Digital Marketing Crash Course:Grow Customers Through Digital Ads

Introduction

Buckle up, digital marketers; we’re serving up a must-read crash course on delighting consumers and, in turn, growing your customer base with effective digital advertising. The fact is, digital ads that interrupt the user experience, or even annoy and turn off your could-have-been customers, are old news.

Here are the latest, proven tactics for not only enhancing your digital advertising through mobile, but creating a brand legacy built on emotionally driven impressions that stick.

Before you can crush your digital efforts, you need to com-pletely understand where consumers are at today. What are their digital habits and preferences? Where are they spending their time? That insight that should inform your strategies.

It’s no secret that everyone and their mother (literally) is con-stantly on a mobile device. Last year, consumer time spent on desktop fell to 2 hours and 12 minutes daily, while time spent on mobile daily was higher, at 2 hours and 51 min-utes — almost three hours each day where marketers can reach them.

Investing in this channel is essential for cutting-edge brands. By 2019, mobile will account for 72% of digital ad spend. It’s an inevitable campaign shift that marketers can no longer ignore. Smart brands, seeking unique ways to reach consum-ers, understand this and are allocating their spend accord-ingly, as mobile ad spending will rise to $65.87 billion by 2019.

WHERE?

The State of Digital Marketing: Channels +Ads

The State of Digital Marketing:Channels +Ads

Brands can also offer users non-incentivized rewards, or real world rewards that occur naturally within the user experi-ence and correlate with the user’s actions and feelings at a specific time. These rewards can come in the form of deep discounts, product samples, or exclusive offers for achieving a digital milestone.

Delighting digital consumers with personalization, rewards, and relevancy is one thing, but gaining lifetime customers requires a bit more. The big question is: How can you catch people’s attention in such a way that they are hooked and become a loyal customer? Let the following steps be your guide.

HOW?

Running creative and relevant ads on mobile is a huge oppor-tunity. Mobile provides marketers with limitless opportuni-ties to uncover who their consumer is and what they want to see. With personalized mobile devices, brands can deliver more personalized, relevant, and effective campaigns.

Some ads are incentivized, which means they reward users with points in a mobile game when they complete an action, like an app download, a full video view, or referring a friend to register for a service. Brands use incentivized rewards to convince consumers to interact with them. The reward is typically virtual currency or an upgrade within the game they’re playing.

Digital Guide to Customers

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Today’s battle for attention and emotional connection is won (or lost) during the user experience. Native ads follow the natural form and function of the user experience. It’s not disruptive or irrelevant; the ad respects the user expe-rience because it naturally adapts to it.

In this state, users are more likely to convert because your brand is positioned as a natural and rewarding piece of their experience, which strengthens trust.

Make Your Ads Native Choose Your Words Wisely

Oftentimes, traditional mobile ads are served at times that feel disruptive to the user, which can turn them off to the brand. 73% of people think banner ads are the most annoy-ing form of advertisement, ever.

When ads are positioned during natural transitions within an app experience, they see higher engagement rates than traditional IAB banner ads. The key is positioning your brand at times that feel natural to the flow of the app environment and matching the offer with the context of the moment. That way, you get high engagement rates AND positive sentiment.

Digital Guide to Customers

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Effective marketers understand where consumers’ heads (and hearts) are at. What resonates with users isn’t as much your product as it is the emotional gain.

Think about it: When a user is playing an in-app game on their mobile device, they experience milestones or achievements throughout the process. Brands can increase engagement by matching their ad placement and timing with the way users are feeling in that moment, essentially position-ing themselves as a pleasant surprise in those feel-good Achievement Moments. If your ad unit is displayed when users feel happy, excited, and engaged, the user will associate your brand with those positive feelings.

Consider The User’s Feelings

After each Achievement Moment, there is a micro-moment of opportunity where brands can capitalize on a user’s hap-piness and inject themselves into the experience. This is the perfect time to leverage non-incentivized rewards because not only will they feel extremely natural and be appreci-ated, but they’ll help you ramp up your customer acquisi-tion efforts and earn an emotional gain that extends well beyond the typical 20 second display ad. Congratulating the user on their in-app milestone will keep them in-app, and coming back for more. If your ad positioning is fun, authen-tic, and rewarding, that impression will stick!

REQUEST A DEMO

Today, digital marketing works if it respects the user experience. As consumers continue to get wrapped up in millions of mobile moments daily, brands should aim to inject themselves in a way that adds real value. Keep the fun times rolling in apps and games and that instinct to immediately click out will disappear.

Key Takeaways

Ready to take your digital advertising to the next level to increase engagement rates and new customers?