Holiday Season: 5 Tips to Effectively Promote Your Brand
Posted: Mon Dec 09, 2024 10:26 am
This year has been marked by major macroeconomic challenges and the war in Ukraine. This has resulted in record inflation, energy shortages across much of Europe, and delays in supply chains.
In this context, many companies have reduced their expenses and revised their marketing budgets downwards. A major question remains: in which area(s) to invest, and when?
From the early days of the pandemic, we talked about the importance of not interrupting marketing efforts during difficult times . This strategy proved to be successful and the positive impacts were quickly felt.
With the current economic situation, however, it seems fantuan database that these challenges are here to stay. It is therefore crucial for marketers to identify the right opportunities to maximize the impact and success of their digital media mix. The end of the year is approaching and companies are about to finalize their strategies and tactics for Q4.
Here are 5 tips to give your brand a boost and ensure its success, even during the most difficult times:
1. Take advantage of the end of the year to boost your sales
Unfortunately, forecasts suggest that the crisis is not over and that your customers’ financial situation could even deteriorate next year. While studies already point to some buyer restraint, it is not necessarily as significant as you might think. For example, in some key regions, budgets planned for Black Friday weekend have only slightly declined and are higher than levels seen in the first year of COVID. So there are still plenty of opportunities to capitalize on the end of 2022, especially if your competitors are pausing their campaigns.
The effectiveness of your digital media mix will be essential to guarantee a positive ROAS (Return On Ad Spend). We are already seeing that many advertisers are no longer activating pure branding campaigns, but rather want to enrich them with engagement KPIs, such as traffic generation or even sales.
Outbrain is the perfect solution for these types of goals. Our platform allows users to discover content and brands that they are really interested in but didn’t know existed, helping to boost engagement and maximize conversions.
2. Favor platforms with low barriers to entry
Even during COVID, digital channels have seen a surge in ad traffic. Campaigns can be sped up or slowed down in near real-time and budgets can be redirected to the platforms that are performing best vs. campaign goals.
The many different channels and formats offer marketers a wide range of possibilities to pursue different marketing objectives.
Outbrain is the gateway for brands to run ads on the world’s largest publishers, while benefiting from campaign management tools similar to those available on the leading social platforms. In just a few clicks, you can run and combine ads, define precise targeting, and analyze your campaigns.
3. Use automated optimization tools
There are two ways to optimize your campaigns. You can either optimize your creatives and settings manually, creating different campaigns for different devices and using the appropriate and relevant images for each audience.
Or, you can also rely on the automatic optimization tools offered by platforms like Outbrain. It would be a shame to underestimate their capacity, especially for Performance Marketers looking to optimize their conversions or mid-funnel KPIs; these tools are now part of their daily lives. They allow you to analyze conversions and adjust bids according to your objectives, taking into account thousands of signals almost in real time, and therefore impossible to do manually.
4. Maximize every touchpoint
As retargeting becomes more and more complicated, it is increasingly beneficial for marketers to focus and maximize the only touchpoint they have left. Two factors are important: optimizing your landing page, for which you can use first-party data, and optimizing your traffic so that you only pay for users who are actually interested in your offers/products.
Ideally, both factors should work together: use “ soft conversions ” on your landing pages to identify highly engaged traffic, or use Outbrain’s Engagement Bid Strategy directly , which leverages your site-centric Google Analytics data and automatically optimizes for traffic that stays on your page longer or clicks more often.
5. Create direct links to your e-commerce sites
Content works great for Native, but it’s not a must-have! You don’t need content pages or blogs specifically created for Outbrain. Many businesses are very successful with native campaigns by linking directly to their e-commerce sites. Remember, your ads should match the offer on the redirect page (never give false hope with your creative). See how fashion brand Marc O’Polo linked their Outbrain ads directly to their e-commerce site and got impressive results.
Try Native for your end-of-year campaigns
Outbrain makes it easy by providing resources and native advertising experts to ensure your campaign is successful. Check out this year’s guide to the biggest consumer trends . You can also sign up for the Outbrain Academy to learn how to run successful campaigns on Outbrain—it’s free and you’ll get your Native Advertising certification too.
In this context, many companies have reduced their expenses and revised their marketing budgets downwards. A major question remains: in which area(s) to invest, and when?
From the early days of the pandemic, we talked about the importance of not interrupting marketing efforts during difficult times . This strategy proved to be successful and the positive impacts were quickly felt.
With the current economic situation, however, it seems fantuan database that these challenges are here to stay. It is therefore crucial for marketers to identify the right opportunities to maximize the impact and success of their digital media mix. The end of the year is approaching and companies are about to finalize their strategies and tactics for Q4.
Here are 5 tips to give your brand a boost and ensure its success, even during the most difficult times:
1. Take advantage of the end of the year to boost your sales
Unfortunately, forecasts suggest that the crisis is not over and that your customers’ financial situation could even deteriorate next year. While studies already point to some buyer restraint, it is not necessarily as significant as you might think. For example, in some key regions, budgets planned for Black Friday weekend have only slightly declined and are higher than levels seen in the first year of COVID. So there are still plenty of opportunities to capitalize on the end of 2022, especially if your competitors are pausing their campaigns.
The effectiveness of your digital media mix will be essential to guarantee a positive ROAS (Return On Ad Spend). We are already seeing that many advertisers are no longer activating pure branding campaigns, but rather want to enrich them with engagement KPIs, such as traffic generation or even sales.
Outbrain is the perfect solution for these types of goals. Our platform allows users to discover content and brands that they are really interested in but didn’t know existed, helping to boost engagement and maximize conversions.
2. Favor platforms with low barriers to entry
Even during COVID, digital channels have seen a surge in ad traffic. Campaigns can be sped up or slowed down in near real-time and budgets can be redirected to the platforms that are performing best vs. campaign goals.
The many different channels and formats offer marketers a wide range of possibilities to pursue different marketing objectives.
Outbrain is the gateway for brands to run ads on the world’s largest publishers, while benefiting from campaign management tools similar to those available on the leading social platforms. In just a few clicks, you can run and combine ads, define precise targeting, and analyze your campaigns.
3. Use automated optimization tools
There are two ways to optimize your campaigns. You can either optimize your creatives and settings manually, creating different campaigns for different devices and using the appropriate and relevant images for each audience.
Or, you can also rely on the automatic optimization tools offered by platforms like Outbrain. It would be a shame to underestimate their capacity, especially for Performance Marketers looking to optimize their conversions or mid-funnel KPIs; these tools are now part of their daily lives. They allow you to analyze conversions and adjust bids according to your objectives, taking into account thousands of signals almost in real time, and therefore impossible to do manually.
4. Maximize every touchpoint
As retargeting becomes more and more complicated, it is increasingly beneficial for marketers to focus and maximize the only touchpoint they have left. Two factors are important: optimizing your landing page, for which you can use first-party data, and optimizing your traffic so that you only pay for users who are actually interested in your offers/products.
Ideally, both factors should work together: use “ soft conversions ” on your landing pages to identify highly engaged traffic, or use Outbrain’s Engagement Bid Strategy directly , which leverages your site-centric Google Analytics data and automatically optimizes for traffic that stays on your page longer or clicks more often.
5. Create direct links to your e-commerce sites
Content works great for Native, but it’s not a must-have! You don’t need content pages or blogs specifically created for Outbrain. Many businesses are very successful with native campaigns by linking directly to their e-commerce sites. Remember, your ads should match the offer on the redirect page (never give false hope with your creative). See how fashion brand Marc O’Polo linked their Outbrain ads directly to their e-commerce site and got impressive results.
Try Native for your end-of-year campaigns
Outbrain makes it easy by providing resources and native advertising experts to ensure your campaign is successful. Check out this year’s guide to the biggest consumer trends . You can also sign up for the Outbrain Academy to learn how to run successful campaigns on Outbrain—it’s free and you’ll get your Native Advertising certification too.