fbpx

Get with the Program(matic): adding a creative touch

Now you have the social aspect of retargeting covered and you’re reaching your customers across the channels they spend the most time on, let’s run through the importance of having engaging creative.

You can have your ads in the most valuable real estate on the web but if you haven’t captured your audience with compelling and creative ads you may as well forget it altogether.

We understand that not everyone in marketing is a creative expert. AdRoll has vertical specialists that understand what creative and call to actions work across each vertical and can work with brands on their creative to get the best results.

Another thing to keep in mind is the phenomenon in display advertising called banner fatigue: the positive effect of an ad naturally diminishes over time, leading to a decline in engagement which results in lower click-through rates (CTR). In extreme cases, seeing the same ad too regularly, for a long period of time, can even lead to negative sentiments about your brand. Luckily it is easily fixed by updating your campaign creative periodically so your potential customers aren’t seeing the same ad over and over again.

So what makes for good creative? Below are my top tips for ensuring your creative stands out from the crowd:

Tips for implementing the best creative for retargeting:

1. Make it Dynamic

Dynamic ads take a visually appealing ad template, then pull from an advertisers feed, to display personalised images, messaging and product details for individual viewers. Brands can take the experience a step further and incorporate customisable animation and other interactive effects.

Internal AdRoll data shows that using dynamic ads (specific, personalised ads), on average, increases CTR by 115 percent and creates a 44 percent lift in ROI when compared to non-personalised ads. Relevancy is key to improving engagement a proves how important it is to nail segmentation.

2. Multiple sizes

As we have mentioned in both the social and mobile articles in this series, having ads that work in social and across mobile is essential. As an advertiser you need to be able to reach your audience where they spend time. With 2.3 million New Zealand Facebook accounts and 46 percent of New Zealanders accessing the internet from their smartphone each day, chances are it could be across one of these channels.

3. Great imagery

For hundreds of thousands of years we have used imagery to communicate. The old saying that a picture paints a thousand words couldn’t be more true. Great imagery draws a consumer in and can be the difference between making a product appealing or avoidable.

The quality of the imagery can also put a customer at ease when clicking on an ad. We have all had those moments with dodgy looking photographs in ads online where we have thought “Uh oh, if I click through on this I might be opening myself up to a virus”. High quality images will put a customer at ease.

Ensure that the imagery you’re using is relative to the product/service and your brand.

4. Branding

The branding really plays into the above point about imagery and customer confidence. If a potential customer clearly sees your branding, which they should recognise from being on your website previously, they are more likely to trust the advertisement and click through.

It is essential that consumers know who you are! Keep your branding prominent and clear in all creative. Not only does branding encourage loyalty and trust but

5. Exciting and relevant call to action

What is enticing your potential customer on clicking through to your website? Not sure. You’re not alone. Different call to actions work across different industries, that’s part of the reason AdRoll have account managers that specialise across the verticals.

Your AdRoll account manager can work closely with you on different call to actions that have worked well for similar brands and he you implement those across your creative.

It is important to have a mixture of enticing creative that’s on brand with exciting copy and a call to action. Keep your creative fresh by rotating between several static ads or keeping the product 100 percent relevant with Dynamic Ads.

Your account manager will work closely with you to keep your creative fresh and identify what is and isn’t working through constant optimisation of your campaigns.

  • Ben Sharp is the managing director of AdRoll in Australia and New Zealand. Click here to see more posts in this series.  
  • This article was produced as part of a content partnership between StopPress and Adroll.  

About Author

Comments are closed.