Like any marketing technique, Native ads need to be done right in order to work. It isn’t enough if you just decided to experience the advantage of native advertising because a lot of things can go wrong there. You can get thousands of clicks or none at all and that’s the point where you might be thinking native advertising is not for your brand.
There are a lot of things to consider when creating a native campaign – audience analysis, branding, a specific goal for that very campaign, and when all of that comes together with adjusting the budget you can easily forget something that might be crucial. But the good news is, if something negative comes up, usually you will need to adjust just a couple of mistakes. Let’s try and cover the most common ones here.
1. You selected the wrong native ad platform
This is one of the most important steps when it comes to creating the native ad campaign. It will affect the success of it the way you didn’t expect it to. When you choose the native ad platform you need to check whether it really fits the goals of your campaign – if it doesn’t reach the right audience, you’re probably doing it wrong.
It is common for advertisers to choose some platform that reaches audiences worldwide, even if it’s sometimes better to choose smaller networks, especially for smaller businesses. That way, you would definitely target your country first and make sure that the native ad network works with relevant publishers.
2. Your native ads aren’t engaging enough
This isn’t judging, but only a few advertisers know how to create an engaging native ad. If you want more clicks, maybe you should revise your ad and check what did you do.
What will work for your business is never clear at the beginning, nor later – people’s taste is changing due to trends, culture, language, niches… There is no universal decision when it comes to creating native ads, even though it is good for you to follow some general best practices. You’ve maybe already read somewhere that for business niche black and white photos work 140% better, while for pets category color pictures have a higher CTR.
3. You don’t promote quality
There are cases where CTR is okay, but users’ behavior fails to meet your expectations. That’s the quality content problem and you should definitely change something. Landing pages are tricky, so, you need to carefully research your audience before even coming up with a topic.
Furthermore, does your content encourages visitors to stay on your page? That can turn your visitors to customers in no time and you don’t want to hurt your brand name with some junk content. Sometimes you will even need to create completely new content.
4. Your ads don’t reflect the content the right way
This is somehow connected with the previous point because bad correspondence between the title and the content can do a lot of harm, too. I’m sure you have clicked on some promising headline before and when you read the content it had nothing to do with the title and you felt disappointed at least. I believe that happened so many times.
Be sure your ads fully reflect the content they promote and don’t let them turn against you. Revisit your headlines.
5. You ignore the customer journey
Don’t shoot in the dark and don’t expect your job is done if you launched a good native ad. Think as if you were the customer – the awareness comes first, then consideration and the decision at last. What your landing page says to them is everything.
Also, I hope you don’t expect them to purchase the first time they see your ad, especially if you target a new audience.
6. You didn’t align your goals with KPIs
You always have a goal when starting a campaign, that is real. You want either to build brand awareness, or you’re launching the sale campaign or whatever. Select the right native advertising performance metrics in order to monitor campaign effectiveness. If you fail to do this correctly, no wonder something is not working for you.
7. You don’t consider native ads as a part of your overall marketing strategy
We would always celebrate if our customers’ path to purchase was straightforward as an arrow but we all know that in most cases we have to do a lot of extra steps. Here is how that path usually looks like:
If you want to drive conversions, native ads results should be measured along with your marketing strategy. They are very convenient for building brand awareness or top-funnel promotion. I recommend that you take a look at the big picture. If you are only looking for more sales, native ads will be ineffective for you. But if you consider this customers’ path to purchase, you will notice that they have an enormous impact on the whole process.
8. You don’t split-test!
I’m sure you know there is no rule and you will never know what works and what doesn’t! Split-testing will help you in creating valuable ads that will bring you some money back and you won’t waste your time on something that doesn’t give results. Test these:
- Ad formats
- Headlines and thumbnails
- Content types
- Audiences
- Publishers
Of course, you’re going to test one variation at a time to carefully observe.
9. You don’t check where your clicks are coming from
I’ve already mentioned publishers – you can spend a fortune and not get anything in return. If a specific website is not giving any conversions, you will definitely need to block it. Revisit your targeting options if you see that thousands of clicks haven’t got you even one customer.
Keep calm and monitor your campaigns
These mentioned above are key aspects of creating a native campaign – they can affect your business badly. Just follow these tips and your brand should be known shortly.
Also, don’t forget to closely monitor campaigns while they are still active so that you can adjust the settings if needed.
