Blog

How successful retail advertisers stand out

Martin Kilp, head of apps at Smartly.io, explains why retailers need to truly embrace digital channels now if they wish to be successful in the future.

Photo by istock.com

December 11, 2019

By Martin Kilp, head of apps at Smartly.io

One of the most common questions we get from retailers is how to stand out from the crowd — especially on paid social as the media environment is becoming more and more saturated every year.

In 2019, mobile content will overtake television as the most consumed form of media, while the average attention span per piece of mobile content is 1.7 seconds. Consequently, many retailers are struggling to attract potential shoppers' attention in this vital medium.

Refusing to react to the shift to mobile and staying in denial would be a catastrophic mistake as it's not just media consumption that is changing. Shopping behavior is also undergoing a dramatic global transition. According to an Ipsos Marketing study, 49% surveyed in the US made purchases on mobile during the 2018 holiday season. By 2022, 58% of all retail sales dollars in the US will be impacted by online advertising. Retailers need to truly embrace digital channels now if they wish to be successful in the future.

However, a mere presence on online channels is not enough. Extremely savvy e-commerce players are already using these channels to the fullest, challenging the dominance of traditional retailers over people's limited attention.

So, how can I succeed?

Luckily, there is ample research available on how to successfully capture a potential customer's attention. Studies have shown that you need to reach potential customers with relevant offers in a visually engaging way to succeed with your advertising. In fact, potential customers are 91% more likely to make a purchase when they receive highly relevant offers compared to generic promotions.

Still, offering the right promotion at the right time is not enough. How you present your offering is critical. For example, did you know that people are five times more likely to pay attention to a video compared to a static image? Creative is perhaps the most crucial component of your advertising success — a Nielsen study found that 56% of brand lift can be attributed to creative.

Instagram and Facebook advertising offers powerful tools for meeting the criteria of both relevance and creative. Two distinct types of ad content are the key to success: video ads and, more recently, interactive ads (with Playable Ads).

Video for the win

Nothing captures attention like relevant video content. The biggest hurdle to start with video advertising is that retailers (often mistakenly) think they don't have the resources for it. They might not have budgets for big, impressive video productions. On the other hand, their brand films might be geared towards television, and thus, rarely work well when used online — especially on mobile.

I would argue this is nothing but a misconception. Yes, brand film assets (that you can repurpose for mobile) and big video production budgets can be hugely beneficial. However, they are not requirements to get started successfully! Existing product information and simple marketing assets are all you need as long as they are combined with the right automation.

To get started, gather lifestyle and product images, write the copy, and make sure you have product information such as prices and descriptions. Powerful video automation tools can ingest the data and create great looking videos containing the necessary product information (such as unique value propositions and price) to capture potential customer's attention successfully.

If you are lucky enough to have brand films made for other mediums, you can also use different parts of them and make the content even more eye-catching. For example, TUI, one of the largest travel operators in the world, was able to leverage these tools and easily create hundreds of videos that resulted in a 36% lower cost per purchase.

Solution 1: Start investing in video automation and make sure to run video ads alongside image ads (especially in prospecting campaigns).

The dawn of interactivity

More and more advertisers are competing for limited user time and attention. Interactivity lowers the barrier to entry and encourages exploration in ways that static ads don't, and thus, promises to drive higher quality and higher intent customers.

Facebook's Playable Ads are a rapidly growing ad format. However, advertisers incorrectly assume the format is only suited for gaming advertisers. On the contrary, all app advertisers, regardless of vertical, can utilize Playable Ads to drive higher intent and reach quality users. Gaming advertisers might have been the early adopters, but with more inventory opening up, other advertisers are already seeing results.

In retail, the importance of shopping apps as a revenue channel is steadily growing, hence Playables is a perfect format to drive revenue. App users typically have a much higher lifetime value than people making a one-time purchase on a website. Thus, the value is much more likely to extend past the initial purchase.

A great example of how retailers can leverage Playables comes from Daraz, South Asia's largest online marketplace. They wanted to get more users to their app and turned to Playables during a sales period. The ad featured a simple scratch card that users could interact with to reveal a discount code for their first purchase on the app. The campaign was a resounding success, resulting in 70% higher conversion rate from app install to purchase with three times higher shareability (compared to their regular app promotion campaigns).

Solution 2: Start testing interactive ad formats such as Playable Ads.

How to verify this works for my brand?

Remember to think beyond video vs. static or Playable ads vs. static image ads when verifying this strategy. As with your overall media mix, people respond to different kinds of online ad formats differently. Fortunately, Facebook's algorithms can take different content preferences into account. If you want to run tests to verify the effects of these formats, test the following:

●    video + image ads vs. image ads only
●    Playable ads + image ads vs. image ads only.

These test structures will give you a much more realistic picture of the total impact and how your advertising improves.

If you are interested in learning more about testing, such as how to set up robust creative tests or what to test when testing, download our ebook: The Ultimate Framework for Creative Testing.