This paper.workBy:M.C. Nanda
As Instagram and Facebook become oversaturated and expensive brands, finding a healthy ad mix has become more difficult than ever.
New York, USAIn its first year, Totalworld relied almost entirely on paid ads on Instagram to show potential customers its main base colors.But founder Scott Sternberg is taking a different approach to the brand's next big marketing campaign.Until then, Totalworld's marketing budget has been those across Instagram, and the new campaign will bring ads to various media channels, including Snapchat, YouTube, Reddit and Google, and allow dancers to dance in monochrome outfits.The advertising ecosystem is bloated and chaotic for budding fashion brands, where the cost of getting a click-per-click is constantly changing, as are the rules governing sponsored content.In an already saturated market, brands must constantly improve their marketing budget allocation strategies and adjust the message they are trying to convey to consumers in order to avoid losing consumer attention."It's like the Wild West," Sternberg said.Band of Foreigns, the brand he founded in the past, sells mainly online through department stores and other retailers. "It's very different from anything I've ever experienced in the past, it's really different from having a traditional wholesale brand, and it's changing every month.”The golden age of Instagram is beginning to fade, and brands are facing a new challenge : exploring new ways to win consumer engagement and acceptance. The cost of betting on the wrong social platform is enormous, and the rising cost of the median price per 1,000 clicks (CPM) on Instagram - from $5.24 in the fourth quarter of 2018 to $7 in the third quarter of 2019 - has made it unaffordable for many brands.The first wave of direct-to-consumer brands, from Warby Parker to Glossier, have benefited the most from Instagram ads, and most of them have begun to diversify into areas such as radio, television and podcasting. As a result, thousands of start-ups marked by millennial colors and eye-catching serifless fonts are also working to update their direct-to-consumer (DTC) marketing models.BoF has in-depth discussions with brand, media buying agents and marketing experts to explore the future of new media.Stay away from instant conversion ratesInstagram ads provide an instant satisfaction for users to see a post, swipe the screen, and then be able to buy a product. This platform provides easy-to-measure conversion rate and performance data for further product development, while brands can easily delete and edit ads to improve their brand image.This can be an attractive option for a new brand with a small advertising budget.But putting all your money on Instagram isn't always an effective long-term strategy.With the enhancement of brand marketing ability, channel diversification becomes the key."Facebook and Instagram are like drugs that flow through your veins, and you need to get rid of them at some point," says Melanie Travis, founder and ceo of swimwear company Andie Swim.Travis was founded in April 2017 and, like many emerging brands, has chosen to advertise only through Instagram and Facebook in the first place. Now, most of Travis's marketing budget is spent on other channels, including podcasts, billboards and ad mail sent directly to consumers.Tracking the rewards of these offline ads may be more difficult, but they can help brands open up awareness and help build customer loyalty to the brand, something that is not possible with social media ads that instantly translate into features."You can get into a very vicious turnar process," says Ali Weiss, Glossier's senior vice president of marketing.“Other social platforms are also making it easier for consumer-facing DTC brands to achieve the ease of use of Instagram.Pinterest Chief Executive Ben Silberman said on a recent earnings conference call that Pinterest is working to improve conversion rates and further improve the quality of service it provides to advertisers.Snapchat is simplifying its advertising system by adding tools to help small businesses optimize their reach through Shopify's integration and goal-based bidding mechanisms.But strategies for success on Instagram may not work on other platforms, and brands must adapt their marketing strategies to each media channel and experiment over and over again.For Andie Swim, user-generated content does well on Instagram and Facebook, but has had little effect on Pinterest, and traditional forms of advertising are more in line with Pinterest users' tastes."Marketing attempts on Pinterest were very difficult at first, but now the results are getting better, " says Travis.In some cases, some companies have returned to Snapchat or started exploring Tik Tok to reduce the cost per transaction (CPA), which points a new path for many brands, and brands are beginning to connect with generation Z's young consumers.To appeal to DTC, Snapchat recently began offering the ability to instantly create and edit ads, allowing users to upload product photos and set templates generated by the platform.After Instagram and Facebook, Google ads are often the next step for brands, but as more consumers move directly into the online retail market in search of products, many brands are turning to Amazon search.Marketer, a market research firm, found that "search" was "the fastest-growing form of advertising for retail advertisers" and that the business is expected to grow 22.5 per cent this year to $13.1bn.The research firm predicts that Amazon's share of the advertising market will rise to 16 per cent by 2021 from 13 per cent this year.Ad mail will also be an alternative to social media, allowing merchants to deliver ad messages directly to potential customers' inboxes.Matt Scanlan, chief executive of designer brands Thakoon and cashmere Naadam, said he was considering the adoption of subscription email service The Skimm for young female consumers, as well as Morning Brew, which offers podcasts and search services, as part of his next marketing strategy, in addition to Instagram and Facebook.Travis also noted that The Skimm has helped Andie Swim significantly increase brand awareness.Many direct-to-consumer brands are built around a single "ace" product , such as Bombas socks or Untuckit shirts. Harry Bernstein, chief creative officer of advertising ad firm Havas Group, says this has affected the way online advertising is performed.Bernstein says even many big brands that sell diverse products are imitating the marketing model of a single product."Contemporary brand advertising is essentially product advertising because they are all directly consumer-facing brands, " he says.Today's marketing model, however, seems to be back to tradition.In recent ads, Entireworld and Glossier have emphasized the brand itself, not the product. They try to convey brand messages to young consumers, centered on values and strong aesthetics.In Glossier's "Feel Like Glossier" ad campaign, models, shop assistants, Glossier fans, and brand friends discuss what beauty means to them. These ads appear not only on television, but also on channels and platforms such as YouTube and Snapchat, where information-driven ads that need to get more attention from viewers are more effective.“The driving force behind our combined marketing strategy is the ability to tell stories around our values and voices within our communities.Weiss said.Platforms such as Snapchat are also trying to adapt to the shift.A recent earnings report showed that the platform was extending the maximum duration of ads so brands could "tell more detailed brand stories."For advertising campaigns like Glossier, ROI is calculated differently because part of the model includes users sharing the organic traffic generated by their favorite ads.Sternberg says the videos in Wholeworld's ads show dancers in branded sportswear performing a variety of stretching and synchronized swim moves intended to inspire a sense of engagement and brand awareness between viewers. However, he added that he did not expect the event to lead directly to significant sales growth."It's not necessary to sell swimwear, and the key is to use it to drive people to visit branded websites," Sternberg said.”The Nue Co., a health care company that specializes in health products, skin care and perfumes, launched its first product-independent advertising campaign last October. The campaign, called Who Are You, works with mental health organizations and spreads them through billboards, opinion leaders, social media and other means."This is the most successful campaign we've ever had," says Jules Miller, the company's founder.The number of people viewing the brand's social media pages increased by 300%, and sales of the main perfume products increased by 20%.Experiment with tradition in digital marketingSending product catalogs and other forms of ad mail is effective for big brands, who want to reposition customers and expand their brand reach.However, this approach is often costly, and it is more appropriate for small brands to test mail delivery services online online in advance.For Andie Swim, the black "Mykonos" suit performs particularly well on social media, with the highest conversion rate on product introduction pages. Therefore, Travis always places the medium item in the important position in the brand advertising message.Of all the advertising channels she uses, she says, the average cost of attracting customers through direct mail advertising is the lowest.Finding the right mix of ads also means adapting to changing consumer trends and emerging media channels. "When I'm at dinner, breakfast, a symposium or any kind of social event, all the entrepreneurs in the room always ask me what the next media channel is," says Travis.Translation: Jingwen Chen
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