Jared Glassman, Author at NoGood™: Growth Marketing Agency https://nogood.io/author/jared/ Award-winning growth marketing agency specialized in B2B, SaaS and eCommerce brands, run by top growth hackers in New York, LA and SF. Wed, 08 Jan 2025 18:05:27 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://nogood.io/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/NG_WEBSITE_FAVICON_LOGO_512x512-64x64.png Jared Glassman, Author at NoGood™: Growth Marketing Agency https://nogood.io/author/jared/ 32 32 Tips for Creating a High-Converting B2B Performance Marketing Campaign https://nogood.io/2024/02/29/b2b-performance-marketing/ https://nogood.io/2024/02/29/b2b-performance-marketing/#respond Thu, 29 Feb 2024 09:52:42 +0000 https://nogood.io/?p=29413 What is B2B Performance Marketing? Think of B2B performance marketing as your GPS in the world of business-to-business dealings. It’s a data-driven approach that focuses on achieving specific, measurable outcomes....

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What is B2B Performance Marketing?

Think of B2B performance marketing as your GPS in the world of business-to-business dealings. It’s a data-driven approach that focuses on achieving specific, measurable outcomes. Whether it’s generating leads, conversions, sales, or even awareness, every action is aimed at contributing directly to your bottom line. And in the B2B realm, where decisions are weighed heavily and made by more than one pair of hands, this approach is not just nice to have; it’s a must-have.

The beauty of B2B performance marketing lies in its ability to turn insights and learnings into actions. By leveraging channels like SEO, PPC, content marketing, and social media advertising, we’re not just shouting into empty space. We’re using experimentation to engage in meaningful conversations with potential business customers, using data to guide us every step of the way.

Now, you might wonder, “Isn’t all performance marketing the same?” Well, not quite. B2B and B2C marketing might share a stage, but they play very different roles.

B2B marketing is similar to a chess game. It’s strategic, with longer sales cycles and higher stakes. You’re dealing with multiple decision-makers, oftentimes, each with their own set of concerns and criteria. The challenge here, among navigating ever-changing stakeholders and evolving goals, is to nurture these leads through a complex journey, using targeted content to address their specific needs at each stage.

B2C marketing, on the other hand, is more like checkers. It’s faster paced and the strategies here are aimed at rapidly capturing the consumer’s attention to drive them towards an immediate conversion event like a purchase or other action.

This distinction is crucial because it helps shape our approach to performance marketing. In B2B marketing, it’s not just about making a sale; it’s about establishing trust and proving value over time.

At the end of the day, the heart of B2B performance marketing serves one purpose – increasing conversion rates. This is where we can transform potential into profit and drive tangible results for businesses.

But, how do we get there? It starts with personalization. By identifying value propositions and establishing personas, we understand our audience’s unique needs and preferences, and we can tailor our messages to resonate deeply with our targeted personas. Then, we cast our net across multiple channels, ensuring we are serving ads where our audience is speaking their language.

Content is king here, but not just any content. What works is content that is value-driven and educates and informs. Some effective examples of this type of content are downloadable PDFs or articles such as white papers, case studies, and industry insights that speak directly to the challenges our audience faces.

And, of course, we can’t forget about measuring and analyzing performance results. This is our compass, guiding us through the wilderness of marketing strategies. By continuously measuring and optimizing our efforts, we ensure that every step taken is a step closer to our goal.

The 7 P’s of B2B Marketing

To navigate the world of B2B marketing successfully, it is important to familiarize yourself with the 7 P’s of B2B marketing. These fundamental principles will help guide your strategy, ensuring that every decision and action aligns with the north star of connecting with your business audience.

  • Product: Learn to customize your products/services to solve the unique puzzles faced by B2B buyers. Each business (especially among different industries) will face its own challenges and have its own nuanced factors to consider.
  • Price: Setting your prices isn’t just about numbers; it’s a balancing act that showcases the value you bring to the table, making sure B2B companies see the bang they get for their buck. It’s important to highlight the bottom-line impact the business will see from using your product/service. This is a great place to talk about ROI to offset the focus on the pricing.
  • Place: Finding the right channels to connect with B2B businesses is like choosing the perfect fishing spot; it’s where you’ll catch your biggest leads. Find your audience where they are. There are several factors to consider when selecting which paid media channels to run on for a B2B business, such as:
    • Target Audience Presence: Identify where your B2B audience spends their time online. LinkedIn, for example, is optimal for reaching professional audiences
    • Content Format Compatibility: Choose channels that best support your content format, whether it’s video, text, infographics, or webinars
    • Budget Considerations: Evaluate the cost-effectiveness of each channel. Some platforms may offer a better ROI for B2B campaigns
    • Industry Trends: Stay abreast of where competitors and industry leaders are most active, which can indicate effective channels for your sector
    • Customer Journey Stage: Select channels that align with the stages of your customer journey, from awareness through decision-making
    • Measurability and Analytics: Opt for platforms with robust analytics to measure campaign performance and optimize for better results
    • Channel Reach and Engagement: Assess the reach and level of engagement potential customers have with the platform
    • Ad Format Flexibility: Consider channels that offer a range of ad formats to creatively showcase your value propositions
    • Integration Capabilities: Look for platforms that can integrate seamlessly with your other marketing tools and CRM system
    • Compliance and Brand Safety: Ensure the channel aligns with your brand values and complies with industry regulations
  • Promotion: Here, content is your megaphone. Crafting strategies that resonate with potential customers is key to the success of your efforts. Understand the competition’s approach, develop intentional buyer personas, identify value propositions and pain points, and draw your audience closer with well-thought-out, purposeful content.
  • People: Your sales teams and customer service folks are the navigators of the buyer journey–the frontline forces who can provide detailed customer feedback, which serves as a growth loop that can help direct your future strategies. Cross-team communication can help identify points of weakness in the marketing funnel or areas where additional information is warranted in your content.
  • Process: Streamlining your sales funnels and purchase decisions is crucial for guiding customers from initial interest to final purchase. By optimizing the process, you increase conversion rates throughout the marketing funnel, moving prospects from “just looking” to “just bought.”
  • Physical Evidence: Case studies, white papers, and testimonials are examples of downloadable content that serve as trust-building tools, guiding hesitant or uninformed prospective customers toward confidence in a business’s offerings. They provide concrete evidence of a product or service’s value, showcasing its effectiveness and reliability.

Each of these elements plays a pivotal role in the grand scheme of B2B performance marketing and are all individual levers to experiment with throughout the growth process. Experimentation with each one of these levers can lead to faster learnings that will ultimately drive growth for your business.

The 7 P's of B2B marketing

Crafting a B2B Performance Marketing Strategy

Creating a B2B marketing strategy that resonates with your audience and drives results requires a deep understanding of the landscape and the unique challenges of the B2B buying journey. Unlike the typically shorter path in D2C, the B2B journey is longer and more complex, necessitating a different approach to push prospects along the buying journey. This means providing a lot more information about how the decision to purchase will drive business results that contribute to the bottom line.

Identifying your target audience and understanding the buyer journey are foundational steps. It involves delving into who your ideal customers are, the challenges they face, and how they make decisions. This understanding informs every piece of content you create and every interaction you have with your audience. Many businesses see success with account-based marketing (ABM) and use a suite of tools to bolster their targeting approaches. Here’s a short list of tools if you’re interested in taking an ABM approach:

  • LinkedIn Ads: LinkedIn offers powerful targeting options for B2B marketers, allowing you to target ads based on company size, industry, job title, seniority, and more. With LinkedIn’s extensive professional network, you can reach decision-makers and influencers within your target accounts effectively.
  • Demandbase: Demandbase is a comprehensive ABM platform that provides account-level targeting capabilities. It uses proprietary technology to identify and target specific companies based on firmographic data, website engagement, and intent signals, enabling personalized campaigns tailored to each target account.
  • RollWorks: RollWorks is an account-based platform that combines account-based advertising with account-based data and sales automation to identify and engage target accounts across multiple channels, including display, social, email, and web.
  • Terminus: Terminus is a leading ABM platform specializing in targeting and engaging high-value accounts. It offers a suite of targeting tools, including account-based advertising, email marketing, and web personalization to reach key decision-makers and influencers within target accounts.
  • 6sense: 6sense is an AI-powered ABM platform that uses predictive analytics to identify and prioritize target accounts based on their likelihood to buy. It provides insights into account behavior and intent signals, enabling you to deliver personalized experiences and targeted campaigns to the most promising prospects.

Another key factor in a successful B2B Performance Marketing approach is developing a content strategy that addresses the needs and pain points of B2B buyers. This is about crafting a narrative that directly addresses your audience’s needs and challenges. Whether through whitepapers, videos, or infographics, your content should educate, engage, and inspire your audience throughout the buyer journey.

Selecting the Right Performance Marketing Channels is crucial. This involves choosing channels where your audience is most receptive, such as SEO, email marketing, social media, and native advertising. Each channel serves a different purpose, from visibility to engagement, and should be prioritized based on your goals and resources.

In essence, crafting a B2B marketing strategy is about connecting the dots between understanding your audience and delivering the content they need to nurture them throughout the buying journey while utilizing the channels where they’re most likely to engage.

Delivering content to an audience

It’s a deliberate process that requires insight, creativity, and precision. By focusing on these core elements, you lay the groundwork for a strategy that not only reaches your target audience but also drives them toward action, ultimately delivering the results your business seeks.

Performance Marketing Tactics for B2B

SEO Strategies Tailored to Organic Search and B2B Keywords: B2B buyers will often conduct extensive research before making purchasing decisions. To ensure your brand is visible during this research phase, your SEO strategy should focus on optimizing your website and content for relevant B2B keywords. This involves conducting thorough keyword research to identify the terms and phrases your target audience is using, and then strategically integrating them into your website copy, blog posts, and other content (whitepapers, case studies, etc.). Additionally, optimizing technical aspects of your website, such as site speed and mobile responsiveness, can further enhance your search visibility and improve user experience.

Looking for a full list of SEO optimization strategies?

We’ve already discussed the importance of content marketing as a powerful tool for providing value and building trust throughout the buyer journey. In addition to the downloadable content listed above, another great way for businesses to provide informative content is to create and publish regular blog posts and articles that address common pain points and demonstrate your expertise.

These types of content not only educate your audience while encouraging them to come back for more, but this content will also position your business as a thought leader in the space.

As with all performance marketing strategies, it is pertinent to ensure that your data collection is top of mind. Conversion tracking should be set up across all channels and pages, and in the cookieless world we’re entering, you should be collecting zero-party data wherever possible. Here’s a great resource on how to implement a zero-party data strategy. 

Lastly, building a community through social media is another tactic that can help prove thought leadership and establish your business as a trusted resource in your industry. It’s crucial to develop a social media strategy that fosters audience engagement and brand awareness. Although B2B decision-makers may not spend as much time on social media as their B2C counterparts, platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter still play a crucial role in the B2B marketing landscape.

Here, you can share content, engage with industry influencers, and participate in relevant conversations. Additionally, consider leveraging paid social advertising to target specific B2B audiences and amplify your brand’s reach. By consistently sharing valuable content and actively engaging with your audience, you can build brand awareness, establish authority in your industry, and generate leads for your business.

Measuring Success in B2B Performance Marketing

Measuring success

With all these efforts to build and engage an audience, it’s vital to set clear marketing goals that align with your overall business objectives and define B2B marketing KPIs so that you can measure and track what your success looks like. Whether your aim is to increase lead generation, boost brand awareness, or drive conversions, clearly defined goals provide direction and focus for your marketing efforts.

Additionally, identifying key performance indicators (KPIs) specific to B2B marketing—such as lead-to-customer conversion rate, marketing-qualified leads (MQLs), and customer lifetime value (CLV)—allows you to measure progress and gauge the success of your campaigns accurately.

Ensure that you have set up your analytics backend properly with the appropriate tools for your business. Generally speaking, Google Analytics is a powerful tool for tracking and analyzing website traffic, user behavior, and campaign performance.

By implementing tracking codes and setting up conversion goals, you can gain valuable insights into how visitors interact with your site and which marketing channels drive the most engagement and conversions. Analyzing metrics such as bounce rate, time on page, and conversion rate helps you understand buyer behavior and identify areas for optimization.

Now equipped with data from Google Analytics and other analytics platforms, you can make informed decisions about where to allocate your budget to achieve the highest return on investment (ROI). By continuously monitoring campaign performance and comparing results against your predefined KPIs, you can identify underperforming channels or tactics and reallocate resources to those that drive the greatest results.

Whether it’s scaling up investments in top-performing channels or experimenting with new strategies to improve performance, data-driven decision-making allows you to optimize your marketing spend and maximize ROI over time.

Conclusion

In summary, B2B performance marketing is a calculated journey aimed at driving conversions and value for businesses in the short and especially long term. It’s the light guiding marketers toward specific, measurable outcomes that directly contribute to the bottom line.

Understanding the 7 P’s of B2B marketing is crucial for crafting a successful strategy, as it ensures alignment with the business audience and their unique needs. Effective targeting through tools like LinkedIn Ads and 6Sense enables marketers to engage high-value target accounts effectively, driving personalized campaigns tailored to each account’s needs. Additionally, a robust content strategy that addresses the needs and pain points of B2B buyers is essential for nurturing leads throughout the buyer journey.

Finally, measuring success through clear marketing goals, carefully defined KPIs, and analytics tools like Google Analytics allows marketers to use data-driven insights to continuously optimize campaigns and maximize ROI.

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Mastering eCommerce AI: A Guide to Transforming Your Online Business https://nogood.io/2023/10/18/ecommerce-ai/ https://nogood.io/2023/10/18/ecommerce-ai/#respond Wed, 18 Oct 2023 08:35:03 +0000 https://nogood.io/?p=28584 The digital landscape, particularly in eCommerce, has seen a dramatic transformation over the years. One of the key drivers of this change has been the role of data, namely its...

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The digital landscape, particularly in eCommerce, has seen a dramatic transformation over the years. One of the key drivers of this change has been the role of data, namely its collection, analysis, and utilization. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is setting new benchmarks in this domain, turning real-time insights into customer behavior that was previously unattainable. This article will dive into the ways AI is revolutionizing eCommerce marketing.

This consistent flow of customer data aggregation combined with the continuous training of the Large Language Models (LLMs) creates a feedback loop that ultimately leads to an eCommerce business providing their potential customer with a more targeted and effective online shopping experience.

AI can sound daunting because it is “the unknown,” but it’s not something that is entirely new to us as everyday consumers. Have you ever seen Amazon suggest “products you might also like”? This is just one small example of how AI is already using large amalgamations of consumer data to drive value to the end-user.

How to Build an eCommerce Website with AI

We live in an era where customer experiences are the cornerstone of e-commerce businesses, and data aggregation is the backbone. It plays a pivotal role in personalizing marketing campaigns, creating a seamless personalized customer experience, and even driving online business decisions. And, with the retail industry becoming increasingly competitive, understanding customer interactions at a granular level is not just an advantage; it’s a necessity.

An online retailer’s website serves as their digital storefront, a crucial touchpoint that can make or break the customer experience. Whether you’re unveiling a brand-new site or fine-tuning a landing page based on valuable insights, Artificial Intelligence offers a multitude of avenues for enhancing user engagement and satisfaction.

A prime example of this in action is Shopify’s AI-Generated Product Descriptions feature. This innovative tool simplifies what can often be a labor-intensive process—crafting compelling product narratives—transforming it into a seamless, efficient task, contributing to a more cohesive online shopping experience.

Shopify product descriptions using the AI tool.
Shopify product descriptions using the AI tool.
Shopify product descriptions using the AI tool.
Shopify product descriptions using the AI tool.

Additionally, retail businesses can use AI to improve the customer experience while saving costs on human labor. One quick guess—you would probably prefer speaking to a human over a robot in a situation where customer service is needed, right?

Well, that might not be true for much longer with Artificial intelligence tools in the picture. Another way a brand can utilize AI is to enhance its customer service offering with robust AI-powered chatbots. To make a chatbot smarter with AI, you’d first teach it to understand how people naturally speak so it gets what they’re actually asking for. Next, you’d keep updating its ‘knowledge’ based on what it learns from talking to customers, making it better over time. Lastly, ensure that if the bot gets stumped or the conversation gets tricky, it knows when to pass the chat to a real person for help.

For brands like Duolingo, Chat-GPT-powered Duolingo Max is one example of how AI has already revolutionized the way users engage brands and their relevant products. In this case, Duolingo users use Duolingo Max as a conversational way to learn new languages.

Duolingo chatbot

Best-Practice Tip: Train your chatbots to handle a wide array of queries but also to recognize when to hand off to a human agent.

One AI use case that you might be familiar with is the Amazon subscription service that offers lower pricing for recurring product subscription purchases. As a part of this feature, Amazon uses Artificial Intelligence to make suggestions if you are running low on quantities of recurring product purchases and suggests that you restock before you run out.

For example, Amazon has a customer who orders a supplement as part of their subscribe & save program. On average, the customer places 1 order every 7-9 weeks. With AI, Amazon is able to predict when the customer is likely to run out of product, prompting a CTA to repurchase the product with enough time for delivery so that you’re never without the product you need. The advantages here are that brands can drive more purposeful and intentional interactions with the customer, and the customer will notice. A customer is more likely to continue to purchase with a brand that feels like it’s personally helping them and meeting their needs.

Predictive Analytics and Inventory Management

Inventory management is the unsung hero of eCommerce businesses. It may not be as glamorous as marketing campaigns or user interfaces, but it’s absolutely crucial for smooth operations and customer satisfaction. In an industry where timing is everything, having the right product available at the right time can make or break a sale—and a customer relationship. This is where predictive analytics, powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI), comes into play. By leveraging AI, eCommerce retailers can forecast inventory needs with remarkable accuracy, ensuring that they’re always one step ahead of consumer demand.

Imagine running an online fashion store. The holiday season is coming up, and you’re unsure how many units of a new trendy sweater to stock. AI can come to the rescue by analyzing historical sales data and current fashion trends. It can even predict how many sweaters you’re likely to sell, allowing you to stock just the right amount. And it is ever-evolving. The more it experiences, the better it gets. For brands, this means no more overstocking and steep discount sales and no more frustrated customers finding their size is out of stock.

AI-Driven Customer Segmentation and Personalization

Among the endless use cases for AI in eCommerce is another fascinating one worth mentioning. AI advanced algorithms can sift through massive datasets to identify patterns and segments that might not be apparent to the human eye. These insights can be incredibly valuable in tailoring personalized marketing campaigns on social media platforms.

Segmentation, creative / messaging experimentation, and garnering continuous learning are all keys to success for any business. With advances in AI and Generative AI, businesses can now employ AI-driven customer segmentation in their paid social campaigns.

Let’s delve into how AI tools like ChatGPT or MidJourney can significantly enhance your paid social campaigns, particularly in the e-commerce sector.

Robust A/B Testing Frameworks

Traditional A/B testing often involves manual effort and is limited by human biases and capabilities. AI tools can automate this process, designing hundreds of tests simultaneously to identify the most effective messaging and creative components. This is crucial for e-commerce businesses where even a slight increase in CTRs (click-through rates) can translate to substantial revenue gains.

Tailored Advertising Strategies

One of the most compelling features of AI in advertising is its ability to create highly customized strategies. By analyzing vast sets of data, AI can identify nuanced audience segments and tailor ad copy and creative elements to resonate with these specific groups.

For instance, an AI tool can craft LinkedIn ad copy targeting C-suite executives in the tech industry or develop Meta ad copy aimed at homeowners interested in remodeling. These tailored solutions are designed to maximize engagement and performance metrics, ensuring a higher ROI on your advertising spend.

Data-Driven Creative Ideation and Copywriting

AI tools can also assist in the creative process by analyzing historical data and current market trends. This enables them to offer creative ideation that is not just innovative but also grounded in data. Whether it’s generating compelling headlines, crafting persuasive body copy, or even suggesting visual elements, AI can significantly speed up and enhance the creative process.

Comprehensive Analytics and Insights

One of the most transformative aspects of AI in paid social campaigns is its ability to provide in-depth analytics and insights. AI tools can track a multitude of metrics in real time, from customer engagement rates to conversion metrics, and offer actionable insights. This data-driven approach allows for agile adjustments to campaigns, ensuring optimal performance at all times.

AI Tools: Challenges and Solutions

Challenges and solutions of AI tools.

As much as AI thrives on data to make intelligent predictions and improve customer experiences, there’s a growing challenge that can’t be ignored: the tightening regulations around personal data privacy. Social platforms, where many ads are served, are becoming more restrictive about data collection. In this environment, the value of first-party data—information willingly and directly provided by customers—becomes paramount.

Businesses, especially in eCommerce, are now encouraged to strengthen their first-party or even zero-party data touchpoints. These are instances where customers voluntarily offer information, perhaps through surveys or personalized account settings, which can be invaluable for targeted marketing and personalization. Balancing technological advancement with ethical data collection practices is the new tightrope that eCommerce businesses must walk.

Conclusion

The realm of eCommerce is no longer just about transactions; it’s about experiences. At the heart of these experiences is data, smartly leveraged through the power of Artificial Intelligence. From enhancing customer service with AI-backed chatbots, as seen with innovative platforms like Duolingo Max, to smart inventory management and hyper-personalized marketing campaigns, AI is not just a technological advancement—it’s a paradigm shift.

In this context, it’s worth noting that platforms like Shopify offer a range of AI-powered tools designed specifically for online retailers. These tools can help businesses optimize their websites, from generating product recommendations based on user behavior to automating customer service interactions.

Additionally, with paid social advertising, by automating A/B testing, providing tailored advertising strategies, aiding in creative ideation and copywriting, and offering robust analytics, AI can be a game-changer for e-commerce businesses. The integration of AI into your paid social campaigns for your e-commerce brand can result in more effective advertising strategies that are both creative and data-driven, ultimately leading to a higher ROI.

However, like all powerful tools, AI comes with its challenges. In an era where data privacy is becoming increasingly paramount, the onus is on businesses to adapt, prioritizing first-party data and ethical practices.

This isn’t merely about compliance; it’s about building trust and long-term relationships with customers. As the digital landscape continues to evolve, the eCommerce businesses that will truly stand out will be those that seamlessly blend technology, ethics, and an unerring focus on customer experience.

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TikTok Shopping Ads: How to Execute a Successful Campaign https://nogood.io/2023/07/10/tiktok-shopping-ads/ https://nogood.io/2023/07/10/tiktok-shopping-ads/#respond Mon, 10 Jul 2023 16:14:36 +0000 https://nogood.io/?p=27855 TikTok is more than just one of the most popular social media platforms, with over 1 billion active users worldwide. TikTok, as a video-sharing platform, has revolutionized the way users...

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TikTok is more than just one of the most popular social media platforms, with over 1 billion active users worldwide. TikTok, as a video-sharing platform, has revolutionized the way users share and consume content, particularly in relation to product reviews. Its rise to popularity can be attributed to several factors, but one of the most significant is its user-generated content (UGC) model.

This model encourages users to create and share their own content, offering an added layer of trust and authenticity to product reviews that is highly valued in today’s digital world. TikTok recognizes the power of this feedback loop created by its communities and has created tools that allow brands to maximize the platform in their sales strategy.

In this blog post, we’ll take a closer look at TikTok Shopping Ads, one of the tools businesses can use to promote their products and services to a large audience.

What Are TikTok Shopping Ads?

TikTok Shopping Ads is an ad solution that integrates a business’s product catalog directly into the TikTok platform, allowing brands to advertise their products or services to TikTok users while allowing TikTok users to seamlessly purchase through the TikTok Shop. This experience makes it much easier for users to learn about product information and checkout without leaving the app. Now, instead of just being inspired to buy a product from content on TikTok, the platform has taken it a step further, allowing in-platform shopping.

With the help of TikTok Ads Manager, businesses can create and manage their shopping ads campaigns, presenting their products in compelling and engaging ways.

One key feature of TikTok Shopping Ads is the shoppable videos. These are essentially feed video ads with an added layer of interactivity. They incorporate a product card, providing TikTok users with additional information about the product being advertised. Users can click on the product card to be taken directly to the product’s page on the TikTok Shop, where they can make a purchase. This can be done all without leaving the platform, which leads to less drop-off at each stage of the checkout process and thus, higher conversion rates.

Benefits of TikTok Shopping Ads:

There are several formats of TikTok Shopping Ads that each have their own unique benefits:

Video Shopping Ads: These ads are short, shoppable videos that can be placed on the For You page, in-feed, or in-feed video. They can be used to promote a specific product or product line.

Catalog Listing Ads: These ads are static images of products that can be placed on the For You page, in-feed, or in-feed video. They can be used to promote a wide range of products.

Live Shopping Ads: These ads are live video broadcasts that allow brands to interact with users in real time and sell products directly to them. They can be used to promote new products, answer questions, or give product demonstrations.

Product Card Ads: These ads display a single product card that includes an image, title, price, and call-to-action button. Users can tap on the product card to view more details and make a purchase.

Branded Content Ads: These ads feature influencers or content creators promoting your products in their TikTok videos. This type of ad leverages the influencer’s audience and authenticity to drive product awareness and sales.

How to set up TikTok Shopping Ads?

If you’re looking to test out Shopping Ads, there is good news – it’s easy to get started.

To set up TikTok Shopping Ads, follow these steps:

1. Create a TikTok Ads Manager account: Start by creating an account on TikTok Ads Manager. This is where you’ll manage your advertising campaigns and access the tools needed to set up Shopping Ads.

2. Set up a product catalog: Create a product catalog that includes information about your products, such as images, titles, prices, and descriptions. You can either manually input the data or use a data feed to automate the process.

3. Integrate your product catalog with TikTok Ads Manager: Connect your product catalog to TikTok Ads Manager by linking the catalog to your TikTok Ads account. This integration allows you to create ads using the product information from your catalog.

4. Create your Shopping Ads campaign: In TikTok Ads Manager, create a new campaign and select the objective of driving product sales. Set your budget, targeting options, and ad schedule according to your business goals.

5. Design your Shopping Ads: Choose from various ad formats offered by TikTok, such as feed video ads or shoppable videos, to create visually appealing ads. Utilize the fully automated creative features to customize the ad templates and add product details.

6. Launch and monitor your campaign: Once you’re satisfied with your ads, launch your Shopping Ads campaign. Monitor the performance of your ads through TikTok Ads Manager and make necessary optimizations to maximize your results.

Shopping Ads Best Practices

Does your brand have an established and growing community on TikTok? TikTok is a community-based platform, so best results are going to come from building that community first. Especially on this platform, asking for the sale without an introduction is asking to be rejected. Establish yourself on the platform by focusing on filling your Top and Middle Funnel, establishing your brand personality on the platform, and identifying your content strategy that best converts (which you can learn through creative experimentation across all stages of the funnel).

And of course, as content will always be the main driver for the success of the TikTok Shopping Ads, It’s always helpful to have a UGC guide that can help you understand how user-generated content can help you grow your brand on the platform. From understanding the different types of UGC to tips on how to encourage your audience to create content for you, this guide has everything you need to know. And if you don’t know where to find creators, TikTok’s Creator Marketplace has got you covered.

Pro tip: In order to drive the most conversions and run the most efficient campaign, utilize a traffic campaign to gain audience insights and content optimizations. Then, retarget that audience using the product links, catalog listing, or live shopping ads. For additional TikTok Marketing strategies that can help your brand expand its reach and establish a community, check this out.

It’s evident that TikTok Shopping Ads provide businesses with a powerful way to reach and engage with TikTok’s massive user base, drive product sales, and grow their brand. This tool can create visually appealing ads that showcase products while delivering immersive shopping experiences to TikTok users.

Whether it’s through product card ads, feed video ads, catalog listing ads, or branded content ads, TikTok Shopping Ads offer a variety of advertising formats to suit different business objectives. By setting up and launching a Shopping Ads campaign, businesses can tap into the immense potential of TikTok’s audience and drive meaningful results.

If you’re looking to expand your reach, boost product sales, and connect with a highly engaged audience, TikTok Shopping Ads are an advertising solution worth considering. And if you haven’t seen it yet, make sure to read through this complete TikTok Ads Guide.

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Leveraging Generative AI to Supercharge your Paid Performance https://nogood.io/2023/03/10/generative-ai-for-paid-performance/ https://nogood.io/2023/03/10/generative-ai-for-paid-performance/#respond Fri, 10 Mar 2023 20:56:49 +0000 https://nogood.io/?p=26487 When it comes to AI in general, there are levers paid search marketers and digital marketers in general have control over that other automation can help with.

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Artificial intelligence (AI) — specifically with the advent of generative AI and its commercialization — is knocking on the doors of every industry, including performance and growth marketing. Here, we’ll discuss how AI is rapidly becoming the foundation upon which some extremely powerful marketing tools like ChatGPT, JasperAI, Dall-E, MidJourney and more are built and utilized within the programmatic advertising world.

Generative AI leverages machine learning algorithms and other technologies to analyze and make decisions on inputs of various types of data. Some of the tools available now can help organize vast data sets and drive insights and value that help marketers optimize their strategies, improve campaign performance, and generate accurate and consistent results. The value lies in the fact that this can all be done in a fraction of the time that it would typically take a human marketer to carry out these otherwise tedious and time-consuming tasks on her/his own.

Increased efficiency leads to higher quality and quantity outputs, which produces more possible iterations of audience targeting strategies, ad copy, creative design, and even value proposition messaging experimentation frameworks. Freeing up time and resources allows marketers to focus on higher-level strategic initiatives. Equally important, AI can improve quality control efforts by greatly reducing the risk of human error.

For example, it’s possible to have ChatGPT analyze a brand’s prior top-performing ad creatives, and then spit out new variations of the same ad for experimentation and learning purposes. Alternatively, it’s possible to prompt the platform to create totally new ad concepts based on audience interests or historical customer data. With Generative AI, digital marketers can launch paid media campaigns with creative variations at scale, thus improving campaign performance and optimizing ROAS.

What is prompt engineering?

The art of leveraging AI in paid media marketing starts with mastering prompt engineering. Prompt engineering involves constructing detailed and thoughtful text-based prompts as the input for a generative AI platform to understand how to generate the user’s desired output(s). Prompt engineering will look different for various types of marketing tasks. It is the process of designing and fine-tuning the input text (prompt) that is used to train or query the AI model, with the goal of achieving better performance or more accurate results.

Sometimes the smallest difference in your prompt can have a large impact on the quality of the output. Adjusting the length or complexity of the input, and providing context to the machine learning platform will always yield more accurate and desirable results than providing vague prompts. Below are some examples of how prompts can be used to improve performance in digital marketing efforts.

In paid advertising, tools like ChatGPT can analyze data and generate ad copy and visuals based on the prompts given to it, allowing marketers to quickly generate a large number of variations for experimentation.

Once you’ve nailed prompt engineering, the world of generative AI really opens up and can assist with various levers of control for marketers, including creative, measurement and feedback loops, audience targeting, CRO, and strategic deployment.

Each lever has specific ways that generative AI can be used to improve performance and efficiency.

Can AI help with audience/persona research?

Adequate audience research and accurate audience targeting are key components of all successful paid advertising efforts. Knowing your audience enables you to tailor your creative, messaging, and targeting to your potential customers’ exact behaviors and interests, increasing engagement and conversion rate. This can be achieved through the analysis of prior campaign data, conducting customer surveys, or other means of gathering audience insights. High-quality audience research can play a role in determining the ROI of your paid performance marketing campaigns by assisting marketers in directing ads to the right people with messaging that resonates with them.

Generative AI can improve the audience research process by performing quick and accurate analyses on large data sets to identify patterns and draw insights that can be used to create detailed buyer personas and value propositions. By analyzing various inputs such as website analytics, search history, social media behavior, and even customer feedback, generative AI can construct predictive models to identify audiences with similar behaviors and characteristics, leading to improved campaign performance.

For example, suppose a brand aims to target an audience likely to be interested in sustainable cosmetics. In that case, generative AI tools could be used to analyze various data points to hone in on the exact audience who will resonate best with certain ad creative and messaging. With proper prompt engineering, generative AI tools can complete all the heavy lifting for you on your desired task. You just need to be specific. Remember, “Garbage in, garbage out!”

Here, we can see that there is an overlap among the audiences provided by ChatGPT. If you would like to get the most accurate responses, you will have to be extremely clear in your prompt engineering. As we can see below in the edited version, one small detail can make an enormous impact on your results. It is not advised to leave all the decision-making up to the AI platform. There is still a need to train the machine properly so it is able to know what exact parameters to operate within.

With the revisions made, ChatGPT has recalled what its previous output was, and based on the changes requested in the prompt, it will go back and reiterate the original request with the new parameters considered. Thus, spitting out a better, more relevant answer.

Can AI help generate value propositions?

Another valuable way to save time with generative AI is when identifying value propositions for a brand or company. With clear and detailed prompt engineering, generative AI is capable of recognizing and delivering value propositions for a brand’s product or service offering. This is an extremely important part of building a campaign, where value props are used to hone in on specific ad creative and messaging approaches.

The key to effective use of generative AI for value prop generation is to provide specific guidance to the AI model through prompting. If you ask the right questions and provide relevant information about the brand, its products/services, and its target audience, you’ll set yourself up with a template that can be used repeatedly. Here are some sample questions that can be included in your prompt:

  • What are the unique benefits of the product or service being offered?
  • Who is the target audience or ideal user for the product/service?
  • What problems or pain points does the product/service solve for the target audience?
  • What does this brand do that differentiates its offering(s) from competitors?

Once your value props are identified, the next step is to fit them into the larger marketing strategy where they will serve as a messaging framework for the brand. By helping to communicate the unique benefits of a product/service, value propositions inform other essential marketing processes such as helping define the target audience, and even suggesting ad creative/messaging approaches. A strong list of value propositions can help drive sales and build brand loyalty by addressing consumers’ exact needs and desires, thus connecting with them on a deeper level.

Below is a hypothetical example of a brand that needs value props identified for its advertising efforts.

Then, once we are able to engineer the prompt to deliver a satisfactory response, we can utilize the previous learnings that ChatGPT stores and references to take it a step further.

Is AI suitable for ad creative and ad copy?

When it comes to generating ad creative and developing ad copy, AI can save a lot of time and resources. By providing instantaneous customizable results, AI can significantly increase the rate of how quickly marketers are able to create multiple iterations of creative or copy for experimentation purposes.

As with any experimentation, the goal is to increase the effectiveness of marketing campaigns and improve the overall ROI for brands and AI can help generate text or image-based content that is personalized and engaging for individual consumers or personas.

Here, ChatGPT remembers the previous prompt in our “conversation” and will use the value props pulled to then create ideas for ad copy and creative.

In another example, you can see here that a basic prompt gives a generic answer that might not encapsulate the proper messaging for your brand’s audience. What you need to do is to refine the prompt until you get the desired output that makes sense for your brand or audience.

Without identifying the specifics to ChatGPT, the platform will have no way of knowing what you’re looking for. If you keep it in your head, it will stay there! So you have to be extremely clear and concise with your prompt engineering to achieve quality results. 

Here, we’re using Dall-E 2 to generate ad creative for a hypothetical hair care brand. 

If your original output is not what you were expecting, you can always adjust your prompt as seen above and continue iterating until you’ve got the creative to look like how you imagined it.

Midjourney is another generative AI tool available on the market. With Midjourney, the integration is through Discord, so text prompts are sent directly through Discord and images are generated and sent via message. You’ll get 4 results within 60 seconds of prompting Midjourney, and each result can be split into an additional 4 variations if needed.

Here’s an example from Midjourney, where we are targeting a photorealistic Warehouse Manager, in a cluttered warehouse full of junk, cinematic, dim overhead lighting, stressed, panicking

Midjourney example:

As with any other generative AI task, landing on a final usable ad creative is an iterative process. Here, we can select one or more of the 4 image variations that Midjourney provided. We can select U1-U4, which will use the respective images as the final output, or, we can select V1-V4, which will provide 4 new variations on the respective image if you’re unsatisfied with the original option, but want something similar. See the below example of what happens when you select variations of a single output.

After you have established a target audience, value props and personas, and made ad creative for experimentation, as mentioned earlier, you can use ChatGPT to come up with ad copy for you.

Here, we prompt the AI model with various inputs such as value props that were previously created by the AI model and descriptions of the ad copy that were also generated by AI. By providing as much detail as we can about the audience and messaging and creative, the AI model is able to provide relevant ad copy that will resonate with consumers.

Let’s talk about one particularly useful feature that is guaranteed to save you some time if used properly. Not all advertising platforms have the same character limit; for example, linkedin, twitter, and Facebook/Instagram all have different character limits. Sometimes a caption is ready for Facebook/Instagram but it needs to be shortened for Twitter, or vice versa.

It’s possible to prompt ChatGPT to stay within the character limit for a particular ad platform. Below, ChatGPT was prompted to both contract and expand ad copy based on which ad platform it belongs on. For Twitter, ad copy was shortened and relevant hashtags were added. For LinkedIn, copy was added and the overall tone/voice was more suitable for LinkedIn. It will take some refining to get the exact results that can be used in a paid advertising campaign, but that is up to the user.

What other levers can AI inform?

Generative AI can analyze large amounts of data to identify patterns and trends, providing insights for optimization and improvement where measurement and feedback loops are needed.

It’s even possible to integrate ChatGPT through Google Sheets and API Key for analysis, projections, and analytical reporting efforts. Below, the formula =gpt () is pulling prompts and data directly from google sheets. With tools like the API Key and this Google Sheets extension, it’s possible to incorporate ChatGPT in your own customizable way to fill your exact needs.

Generative AI can also help segment audiences for targeting efforts using historical campaign data to identify the most relevant and profitable audiences.

The list is truly endless as long as you can organize a prompt with the proper data inputs, Generative AI can assist with many other levers such as CRO methods like A/B testing and optimization of ad creatives and landing pages, strategic deployment by analyzing market trends and identifying opportunities for growth, as well as giving recommendations for budget allocation and other campaign optimization strategies.

A prompt for this could be, “Analyze this dataset to provide recommendations on which ad creatives to turn off and which ad creatives to leave running based on historical CTR, total spend, CAC, and CVR.”

Things to Be Cautious Of with Generative AI

Generative AI can be a powerful tool in performance marketing, but as with most great tools available to us, there are inherent risks and some potential pitfalls to be aware of when using it. One of the main risks is that the generated content may not be aligned with the brand’s values or messaging, potentially damaging the brand’s reputation. This is why it’s important for the end-user to have checks and balances when working with generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Dall-E 2, Writer, Jasper.AI and more. It is even possible to train these machines to learn what was incorrect or undesirable in the outputs to avoid those types of off-brand outputs in the future.

Some of these undesirable outputs can come in the form of odd-looking images when using image-generating AI tools like Dall-E 2. Always make sure to carefully review the output of generative AI tools. This includes checking for any distorted or unappealing images that could negatively impact the performance of your ads. When in doubt, always go back and revisit your original prompt. The more precisely you engineer your prompts, the more accurate output the AI tool will provide.

It is also recommended to understand the limitations and capabilities of the specific AI tool you’re using to generate images, as some tools may be better suited for certain types of images than others.

Another potentially risky area is that the generated content might not always be legally compliant. It’s completely up to the end-user to review and adjust outputs as necessary because ChatGPT cannot be sued or penalized (yet) for incorrect or illegal claims. It’s always important to ensure that your work that uses any generated content is compliant with legal and ethical standards.

Lastly, it is important to be aware that generative AI is still an infantile technology, and there may be bugs or errors in the system that result in unexpected or inappropriate output. Overall, it is always essential to give that last human run-through to validate any generative AI output before using it in live marketing efforts. It’s definitely something to approach with caution and to ensure that any output is aligned with the brand’s values, compliant with legal and ethical guidelines, and thoroughly tested before use.

Also be aware of potential copyright infringement, by ensuring that any text or images generated by AI tools are not in violation of any copyright laws. If you stick to reputable AI tools that are well-known for using legal practices, you are less likely to run into any copyright infringement issues.

If you leave with some important takeaways for best practices when using generative AI, here they are:

  • Set clear parameters and goals when working with AI tools to ensure that the generated content aligns with your brand and messaging.
  • Regularly analyze and review performance for any campaigns ad sets or ads that utilize outputs generated by AI to ensure that they are meeting your performance goals.
  • Continue to follow the proper marketing strategies and techniques like A/B testing and other experimentation methods to test different variations of ad creative generated by AI.
  • Never stop refining your AI strategy and educating yourself on new breakthroughs in machine learning technology, and always keep up to date on industry trends.
  • Implementing generative AI into your performance marketing efforts can be a powerful time-saving tool for creating high-performing ad content, but it’s important to approach it with caution and best practices in mind.

Conclusion

The marketer’s toolbox is rapidly expanding as more and more applications for generative AI are introduced every day. These tools will only improve over time and it is essential to continue to iterate and stay open-minded to this new technology.

Marketers who leverage generative AI can gain a competitive advantage by creating more effective and targeted campaigns. If used properly, these tools have the power to improve the quality of work and reduce the man-hours required for executing certain tasks.

I encourage you to continue to experiment with generative AI tools and challenge yourself to improve your prompt engineering skills with Natural Process Language (NPL) tools. You will thank yourself later!

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Facebook Vs. TikTok Marketing: Which One is Better for Ads? https://nogood.io/2023/01/20/facebook-vs-tiktok-marketing/ https://nogood.io/2023/01/20/facebook-vs-tiktok-marketing/#respond Fri, 20 Jan 2023 23:06:48 +0000 https://nogood.io/?p=26023 Navigating Facebook vs. TikTok marketing? Understand the key differences and how to leverage each platform for brand success.

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As social media platforms continue to evolve, brands are constantly looking for new ways to reach their target audiences and drive conversions. In recent years, Facebook has been the go-to platform for many companies looking to advertise their products and services. However, with the rise of TikTok and its growing user base, brands are starting to experiment with this new platform as well. TikTok has quickly become a popular destination for younger audiences, and with its unique features such as short-form snackable videos, trending sound bites and creative filters, it already offers a new and exciting way for brands to connect with their target market.

As TikTok’s ad offering continues to evolve, brands are becoming increasingly interested in what that means for their Facebook ads efforts moving forward. Here, we will identify some fundamental differences in what works for TikTok and Facebook ads respectively from a content standpoint, and how brands can effectively utilize both platforms properly to succeed in their paid media efforts moving forward.

TikTok Ads Vs. Facebook Ads

Every paid media buyer needs to know the fundamental differences between TikTok ads and Facebook or Instagram (Meta) ads, and what that means for their marketing strategies.

As with any digital advertising platform that is directly tied to a social media platform, in order to understand its true value, you must first have a grasp on the content native to the social media platform. For instance, with Facebook Ads vs. TikTok Ads, it is imperative to understand the type of organic content that resonates with the viewers on each platform, when to use each platform, and why each platform functions the way it does. To illustrate this point, here is some insight into how each platform gained traction from the beginning.

A Brief Recap of Meta’s History

Facebook has long held a monopoly in the social media advertising space, but the advent of TikTok, as well as the major shifts in the industry due to data and tracking restrictions, have begun to change that.

While Facebook will still likely play a significant role in any paid advertising strategy, TikTok is becoming an increasingly popular experimental channel for brands looking to reach younger audiences and try out new creative formats. With its rapidly growing user base, TikTok is becoming an increasingly attractive platform for brands looking to reach new audiences and test new ad formats. As TikTok’s ad offerings continue to evolve, brands are starting to experiment with the platform as a way to diversify their paid media strategies.

Meta’s success as a social media platform has grown and transformed from a photo/video-sharing platform for friends and family into much more. Over time, Meta grew into a highly addictive multifaceted platform where you can go if you want to learn about a celebrity or an ex-partner, shop online, or see what your friends are having for lunch (under the perfect lighting, of course).

Eventually, as more and more people photoshopped and color-corrected their posts into perfectly edited photos and glamorous lifestyle videos, Facebook and Instagram users began to get accustomed to seeing only perfect high-quality content. But recently, there have been some major shifts in what kind of content is embraced by audiences, what the nature of “social media” is, and what connection means in today’s world of consumption. Particularly, the rise of authentic storytelling, the “unpolished” and raw aesthetic, and short-form video that’s quick and easy to create have been dominating the space — in many ways spurred by TikTok’s rapid rise.

A lot is changing for Facebook Ads and Meta is under the pressure to figure out a way to become more proactive and less reactive to Bytedance’s (TikTok parent company) successes.

With Apple’s data privacy restrictions, the fight for viewership getting stronger each day, exponentially advancing AI-driven algorithms, and the massive content shift towards short-form video / discovery, Facebook is having a bit of an identity crisis.

Instagram, once primarily a photo-sharing platform, has adapted to the growing popularity of video content by introducing Reels as a response to TikTok. The platform has made changes to its algorithm to promote videos and allow users to create and share short-form videos in a similar format to TikTok. This move is a clear indication of the impact that TikTok has had on the social media landscape and how other platforms are being forced to adapt in order to compete. Reels has allowed Instagram to attract a younger audience and give their creators a new way to share their content. With this move, Instagram is showing its willingness to evolve and adapt in order to stay relevant in the ever-changing social media landscape.

The community-based discovery content that became popularized by TikTok has backed Facebook into a corner, where Facebook is trying to catch up to the rapid changes to retain market share. Short-form and UGC videos have changed the way that consumers feel about and engage with ads.

TikTok’s Brief History

TikTok has been rapidly gaining market share in the social media space over the past two years. This can be attributed to its foundation as a discovery platform, where users follow strangers, who put out such engaging content that users were drawn to follow and view more content. The algorithm used by TikTok is designed to promote relevant, entertaining and valuable content to the users. The algorithm uses various factors like user engagement, watch time, and content type to determine what videos to show on the “For You” page. The For You page is the main page where users can discover new content, and it is the core of the TikTok experience. The algorithm is designed to favor content that is likely to be popular and engaging to the user, thus making it more likely that they will spend more time on the app and consume more content. The algorithm is constantly evolving, and it’s continuously learning the user’s behavior and preference to better cater the content to them.

Different in nature, the content is refreshingly low-fi from a production standpoint, with fast edits and strong hooks, which converts to trust and provides a fresh perspective from what consumers of social media have been used to for the past decade with the high-production value content that was typically found on Facebook and Instagram.

In order to capture attention on TikTok, content needs to be able to tell a story and be compelling. Short-form videos are an excellent medium for storytelling and allow brands to showcase their products or services in an engaging and creative way, making it more likely that users will stop and watch the video.

Edutainment through Storytelling arc

With such engaging and informative discovery-based content, TikTok is growing into the go-to search platform where people would find information they would have otherwise looked for on Google or Youtube.

On TikTok, there is a large opportunity for community building where brands have the chance to exhibit their true voice and connect with their target audience like they never have before through comments, duets, stitches, and other engaging community features that TikTok has.

Although TikTok was originally largely popularized by its influx of open-minded Gen-Z users, the 1.4 billion users and 1 billion MAUs the platform now boasts comprise a diverse pool of users.

Tiktok naturally became a hub for transparency, where people and brands could express themselves in a more unfiltered and authentic manner, and has grown to be the default platform to learn and discover new things from the everyday person, rather than from a big-time heavily endorsed celebrity, or through a high-production quality video.

How are Facebook and TikTok Ads Changing?

TikTok is catching up

TikTok has been rapidly catching up to Facebook in terms of advertising capabilities and offerings.

From a functionality and user experience standpoint, both Facebook Ads and TikTok Ads platforms feel very similar. If you are used to running ads on Facebook Ads Manager and have never touched or seen TikTok Ads Manager, you are in luck.

While the campaign, ad formatting options, and targeting options differ between platforms, the layout and overall feel is similar enough that you would sort of already know where to go the first time seeing or using TikTok.

TikTok has been introducing new ad formats and targeting options, making it more attractive to brands as an advertising platform. While Facebook still holds a strong monopoly in the social media advertising space, brands are starting to diversify their channels and experiment with new platforms like TikTok to reach new audiences and test new ad formats. TikTok’s unique features like short-form videos, creative filters and its popular “For You” page make it an ideal platform for brands to connect with younger audiences and try out new creative approaches. The rise of TikTok as a viable advertising platform has led to a shift in how brands approach their social media advertising efforts. With TikTok’s increasing popularity, it’s expected that more brands will start to include it as a core part of their social media advertising strategy in the near future.

AI as a Competitive Advantage

One major trend that is being seen across most paid social platforms is the shift toward machine learning and AI for targeting efforts. Significant investments are being made by advertising platforms to enable their AI-powered machines to become smarter and more efficient, especially due to the rising privacy concerns in the data-sharing world.

This means that algorithms are finding new ways of interacting with data to target audiences who will be most likely to engage or convert based on what the computer recognizes as relevant to specific users within the creative imagery and copy.

In some cases, Meta has even reported that there is as much as an 18-20% lift in conversions when brands utilize their new Advantage + Shopping campaign.

There are many uses for AI that, if used properly, can help paid media buyers to be more efficient in their work. AI copywriting can be used to write compelling ad copy for Meta or TikTok ads. AI content creation can be used to generate videos, images and animations for Meta or TikTok ads. AI targeting can be used to show ads to the most relevant audience by analyzing user data, such as demographics, interests, and behavior.

The importance of AI is rising and your AI tech stack will become increasingly large as more and more software is developed over the coming months/years.

The Rise of UGC

As a result of the increased need for brands to have access to short-form video, there is a rapidly growing opportunity for brands to utilize UGC for their top-of-funnel and mid-funnel paid social efforts.

UGC tends to work really well at the top and middle of the funnel, when brands want to increase brand awareness and reach, or to warm audiences up with more educational and informative product-based content.

Creator Content outperforms non-native ad creative

Over time, the audience’s sensitivity and antagonism towards ads have increased significantly due to the spike in the saturation of content and ads. UGC offers a new avenue to create value-driven ads that are meant to entertain first, sell second, earning that initial buy-in/trust from the audience and mitigating the negative reaction to traditionally promotional ads. In other words, at this point in time, people actually are willing to and even want to watch ads if the ads are indistinguishable from regular content and deliver value first and foremost.

With this, audiences can expect to continue to see authentic, transparent, and informative content that delivers real valuable insights to a brand or product.

Don't make ads, make tiktoks

Are Facebook Ads or TikTok Ads Better?

Facebook ads and TikTok ads can work in tandem as part of a full-funnel marketing strategy. Both platforms have their own unique strengths and target audiences, and by utilizing both, brands can reach a wider audience and achieve their marketing goals more effectively.

For the top of the funnel, TikTok can be used to raise awareness and generate interest in a brand or product by creating engaging and creative short-form videos that are likely to be shared and viewed by a wider audience. This can be done through Spark Ads, sponsored hashtag challenges, branded filters and effects, and influencer partnerships.

For the middle of the funnel, Facebook can be used to target a specific audience and drive conversions by using its sophisticated targeting options and ad formats. Brands can use Facebook’s retargeting capabilities to reach users who have already engaged with their content on TikTok, and use lead generation forms, carousel ads and video ads to encourage them to take a specific action.

For the bottom of the funnel, both platforms can really drive value depending on what your goals are. If your BOF goals are conversions, then Meta has historically been known to have a stronger BOF conversion rate with a better CPA than TikTok. However, at the BOF, TikTok can still be used to increase brand loyalty and customer retention by building a community around a brand and creating content that encourages users to keep coming back. Brands can use TikTok live, duet and reaction features to interact with their audience and create a sense of community and engagement.

By using both platforms in a coordinated way, brands can create a full-funnel marketing strategy that leverages the unique strengths of each platform to reach a wider audience and achieve their marketing goals more effectively.

The best ad platform for each brand will vary. The answer to this question requires us to take a step back and take a more holistic viewpoint. A brand’s digital ads strategy should encompass a multitude of platforms that contribute to overall blended performance. An advertiser’s toolbox today needs to span a variety of social tools like Facebook Ads, TikTok Ads, Amazon Ads, Pinterest Ads, Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads, etc. The list goes on and the tools available to advertise digitally grow each day — and each ad tech stack will look different depending on the brand’s vertical, business model, and audience needs.

The main difference between Facebook Ads and TikTok Ads is not in the technical capabilities of each ad platform, but rather the fact that the content that works on Facebook for paid social is largely influenced by the content that TikTok creators are putting out due to the reasons stated above.

There is no answer for which is a “better” ad platform between Meta and TikTok because both platforms can be used simultaneously to achieve different goals for a full-funnel approach.

TikTok can be a strong Top of Funnel driver that we can use to warm audiences up and retarget them on Facebook, which has proven to be a strong tool for Bottom of Funnel objectives like conversions.

Facebook Vs. TikTok Advertising

Consistent creative experimentation is key no matter which platform a brand chooses to advertise on. Creative is and will continue to be the number one determining factor in the performance of any ad campaign on any platform.

Why is it Important to get out of learning mode?

What remains true to both ad platforms is that campaigns take time to learn and optimize when they are first launched. This is especially the case for new brands starting out with a brand new pixel. When a conversion objective has reached enough events (minimum of 50), then the learning phase will end. The learning phase is a period where your CPC, CPA, CPM will all be significantly higher because the platform is still learning how to best perform and deliver your ads to the proper audiences who are most likely to engage and convert.

Number of conversions in relation to conversion rate

Once the campaign is out of learning mode, the costs should begin to come down and desired metrics should start to increase if your campaign setup, targeting, and ad creatives are done properly. It is recommended to spend only maximum 20% of your budget in the learning phase to achieve optimal results. That means once you launch, you should try to make as few significant changes to the campaigns as possible as each change sends the campaign back into learning mode.

Moving forward

As the race to grab attention morphs and grows, change is inevitable, and it will happen suddenly. Now, more than ever, it is critical to upkeep on research and continually uncover new “current” best practices for each platform to achieve success. These strategies need to be constantly reassessed as new platform features and industry trends are arising all the time. If you would like to learn more about Growth Marketing for your business, check out NoGood’s list of services.

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