Category: Advertising

The Importance of Brand Awareness Ads

Posted on | by The AD Leaf Studio West Palm Beach
Advertising, Marketing, Social Media

For marketers, the choice between brand awareness and lead generation can feel like a boxing match. ‘Awareness’ fights to increase the size of your audience, while ‘lead gen’ limits your audience to a group of people who are willing to trade their contact information for your services.

There’s a simple formula for choosing brand awareness or lead generation. To determine the best strategy for your social media campaign, consider the benefits and drawbacks of each. When used effectively, the two methods can complement each other, and there are times when you might need to focus on one more than the other.

For instance, if you have a brand that has just started its social media strategy and has little to no posted content and little to no followers on its page, it may be wise to start with a brand awareness or a reach ad. This will entice potential customers with awareness of your brand without asking them for their personal information or coming across as too salesy. This type of ad is simply meant to spread awareness without asking for anything from the viewer. 

Look! We’re here. We exist. Did you know that?

Brand awareness creates visibility for your brand and what you offer.

There’s a good reason that brand awareness is the first pick for most marketers. Brands need to focus on attracting attention before lead generation ads can succeed. If no one knows about your brand and what they offer, they are much less likely to fill out a form with personal information such as their phone number or zip code. That said, it’s not always the need for personal information that turns potential customers away, but the time it takes to fill out a simple form, especially if they know nothing about you or have never heard of you before. 

Brand Comprehension

So let’s say you’ve been running a brand awareness ad for a few months. Your ad recall lift is high. Your page has a decent amount of likes and follows in this short amount of time. People know you, and it’s starting to show. You have a base now. You now have brand comprehension because you’ve been running brand awareness ads for a few months. People see your ad and know who you are and what services you offer. Now is the time to transition to a lead generation ad.

This same audience has been seeing your brand awareness ads on their feed for a few months now, and all of a sudden, they desperately need the service that your brand offers. What are the chances they fill out your new lead form? Pretty high! BAM! Quality lead.

Brand awareness is what makes lead generation ads work. With brand awareness comes brand comprehension and knowing what your brand offers. 

Starting Cold

Alright. Now let’s go in the other direction, where you don’t have much of an audience or following on social, but you want to get going and start getting leads as quickly as possible. You know you don’t have much of a following, yet you decide to run lead generation ads instead of brand awareness ads, hoping to get leads immediately.

You do this for months. Your page slowly grows, but your lead form is nearly vacant. You’ve had three leads in 60 days, and at this point, you’re wondering where you went wrong.

The problem is quite simple. Nobody knows your brand or who you are. Your brand is not trusted, and your audience is freezing cold.

The Process

It may be difficult to see a brand awareness ad as an investment, but that’s really what it is. You need to put money in, knowing that you probably aren’t getting an immediate return. Your brand needs a following. It needs to be easily recognizable and quickly comprehended, and brand awareness ads are the way to do that.

Once your audience knows you, they know they can trust you.

About Us

The entire process of putting together, running, and adjusting a quality Facebook ad is in-depth and time-consuming. Allow the experts at The AD Leaf to assist you in your lead procurement journey! Reach out via phone at (321) 255-0900, or complete our contact form.

Is Your Marketing Cutting It? Here’s How To Make The Most Out Of Your Budget.

Posted on | by The AD Leaf Studio West Palm Beach
Advertising, Email Marketing, Pay Per Click, Search Engine Optimization

Let’s cut to the chase: without proper marketing, your business is set to struggle. In today’s digital age, having an online presence is more important than ever. Even if you do have a digital presence, are you truly making the most of it?

Whether you’re new to digital marketing or have been in the game for a while, it might be time to reassess your budget. According to BDC, your marketing budget should be between 2 and 5% of your revenue for business to business, B2B, and between 5 and 10% for business to consumer, B2C. The term marketing is broad, so you may be wondering how you can know what you should be putting your investment in. The AD Leaf is here to break down how you can truly make the most of your budget.

Marketing Is An Investment

Something to keep in mind when planning out your budget is that marketing is an investment you are making and not simply an expense. When you pay for marketing, you are hopefully going to see results that will help your company endlessly. While it can be hard to justify spending the cash, especially for small businesses, there are so many reasons why marketing is worth the investment. When you market your business, you are:

  • Building brand awareness
  • Increasing your sales
  • Alerting potential customers and clients to new deals, offerings, and sales
  • Building a customer base
  • Taking advantage of social media and other online spaces
  • Putting your business where your customers are
  • Receiving analytics to help improve your future business strategy

Get The Most Out Of Your Marketing Budget

Marketing budgets can be hard to set for small and big businesses alike. It takes a lot of trial and error to find the right combination of online platforms to get a good ROI, return on investment. We have a few tips and tricks up our sleeve for you to use to get your business off the ground.

  • Start your business off on the right foot: New businesses can have a harder time breaking into an established field. By spending a little extra money upfront, around 15-20% of your revenue depending on your industry, you can get a boost into your target market. Once your business becomes a little better established, you can drop your spending to about 5-10%.
  • Try competition matching: Take a look at what your competitors are doing that’s working for them. Could it also be applied to your marketing strategy? If so, you might be able to get inspiration from other players in the field.
  • Keep your goals in mind: Having a goal-driven marketing strategy is one of the best ways to reach your objectives. Try using the acronym S.M.A.R.T. to set your goals: specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound. Keeping this acronym in mind will help you set goals you can realistically hope to achieve with specific ways to achieve them.
  • Imagine yourself in the customer’s shoes: While this is a pretty straightforward piece of advice, it doesn’t hurt to be reminded that you should always think of what’s happening on the other end of your marketing. Are you solving a problem for a customer, or are you just trying to sell a product? Always keep in mind your customer’s journey all the way from your advertisement to them clicking “complete purchase”. What keeps them clicking through? You should also ask yourself how many leads you are getting, and how many are turning into paying customers. Focusing on the buyer is crucial to your marketing success.
  • Keep your ROI in mind: When you start spending on marketing, make sure you are tracking your ROI. By measuring your ROI, you can determine if your budget needs to be adjusted, or if you should increase your spending.

Who We Are

The AD Leaf Marketing Firm is made of experts well-versed in social media research and content creation. We would love to conquer the world of ever-changing social media and research for your company and help sky-rocket your business’s online presence and social engagement. Contact us today for more information on how we can help you grow by using our online form or call us at 321.255.0900. You can also email us at info@theadleaf.com. We can’t wait to hear from you!

using-social-media-stories-to-your-business-advantage

Using Social Media Stories to Your Business’ Advantage

Posted on | by The AD Leaf Studio West Palm Beach
Advertising, Marketing, Social Media

Even if they are only on your page for 24 hours, using social media stories to your business’ advantage can be very useful. If you are looking for a way to incorporate Instagram Stories and Twitter Fleets into your marketing, contact our experts at The AD Leaf ® Marketing Firm LLC. today! 

  • Around half of Instagram’s total base uses the Stories feature.
  • Keeping on top of trends and new features is appealing to new customers.
  • You can track how engaging your followers find your content. 

In November, Twitter launched its new feature called Fleets. Following in a similar vein to Instagram’s Stories feature, users are able to share short-form content for a limited amount of time. You can customize this content with text, GIFs, or even links that will take whoever clicks on it to a web page. 

Not only that, but Stories is not the only interesting tool that Instagram has to offer. They also recently launched Reels in August, which are fifteen-second videos that are featured on a special part of the Instagram app. Since these are separated from the general post and Stories feeds, you are able to reach people that may not follow you yet. 

If you and your business have a social media presence, you can utilize these features to drive up business. If you are unsure of where to start, let the social media experts at The AD Leaf ® Marketing Firm LLC. guide you towards a strategy that works for you.

Give Your Customers an Inside Look into Your Business

Customers are always looking for the human aspect of small businesses like yours. That is why it is a great idea to pull back your curtains sometimes to show the daily operations of you or your employees. Using Fleets and Stories are a great way to do this. As they are only on your page for twenty-four hours, you do not have to worry about bothering your social feeds with individual posts about your company. 

Offer Exclusive Discounts and Offers

As a business owner, you understand that urgency is one of the best feelings you can instill in a customer. You want to convince your audience that they should not miss a sale or opportunity as much as possible. By posting these offers on a platform that erases posts after twenty-four hours, this sense of urgency is effectively conveyed.

Interact with Your Customers

One of the major differences between Instagram Stories and Twitter Fleets is the fact that Stories is more user-friendly. This is because the platform offers “stickers” that allow your audience to vote in polls or ask questions. An idea that you can do with these stickers is to ask your customers to vote for their favorite product or service they’ve invested in this year. Although this is a feature currently not available in Fleets, chances are that something similar will be available in the near future. Using social media stories to your business’ advantage is also a great way to interact with your customers.

Customize Your Social Media Strategy Today

If you are interested in learning more about how Stories and Fleets can be used to market your business, contact The AD Leaf ® Marketing Firm LLC. today! We can work with you side-by-side to determine the best course of action for your social media strategy. To schedule a free consultation, call us today at 321-255-0900.

Advertising To Your Audience on Facebook

Posted on | by The AD Leaf Studio West Palm Beach
Advertising, Marketing, Social Media
Social media is the most relevant advertising channel for Generation Z, Gen X, and millennials. These younger audiences are open, responsive, and primed to receive advertising messages as they browse their feed. If you want to target this younger demographic, paid social media advertising will help.
 
Social media is the most effective channel to inspire potential buyers to purchase from brands. Especially if you’re ready to invest in video ads. Marketers disclosed that they are increasing their digital video budgets by 25% year-over-year since video is widely preferred by consumers. Depending on your budget, you can get super specific with ad targeting to reach qualified customers and patients.
 
The problem with a lot of typical advertising that isn’t on social media is that they have no specific audience to target to and initial campaigns waste a good chunk of money fishing in an empty pond. While eventually, a target audience may be organically discovered this way, it’s highly unlikely that it will happen overnight.
 
With social media, you’re not necessarily fishing in an empty pond. It’s more like your fishing in a pond with a massive amount of very small fish that will very quickly turn into full-grown fish that you will eventually find yourself reeling in. With over 2.7 billion monthly active users as of the second quarter of 2020, Facebook is the biggest social network worldwide.
 
Instead of marketing to the masses and getting nowhere, your audience is already on social media and primed to buy. Strategic social media advertisements pop up in front of people at the right time, educating them about your product or service and motivating them to make a purchasing decision.
 
Social media has changed how advertisers find their true target audience. With specific ways to target demographics, location and even a potential consumer’s interests, targeting your audience is now common knowledge when it comes to digital marketing on social networks.
 
The largest demographic on Facebook is men ages 18-34, making up 35% of active users. Simple things like targeting a specific gender can change your ad campaign completely. Additionally, when setting up a new campaign almost all social media advertising platforms will ask you for an objective; be it video views, website clicks, post engagements or sales. Once this has been defined, the platform will use previous user behaviour data to put your ads in front of the people that are most likely to perform your desired action.
 
Many businesses end up boosting posts on Facebook as prompted by the platform. Boosting is an easy and cost effective way to get more exposure of a post and can be very successful for competitions, photos, blog posts and other posts that are not sales orientated.
 
However, when boosting, note that you are only able to use basic targeting functionalities and Facebook will target users more likely to engage (likes, comments, shares) rather than link clicks by default. Therefore, if you are running a campaign that’s designed to generate conversions, consider exploring the Facebook ads manager platform instead.
 
With social media advertising, there is less intent, you are simply targeting someone because they meet the profile of your target audience, they may have no interest in actually using your services or buying your product. The exception to this is when you use the Facebook pixel as when retargeting previous visitors of your website, you can assume higher intent.
 
The effectiveness of a social media platform will depend largely on your target audience, product or service and budget. However, Facebook could be considered to have the most advanced advertising features of all social media platforms and also has the largest user base. A person’s social media account tells you a lot about them, and social media advertising platforms allow you to utilize this data to put your ads in front of the right people. The more interested in a topic a person is, the more likely to click an ad with that interest in mind.