As fast as the social landscape is changing, TikTok has adapted to its growing audience while making headway in the paid social landscape as marketers take notice.

TikTok’s demographics have also evolved, with older generations checking out the app to see what it’s all about, influencers turning into content creators, and brands discovering the viability of TikTok advertising. New content trends have developed including lip-syncs (migrating their lip-syncing predecessor Musical.ly in 2018), comedic sketches, and special effect filters. TikTok is also a place of visual discoverability as it’s overtaken Google Search in the eyes of Gen Z users. All of these elements combined have changed how brands approach their social marketing stack – particularly in relation to how ad spend is allocated. TikTok has earned its seat at the table with its platform counterparts and continues to force them to adapt to the changing social sharing landscape.

We’re big believers in TikTok as a component of any performance and growth marketing strategy whether that is focused on an organic presence or paid ad strategy. Now, let’s look at some data to back up our excitement for the platform. Here are the ten TikTok stats you need to know in 2022.

1. TikTok’s userbase is aging up

47% of TikTok users are between the ages of 10 and 29 compared to last year’s figures of 62%. TikTok’s core demographic isn’t just for dancing Gen Z-ers anymore as more mature generations are joining the platform in throngs while the main demographic continues to age. Don’t get us wrong, lip-syncs and dancing videos still exist by the millions, but the growth of TikTok has resulted in the growth of several new trends in the types of content that people are creating.

New verticals have exploded in popularity across the platform, such as cooking, beauty & fashion, #cryptok, and #fintok. Even celebrities have started getting involved, with stars such as Kevin Hart, Lizzo, and most recently Kim Kardashian (who gained over 3 million followers in just 15 hours) all becoming active users within the TikTok community. The latter has undoubtedly helped grow the platform, with users signing up to see the latest updates from their favorite personalities. Still, the former has inspired countless content creators to either get started or shift from a previous platform (YouTube, Instagram) over to TikTok.

2. 37% of TikTok Users Are Making More Than $100,000

Arguably the biggest appeal of TikTok as a marketing platform is the ability to reach Gen Z at scale. While that age bracket is coveted for its ability to set trends, the risk is that they don’t have the buying power to justify substantial investment in marketing spend. Who cares if someone thinks a brand is cool if they don’t have the money to purchase it?

As mentioned above, the platform’s changing demographics show that’s not the case with TikTok as Gen Z ages and older generations get more comfortable with the platform. Brands can essentially get the best of both worlds— engaging the Gen Z trendsetters with fun challenges, and them spreading the word to more affluent audiences.

3. Partnering with Creators boosts view-through rate by 193%

We said it once, but we’ll say it again – content creators are the new influencers and UGC is essential to any social strategy. TikTok’s Creator Marketplace is one of their strongest and most unique features for brands to partner with over 100,000 vetted creators. The TikTok Creator Marketplace API allows brands to view creators’ first-party data, analytics, and direct insight into their engagement to better pair with the best creator for their campaign goals.

4. TikTok Has Been Downloaded Over 3.5 Billion Times Worldwide

TikTok is officially the first non-Meta app (and the fifth app of all time) to surpass 3 billion downloads. In the first quarter of 2022, the app was downloaded more than 175 million times. In the U.S., TikTok has been the top app every quarter since Q1 2021 on the App Store and has seen a 19% year-over-year increase on the Google Play Store.

5. TikTok has 1 billion active monthly users worldwide

TikTok isn’t hurting for users, in fact, they are quickly coming for their counterparts that have been around much longer. Despite 3 billion downloads, a download doesn’t equivalate to an active user. In the US alone, TikTok has over 138 million monthly active users in comparison to Instagram’s 123 million U.S. monthly active users. Globally, TikTok has 1 billion monthly active users worldwide and is expected to hit 1.5 billion by the end of 2022.

6. Despite being banned in India, TikTok saw an 11% growth in Asia

It’s no surprise TikTok has had a hold on the Asian market. Known as Douyin in its home market, the app quickly gained popularity at home and abroad with 600 million active users in China daily. Despite its popularity throughout Southeast Asia, India has banned the app not once but twice due to controversial security issues. But despite losing this large market, TikTok has continued to climb and hold its #1 spot globally.

7. TikTok users in the U.S. spend an average of 38 minutes on the platform

Users in the U.S. are spending on average 38 minutes per day scrolling TikTok. Not only is TikTok being checked more frequently, but users are spending more time within the app as well. The average TikTok viewing session clocks in at 10.85 minutes which is over three times longer than the average Instagram session of 2.95 minutes.

It’s also worth noting that TikTok has arguably a better platform and algorithm for discovering new content too. The “For You” page opens upon launch, meaning the first thing you see isn’t content from the people you follow, but from other content creators that the TikTok algorithm thinks you’d enjoy. In comparison, the Instagram experience is based mostly on people you follow causing users to navigate to the Discover tab to explore suggested accounts. On Instagram, users need to go out of their way to find new content, versus TikTok users, who expect to see something completely new every time they open the app.

8. TikTok is a sound on experience

TikTok is a visual and auditory experience. In fact, over 93% of top-performing videos use sound. Brands that use songs and sounds in their videos see a 16.1% increase in engagement over videos that don’t use sound. In 2021, over 160 billion videos used TikTok’s popular text-to-speech automation feature which proved to be one of their most popular effects.

TikTok also has a powerful impact on the music industry. 88% of users report that music is critical to their TikTok experience. So much so, that in 2021 175 songs that trended on TikTok were charted on the Billboard Hot 100.

Unfortunately, business accounts only have access to commercially licensed songs, but the music library contains over 600,000 sounds and songs to choose from so this is hardly a hindrance.

9. 24% of marketers consider TikTok as an effective marketing platform

This is a 700% increase from the previous year when only 3% of marketers responded positively toward TikTok as an effective advertising platform. Though the ad spend on TikTok remains behind Facebook and Instagram, the Meta platforms’ global ad spend fell by 25% and 40% respectively.

10. TikTok is the top mobile app for consumer spend

Last year, consumers spent an astounding 2.3 billion dollars on TikTok. If you haven’t started advertising on TikTok, this is your sign! Consumer spending increased year over year by 77% and as TikTok rolls out even more in-app shopping features such as Storefront, product tags, and Instant Landing Pages, the social shopping spend is only going to grow. 37% of users have discovered a product on TikTok with 29% finding out the product they wanted to buy was sold out. Even when users don’t come with the intention of shopping, 67% of users say the platform inspires them to shop.

These TikTok stats emphasize the same overall theme –TikTok is more than a Gen Z social app, it is a prominent player within the media and marketing landscape. Not only is TikTok making a name for itself in the social media category, but continues to overtake in search and entertainment. TikTok is a force to be reckoned with as they continue improving its advertising features and user experience.

Check out some of our favorite TikTok brand examples and check out NoGood on TikTok!

The post 10 TikTok Stats You Need To Know In 2022 appeared first on NoGood™: Growth Marketing Agency.

We recently did a deep dive into TikTok advertising strategies and have compiled a list of 11 strategies brands on TikTok can do to get started. Now, let’s take a look at some brands utilizing the platform to its fullest potential, manipulating the TikTok algorithm with SEO, and how they launch their most viral TikTok campaigns.

Table of contents

What is TikTok marketing?
Why should you use TikTok for your brand marketing strategy?
What brands are spending the most on TikTok?
What brands are crushing it on TikTok?
The most followed TikTok brands
TikTok marketing best practices

What is TikTok marketing?

TikTok marketing refers to the strategic use of the popular social media platform TikTok to promote brands and engage with potential customers through a variety of content formats. TikTok, known for its active user base and abundance of funny and viral videos, offers unique opportunities for marketers.

There are three primary areas where marketers can capitalize on TikTok:

1. Paid advertisements: TikTok’s advertising platform, TikTok For Business, enables brands to run in-feed ads, create branded hashtags, and develop video effects. Although initially embraced by larger, well-known companies, even small businesses can benefit from the platform’s potential. By examining why brands of all sizes are joining TikTok, you can leverage the platform to reach a wider audience and enhance your social media presence.
2. Influencer marketing: One effective approach is to collaborate with influencers who possess a deep understanding of the platform. These influencers can transform brand messages into fun content and creative videos that resonate with their engaged community. This type of marketing opens up new audiences, enhances brand awareness, and boosts engagement rates.
   
3. Original content: While TikTok users appreciate original content, marketers need not spend hours devising the next viral trend. Often, the best-performing TikToks are those that replicate or recreate current trends. By exploring the app, identifying popular trends, and finding ways to align your brand with relatable and fun videos, you can create relevant and authentic content that resonates with your target audience.

TikTok marketing harnesses the power of this short-form video platform, utilizing influencer partnerships, original and relatable content, and paid ads to connect with potential customers, increase brand awareness, and drive engagement. By understanding the platform’s dynamics, following popular trends, and aligning your content strategy with the creative vision of TikTok, marketers can effectively tap into the platform’s engaged community and achieve high-performing results.

Why should you use TikTok for your brand marketing strategy?

TikTok is the dominant platform for short-form video content in the ever-evolving social media landscape. This is evident from the fact that a significant 53% of marketers using TikTok plan to increase their investment in 2023, showcasing its remarkable growth compared to other platforms.

While TikTok may be relatively new compared to other social media channels, its growth has been exceptional year-over-year. With 1.6 billion users worldwide in 2022, it is projected to reach 1.8 billion by the end of 2023, indicating its expanding global presence.

What sets TikTok apart is its viral video nature, where even accounts with a small following can generate millions of views for an exceptional video. This organic reach potential makes it stand out among other social media platforms. However, some accounts may experience a decline in views and user engagement due to potential shadow bans.

Contrary to the misconception that TikTok caters only to Gen-Z users, it is gaining traction across various age groups. In 2021, the percentage of TikTok users aged between 35 and 54 increased by 10%, highlighting its appeal to a broader demographic.

Given TikTok’s inherently quirky nature, successful brands must adopt a creative approach to capture their audience’s attention. A traditional ad or sponsored influencer content may not suffice on this fast-paced platform, which demands innovative and engaging types of content strategies.

Incorporating TikTok into your brand marketing strategy is crucial due to its leading position in short-form video content. The platform’s stellar growth, massive user base, diverse audience, and unparalleled viral potential make it an essential tool for brands looking to captivate audiences, expand their reach, and drive engagement in the dynamic world of social media marketing.

What brands are spending the most on TikTok?

Among the brands allocating substantial budgets to TikTok marketing, notable names such as Apple, Pepsi, DoorDash, and Amazon have emerged as top spenders. These high-end brands recognize the platform’s still-strong user growth and positive perception among younger demographics, allowing them to confidently advertise on the TikTok channel without fearing any adverse reactions.

TikTok’s For You algorithm provides an advantage by enabling precise targeting, bypassing any complexities associated with privacy rules like Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT). By leveraging relevant content and staying in tune with popular videos and relevant trends, these brands can effectively reach a wider audience and engage with real customers on this influential social platform. To accomplish this, they often employ dedicated social media teams to strategize and execute impactful campaigns that resonate with TikTok’s active user base.

What brands are crushing it on TikTok?

1. NoGood | @nogood.io

So there may be a little bias on this one, but we are proud to have been one of ByteDance’s first growth partners in the U.S. Since then, we have used TikTok as a platform to build our marketing community by providing in-depth insights, brand breakdowns, our top tips and tools, and giving our followers a peek into the fun we have in and out of the office. Just after hitting 100K followers, we launched our TikTok Studio, offering our services as strategists, content creators, and growth marketers to help brands build their communities, find their authentic voices, and monitor performance. If you’re looking for a partner to help scale your brand and TikTok presence through community-led growth and/or paid marketing strategies, then we’re the agency for you!

2. Chipotle | @chipotle

The popular Mexican chain has amassed over 1.7M followers and over 3.8M likes. Chipotle first found success by encouraging users to partake in the #ChipotleLidFlip Challenge, which originated from a passionate Chipotle employee and was later imitated by over 100K trying to replicate the stunt. Upon TikTok launching their Ads platform, this was one of their first Branded Hashtag Challenges where the brand also featured popular Creators, which effectively raised awareness for the official Chipotle Business Account.

The brand has shown they weren’t a one-hit-wonder either and followed up with a second Branded Hashtag Challenge. In July, they started the #GuacDance challenge, resulting in over 250K video submissions and 430M video starts in just six days. The stunt didn’t just live on the internet either, as Chipotle reported over 800K sales of guac on National Guacamole Day.

Now, Chipotle has entered the metaverse. In October 2021, Chipotle brought their Boorito Halloween event to the VR world by allowing users to visit a virtual store on Roblox. By advertising on TikTok with the hashtag #Boorito, the hashtag received over 4.2B views. Most recently, the chain re-opened their Roblox store for National Burrito Day, which they promoted with videos on TikTok.

3. Guess | @guess

While it takes some brands a bit of time and practice to figure out how to best create content and drive engagement in a new platform, Guess nailed it from the start. Their first post promoted their #InMyDenim campaign, where creators quickly changed from old, ratty clothes into stylish Guess outfits. To further promote the challenge, Guess collaborated with Bebe Rexha and her original song “I’m a mess,” which was used as the sound for most of the user-generated content (UGC), generating a deeper level of engagement with the audience. Boosted by influencers such as @ourfire and @jackjerry, videos using the hashtag have been viewed over 53.5 million times.

They later followed up with #LoveGUESS to drive another 24.1 million views. Guess seems to be as good as any brand on TikTok at finding the right influencers for their campaigns. Their #LoveGUESS post on their own channel featured popular influencers @brentrivera and @mylifeaseva. That video alone was viewed over 1 million times, with hundreds of comments about how much their viewers liked the influencers.

4. NBA | @nba

The NBA is already a massively popular brand across social media, with over 117 million followers across their Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter pages, so it should come as no surprise that they’re among the most popular brand accounts on TikTok as well. They currently have over 15 million followers, which is among the top 5 most followed brand accounts on the platform.

The brilliance of the NBA’s social media strategy is the way they specialize content for each platform. If you want NBA news and updates, follow them on Twitter. If you want game highlights, follow them on Instagram. For TikTok however, they know people are looking for short-form content that engages them quickly, so the NBA mostly uses the platform for comedy and memes.

5. The Washington Post | @washingtonpost

Newspapers are the most popular content medium amongst the younger generation, which makes the Washington Post a curious case of astounding success. While you might expect they’d use it for short-form news content, the channel is filled with funny, engaging videos, often “behind the scenes” type skits to let viewers get a feel for the personalities behind the articles.

The account is run by a man named Dave who brings a “dorky dad” vibe to trending memes and video formats on the platform.

This strategy has resulted in over 445K followers and has undoubtedly bought WP some goodwill and credibility among TikTok’s younger demographic.

The Washington Post makes its goal to be creative in order to attract its audience while remaining true to its function of providing timely and accurate news coverage. More recently, The Washington Post began launching in-feed ads that promote their latest articles by making funny skits about the news covered with CTAs to read more on their website. This method proves successful as they entertain their audience to keep a positive image while intriguing them to continue reading and click the link.

6. Gymshark | @gymshark

Gymshark is another example of a brand that fully understood TikTok from the get-go, built a content strategy around it, and is seeing the results to the tune of 3.5 million followers on their account – one of the highest we’ve seen that didn’t previously have the backing of a large media company.

They also understand the value of posting frequency and are sure to post at least once a day. Their content is engaging, but also motivational at the same time. Gymshark does a great job at seeing what’s trending on the platform and adapting it to their brand voice and style, partaking in many of the popular hashtags, challenges, and involving popular creators.

7. San Diego Zoo | @sandiegozoo

If there is a cheat code to making engaging social content, it’s cute animal videos. The San Diego Zoo takes full advantage of this, creating short videos that people can’t help but like and share, resulting in over 2.1 million followers.

The San Diego Zoo has also done a phenomenal job of using its account to build partnerships with other animal-friendly brands and causes. Taking advantage of specific national animal days is easy, low-hanging fruit, but they’ve also done cross-promotions with the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

To take things to the next level, the zoo pairs its cute animal content with trending TikTok sounds to stay native to the platform and tap into the cheeky humor of TikTok’s audience.

8. Red Bull | @redbull

Red Bull has been a pioneer in creating viral digital content for years, so it should come as no surprise that they’re among the most popular and successful brands on TikTok as well. Their account has over 6.6 million followers, putting them among the highest branded accounts on the platform, and videos with the #givesyouwings hashtag have been viewed over 1 billion times.

While they do an excellent job of participating in trending hashtags and challenges, a good amount of their content isn’t explicitly made for TikTok. While this is something that most brands should avoid, Red Bull succeeds by excelling at another critical aspect of TikTok – hooking people quickly with engaging content. Whether it’s an extreme stunt or someone with next-level skills, Red Bull’s videos are undeniably thumb-stopping – something all brands should consider when planning their content.

9. Spikeball | @spikeball

To those unfamiliar with the game, Spikeball describes itself on TikTok as “if volleyball and foursquare had a baby.” Their channel videos have generated over 24.3M likes, and the #spikeball videos have over 147M views.

The secret to their success starts from the fact that the game’s target audience skews younger, which aligns with the demographics of TikTok. But perhaps more importantly, a large part of TikTok’s appeal comes from people wanting to show off a bit (often ironically). Spikeball leans into this within TikTok by showcasing “highlights” of people (and dogs) playing the game and encouraging others to do the same. Though they don’t have many posted videos, each has gone viral.

10. Ryanair | @ryanair

Ryanair is an airline that offers ultra-cheap flights in Europe. Their TikTok account is an example of a brand that has taken TikTok’s trends and humor to heart. Ryanair’s TikTok shot to fame by using TikTok’s native greenscreen filter on their planes – a filter many other brands have found success with. Ryanair rode the wave of the greenscreen trend with hardly anyone realizing when they used the filter in ad content. By using this filter to further tap into popular trends, the company has gained massive popularity and now has over 1.6 million followers and more than 9.8 million likes.

11. Taco Bell | @tacobell

Similar to Chipotle, Taco Bell has hooked users on their TikTok with UGC and hashtag challenges. In an effort to achieve more brand awareness and entice the public to visit their restaurants, Taco Bell partnered with Doja Cat to announce the return of their Mexican Pizza. In a video that has more than 1 million views, Doja Cat says she’s “forced to make this video for Taco Bell” but she isn’t allowed to say what it is. By teasing viewers, the comments section blew up with speculation about what the announcement might be. About a month later, Doja Cat posted on her own TikTok a video of her singing about the Mexican Pizza. This follow-up video has 8.3 million views and 160K comments, further promoting Taco Bell.

12. Duolingo | @duolingo

Now how could we forget the angry owl that shot Duolingo to become a household name? Encouraged by her managers to “go viral,” social media manager (and Gen Z extraordinaire) Zaria Parvez brought the Duolingo mascot to life through Gen Z humor, trends, and a distinct personality. The equally relatable and funny character created a new category for brands to tap into: #mascottok. By observing Duolingo’s success, many brands brought their own characters to life including Hootsuite and Sour Patch Kids. Today, Duolingo has 4.1 million followers and 77.2 million likes and is the new brand standard for experimentation, humor, and brand voice on TikTok.

13. Fortnite | @fortnite

In their first 16 posts, Fortnite amassed 2.6 million followers. The brand now sits at 8 million and may have more to do with the popularity of the game among key TikTok demographics than post quality. But with one of the highest numbers of average likes per post, Fortnite’s TikTok success can’t be ignored.

Fortnite’s content capitalizes on new game releases, tips and tricks, upcoming events, trending hashtags, and even uses its characters to take part in some of TikTok’s trending dances. By using their recognizable characters, followers can enjoy their favorite Fortnite characters taking part in native TikTok trends. It is a smart way to bring the two worlds together and play to their audience’s interests.

14. Nickelodeon | @nickelodeon

Similar to Netflix, Nickelodeon uses content from their beloved shows and brings it to life on TikTok. Nickelodeon has an astounding 12.9 million followers and with the age threshold at 13 years old, their content caters to the 32.5% of TikTok viewers under the age of 19.

Nickelodeon’s TikTok is another way their viewers can connect with some of their favorite characters and humanize the actors that bring them to life. Their content is native to the platform with trending sounds, participating in hashtag challenges, and they do a great job at fostering community by responding to comments directly and with video responses.

15. e.l.f. Cosmetics | @elfyeah

Beauty and fashion are some of the largest categories on TikTok due to their visual nature and attention-grabbing transformations. E.l.f. knew they had to go big in order to stand out. Most famously, they commissioned a song called “Eyes Lips Face” (the brand name’s acronym). e.l.f. then enlisted a team of creators to launch #EyesLipsFace, a viral dance challenge where creators would show their eyes, lips, and faces to the tune of the song. The song was catchy enough to get stuck in your head and the lyrics of it ensure that you know (and never forget) what the e.l.f. in their brand name stands for. The challenge itself was also fun because it didn’t require the use of cosmetics. This led to the brand going TikTok viral. The result – 9.2 billion views and counting.

The e.l.f. TikTok page @elfyeah sits at 502K followers and they leverage their successful in-store partnerships with other brands on the platform. e.l.f. teamed up with Dunkin’ to produce a new line of coffee and donut-inspired products which have lent themselves to iconic UGC in which both platforms can share. The partnership kicked off with beauty influencer Mikayla Nogueira in a TikTok that racked up 6 million views.

16. Netflix | @netflix

Netflix sits at an incredible 22.5 million followers with many of their video views in the millions. Many of Netflix’s TikTok videos are expertly cut from their own streaming content in ways that come off native to the platform. They also use the platform to promote upcoming releases, behind-the-scenes content, and exclusive interviews with the actors.

Netflix also has fun series including #whoworeitbest while they were promoting the hit show Selling Sunset and quick games like “Guess the Netflix show.” These types of series get users involved in the comments, increasing engagement and shareability.

17. We’re Not Really Strangers | @werenotreallystrangers

With an impressive following of 4.1 million users, WNRS has both incredibly engaged followers and some standout viral posts that hit the ‘For You’ page and got tons of likes. Koreen, the creator of the WNRS card game, created WNRS to empower meaningful connections with others. Their TikTok account is different from others; they not only repost their question cards but also encourage their viewers to answer them in the comments. The TikTok algorithm uses engagement (likes, comments, shares) as a signal of quality, so for brands looking to grow and reach a broader audience, this tactic can be quite effective. The nature of the game, and therefore their TikTok content, is a nice break from the humorous skits and sometimes self-serving videos and almost feels like a breath of fresh air when it comes across your scroll. The brand encourages its TikTok community by calling users to tag their friends and interacting with words of encouragement.

18. Starface | @starface

As an up-and-coming skincare brand, Starface definitely knows how to utilize social media as they are often cross-promoting on their TikTok and Instagram. Starface makes unique “acne stickers” in the shape of stars that fit perfectly within the beauty and skincare TikTok category – specifically for Gen Z in the age of “Euphoria.” Their TikTok videos primarily consist of fun-loving UGC, trending sounds, and effects native to the TikTok platform including duets, stitches, and green screens. Their videos are colorful and trendy which greatly assist in stopping the scroll.

19. Crocs | @crocs

While a brand doesn’t necessarily strive to be the subject of low-hanging jokes, Crocs deserves a lot of credit for using this to their advantage. Their TikTok account itself is mostly used to showcase products and announce new releases, but they’ve been smart about strategic partnerships.

The biggest of which by far was the #ThousandDollarCrocs challenge, where users were encouraged to “class up” their crocs as fancy as possible. In partnership with singer Post Malone, YouTuber Adam W, and others, the campaign generated over 3 billion video views. Being a brand that doesn’t take itself so seriously can be a tremendous advantage on a creative content platform such as TikTok.

The most followed TikTok brands

The most followed TikTok brands have achieved massive success on this popular social media platform by effectively engaging their audiences with creative and diverse content. Let’s take a closer look at these brands and what makes them stand out:

1. WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc.)

• With over 23 million followers, WWE is among the most followed examples of brands on TikTok.
• WWE’s TikTok content primarily features highlights from wrestling matches, providing fans with an exciting look at the action.
• The brand adds a unique twist by sharing funny moments between wrestlers and fans, participating in TikTok trends, and offering behind-the-scenes exclusives.
• WWE’s use of a distinct voiceover in many of its videos adds a unique touch to its content.

Content

WWE diversifies its content by creatively showcasing highlights, funny content interactions, and trending content. For example, they often post wrestlers reacting to unexpected moments, providing fans with a more personal and relatable connection to their favorite stars. Their unique voiceovers in highlight videos create a consistent and recognizable brand identity on TikTok.

Key takeaway

The key lesson from WWE’s TikTok strategy is the importance of providing a variety of content that caters to the diverse interests of your audience. By combining highlights, behind-the-scenes moments, and trend videos, WWE ensures that its TikTok page offers a well-rounded experience for fans.

@wwe FLABBERGASTED to say the least 😳🔥 #WWE #LivMorgan #DakotaKai ♬ original sound – WWE

2. Overtime

• Overtime, a sports streaming service provider, enjoys a substantial following of about 24.5 million on TikTok.
• Their content revolves around sports commentary, highlights, and viral reposts, appealing to sports team enthusiasts.
• Overtime’s unique approach includes featuring entertaining content that may not directly relate to their brand or industry, effectively boosting audience engagement.
• They emphasize the importance of obtaining permission and giving credit when sharing third-party content.

Content

Overtime stands out by seamlessly integrating entertaining content into its sports-focused feed. They understand that featuring funny videos or engaging content, even if not directly related to their industry, can enhance user engagement and make their feed more enjoyable.

Key takeaway

The takeaway from Overtime’s TikTok strategy is the ability to leverage third-party content creatively to increase engagement and follower counts while maintaining a responsible approach by obtaining permission and giving credit.

@overtime I love u Jumping Jerry ❤️ #funnytattoo #tattoocheck #shoutoutot (via @Crazy Stevie Wells ♬ original sound – Overtime

3. ESPN (Entertainment and Sports Programming Network)

• ESPN, a prominent sports network, has a massive following of 36 million on TikTok.
• The network consistently posts multiple sports-related videos daily, ensuring a steady social content stream on its page.
• ESPN effectively uses TikTok’s playlist feature to organize its highest-performing videos, enhancing user experience.

Content

ESPN maintains engagement by frequently posting diverse sports content. Their use of TikTok’s playlist feature ensures that their popular videos remain easily accessible, enhancing the overall user experience.

Key takeaway

The key lesson from ESPN’s TikTok strategy is the importance of organization and navigation. By effectively using features like playlists, up-and-coming brands can keep their most popular content at the forefront of their TikTok page, improving user experience and visibility.

@espn THE HEAT STEAL GAME 1 IN BOSTON 🔥 #nba #basketball #miamiheat #bostonceltics ♬ original sound – ESPN

In essence, these brands creatively use TikTok to connect with their audience by offering diverse and engaging content, strengthening their presence and influence on the platform.

TikTok marketing best practices

TikTok has become a dynamic platform for marketers seeking to connect with younger, wider audiences and enhance their brand visibility. While achieving viral success may be challenging, there are effective TikTok digital marketing practices that can help your business thrive on the platform. Here are some valuable tips to consider:

1. Showcase a different side of your company

• TikTok thrives on creativity and humor. Embrace a more personal and behind-the-scenes approach to make your company appear more relatable and trustworthy to potential customers.
• Share moments that provide insight into your brand’s personality, values, and culture. It’s an opportunity to connect with your audience on a more human level.

2. Don’t be afraid to experiment

• Unlike some traditional social media platforms, TikTok has fewer established norms and best practices. Therefore, it’s a great place to experiment with social media content.
• Feel free to try out ideas that you find interesting or amusing. If it resonates with your audience, you can gauge the response by tracking social media insights, like likes, comments, and shares.

3. Engage with your audience

• TikTok offers multiple engagement options, such as challenges, duets, likes, comments, and shares. Interacting with other TikTok users can boost your brand’s presence.
• Create videos, challenges, or duets designed to encourage interactions. The more you engage with people, the more your fan base could grow and the stronger your presence becomes.

4. Creatively market your products or services

• While TikTok is primarily about entertainment, you can incorporate creative ways to market your products or services. Think about tutorials, demonstrations, and how-to content that showcases the best aspects of your offerings.
• The key is to keep it fun, engaging, and aligned with TikTok’s playful environment.

5. Collaborate with niche micro-influencers

• Influencer marketing on TikTok can be incredibly effective. However, relevance is often more critical than reach.
• Partner with niche micro-influencers who share a similar audience to your brand. Their genuine connection with their followers can be a powerful tool for your marketing efforts.

By joining TikTok as a brand, you open the door to reaching younger audiences in a playful and engaging digital environment. Success on this platform hinges on your ability to create captivating content. Be prepared to unleash your creativity, experiment with new formats, and connect with your audience in a fun and relatable way. Embracing TikTok’s sense of humor and curiosity can be a game-changer for your marketing strategy, helping you build a community of engaged followers and boost brand awareness.

As you can see from the vast array of brands, TikTok is a playground for creativity and community. While some brands rely heavily on humor and lip-syncs, others work to teach viewers about their products and brand mission and utilize storytelling to educate users. Given how much TikTok encourages authenticity, high-quality content, and entertainment, it’s up to the brands to create a unique point of view while staying true to their brand values. Users are looking to learn, be inspired, and connect with content, so brands on TikTok must give consumers a valid reason to engage with them amongst the noise. As more and more brands hop on TikTok to connect with their communities, we’ve created an all-inclusive guide for leveraging UGC for brands on TikTok to begin experimenting with.

Happy TikToking!

The post The Best Brands on TikTok Absolutely Killing It (With Examples) appeared first on NoGood™: Growth Marketing Agency.

Both strategies have their own pros, cons, risks, and benefits. For example, while a Red Ocean may be more competitive, a business knows that there is demand, so the challenge is differentiation. However, constant competition often results in having to drive down prices to compete, which puts somewhat of a ceiling on growth. In a Blue Ocean, while there’s a risk in seeing if you can create demand in your new category, the rewards are much greater.

The origins of the Banza product line were decidedly low-key, low-tech, and personal. When Brian Rudolph was developing the pasta for his own consumption in the kitchen of his Detroit apartment, he was casting about for a start-up idea of his own, focusing on technology.

His tech ideas fell flat with his Venture for America mentors and colleagues. But when he casually mentioned the chickpea foods he was making for himself to meet his need for high-protein, gluten-free food, something clicked.

When Banza launched in late 2014, they were the first to create and enter the chickpea pasta market. With a great product and robust marketing strategy, they’ve been able to dominate the space, launch distribution deals in 12,000+ stores, including Whole Foods and Target, and raise funds from some of the most prominent players in the food industry.

Creating a Category

If creating a category was easy, everyone would do it. As mentioned, there is some risk in this strategy. There are no guarantees that you’ll be able to create demand for a product people have never heard of, let alone capture it and convince someone to buy. However, a business can still set itself up for success with smart strategy and data.

In a NY Times interview in 2016, founder Brian Rudolph said, “I couldn’t find a single person who didn’t want a healthier pasta.” While this statement by itself is a bit anecdotal, there is some data to support this.

For one, interest in gluten-free diets had been steadily rising for several years, reaching its apex in November 2013, according to Google Trends data.

Additionally, Rudolph says that he first created Banza in his kitchen while following the Slow Carb Diet, coined and popularized by Tim Ferriss in the Four Hour Body, released a few years earlier. Tim Ferriss has a famously active fanbase, so Rudolph knew he had a passionate audience he could tap into, leveraging communities like Reddit to reach potential fans.

Combine that with the fact that the average American consumes nearly 20 lbs of pasta per year, and it becomes a much safer bet that a significant population would be interested in a more healthy alternative, even if only for some of their meals.

In many ways, Banza followed in the footsteps of Chobani, who set the standard in creating a healthy alternative to an existing popular food. (Banza even joined the Chobani Incubator while getting started, where they received some valuable grant money, and even more valuable advice and guidance).

Launch and PR Rise

Rudolph first toyed with the idea in college, when, on his path to eating healthier, he began experimenting with chickpeas, specifically in pasta. He first tested the waters with his product with a crowdfunding campaign on Venture for America. The campaign raised nearly $18,000, where it won the VFA contest worth an additional $10,000. The marketing efforts ran in tandem with constant appearances at pitch competitions, events where entrepreneurs vie for seed money. At one at the University of Michigan, Brian Rudolph met a judge who connected him with the buyers for Meijer. Months later, the chain placed an order for 20,000 boxes of Banza to stock its 215 stores.

From there, Banza got the opportunity of a lifetime, getting featured on the CNBC reality show “Restaurant Startup,” where they ultimately convinced judge and restaurateur Joe Bastianich to invest in the company.

From there, Banza continued to rack up recognition from various entrepreneurial and innovation groups, scoring some major press wins, including Time magazine’s Top 25 Inventions of 2015, CircleUp25’s Most Innovative Consumer and Retail Brands of 2017, and CNN’s Best Products of 2018.

Driving Engagement

While PR wins are always worth celebrating (and valuable SEO backlinks), they aren’t the cure for long-term success. Long-term success requires getting in front of your customers on a regular basis via multiple touchpoints.

Always being aware and having an eye on consumer trends is key when launching a new brand or product – additionally, knowing and understanding how spending habits change ever so frequently. As a result, Banza has pivoted its marketing strategy over the past year to focus its sales on both traditional retail storefronts, as well as its own digital channels in an effort to keep up with changing shopping behaviors, which has shifted and accelerated significantly during the pandemic.

A brand in a Red Ocean would likely accomplish this by competing in the advertising world. They’d launch campaigns across search and social, selling specific benefits of your product versus their competitors and driving users down the funnel in a way that they’re likely familiar with.

However, these tactics aren’t as turn-key for a brand in a Blue Ocean. There is only so much real estate on a text or social media ad, which makes it difficult to tell your product story in a quick and concise way.

On top of that, even if Banza were able to grab some attention with its differentiation, consumers would be understandably skeptical, and perhaps timid to try it.

Banza realized that for long-term growth, they needed to find a way for users to engage with their products, and have real people vouch for its quality and taste. That’s where influencers came in.

Food has long been one of the top industries for influencer marketing. Food is not only an essential, daily element of people’s lives, but it also becomes an area for creativity and craft. Social media has become the go-to spot for people to share tips or their latest food porn creation. Besides food, health and fitness are among the next biggest industries for influencers, as many people love to share their secrets to success and their fitness journeys. Banza was at the perfect intersection of these and used it to their advantage.

In the early days, Banza had a hard time securing influencers to work with them. With influencer marketing, sending just customized email pitches referring to specific articles and reports with comments on the photos of people with big Instagram followings doesn’t always work in the beginning – especially if you’re not an already established brand.

However, as time went on and Banza gained more recognition, their influencer strategy built up a great deal of momentum, where not only did Banza build up demand among consumers but also among influencers who wanted to share their own creations. When an influencer shares a product, other influencers want that product and a brand deal as well. With the snowball effect, this is the best way to get the product out there for a small business without a ton of resources.

Because of the different interest segments that Banza is able to tap into, the influencer content was always able to remain fresh. Some users recreated classic Italian dishes but made them more healthy by swapping out traditional pasta for Banza. Others focused on the health element, creating dishes that showed their readers how they could re-introduce pasta to their diets and maintain their fitness goals. Others just wanted to show off their creativity.

As of 2018, Banza said they received around 30,000 pieces of user-generated content, 80% of which came from users who had never posted about Banza before.

Not ignoring the importance of effective PR, Confidant was recently awarded ongoing PR work with Banza. They were named one of the 2021 top boutique agencies in North America. The selection of Confidant follows an RFP in late 2020 as well as the hiring of Banza Marketing Communications Manager Nicole McNey in October 2020.

Last year was a pivotal year for Banza. Between better-for-you category momentum, the launch of Banza Pizza and the recent excitement around chickpeas as a staple ingredient, Banza sought out a long-term agency partner to help them tell their brand story in more impactful ways.

Product Expansion

A Blue Ocean can only stay blue for so long. Once people start to see growth in a new category, competitors flock in to steal market share, competing on price, taste, or other product variations. Banza, however, had built up enough brand equity to not only stand out in their category but safely expand into new ones.

User-generated content doesn’t only help spread the word about your brand. It can also provide valuable insights about how consumers are using your product, what they like and don’t like, and what they might like to see next. After seeing post after post of Banza being used as a carb substitute in grain bowls, the next product launch became clear. In 2019, Banza released chickpea rice with three times the protein, twice the fiber, and 30% fewer net carbs than brown rice. This product was easy for customers to adopt, as not only had the market been made for chickpea as a carb alternative, but clear user signals showed they were ready for this product as well.

This expansion continued in 2020 when Banza entered another carb-heavy category – frozen pizzas. This release also piggy-backed off user comfort with chickpeas, but Banza also paid attention to the creativity they saw within their UGC. That is why with pizzas, they released both pre-made pies as well as plain crusts for consumers to put their own creative juices to work. Banza is looking further than the grocery store as well – Food Navigator reported the company hopes to branch into food service.

During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Banza was not left unaffected by the global COVID-19 pandemic. “Your customers aren’t walking through the grocery store, they’re not browsing. They want to get in and get out…” Rudolph says. However, since the world was essentially shut down, that in turn also positively benefited Banza’s online sales business. Since everyone had to shift to an at-home model, chefs and restaurants were shifting to at-home cooking demos and brands marketing at-home DIYS, Banza was also able to shift their business to D2C for the time being, capitalize on and market around ordering products directly to your front door, staying in and cooking at home.

Now, as everyone and everything begins to recover from the pandemic, Banza is also keeping a close watch on consumers’ buying habits. People will start spending more time grocery shopping again, as well as dine in restaurants again – which we’re sure everyone is ready for now.

Takeaway

Much like marketing, product creation can often be a copycat game. Where there’s demand, a smart marketer can almost always find room within a category with their playbook of strategies and tactics. It’s almost formulaic.

But there will always be a ceiling to growth in those categories. Take some notes from Banza’s marketing strategy, and look for your own blue oceans. Instead of battling your competitors at the margins, what are some areas where there is no competition? Look for those spaces that still solve problems, and it’s full steam ahead!

The post Banza’s Marketing Strategy: How The Pasta Brand Dominated The Category appeared first on NoGood™: Growth Marketing Agency.

This Reddit marketing guide will give you a complete rundown of the site, as well as how and where smart marketers can find opportunities for growth.

Reddit 101

For those unfamiliar, Reddit is a site where users can post various content to topic-specific channels (or subreddits), pictures, videos, links, and text – once posted, other users can view and comment to continue the conversation.

Here’s a quick breakdown of the content types, and how best to utilize them on the platform!

Content Types

Pictures:

Due to the variety and nuance of the different communities on Reddit, photos shared on the platform can serve a number of purposes. While memes may be the currency of choice for the platform when it comes to still images, branded subreddits (both official and unofficial) like /r/fujifilm can provide users to share their experiences with a service or product through pictures.

Videos:

Reddit may possibly be the godfather of short-form video, having offered the opportunity for users to embed videos of varying lengths as posts for some time. As of today, users can upload videos of up to 15 minutes, with many opting to keep things on the shorter side, primarily repurposing content found elsewhere on the internet. While branded content is generally frowned upon unless shared in a dedicated subreddit for the brand, meme videos can be a great opportunity for spreading awareness for a brand and aligning culturally with audiences.

Links:

Whether sharing with a community on a branded subreddit, or building karma for the account that is acting as an ambassador for your brand, sharing links to relevant content is a great way for building relationships with communities while establishing your account as a trusted source, and fostering brand awareness through increased engagement and visibility. Sharing blog posts that your brand has created to a brand-specific subreddit can be just as effective a strategy as sharing non-brand-related content to a brand-relevant sub to create conversation and generate opportunities to interact with communities. For brand-owned subreddits, pinning relevant links to specific resources or community spaces (like Discord servers) can be a great way to drive community interactions outside of Reddit.

GIFs:

Gifs have become almost their own language on the internet as services like Gfycat, Giphy, and IMGUR allow users to create, edit, upload, and share, their very own gifs. For Reddit, gifs are an incredible opportunity for engaging directly with audiences from branded or brand-associated accounts on the platform (more on these later).

While brand-specific gifs have historically found their way into the meme zeitgeist of the internet, attempts to push product awareness through branded gifs are more often than not seen as disingenuous and will likely hurt brand perception than help it — those sorts of things have to happen naturally.

That’s not to say that brands can’t incorporate gifs into their content strategy on the site at all. In addition to a well-placed gif response to a comment potentially rewarding a brand account with high levels of engagement and visibility, gif specific subreddit such as /r/retiredgif can encapsulate a post in the annals of Reddit lore if the usage is done in a way that the community deems to be perfect — to the point that the gif itself should be retired from use indefinitely.

Text:

The foundation of Reddit’s content, text posts can be anything from long-form content meant to educate or otherwise engage audiences in the same vein as a blog post, to single sentences, or even headlines with a single question and no body text.

One of the most notable formats for text posts is the AMA, or Ask Me Anything, a Q&A structure that allows users to post a thread inviting members of the subreddit to ask them anything — or in some instances AMAA (ask me almost anything).

And while AMAs are one of the few places where Redditors are generally accepting of shameless plugging of products or projects, there are still limits.

Outside of AMAs, however, brands can ask questions to gauge interest in potential future products, solicit feedback from communities, and gain all sorts of other insights and opportunities for engagement and relationship building.

Democratization of Content:

The beauty of Reddit and the reason that the communities built there are so strong is that there’s no algorithm. Posts and comments are sorted through a voting system through upvotes and downvotes. What this means for the platform is that popular content will rise to the top of the page, and unpopular posts will be “downvoted to oblivion,” sinking towards the bottom — often hidden from the community. Upvotes and downvotes are tallied into Karma for individual accounts which are largely referred to on the platform as “meaningless internet points” that indicate how often a user’s posts or comments have been upvoted or downvoted. There are two kinds of Karma, Post Karma for content users themselves submitted, and Comment Karma for karma received on comments that users make in the threads for other users’ content.

Reddit’s format borrows heavily from the structure of early message boards on the internet and is organized into subreddits, which are communities for different topics of discussion. Volunteer moderators (or mods) are in charge of keeping the discussion on topic and ensuring everyone plays nice and follows the subreddit’s rules. The subject matter of subreddits themselves can vary drastically from the extremely broad (/r/videos), to memes (/r/AdviceAnimals), to popular hobbies (/r/nfl), to advice-based (/r/selfimprovement), to the just plain weird (/r/BreadStapledToTrees).

There are currently over 2.8 million subreddits, so odds are there is something for every niche interest. But on the off-chance there isn’t, any user is free to create their own new subreddit and build a community to populate it with content.

Why Market On Reddit?

As mentioned above, Reddit is the 18th most visited site in the world. To put that into context, Reddit has over 430 million monthly active users, and over 1.7 Billion page views per month.

An audience that size clearly goes across demographics, but it tends to skew younger, reaching over 64% of Americans aged 18-29.

Reddit is also famous for being a “black hole,” where users can get drawn into content and spend hours going down various rabbit holes. The average Reddit visit lasts roughly 10-13 minutes, where users visit over seven pages each.

The case for Reddit is simple – it’s a wildly popular platform with a very engaged audience. Users come to Reddit not only looking for entertainment but often for answers to their questions and solutions to their problems. Smart marketers can use this to their advantage, learning about their audience and using these insights to help guide marketing messaging and product development.

So Why Is Reddit Not More Popular For Brands?

As much fun as the site can be, Reddit can be an intimidating platform for brands.

Redditors, as a whole, have traditionally been anti-advertising, though since the platform sold to Conde Nast in 2006, and was later transferred to the Conde parent company, Advance Publications, the platform has been experimenting greatly with monetization efforts and, of course, ads. While there is a subreddit of ~205K subscribers called /r/hailcorporate dedicated to Redditors calling out the obvious attempts of brands trying to push products on the platform, the reality is that the relationship between Redditors and brands has made a great deal of progress in recent years — thanks in large part to increased efforts on the part of brands to exercise transparency in their interactions on the platform.

For some historical context, Reddit had a competitor in the social news aggregation space called Digg, which was actually the more popular at the time. In 2010 however, Digg revised its interface, which removed some popular features and loaded the site with ads. As a result, Digg lost 50% of its traffic nearly overnight (mostly to Reddit), and had to lay off 40% of its staff a few months later. They now exist mainly as a cautionary tale. Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian commented, “this new version of Digg reeks of VC meddling.” Thus, they’ve been timid to make any radical changes to the site that could potentially upset the user base.

As such, the user base has a lot of power on the site, and that level playing field is also scary to brands. If a brand were to post something unpopular on Twitter, their worst-case scenario is that it either gets ignored or gets replied to by people with much smaller followings, so the damage is minimal. Reddit, on the other hand, gives users the power to respond in real-time, as well as upvote/downvote power to dictate what they like and what they don’t like, and the brand just has to accept the results.

Marketing On Reddit

Like most social sites, there are essentially two tactics one can take to gain Reddit’s attention: organic and paid. Reddit, however, isn’t like social networks because brands and/or people aren’t the stars – the communities are. This power shift presents some challenges but not ones that are impossible to overcome.

Growing Accounts Organically

Unlike most social networks, interactions on Reddit are not driven by the individual as much as the individual interactions within the community — sharing content that is either helpful or entertaining in order to accumulate karma. While accounts are generally anonymous, and while usernames are visible on all posts and comments, individual users outside of a handful of “power users” do not generally get individual recognition — though this dynamic is slowly changing. While traditionally users would follow communities, not people, individual users, brands, and other forms of personalities are now beginning to create dedicated subreddits to build brand awareness and authority in their specific spaces.

Subject Matter Experts

In the realm of the unlikely Reddit celebrity, there have emerged a number of accounts that have become synonymous with specific topics, or that get summoned to chime in with their opinion or expertise whenever necessary. Quite possibly the most well-known of these accounts, and the one that’s most illustrative of the trend, is /u/TheEarthquakeGuy, who unsurprisingly is the resident expert on earthquakes and is immediately tagged whenever there is an earthquake to provide reporting on the magnitude and severity of the occurrence.

For brands, this poses a great opportunity to flex authority in a space, and do so in an organic and authentic way.

Many brands have adopted the practice of having brand representatives that can go out into the wilds of Reddit to represent the brand in their particular area of expertise. This allows the brand to show up where conversations are happening organically, help out the community, and ultimately build trust. This practice is used with the express purpose of building community and brand awareness as leveraging conversations as opportunities for conversions is generally frowned upon.

For example, Verizon has a fairly substantial presence on Reddit (more on them later) with one of the mods on their subreddit being /u/_bama. What’s surprising to find is that /u/_bama posts just as much on /r/ATT as they do on /r/Verizon. The reality however is that while they are a verified employee of Verizon, and a mod on /r/Verizon, they are also generally a subject matter expert on all things wireless technology and graciously share their knowledge wherever it is needed.

As we can see from the above comment by /u/_bama, it’s brand agnostic, but presents them as an authoritative figure within the realm of wireless technology. Despite being posted to /r/ATT, anyone interacting with the account would quickly discover that /u/_bama is a Verizon employee and likely build trust in Verizon as a brand as a result by virtue of /u/_bama’s level of expertise in the field which positively reflects on the brand.

The Actual Celebrity

Celebrities are just people, like you and me. So it’s only natural that they would love Reddit and of course harness the platform to help build their brand — or post photos of puppies.

While typically celebrity accounts have relatively short lifespans, being created as part of a PR campaign to conduct an AMA, only to be later abandoned and never heard from again, some celebrities become addicted like the rest of us and either continue to lurk, continue to post under their public account or, of course, post secretly with their “alt account”.

One of the most prominent of all the celebrity accounts, or at least those we know about, is Governor Schwarzenegger’s, which is surprisingly active.

Arnie, or Arnold, or the Governator if you prefer to call him that, is a fairly prominent celebrity that will often pop up in the comments of threads that are spreading positivity, or really any references to pumping or the pumping up of things.

Customer Service Representatives

How many times have you found yourself in an uncomfortable situation where you’re having an issue with a product or service, you’re trying to call the customer service line, are unable to navigate the directory, and are just generally yelling the word “REPRESENTATIVE” into your smartphone hoping that some form of AI will register your request? It doesn’t have to be that way.

As an extension of the brand-specific accounts on Reddit, few shine brighter than the customer service representatives in the esteem that the command. It may seem simple, but having an employee with a Reddit account can drastically impact public perception of a brand through the attention that they can provide to what might otherwise be upset customers.

One of the most prominent examples of such an account would be /u/tvacgamer or, as they’re known throughout Reddit, Tony.

Tony was once a representative of Amazon and would frequently be seen responding to questions about current deals and sales on the subreddit /r/gamedeals — signing each and every post with, “Cheers, Tony”.

To say Tony was beloved by the community would be an understatement, and as mentioned previously, that love was reflected directly back to Amazon.

While Tony’s contribution to Reddit went little beyond just answering questions, or helping people receive support if they had issues with their order, Tony added a human touch to the brand experience that Amazon often lacks, and there was no lack of recognition for these contributions — small as they were.

Find the Right Subreddits

Think about your customer persona. What are their unique interests, and which communities within Reddit over-index for that persona? There are over 130K active subreddits, so there is likely to be something for every brand.

Finding the right subreddits is a bit like SEO keyword research. While it may be tempting to go after the most popular subreddits, the riches are in the niches. Say, for example, your brand makes kitchen tools. Making an impact on /r/food and its 20 million subscribers will be a difficult task. However, impacting a smaller but still active community like /r/bachelorchef and their ~10K subscribers is a lot more feasible.

Once you’ve interacted with people and built some credibility, then you can start testing some of the larger subs, as well as posting your own content. Be sure to keep a balance of comments and posts, though. Too much posting and not engaging enough, and you’ll be seen as spamming your content – wanting the clicks and traffic without wanting to be a part of the community. Once this social contract is broken, it can be very tough to repair your image. In fact, many subreddits even have strict rules against self-promotion, which can lead to temporary or even lifetime bans. Reddit holds grudges.

Or Make Your Own Subreddits

Depending on the maturity of your brand and the level of brand recognition that you have developed, it can be incredibly impactful to create a subreddit dedicated specifically to your brand, platform, or product.

Similar to the .com boom of the 90s, as Reddit gained momentum and popularity brands have been in a race to secure their place on Reddit to prevent losing control over brand narrative and the trajectory of the branded community.

Looking at the technology space as an example, both Razer and Microsoft have branded communities, with Razer being described as being, “Made by Redditors, for Redditors…”

The result in the case of Razer is that the brand has less control over the content narrative as the subreddit itself is run independently — despite some of the mods coming directly from Razer’s internal staff.

For users, the experience is arguably more authentic, with many of the content submissions pointing out flaws in the Razer products, or otherwise being critical of the “cult of Razer” which may not present the brand in the best light and requires disclaimers such as this one, warning of potentially nefarious users posing as Razer employees due to their inability to directly manage which employees have access to mod privileges.

Meanwhile, on the Microsoft subreddit, the Microsoft team can control the messaging and experience of users much more effectively, providing users with confidence that their comments or questions will be directly addressed by someone from the Microsoft social team — without much, if any, worry as to whether or not the person they’re speaking with is an imposter or not.

By having control of the subreddit, the brand is also able to pin whatever content they want to spotlight at any particular point in time, whether it’s a keynote, official support thread, or potentially even a new product launch.

Ultimately, both types of branded subreddits are incredibly important and helpful to building relationships with the communities developing around your brand, though it is inarguable that having the ability to own your own subreddit is far superior to simply being an active participant in a Redditor-run sub.

What is important, is that, like any other social media presence, your sub be active. While there may be disappointment from users seeking out a branded sub that aren’t able to find one, the perceptive damage of having a user find an abandoned sub, post a concern or question and never get a response is likely worse.

Engage with the Community

The biggest takeaway of this entire article is this: your engagement with the community needs to be humble and genuine. Especially within niche communities, people will see through the BS, and because Redditors have the power of the downvote, you will be punished for it.

The most downvoted comment of all time actually belongs to the video game brand, EA. After Star Wars Battlefront was released, a user took to the game-specific subreddit (/r/StarWarsBattlefront) to complain that they either needed to log an excessive amount of playing hours or pay to unlock their favorite character. EA attempted to respond and stand up for its product, but Redditors saw right through the PR response, and the comment was downvoted over 668,000 times.

Instead, see this community engagement as an opportunity to learn about your potential customers. What problems are they consistently having, and how can you help solve them? A famous example of this was Imgur, the image hosting site that’s in the top 100 most visited sites in the world. Back in 2009, it was created by a Redditor as a gift for Reddit, since users were constantly complaining about glitchy tools like Imageshack and Photobucket. The creator was still a college student at the time, and this was just a side project for him. But Imgur ultimately blew up into a bonafide startup that has raised $60 million because he understood a community and solved their problem.

Consider an AMA

A Reddit AMA (short for “Ask Me Anything”) is a thread of questions hosted by a person who declares, “I am _______, ask me anything.” From there, Reddit users respond with the type of questions that you’d never see on your standard PR tour. While politicians like Barack Obama or celebrities such as Gordon Ramsay will often make appearances to help promote their campaign or project, a popular AMA can just as likely come from someone with an interesting story to tell, such as this guy who walked every single block in NYC.

As with all things Reddit, humble and honest answers are required. While some questions will be related to the newest project or topic, many will not be, so participants need to be prepared and not expect this experience to be strict promotion. Woody Harrelson once infamously got annoyed with any questions not related to his new movie released and felt the backlash from the community as a result. While timing AMAs with a release can undoubtedly help, see it as an opportunity to engage with a community rather than a sales pitch.

An example of this done right is Ivan Kutskir, creator of Photopea, a free version of Photoshop. With Reddit being a very tech-friendly community, he answers many questions about coding and development, but also about his business plans and what’s changed in his life as the tool has gotten more popular. He’s made multiple appearances in AMAs and reports that his downloads and income double each time. However, he gets the benefit of the doubt from the Reddit community because he’s an active member throughout the year, not just during his AMAs.

Don’t have a physical product to sell? AMAs can still work for people who thrive on knowledge and expertise. Famous food writer and restauranteur J Kenji Lopez-Alt hosts the occasional AMA just to answer people’s questions about food and cooking. He’s not selling anything – only offering advice and entertainment. By doing this, he becomes more popular and credible within the community, so when he wants to promote something (such as a new book or restaurant opening), he’s not seen as spamming because he’s a consistent contributor to the community. He’s even started his own subreddit (/r/seriouseats) where users discuss and post pictures of the recipes from his site, which has over 272K subscribers!

If you’re just getting started on Reddit, an AMA without any sales pitch can be a great way to introduce yourself to the community and begin building credibility quickly.

Paid Advertising on Reddit

Organic engagement requires a long-term strategy and a consistent time commitment. However, sometimes brands need a short-term boost of brand awareness or want to maintain a presence but lack the bandwidth to participate on a regular basis. Reddit’s ad products, while a bit nascent, can be a possible solution.

Trust in Transparency:

While Reddit may be anti-product placement when it comes to their communities, according to the metrics Reddit itself reports, ads on the platform have provided some fairly favorable metrics for brands like Duracell and Woodchuck Ciders — with their case studies claiming a remarkable 16% increase in engagement for Woodchuck and 250M+ impressions for Duracell from their respective campaigns. This may imply that while Redditors are unreceptive to deceptive advertising on the platform, ads that are presented with transparency are fine.

As with any platform, it’s important to understand your audience, and the platform, and craft your ad experience accordingly.

Getting Started:

If you’re familiar with other ad platforms, then you’ll likely feel right at home with the Reddit Ads API as it offers a number of familiar features, while still being tuned to best serve the Reddit platform.

As with any troubleshooting best practices, your first step towards becoming a Reddit ads expert is to be sure that you have an account, and that you’re logged in — so far, so easy. Once logged in, head on over to ads.reddit.com to set up your ad account which will require a bit of additional information such as:

• Company Username (Which will appear on your ads)
• Password
• Company Name
• Business Email Address
• First Name
• Last Name
• Business Phone Number (Optional)
• Industry
• Country

You can also opt to indicate whether or not you work with or at an advertising agency just so the folks at Reddit are aware that you may potentially be working with multiple business accounts — no big deal.

Choosing an Objective:

In keeping pace with other ad platforms, Reddit has a similar structure to other existing platforms in the market with its campaign objective offerings.

Here’s a quick breakdown of the types of objectives that are offered, their funnel location, and bid types:

Ad Options:

Promoted Posts

Reddit’s primary ad offering is native posts (posts, carousels, or video) that look and feel like standard posts, including upvotes, downvotes, and comment threads (though these features can be disabled if you choose). The only real difference is that ads maintain a presence for the duration of your campaign, unlike posts that fade from the page after 24 hours. That said, Redditors are accustomed to seeing fresh content, so consider varying your ads or rotating them somewhat more frequently — and of course, make them feel like native content.

Because commenting is so natural on Reddit, advertisers have the benefit of getting some real-time feedback on their ads or brand, plus they can quickly answer any questions in the discussion that follows. Video ads have the added benefit of being embedded into the page to be viewed without clicking to a new page, as well as the option of a custom CTA.

These units are available on auction through Reddit Ads Dashboard and can be priced on a CPM, CPC, or CPV (for video ads).

Features of Promoted Posts:

• Image or Text
• CTA (optional)
• Multiple bid types (CMP, CPC, CPV)
• In-feed placements

Features of Promoted Video:

• In-feed auto-play or click-to-play for conversations
• Various aspect ratios
• CTA
• Multiple bid types (CPM, CPC, CPV)

Features of Promoted Carousels:

• 1-6 images or GIFs
• CTA
• Multiple bid types (CPM, CPC, CPV)
• In-feed placements

Takeovers

For when brands want to make a short-term splash, takeovers can be an excellent opportunity for widespread or niche brand awareness.

Takeovers offer the opportunity to own some of the top communities of your choosing for 24 hours. For widespread, takeover options include:

Category Takeovers:

• Promoted Post (for top communities in chosen category)
• Top Banner (300×600 or 300×250)
• Sticky Banner (300×250)

Front Page Takeovers:

• Promoted Post (for Reddit front page)
• Top Banner (300×600 or 300×250)
• Sticky Banner (300×250)

Trending Takeovers:

• Trending unit on Popular
• Trending unit on Search
• Trending landing page

Reddit Takeovers:

• Promoted Post (for Reddit front page)
• Top banner (Above the Fold)
• Sticky banner (Below the Fold)
• Trending unit on Popular
• Trending unit on Search
• Trending landing page

Because these ads are little more than standard display plus a native post, a brand will typically only see success in one of two ways. The first is if the brand is already well-liked by the Reddit community. In that case, the ads are more seen as reminders, such as for an upcoming movie or video game release. The second way is for the ads to acknowledge the Reddit community somehow. Reddit is a place with many in-jokes and memes, so leaning into this can help a brand break through the clutter and make the community feel seen. Budweiser made good use of this tactic, adapting their “Real Men of Genius” ads to acknowledge and joke about people within Reddit.

Targeting Options

Without the extensive data collection of Facebook or other social media, targeting on Reddit can be a bit tricky, particularly when you consider the fact that most accounts are completely anonymous. However, the niche interests of Reddit do create some exciting and potentially valuable audience segments.

Community Targeting:

Using community targeting means you’ll pick the specific subreddits that most closely align with your target audience. This strategy looks at a user’s engagements (subscription, visits, comments, and upvotes) with a community, as well as views of community content via an aggregated feed (or listing pages). Once a user enters your targeting pool, ads can be served to them throughout Reddit – not necessarily on the specific subreddits.

Interest Targeting:

Similar to community targeting, this strategy groups users based on the topics they interact with on Reddit. Reddit has broken down interest targeting into 15 different groups. While these tend to be broader than specific community targeting, Reddit does allow certain exclusions to help you hone in more granularly. For example, Gaming is a popular topic across Reddit and is one of the potential interests you can select. However, Reddit gives you the option of specifying PC Gaming vs. Video Games to ensure you’re only targeting your most likely potential customers.

Location Targeting:

If running regional campaigns for an event, service, or product, Reddit allows targeting based on the following parameters:

• Country
• US State
• A list of 210 US cities

While this isn’t the most robust set of targeting parameters, and many marketers are making requests (on Reddit) for the ability to target specific zip codes, the option to hone in on such a wide variety of cities within the US is likely more than sufficient for most marketers needs — unless you’re targeting hyper-locally.

Device Targeting:

The device wars between iPhone and every other device are not without representation with Reddit’s targeting offerings. And with developers continuing to give preference to testing new apps on one OS or the other before eventually porting it over, it makes sense that targeting by device would be a thing for Reddit so that app or game developers can reach their intended audiences without wasting ad spend by reaching the other half.

Time of Day Targeting:

Targeting by the time of day can be super helpful for certain businesses and is a fantastic offering from Reddit’s ad platform. If you’ve ever noticed that you specifically are getting GrubHub ads served to you when you’re not-so-secretly checking Reddit as you begin mentally planning your perfect lunch order — time of day targeting is why.

Custom Audiences:

These audiences are the most granular within Reddit, allowing you to target specific people based on email addresses or mobile app IDs (MAID, IDFA for iOS, and GAID for Android). Emails can be a bit tricky, as Reddit users aren’t required to provide an email address to create an account. Marketers either need to have an extensive email list or at the very least, know in advance that their match rate might be a bit low. Once you have your list uploaded, you can provide additional layering or exclusions to hone in even further, such as Community, Interest, Keyword Exclusion, Device, or Location.

Making Your Reddit Ads Shine:

Reddit truly is unlike any other social media platform, and so the same should any ads on the platform. While traditional best practices for ad creative and copy still apply with ensuring that the purpose is clear, the copy is concise and with a clear value proposition, the product is the star, you’re taking advantage of CTAs, and you’re always testing, it is still important to craft your messaging specifically to Reddit’s audience — and your intended community within that audience.

Reddit Marketing Takeaway

Overall, Reddit remains an underutilized resource for marketers, mainly because rather than the plug-and-play tactics of sites like Google or Facebook, Reddit requires genuine engagement and long-term vision. However, the payoff can be worth it to smart brands and marketers who are willing to put in the time.

While their ad products still may need some further refinement, Reddit’s collection of highly engaged communities contains countless valuable insights and people looking for solutions. Be the brand that steps up and helps solve problems, and you won’t just have extra traffic to your site; you’ll have an entire community behind you.

If you’re looking for a growth partner with extensive Reddit experience we’d love to talk strategy to help your brand grow and achieve your goals!

The post Reddit Marketing Guide: Strategy, Examples & Best Practices appeared first on NoGood™: Growth Marketing Agency.

There’s somewhat of a variety of books here. Some are new, with up to date case studies backed up by recent research. Others are older, with timeless advice about human behavior and psychology. Some focus on specific important areas, while others are more general and are written to help you hone the right mindset. As you’ll see, it’s this breadth of information that will keep both your mind and your marketing skills sharper than your competition. The team here at NoGood runs a growth marketing book club where most of these books made it to our list and were heavily debated.

Here is our vetted list of the best marketing books you should read in 2021:

1. Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products – by Nir Eyal

It’s not always the best products that go “viral” and capture widespread attention. Sometimes it’s the products that were specifically designed to keep you engaged.

In Hooked, Nir Eyal outlines a four-step process by which companies can (and do) guide human behavior in a way that consistently brings users back without having to rely on any additional advertising or marketing.

The Hooked model itself looks like this:

1. Trigger – an internal or external cue that prompts the user to take action
2. Action – the simplest behavior in anticipation of a reward
3. Variable Reward – sustain user interest by satisfying their needs while leaving them wanting to re-engage with the product
4. Investment – the anticipation of rewards in the future

According to Nir, these hooks, when properly executed, allow businesses to increase customer lifetime value, provide pricing flexibility, supercharge growth, and sharpen their competitive edge.

For more on hooks and how they can integrate with growth loops, check out our deep dive into acquisition loops.

2. Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator – by Ryan Holiday

To understand how to best position a brand or client within the media landscape, it’s critical to have a deep understanding of how media truly works. Holiday’s book is a deep dive into exactly that, and unfortunately, the outlook isn’t pretty.

“Trust Me, I’m Lying” is essentially two books in one. The first half explains how blogs drive news and how they can be manipulated. The second part shows what happens when this is done, with examples we can all remember. When a media eco-systems primary KPI is attention and profit, media companies and marketers win, and readers lose.

According to Holiday, the former marketing director for American Apparel, “I wrote this book to explain how media manipulators work, how to spot their fingerprints, how to fight them, and how (if you must) to emulate their tactics. Why am I giving away these secrets? Because I’m tired of a world where trolls hijack debates, marketers help write the news, opinion masquerades as fact, algorithms drive everything to extremes, and no one is accountable for any of it. I’m pulling back the curtain because it’s time the public understands how things really work. What you choose to do with this information is up to you.”

While the book was meant to be a warning, it’s tough to read it and not come up with actionable ideas.

Ryan was also one of the first thought-leaders to recognize growth marketing and its future and wrote one of the earliest primers on the topic – Growth Hacker Marketing.

3. Contagious: Why Things Catch On – by Jonah Berger

Think about the last thing you saw online that you immediately shared – YouTube video, NY Times article, meme, etc. What made you want to share that? What exactly was your motivation?

Jonah Berger, a marketing professor at the Wharton, studies how social influence shapes the decisions we make and why some things go viral, and others don’t. In Contagious, he outlines six factors that help make things go viral:

1. Social Currency – how much social value do I gain by sharing this?
2. Triggers – what internal or external cues will be associated with this?
3. Emotion – what does this make me feel?
4. Public – do I see people using this in the real world?
5. Practical Value – what value am I getting out of this?
6. Stories – what narrative can be latched onto this?

This book essentially picks up where Malcolm Gladwell’s “Tipping Point” left off, showing how ideas catch on in the digital age. The next time you create something with the hope of it spreading, take some time to strategize over how or why someone would be inspired to share it.

4. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion – by Robert Cialdini

“Influence” is the culmination of Dr. Robert Cialdini’s 35+ years of research in influence and persuasion, looking into the psychology of what makes people say “yes.”

To him, there are six principles of persuasion. Understanding these will not only help you become a better persuader, but you’ll also become better prepared to defend when these tactics are used on you.

1. Reciprocation: The internal pull to repay what another person has provided us.
2. Commitment & Consistency: Once we make a choice or take a stand, we work to behave consistently with that commitment in order to justify our decisions.
3. Social Proof: When we are unsure, we look to similar others to provide us with the correct actions to take. And the more people undertaking that action, the more we consider that action correct.
4. Liking: The propensity to agree with people we like and the propensity for others to agree with us (if we like them).
5. Authority: We are more likely to say “yes” to others who are authorities, who carry greater knowledge, experience, or expertise.
6. Scarcity: We want more of what is less available or dwindling in availability.

In marketing, understanding human behavior and psychology are critical. Understanding Dr. Cialdini’s work will make your messaging better. Plain and simple.

5. This Is Marketing: You Can’t Be Seen Until You Learn to See – by Seth Godin

It’s not a list of best marketing books without something by Seth Godin. We really could have included any of his famous works (particularly Purple Cow or Permission Marketing) on this list, but “This Is Marketing” is essentially a culmination of his wisdom from his lifetime in marketing, so it’s as good a place to start as any.

Rather than giving technical advice, Seth’s writing is a bit more broad and philosophical. It looks at topics like the history of marketing and how mass media is less and less relevant or necessary in the digital age. His advice tends to gravitate around a similar theme of making things that are more personal. Rather than trying to tweak your copy or optimize some new tool, Seth’s advice tends to fall back on figuring out exactly who your product is for and what need it fulfills and then crafting your messaging specifically for them.

While the digital space is often fast-moving and tactical, Seth’s advice is more timeless and general. It’s often necessary for every marketer to be reminded that at the end of the day, we’re all trying to connect people with products that can help them. If solving problems is our goal, we can do it by making things we’re proud of.

6. Thinking Fast & Slow – Daniel Kahneman

Daniel Kahneman is a psychologist and economist notable for his work on the psychology of judgment and decision-making. He also won a Nobel prize for his work in behavioral economics. So when someone of his background writes 600+ pages outlining everything he’s learned about human behavior, trust me when I say you’ll come out of it with something actionable.

The book covers a variety of topics that seems to touch on all aspects of human behavior, particularly irrational human behavior. He spends a lot of the book talking about “the two selves,” which is essentially a divide between conscious vs. unconscious thoughts and actions. This topic leads to heuristics, particularly why humans are so bad at thinking statistically, showing how and why both types of “selves” can be tricked.

It bears repeating that understanding psychology and human behavior is essential to marketing. Kahneman’s work will undoubtedly help with that, but it will also help with a more underrated trait that every marketer needs to have: empathy. Put yourself in the shoes of people who will be seeing your product or messaging for the first time. The results will speak for themselves.

7. Building a Storybrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen – by Donald Miller

If you’ve ever struggled with getting consumers to respond to your messaging, it often helps to approach the problem with a different lens. If you listen to Donald Miller’s advice, try making your customer the hero of a story.

Miller breaks down “Building a Storybrand” into seven principles:

1. The customer is the hero, not your brand.
2. Companies tend to sell solutions to external problems, but customers buy solutions to internal problems.
3. Customers aren’t looking for another hero; they’re looking for a guide.
4. Customers trust a guide who has a plan.
5. Customers do not take action unless they are challenged to take action.
6. Every human being is trying to avoid a tragic ending.
7. Never assume people understand how your brand can change their lives. Tell them.

It’s impossible to read this book and not reconsider how you’re positioning your brand to your customers. Is your messaging just a list of product features that you’re hoping will get a customer excited? Try recrafting those with the customer journey in mind, make them feel understood, and see how much the response changes.

8. Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content – by Ann Handley

Despite living in a digital age where more and more communication dwindles to acronyms, emojis, and GIFs, writing remains an important skill for anyone. When everyone has access to the same tools, your choice of words is one of the few areas where you can truly set yourself apart from the competition.

Ann Handley, chief content officer at MarketingProfs, covers all things writing in this book. But don’t worry – this isn’t just an updated version of “Elements of Style.” The lessons and rules apply across all of your online assets ― from web sites, to blogs, to email marketing offers, to Facebook and other social media.

Always remember to grab your readers’ attention early and that your first draft will always be ugly.

9. Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World – by David Epstein

Range by itself isn’t so much a marketing book, but its premise helps establish or reinforce the framework of what a good growth marketer should be.

We live in a world where everyone works to become more and more specialized. People strive to become experts at solving a specific problem with a very narrow skill set. However, as the old saying goes, when all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

In marketing, rarely are we solving the exact same problem over and over — the more general our knowledge-base, the more experiences and potential solutions we have to draw from. For example, sometimes, more paid media is the solution, but it isn’t always. The same goes for content, SEO, email, referrals, and on and on. Growth marketing is about finding unique solutions, so knowing the full landscape of tools and how they work together is essential. This means we need generalists in a world of increasing specialization.

Now, of course, we want to avoid having a knowledge-base that’s a mile wide but only an inch deep. Range reminds us to work towards developing into the T-Shaped Marketer that’s becoming more and more valuable on today’s marketing teams.

10. 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing: Violate Them at Your Own Risk – by Al Ries and Jack Trout

This book is probably the shortest read on this list at only 143 pages, but it’s almost impossible to read through Al Ries and Jack Trout’s decades of wisdom and not come away with a few actionable insights.

The advice in the book is more high level and less tactical, addressing challenges such as brand positioning (The Law Of The Category) and PR (The Law of Perception). One important thing to note is that many of the ideas in this book surround decisions that a company must make long before their product is released, as opposed to tactics applied after the fact to convince people to buy. Essentially, the laws in the book stress the importance of “product/market fit” long before it became the new buzzword.

It’s also worth noting that the book was released in 1994, so many of the examples and advice may seem a bit dated. This puts it upon the reader to see how these ideas can be applied in the current age. For example, the Law of Focus discusses owning a word in your prospect’s mind, which is an idea that can be tied into modern SEO strategy.

11. No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram – by Sarah Frier

Long time tech reporter Sarah Frier offers the definitive story of Instagram and a compelling tale of how social media has transformed the lives of a new generation. The book is less action-oriented than some of the others on this list but for anyone who works with social media or social marketing, it should be essential reading. The book offers insight into Facebook’s heavy-handed focus on the “growth” of Instagram, as opposed to its future commitment to the product or the satisfaction of its users which has ultimately lead to the bloated Instagram app of 2021.

And if you needed any more reason to read No Filter the book was crowned the 2020 Business Book of the Year by the Financial Times and McKinsey.

12. The 1-Page Marketing Plan: Get New Customers, Make More Money, And Stand out From The Crowd – by Allan Dib

Almost any marketer that’s been in the business for a while is probably guilty of getting too caught up in the new shiny tactic at some point or another. Dib’s book is a reminder on how to simplify and still drive results.

The 1-Page Marketing Plan breaks down like this:

1. Select your ultra-specific niche target market
2. Craft a message your target market responds to
3. Reach your prospects with advertising media
4. Capture leads in an opt-in or a CRM
5. Nurture those leads by following up
6. Convert your prospect into a customer
7. Create your tribe by delivering a world-class experience
8. Increase your lifetime customer value
9. Orchestrate and stimulate a targeted system for referrals

Everything else is just noise, or marketing for the sake of marketing. Once you have your plan set up, all marketing should tie back towards growing and optimizing one of these defines steps in your plan.

The post 12 Best Marketing Books You Should Read in 2021 appeared first on NoGood™: Growth Marketing Agency.

1. How do I maximize results and efficiency?
2. What should I automate, and what should I still do manually?

Leveraging Machine Learning Tools for Marketing

The benefits of using AI in digital marketing are pretty clear. Machines that can utilize deep learning are simply better and faster at crunching and organizing massive amounts of data. They help marketers identify trends and relationships, so we can make optimizations, and execute routine tasks.

Given what we know about how AI works and what it’s good at; below are some examples of machine learning tactics that marketers can take advantage of right now.

Audience Building

Artificial intelligence can take much of the guesswork out of targeting. While it may be true that your target audience over-indexes among sports fans, not everyone that goes to ESPN.com is a potential customer – not to mention the expensive premiums that go with targeting specific sites directly.

Honing in on your targeting based on the audience rather than site is the basis for programmatic advertising, and it all starts with AI tools.

In-Market Audiences – Google looks at customer behavior signals such as search history and content consumed to identify people who are likely in the latter stages of a buying decision. Without machine learning crunching vast amounts of data and behavior in real-time, it would be nearly impossible to find and target these audiences at scale.


Lookalike Audiences – After you’ve built a core customer base, utilizing lookalike audiences may be the best way to reach people most similar to your existing customers – at scale. Using Facebook, you can leverage your customer data by finding commonalities among them (location, demographics, affinities) – then you can target people that match those characteristics.

Depending on how you source data, you can even segment deeper into products, because the audience of Product A could look very different than the audience of Product B – so you can serve them different messaging accordingly. Without machine learning, this research would be a laborious process, relying on imperfect data and heavy assumptions about who your customers really are.

We ran lead generation campaigns for a client of ours on Facebook where we target a variety of audiences, but most can be categorized as Lookalike, Affinity, or Retargeting. We update our Lookalikes on a weekly basis to continue defining our audience as the business grows.

From a CPL standpoint, Lookalikes have outperformed Affinity audiences by 43% and even outperformed our pre-qualified Retargeting audiences!

It’s worth noting here that while Lookalike audiences are compelling, marketers need to continue testing new audiences to avoid data bias. Lookalike audiences still require a level of management. Setting and forgetting will result in your ads only reaching a handful of demographics and affinities, ignoring many that would potentially be interested in your product. Continuing to make new assumptions and test new audiences will develop a more complete persona profile.

Smart Segmentation – is utilized by gaming app developers to maximize revenue. As I’m sure you all have noticed, many apps have adopted the freemium model, where downloading and using the app is free, but there is a paid version that eliminates ads and unlocks additional features. Smart segmentation uses machine learning to segment users based on their likelihood of spending money within an app.
Users who typically purchase will see no (or fewer) ads, as developers want to give them an optimal user experience in order to increase the chances they purchase. Players who are unlikely to buy will be served ads.
Ultimately, this allows game developers to maximize total revenue, by increasing conversion rates for in-app purchases, and capitalizing on ad revenue where the conversion opportunity is lower.

PPC Automation

Ad Optimization – PPC ads tend to require a lot of trial and error. You launch a campaign with your best assumptions on keywords and ad copy, monitor the campaigns until they have enough data to draw conclusions, then test new ideas. While the process is still similar, AI can be used to automate this process, identifying the best keywords and ads, while giving you insight into pausing the worst.

Responsive Search Ads – In the pre-machine learning days, trying to find the right headline and description combos for search ads was a manual process of creating multiple iterations of similar-looking ads to A/B test. We would then study the data in order to make adjustments and discover which ad(s) performed best.

With Google’s new Responsive Search Ads, we now have the option to set up multiple headlines and descriptions within the same ad, allowing machine learning to test and optimize towards the best performing combos. It’s essentially the same process before, but leveraging the available machine learning tools to get results faster and with less manual work.

At NoGood, we tested Responsive Search Ads versus Expanded Text Ads to see which is better at driving traffic to our own site. The Responsive Search Ads won by a considerable margin, with a CTR 40% higher!

Bid Optimization

As with many areas regarding artificial intelligence and performance marketing – Google is at the forefront of developing Smart Bidding strategies that go beyond simple click metrics. The previous CPC method was a bit of a manual guessing game, where humans had to decide if they were willing to pay extra for bids on specific keywords with the hopes that those users were more likely to convert.
Now, machine learning tools can take all those factors into account to better understand your audience, and adjust bids and budgets accordingly.

Maximize Conversions – The maximize conversions strategy is pretty self-explanatory, where Google will set bids to help get the most conversions for your campaign within your daily budget. During the auction, Google’s algorithms will consider not just the highest-converting keywords, but it will also factor in the demographics of the person searching. The day of the week and time of the search, the device being used, and more – to help determine how we can optimize our bids on that particular search.
While this bid strategy can be incredibly useful, there are a few things worth noting.
First, your campaign needs to have some historical data on what is driving the conversion you desire, so this typically won’t be utilized on brand new campaigns.
Second, while there’s obviously a ton of value in being able to leverage all these data points automatically, there is a certain loss of control. Not only will it erase pre-existing bid adjustments, but it removes the CPC maximums as well; so be sure to monitor these campaigns, particularly in the first few days of changing your bid strategy.

Target CPA & Target ROAS – Target CPA sets bids to drive as many conversions as possible at or below the target cost-per-action you set. The AI incorporates much of the same historical data as Maximize Conversions will, but takes it one step further, by making predictive models as to whether or not bidding on a specific search query will or will not help a campaign CPA come in under your benchmark.

Similar to Maximize Conversions, tCPA is best utilized when a campaign has historical data to allow machine learning to take place. tCPA does allow bid adjustments, though they’re generally not recommended. Setting a Max CPC can limit bids that could potentially help reach your benchmarks. Making bid adjustments based on the device can also work – this will adjust your tCPA accordingly (i.e., a campaign with a tCPA of $10 with a +10% bid adjustment for mobile will set your mobile tCPA to $11).

Target ROAS takes into account all the factors and best practices of Target CPA, but goes one step further, by tying that conversion/action to a dollar value. This strategy, of course, requires an extra level of tracking but can be extremely powerful for a business, particularly in eCommerce. If your online store sells items with varying costs, it would only make sense that you’d be willing to pay a bit more for clicks on the more expensive items. tROAS allows the optimization automatically and virtually ensures your campaigns will always be profitable.

Reporting

Attribution – We all know last-click attribution isn’t the right model, but it’s what so many brands default to just to keep an apples to apples of their different marketing channels. We’ve all heard the rule of thumb that it takes 5-7 touch points before a sale is made, though the reality could be even higher. Machine learning tools for multi-touch attribution are truly the only way to understand the full consumer journey, analyze the impact of each touchpoint, and identify which tactics are actually driving conversions and sales.

Data Visualization – As marketing becomes more and more data-driven, drawing actionable insights from your data becomes even more critical. While tools like Excel or Tableau are great, they still require a ton of manual work to collect and organize your data – time that could be better spent analyzing the results themselves and taking action on the learnings. AI-driven reporting tools not only sort and visualize data in a fraction of the time but can help identify trends and patterns that could otherwise easily be missed.

To Automate, or Not To Automate

However, as powerful as these tools are, they still have their limits. While ai algorithms and marketing automation can and does make life easier for many PPC marketers and data scientists, it certainly doesn’t make the jobs obsolete – it just changes the nature of the role. Rather than focusing on the minor details, automation frees us up to work on higher-level strategy.

It could be great if we could just push a button and get a perfect marketing campaign, but the reality is that despite their ability to learn and improve, machine learning is still just a tool. Marketing professionals need to understand how and when to use them, as well as the best places to focus their energy.

The machine will only do what it’s told. You need to know what to tell it.

The role of the digital marketer will need to evolve from tacticians to strategists. Our purpose is no longer to stare at dashboards, making marginal shifts of budgets as new data comes in. We need to grow from campaign managers into strategic advisors.

Machine learning marketing tools can handle the menial work, which will save us time, improve quality, and allow us to scale better and faster than ever before. However, humans are not obsolete yet! We’re still needed to provide common sense, emotion, empathy, and make sense out of everything when the answers aren’t perfect. So what aspects of the process still require a human touch?

• Define what problem to solve. Machine learning can help get you towards the right answer, but the marketer still needs to provide the right question. This requires a deep understanding of an industry and knowing where your business or product fits into that landscape. It requires a complete understanding of business objectives.

• Define the metrics that matter. Machine learning can optimize towards whatever parameters you give it – clicks, video views, conversions, etc. It’s up to marketers to determine what the right goals are. Should your campaign goal be for sales, or does your product need more brand awareness first? Maybe your first campaign should optimize for maximum clicks, which would help your bot collect more post-click data, helping future sales-driven campaigns.

• Find meaning in results. A machine will understand your question, optimize toward your goal, collect and sort through endless data, and give you an answer. However, only a human can interpret if that answer is meaningful. Humans need to provide the “smell test” to see if the results make sense, and if so, what they mean for the business.

• Transfer learnings from one platform to another. With the increasing walled gardens and law for data protection, taking an insight from one campaign still requires humans to relay that to other media. This goes beyond just media, however. Audience insights from one platform can help guide product development as well. Say you’re an apparel brand, and your AI built a marketing persona that said your core audience were pet lovers. Product teams can leverage that learning to develop a line of products for pets. Bot learnings result in human actions.

• Know Your Data. Your outputs are only as good as your inputs. A machine does the best it can with the data it has, but it can’t make judgments about the data itself. Marketers still need to ensure that the data is clean and being interpreted properly. How was the data collected? How can it be integrated or combined with other data? What could go wrong, and what would that look like? These are still problems that only a human can solve.

• Know the technology landscape and use the best tools. When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. However, in the ever-expanding digital landscape, we have a lot more tools and a lot more problems. One size fits all won’t drive the results we need. Marketers need to always be learning about how technology is evolving – how it works, how it can be used, what its potential dangers are – so that when the time comes, and a new problem arises, they’ll know to put the hammer down and pick up the screwdriver.

• Grow your skills. With bots taking care of the mindless, time-consuming tasks, marketers now have even more opportunities to add new abilities to their skillsets. Learn more advanced psychology, so you can better position your brand and write better ad copy. Learn a programming language like Python or SQL to help you better analyze your data.

Machine learning marketing tools have undoubtedly changed the PPC game, giving marketers tools to execute faster, more accurately, and more efficiently. However, it still takes human power to tell the machines what to do, and interpret the results they give us.

Marketers now need to focus on taking data and translating it into actionable insights. We need to know everything about the industries we’re in, know the pain points of our audience, and how to position our products within that marketplace. We need to move away from focusing on tactics to concentrate on strategy.

The post Using Machine Learning to Supercharge Performance Marketing appeared first on NoGood™: Growth Marketing Agency.