on other sites, making them an extremely detailed database of their users.
As a businessowner, personalisation allows you to hyper-target your perfect audience of potential customers. Social media platforms act as the matchmaker, serving your ads directly to those you feel are most likely to click on them.
When used effectively, personalised ads allow you to put your business directly in the palm of your future customers. Below are some examples of the different ways that this can be achieved.
O2’s segmentation – success through variation
Not all customers want the same thing from your business, so why advertise to them as if they do? Variety requires segmentation.
Mobile giant, O2, demonstrated the power of this in one of their earlier digital campaigns focused on tariff refresh. Using Facebook, they divided their audience into three groups, and targeted each with a slightly different message: early upgraders, those out of contract, and those approaching the end of their contract. Personalised messaging appealed directly to the customer’s situation, and it was markedly successful: these ads achieved an overall 49% lower cost per order.
Relevancy is key. The more relevant your ad is to your customer, the more likely they are to click on it. Personalised ads on social media give you the ability to customise this at a micro level.
Scotch’s trend-tailoring – harnessing the back-to-school buzz
Mimicking organic content and harnessing trends are great ways of advertising on social media. Scotch, the synonymous tape company, demonstrated this on Pinterest with their series of ‘how-to’ videos on child-friendly back-to-school crafts, using their tape as the key component. ‘Preschool crafts’ and ‘back-to-school crafts’ were popular search phrases on Pinterest, so Scotch used these insights to personalise the content of their ads. It was hugely successful, with a 4x higher click-through rate.
This shows an alternative use of personalisation. Not only can you tailor the audience for your ads, but you can also tailor your ads to match trends and popular searches, exposing your business to new customers.
Also, people share engaging content that they relate to. By making your ads personal and entertaining, you could see a far greater reach for a fraction of the cost. Who knows, maybe you’ll even go viral?
Expedia’s retargeting – second time’s a charm
There are hundreds of reasons why a customer might get cold feet moments before a purchase, but there’s no reason why they can’t change their mind later – especially with a friendly nudge. Retargeting is that nudge: directing ads at users who have already interacted with your website or social media pages.
The online travel agency, Expedia, employed a retargeting campaign for those who had pulled out before their purchase was complete. Hashed lists allowed them to connect to their almost-customers on Facebook and tempt them to reconsider. The first image in the ad carousel was the exact package they were viewing before their change of heart.
Retargeting via social media can be a great way of coaxing repeat customers and shining a spotlight on your business – asking, hey, remember me? After all, with humanity predicted to spend a combined 500 million years using social media in 2024, if you’re going to reach them anywhere, it’ll be here!
If you think that personalised social media ads could be a good fit for your business, get in touch with us to talk about how this can form part of your next campaign.