How do Clients use Digital Advertising in October?

The Starbucks Pumpkin Spice latte debuts today, August 30, 2022.  Yes, there’s a feeling in the air with marketers, that October is right around the corner.  That means pumpkin-spiced everything. Walks to raise money for Breast Cancer Awareness. A high volume of commercials from the politicians who are running for office.  Fall is officially upon us, and advertisers have a lot of reasons to advertise in October.

I think October is primarily known for being home to Halloween.  And with Halloween comes haunted houses, city-wide Halloween Movie Nights, themed nights at bars, and so on.  With events, you typically don’t have the opportunity to promote for months at a time.  In fact, you only usually get a full month’s commitment to run in 3 or 4 weeks.   Luckily, with digital, promoting an event is something that you can do.  When promoting an event for Halloween themed events, as mentioned above, there are a few products that are most popular.

Facebook and Instagram:

Let’s face it.  As people start prepping for this holiday, pictures and conversations of costume ideas get shared, liked, and some of them even go viral.  Having presence on these social media platforms will be a great place for your client to promote their events.  Using Facebook and Instagram, there are 2 types of ads that are the most effective.

First, the Carousel Ad.

What’s great about these Carousel Ads are that you can showcase so many aspects of your clients’ events.  Is there a costume contest?  Food and drink specials? Specialty music?  Do they have photos/videos from last year?   We recommend a combination of 10 images or videos to showcase what’s taking place at the event.  That means up to 10 different ways to get someone’s attention!   And each image or video can link to a different page of the client’s website that talks about that aspect of the event.  Are they selling tickets?  Have one of the images link to the page where a customer can buy a ticket today.  Is it a Haunted House and they are only open on weekends?  Have an image talking about hours and link to the page of the site that lists the hours.   This type of ad offers so much flexibility.

The second ad type that you can use is the Event Response Ad.  This is something you would pair with the carousel ad above.  Event Response ads can work with either B2B or B2C events because you get to choose the targeting criteria.   Facebook layers thousands of targeting categories on everyday users, like where they are, their job title, their age, gender or interests.  On the left side of your Facebook Business Page is a link called “Events”, where you create a free event with the date, address, and all other pertinent details:

From there, we use that event to target potential attendees inside their News Feed.   When someone expresses interest in your event by clicking “Interested”, the event details will automatically be added to their calendar on Facebook.   Facebook continues to gain frequency on those interested by posting alert reminders about the event as it draws closer.   Your event also will show up in your friends News Feed as something they could be interested in.   Here’s an example of an Event Response ad with advertising power behind it:

When using Facebook to target people for Halloween, here are a few categories that may help:

Halloween

Haunted Attraction

Haunted House

Halloween Costumes

Halloween Horror Nights

Horror Movies

The 2nd product to target your October events are Social Mirror Ads.

These ads are knocking it out of the park with our clients, averaging 7x higher CTR than the national average!  With Social Mirror Ads, we are taking your Social Media content, from any of the 8 major social media platforms, and mirroring that content onto other apps and websites to target potential customers when they are not on social media.

The first step is the client would give us the URL of the social post they want to use to create the ad – in this example, it’s a tweet that this advertiser published:

Then, we take that post and create it as an ad – that looks just like (and links to) the social post.  Again, these ads are running across thousands of apps and websites (not the social media platform).

Whether your client is like most other businesses, using Facebook and Instagram, or on any of the other 6 major social media platforms:

Twitter

LinkedIn

Pinterest

Snapchat

YouTube

TikTok

We can even create a Story Ad which mimics many of these platforms story format.  Using this type of advertising allows them to enhance their social media presence by putting it in front of their target audience when they aren’t on social media.  This is a great opportunity, especially for those clients that invest a lot of time and money into the creation of their content!

Targeting through Social Mirror also allows you to be pretty specific when looking for your customers.  Here are some categories you can use via Social Mirror:

Halloween

Halloween Candy Buyers

Halloween Costume Buyers

Halloween Super Shoppers

Halloween Products

Halloween Party Supply

Halloween Decorations

Halloween TV Specials

Halloween Enthusiasts

Holiday Entertainment Lovers

Horror Enthusiasts

Horror Movie Fans

As you can see, there are a lot of ways to help your clients promote their upcoming Halloween events, or just change their targeting to the demo of people that are going to spend a LOT of money on Halloween.  Also, as you’re speaking with your clients, here are a few stats you can share with them.

Americans spent around $10.14 billion on Halloween in 2021 (a record high).
The average amount spent on costumes, candy, decorations, and greeting cards per person is $102.74.
45% of consumers shopped for Halloween in September of 2021 or earlier.
39% shopped during the first 2 weeks of October.

During October, you also see a lot of pink, representative of the support for Breast Cancer awareness.   In my career as a radio salesperson, and even since I’ve entered the world of digital 6+ years ago, I’ve seen a lot of business owners give back to their communities by supporting their local Breast Cancer organizations.

There are a lot of ways to be able to do this and for businesses to promote their dedication to their community.  One of the top ways that I would recommend to a business owner would be using video.  I say this because when someone can convey their message verbally, there’s a lot of power that can be used in the tone of your voice, as well as in the words you speak.

There are a lot of video options out there, but I’ll share our top recommendations.

Video Pre-Roll

Have you ever gone to watch the latest highlights on ESPN of the game that took place yesterday?  Or maybe wanted to go watch a DIY tutorial on HGTV?   If you did, you probably saw a commercial play before you can watch the content you went there to watch.   That’s a video pre-roll ad.  They are either :15 or :30 in length and can be done with behavioral targeting, keyword targeting, artificial intelligence, and retargeting, and can run across all devices. These ads can be skippable or un-skippable, but that isn’t something that the advertiser is able to dictate. Whether ads are skippable or not is determined by the website in which they are appearing. By having a combination of skippable and un-skippable ads, those un-skippable ads are aiding in branding and awareness, and with skippable ads, research shows that people who have the option to skip but don’t, are the consumer who are really interested in your product or service.

Another opportunity to utilize video is through OTT (Over-The-Top) Advertising.  OTT is video programming that is transmitted via the Internet, not cable or traditional broadcast. People can watch their programs of choice by watching through connected TV’s (like an Apple TV), using a set top box like a Roku or a Chromecast that turns their “dumb TV” into a smart TV, or through a gaming console. These ads are similar to TV ads where the ad will run inside of the programming that the user is streaming, and they can be :15 or :30 in length.

Using both Video Pre-Roll (VPR) or Over-The-Top (OTT) to promote a business’ desire to give back to the community is a great strategy.  Here are a few of the categories you could choose from for your clients’ targeting:

Charitable Donors

Interested in Charity by type of Charity (Animals, Health, etc.)

Charity Event Attendees

Amount people have donated to charity

And in this case, for Breast Cancer Awareness specifically:

Breast Cancer Fund Raisers

Breast Cancer Caregivers

Charity Walks

Cause marketing is a great opportunity for your clients to give back to the community and bring awareness not only to their generosity, but also to the cause they are supporting.  In October, I’m sure there are many options, Breast Cancer awareness just being one of them.

Lastly, come October, Politicians are in full swing of their Ad Campaigns, which makes right now a great opportunity to start speaking with those candidates, their representatives, and the organizations behind issues.  No matter what side of the political spectrum you fall on, you know you’re going to see and hear ads from everyone that’s running.

Digitally, we see a lot more money being spent online (over 22% of budgets).

So where online is money being spent?  From what we saw this year during the primaries, there are a few products that I saw get most of the budget:

Over-the-Top (OTT)

Social Mirror

Mobile Conquesting – Address Targeting.

Since Over-the-Top (OTT) and Social Mirror were covered earlier I won’t repeat the same info.  However, here are just some of the reasons these two products are used (think behavioral categories):

Mobile Conquesting Address Targeting

I think we can all agree that every time there’s an election, we get bombarded with pieces of direct mail for every candidate we know about (and maybe some we didn’t).   Well, think of Address Targeting as Direct Mail for the Internet.

These politicians have huge databases.  Maybe it’s from their team knocking on doors, or information they’ve gathered in other manners.   How this works is the political team would provide you with the list of physical addresses.  Then we draw hundreds or even thousands of tiny geo-fences around an address (business or residential) to serve ads to consumers on their mobile phones and tablets.  Address Retargeting is continuing to serve ads to those same people when they leave their houses and use their mobile devices.  Advertisers can target a list of current customers, past customers, or any type of first party database list they have collected.  These ads can be mobile display or video ads.

Here’s a visual of impressions served to hundreds of targeting addresses:

With this tool, they can pinpoint the exact houses (or businesses) they want to reach.  We can also reach 100% of an address list that they have (except for PO Boxes and specific apartment numbers).   This strategy also uses frequency within the campaign, meaning we want to hit each of these addresses’ multiple times throughout the month, as opposed to just one time with Direct Mail.

Keep in mind that because Address Targeting is sent through mobile devices, be aware of the conversion you are asking the end consumer to complete on the website.  Typically, for political, it’ll just be branding and awareness, but if someone has to fill out a long form, a multi-field application, or a conversion that is better suited for a computer with a keyboard, this product may not be a good fit.  You want to make sure the action you’re asking a customer to complete after they click your ad is easy to do on a mobile device.

Whether your clients sell pumpkin spiced lattes, own a Haunted House, are supporting Susan B Komen or another non-profit, or are wanting to get elected for a specific office, October is jammed pack full of advertising opportunities.   These are just a few.

The post How do Clients use Digital Advertising in October? appeared first on Vici Media.

Are You Investing in Digital this Political Season?

The “ber” months are approaching quickly and that means cooler weather, reasons to eat a lot of pie, and everyone’s favorite- political season. That’s right, political season is already ramping up and we are seeing and hearing ads for all sorts of political races from local ballots to nationwide races. This year, political ad spending is set to smash records in the midterm elections with $9.7 billion dollars being spent on political ads during the 2022 election season.

Now, chances are that your particular candidate isn’t going to have millions of dollars to spend on a digital campaign, but take a look at your local races like Mayors, Clerk of Courts, County Assessor, District Judges, Prosecuting Attorney, State Representatives for your area’s districts, Family Court Judges, etc. On the local level, there are a lot of different ways you can use digital for political races and get a slice of that political pie.

The map above is broken out into congressional districts and it’s a great illustration showing the predicted percentage of local spending that political advertisers will take up as we march closer to that political window. Anything shaded in dark blue to light purple and then into dark purple means that those areas are predicted to have political spending be as much as 50% of the local ad spend, so this can help give you an idea on how much is going to be spent in your area for political.

Something else that can be helpful when talking to political candidates or campaign managers about how much they are looking to spend is to ask them what the average amount spent per eligible voter is. That number can vary greatly from $5.00 a voter, to more than $100 a voter but the average amount spent per eligible voter is $40.87. When talking with campaign managers or candidates themselves, you can ask them what their win number is, or how many votes that they have calculated that they need to get in order to win. Most will have calculated this number or at the very least looked at the prior election to know what the win number was for that winning candidate, and then you can multiply that by the number spent per eligible voter to get a benchmark on what a budget should be. For example, if we are dealing with a candidate with a win number of 500, their budget with a per eligible voter spend of $40.87 would be $20,435. That sounds like a pretty hefty number, but their opponents are looking at the same numbers they are, so they want to be aggressive!

When it comes to political races, broadcast TV is going to continue to get the elephants share of the spend, but digital ad spending is the next in line with the highest level of ad spend at $697 million dollars being spent. With 43% of voters searching for more information about a candidate after viewing an ad, digital is coming up at the heels of broadcast TV. Broadcast also has some restrictions when it comes to running ads because they don’t have endless amounts of inventory, so this is a great opportunity to talk about different digital offerings, like Over the Top (OTT) for those campaigns getting shut out of broadcast TV due to limited inventory.

OTT is definitely a top product for political and it’s estimated that $1.5 billion will be spent on OTT ads this year, which is surpassing the $1.3 billion that is expected to be spent on Google and Facebook. By using OTT, it is great for that top of funnel awareness to get the candidates name out there, but it also allows you to get more targeted by utilizing Behavioral Targeting, Artificial Intelligence, and Retargeting, and the targeting categories are really great for political:

Another well-known strategy for political is Mobile Conquesting because of the ability to target by some type of database list. Anybody who is running for an office is going to have access to all kinds of database lists either that they have collected, or through their affiliated party. With Mobile Conquesting Address Targeting, they could target voter lists so that we are reaching people that are affiliated with a certain party, or donor lists where we show ads to previous donors and ask them to donate again. With this strategy, we are going to reach 100% of that list and they can use display ads, video ads, and even add in Cross Platform targeting ads where we are reaching people on multiple devices and not just on their mobile device.

Now if the candidate doesn’t have a list to target or just wants to reach a little bit more of a broader audience, we can use Mobile Conquesting with Behavioral Targeting. With this targeting strategy, we can actually target by Congressional District as the geo, and the categories are also pretty specific:

The most common type of political campaigns are those that are running for offices, whether it be local, statewide, or national, but there are other type of political campaigns that you want to keep your eye our for, and those are ballot initiatives. Ballot Initiatives is a means by which citizens may propose to create, amend, or repeal a state law or constitutional provision through collecting petition signatures from a certain minimum number of registered voters. These types of initiatives or campaigns also have advertising budgets. One really good resource to use when looking for theses ballot initiatives is ballotpedia.org. This website lists national elections, state elections, city, county, ballot measures, local elections, etc., and all you have to do is go to the left side and look at ballot measures in your area and you can get an idea for what is being proposed, created, amended, repealed, etc..

Now that you have an idea on who you want to talk to and even some products that you want to talk about, here comes the hard part and it’s getting that meeting. How do you reach out and make yourself stand out compared to all the different types of media that are also trying to get a piece of the political pie? How do you position yourself as an expert? How do you make the candidate or campaign manager want to meet with you instead of someone else? You want to make sure you are using a valid business reason! Ask them if they are looking to target people by their political affiliation, interests, age, income, or voting district, and talk about the products you can do that with such as Video Pre-Roll, Social Mirror, OTT, Native Display, Native Video, or Display ads. Maybe reaching a large Hispanic population is something that they are interested in. If so, you have an entire presentation deck tailored for that. Talk about all the different ways that they can use a database that they might have with Native Email Matching, Facebook Custom Audience Matching and Lookalike, or Mobile Conquesting Address Targeting and Address Retargeting.

Once you do get that meeting, make sure you are doing your homework ahead of time. There is the potential for a lot of money with political campaigns, so you want to be prepared. During that first meeting, have an idea of who their target voter is, but clarify it with the candidate or campaign manager. Are they looking for certain ages or genders, is there a certain income they want to target or certain interests. If it is a Democratic candidate, be sure to highlight some of those categories that they will be interested in. If there is a certain ballot initiative, see what categories would be the best fit for that initiative. Ask them what the geo is that they want to focus on. If it’s a county race, you will want to make sure you are hitting all the zip codes in that county. Also, check out their Social Media accounts to not only see what accounts they have, but also get a feel for what they are about, their style, where they’re from, and even their values so that you have an idea of who you are going to meeting with and representing.  Don’t forget to use your Political Capabilities Presentation deck that we’ve created for you in your shared drive.

Maybe if you’re lucky, you’ll even find out what kind of pie they like.

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Are You Following the Proper Steps to Close Digital Sales?

ABC is an acronym for a lot of things. If you’re learning CPR, they teach you ABC to look for Airway, Breathing, and Circulation. If you’re a parent, ABC could mean “Another Blowout Coming”. In the broadcasting world, ABC stands for American Broadcasting Company. In sales, ABC is most commonly known as “Always Be Closing”, and in this case, ABC isn’t as easy as 1-2-3, so let’s look at some ways to make it a little easier when pitching and closing your digital prospects.

In a typical sales process, there are six steps:

Prospecting
Preparation
Presentation
Overcoming Objections
Closing the Sale
Follow UpFor prospecting, some great tools that you can use when looking for digital clients are Ghostery, SpyFu.com, and Facebook. Ghostery is an app you can download on your phone, or a paid extension that you can install on your browser. What you’re using this for is to see if that prospect has any advertising trackers. If they don’t have any advertising trackers, that is a good prospect to start from the beginning and mention some easier products like Display Ads. with. If they do have some trackers, this is a great opportunity to talk about some of the more advanced products like Social Mirror ads, Amazon, or Mobile Conquesting.

With Spyfu.com, you can look and see what some of the most popular keywords are that people are searching for for that business. This can help you get that first initial meeting with the prospecting by using a valid business reason like “We can target keywords related to your business such as (insert keywords found from SpyFu.com).  We do this by showing your online ads to people who visit webpages that contain your keywords. Can I schedule a meeting with you to talk about this and some ideas to market your business?”

For Facebook, you can actually see if a business is currently running ads on Facebook. If you go to their Facebook business page and go to Page Transparency, it will show it they are currently running ads or not.

If we take it one step further, we can see where they are running ads. If you click “Go to Ad Library”, now you can see they are running on Facebook, Instagram, Facebook Audience Network, and Facebook Messenger. If they are not using all the platforms that are available, this is where you can use your valid business reason to talk about Facebook and all the platforms that are available. “I was on your (Facebook) or (Instagram) page today and I was wondering if you were taking advantage of all the new ways Facebook now has to target your ads with products like Carousel ads with click to call options or Lead Ads, and run these ads not just on Facebook but on Facebook Audience Network which features thousands of top apps Facebook has partnered with, Facebook’s Messenger app, and even where we can take list of potential or past customers and target them with your Facebook ads. Can I schedule a meeting with you to talk about this and some ideas to market your business?” If they are doing all the platforms, you can complement them on using Facebook as a piece of their marketing puzzle, and talk about using that same post, but reaching people on other websites and apps with Social Mirror ads.

Now that we have our prospecting down, let’s look at what is involved for step two where we are going to do our preparation. The worst thing you can do when going into a sales presentation is to be unprepared.

Before you meet with the prospect, do your homework. See what kind of trackers they have from Ghostery, look up their keywords on SpyFu.com, see how many locations they have, look at different social media sites and see what kind of platforms they use. The answers for all these questions are not only going to help you put together your presentation, but it’s also going to show the prospect that you took the time to do some research before meeting with them. During that first meeting, you are also going to figure out a little bit on what they have done in the past that has worked for them, where they want to reach people, who their target audience is, and what goals they would want for a digital campaign. Are they looking for in-store sales, or website traffic, or branding and awareness? That is important information to know in order to come back with a custom proposal to pitch back to the prospect. You also want to be sure to ask the prospect how much budget they want to use and when a good time would be to get back together and go over the customized proposal. The goal of that first meeting with the prospect is to get the second meeting, step number three.

When presenting the tailored presentation to the prospect, communication is key. Be sure to guide them through the process so they know what to expect. You want to gain the credibility and trust with the prospect because if they feel confident in you and you come across as wanting to help them and they trust you, they are more likely to move forward with the sale, bringing you to step number five, closing the sale.

Before we get to ABC, closing the sale, there are some points that you want to make sure you are hitting as you are presenting your presentation. First, remember that you want to present yourself as an advertising expert. You want to make sure that you’re explaining the products in a way they client can understand and that you’re expressing your belief in the plan. For example, “These are the categories for Facebook that we found that are going to be best to reach the audience that you want in order to solve your challenge. We’re also going to include Retargeting because we know people are going to your website, so we want to stay in front of them”. That is going to help you build that credibility and trust. You also want to let the prospect know that you are looking at this marketing plan from their point of view and physically say to them “Here’s what I would do”. Those five words strung together carry a lot of weight. If you deliver this with confidence and put yourself in their shoes, it’s going to show. “I think these might be the best categories that might make the most sense” compared to “these are the best categories that are available to target your audience on Facebook” is a big difference and it comes across with a lot more confidence.

You also want to incorporate trial closes into your presentation. Trial closes are questions you are asking during the presentation that move the prospect further to that “yes”. Ask them how they feel about what you have presented so far and be sure to use open ended questions, or questions that can’t be answered with a “yes” or a “no”:

With all the information you’ve received so far, what questions do you have?
How do you feel about the product and what we’ve discussed so far today?
What do you think about the products I’ve presented?
If you could change something about this proposal, what would it be?

By asking these types of questions, you can better understand the customer’s perspective and draw conclusions about their needs.

The next step is overcoming the objections, and more than likely, you will get some during the closing process. The first thing you want to do is listen and not interrupt when the prospect starts to talk. Let them empty their cup. Active listening will make the prospect feel like you have good intentions, and it will help to continue and build that trust and credibility. You also want to summarize the prospects intentions and repeat back to them their concerns. This is another opportunity to ask more open-ended questions that could help you to reveal other concerns they might have. When you respond to them, address all the pain points that they mentioned, even if they seem trivial.

Now comes the fun part; you’re going to go ahead and close that deal! When you do close the deal and you get that pretty John Hancock signature, talk to the client about some potential conversions to track and show them how that would work. Show them those conversions on a laptop or a desktop, but then also show them on a mobile device. Ask them what type of creative they will need. Is that something they are creating or is that something your team is creating? If they are creating it, you want to make sure they have all the correct specs to do so. If you are creating it, what kind of look or colors do they want the ad to have? What is the click through landing page? Sometimes it is the homepage of the website, but sometimes it’s not. If they are promoting a certain sale or a certain product, you want to be sure they are landing on that offer page or that service page. What is the call to action going to be? Do they want to sell tickets, do they want phone calls, people to go to the website, or click on a certain page? You also want to explain that the client most likely won’t see their ad, and be sure to get out ahead of that one. Also give them a sample report for the products that you pitched and let them know you’ll come back and go over their monthly reports with them. This last step is tying everything together and putting a pretty little bow on it. You are continuing to guide them through the process and also continuing to strengthen that credibility and trust.

And then the final step in the sales process, is to follow up. Don’t just sell the deal and then only come around when it’s time for a renewal because you won’t get one. Be sure to stay in touch with the client. Sent them an email with a fun little factoid or stat about their industry and digital advertising. Keep on top of their creative and make sure it is being changed as needed. Make sure their website it secure and up to date. Be sure you’re holding their hand all the way from the beginning to the end.

Now that you know your ABCs, it can be as easy and 1,2,3, so go out and do it all over again.

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